Anna Konkle Is Figuring Out What a Post-Pen15 World Looks Like

Konkle briefly touches on a memoir in the works as well as a feature adaptation, but for the moment, I want to tap into the acting part of her brain. This month, the 36-year-old is starring in season two of The Afterparty, an Apple TV+ genre-hopping murder mystery series. Outside of Tiffany Haddish, Sam Richardson, and Zoë Chao returning as their original characters, season two features a brand-new cast and fresh whodunnit story. This time, the events take place at a wedding where the groom is murdered, and the weekend’s guests—which range from oddball family members to business partners and past lovers—are all suspects. The comedy this season comes in spades thanks to its fantastic ensemble, which sees Konkle opposite the likes of Elizabeth Perkins, Paul Walter Hauser, and Ken Jeong, to name a few. 

The brilliance of a show like The Afterparty lies in its format. Each episode revisits the events leading up to the murder from the POV of a different suspect, all told through the lens of popular genres to match the character. In season two, we get regency romance, film noir, Hitchcock, heist, and even a YouTube vlog. There’s quite literally something for everyone. 

Konkle plays Hannah, the groom’s slightly quirky adopted sister—emphasis on the adopted part. “She has to say it a lot,” Konkle says. “I think she says it almost as a point of pride and is almost one of those people who overshares all the time but doesn’t think they’re oversharing, and that’s just normal.” Outfitted in preppy suiting in rust hues with her hair punctuated with a yellow barrette and her eyes rimmed with blue liner, Hannah is reminiscent of beloved Wes Anderson character Margot Tenenbaum. She spends a lot of time in a fashionable yurt on her family’s property filled with her many hobbies—among them typewriting, archery, taxidermy, carving wooden anchors, and macabre horticulture—and is clearly hiding a secret. Not surprisingly and to the delight of this writer, Hannah’s episode takes inspiration from Wes Anderson films. 

“I felt really lucky that I got to do the Amélie, Wes Anderson genre and that it was so emotion driven. That episode, that’s my favorite,” Konkle says. “I’ve always loved that indie space more so than the big mainstream [stuff], though a lot of them have become very mainstream. But the origin of those movies, they were sort of cultish for a bit.” Konkle loves playing in the minutiae of emotions, so the opportunity to step into that world and work for writer/director Christopher Miller felt like a no-brainer for one of her first acting projects post-Pen15.