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In this building, Martin Short and Meryl Streep’s chemistry is evident — just ask “Only Murders in the Building” creator, John Hoffman.
The writer shared an inside look into how Short’s Oliver Putnam and Streep’s Loretta Durkin came to be as the Season 5 premiere kicked off on Tuesday, Sept. 9.
“This show has miracles all around us, truthfully,” Hoffman exclusively told The Post. “And that’s what I just loved. We wrote Loretta first, and then Meryl said, ‘Is there anything there?’ And I was like, ‘Well, we just are writing a part that you’re perfect for, in my mind. And it includes a romantic interest for Oliver.’ We hadn’t done any romance stories for Oliver by that time in Season 3, so there it was. I can only say it’s like that thing of just watching brilliant actors, first of all.”
Even behind-the-scenes, the director was in awe of Streep, 76, and Short, 75.
“Meryl was always doing things. We’d be sitting in the green room and I wouldn’t realize they were running lines,” explained Hoffman. “I thought she was just saying things in the green room that were not even in the script. And I’m like, ‘Oh, wait. Oh, we’re running lines because it’s so real.’”
“In that first moment in Season 3, when she’s onstage giving them an audition and they look at each other for the first time and he says, ‘Where have you been?’ And it means as an actress that he hasn’t seen [her] before but also knows there’s something way more, and their careers are very different.”
As Hoffman described, Short is “a clown like no other and so versatile and so wildly funny.”
“And she is sort of this expert dramatic actress. Virtuoso, versatile, also [a] comedic actress. But just like, what can’t she do?” he mused of Streep. “The two of them as a love interest couple was unexpected, but then it made perfect sense in that moment. And then every step along the way.”
“When I’ve gotten to know each of them as well as I have now, which has been a gift, it just makes you so happy when you see the way in which the ease they find within working with each other. And the unexpected is all you want. You want something unexpected. Always. And I find that that’s always happening with them.”
Hoffman saw magic between the real-life couple in the very first scene they shot together for Season 3.
“They are at the piano in Oliver’s apartment. She is singing a song, and he joins in on it and the camera is moving around them. And I was directing that episode, and it was the first day with Meryl on set,” he told The Post. “She, I later found out, was nervous. And I was like, ‘She was nervous?’ And my butterflies were crazy. Marty said he was nervous.”
In the scene, Loretta asks Oliver to check her earring. The camera then turns in such a way “suggesting something’s going on” between the pair. J. Roy Helland, Streep’s hair and makeup artist for well over 30 years, later told Hoffman that the shot was “gorgeous.”
He noted he will “never forget” what came next.
“I think the electricity around their connection just is visceral,” Hoffman said. “You feel it.”
Short and Streep sparked romance rumors after getting cozy at the Golden Globes in Jan. 2024, but the “Father of the Bride” actor’s rep shut down the speculation at the time.
Short was previously married to actress Nancy Dolman until her death from cancer in 2010. The pair shared three kids: Katherine, 41, Oliver, 39, and Henry, 36.
Meanwhile, sources told Page Six in 2023 that Streep and Don Gummer — whom she married in 1978 and had four children with: Henry, 45, Mamie, 42, Grace, 39, and Louisa, 34 — had been quietly “separated for more than six years.”
In March, Page Six confirmed that Short and Streep had been dating for “well over a year” at that point.
“Only Murders in the Building” has gone on to win Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series at the 2025 Screen Actors Guild Awards. Short also picked up a win for Best Male Actor in a Comedy Series at the ceremony.
Hoffman was at his New York home when he started getting texts about Short’s win.
“I think he was sick. So I called him and he was home. I said, ‘Marty.’ And he’s like, ‘Can you even believe it? And I’m not there.’ I’m like, ‘I know.’ He said, ‘I would kill to make a speech on the show and for the show.’ And I was like, ‘We all want to hear it.’”
The two were even on the phone when they learned live that the cast won Best Ensemble, too.
Short asked for his trophies to be sent to his LA home — but they ended up lost in Indiana.
“Then he got two replacements for the awards, and then they found the original two. And so Marty has four SAG Awards when he only got two!” Hoffman said.
“They were lost in transit, but they were lost for a long period of time,” he explained. “I don’t know if he ended up giving the other two back. I’m sure he did.”