Apple TV+ is adding a new dark comedy to its TV show lineup, starring Patricia Arquette. She plays an addict, Peggy, who’s trying to turn her life around and become a private investigator. But she comes to find out that working as a P-I isn’t easy, actually, she learns that it’s way harder and crazier than she thought.
Patricia Arquette stars as an amateur private investigator in the new Apple TV+ show, High Desert.
Patricia Arquette: “It was inspired by one of our writers, Nancy, by her sister Marjorie, who was a on again-off again drug addict, struggling with that, avoiding reality, deceiving herself and the world around her, always had a hustle going on and she said one time, ‘You know, I think I’m gonna be a P-I.”
The cast got to show off some of their own investigating skills.
Matt Dillon: “Character logic is an interesting thing because it’s not necessarily rational, right, so, we open the papers and we go like, ‘Why the hell would somebody do that?’ Well, if you dig just a little bit, you’re gonna figure out who they are.”
Patricia Arquette: “Being a character investigator, yes, that is part of my job and I do, do that and I do pick up little things of people and how they do things.”
Bernadette Peters: “You peel away what’s going on. You peel, peel away what life was like before they were here.”
Weruche Opia: “Intuition is important for, you know, people who are investigators and stuff like that, but, I think I’d be great at it.”
The bonds off-screen were just as tight as the ones on-screen
Christine Taylor: “We started talking about our own families and siblings and our own parents and Patricia was just so open about, you know, how her siblings managed when their parents passed on and like, we just immediately were like, this is we are brothers, we’re brother and sisters.”
The actors knew their characters so well, that director Jay Roach used some of their improvised moments.
Jay Roach: “We always shot the dialog that the great showrunners wrote, but then, we’d also play and these actors were all capable of that.”
Copyright 2025 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.