Palm Springs has had its fair share of time in the spotlight, but a new Apple TV+ show gives the high desert its 15 minutes of fame.
The aptly-named series “High Desert,” starring Academy Award winner Patricia Arquette, will bring a little desert weirdness to audiences beginning May 17. The show follows Peggy (Arquette), an on-again-off-again drug addict who decides to make a fresh start. Still grieving the death of her mother, whom she lived in Yucca Valley with, but ready to put herself back on the right path, she sets her eyes on becoming a private investigator. But because this is the desert, known for extraordinary sights and sounds, Peggy encounters a number of wacky people and interesting mysteries to solve.
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Showrunners Nancy Fichman, Jennifer Hoppe-House and Katie Ford initially wanted to set the series in Tucson, Arizona, where Fichman’s sister, who Peggy is based off of, lives. But Arquette ended up being the biggest advocate for the high desert.
“Patricia loves that area of California because it’s such a weird patch and she suggested we move it there and took us on a fieldtrip,” Hoppe-House said.
On that trip, they visited the Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum, a mishmash of mysterious art sculptures, and the Crochet Museum, which features an eclectic assortment of crocheted animals and dolls inside a converted drive-thru photo stand. These sites are totally quirky and strange, but once you take in the surrounding otherworldly-looking plants and rocky, Mars-like landscape, it makes the whole area “weird and wonderful,” Hoppe-House said. “And that’s how my wife characterizes the show.”
They also loved seeing the geographic highs and lows of the area, with the perfectly-manicured, lush lawns and golf courses of Palm Springs in the valley juxtaposed with the harsh, gravely desert at a higher elevation.
“It’s so surreal and wonderful,” Fichman said. “(With) the highs and lows, there’s just a great terrain for this character and it to be an epic canvas for her to deal with really toney people and situations.”
Seeing and experiencing the high desert “definitely influenced the way we saw things and the way we felt as we were writing,” Hoppe-House added. And with all its quirks and charms, it ended up being a series character itself.
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Viewers meet Peggy in 2013, celebrating Thanksgiving with her family in a classic mid-century modern home in Palm Springs. Suddenly, the good times are interrupted with a police raid, and Peggy and her husband, Denny (Dillon), attempt to get rid of stacks of drugs around their home.
The showrunners picked the Indian Canyons neighborhood in Palm Springs for Peggy’s home, which is easily recognized by its 1960s-developed white homes and vibrantly-colored front doors. Filming took about three weeks in the area, and shorts of the iconic windmills outside of the city can also be spotted in the series.
Flash forward 10 years, Peggy’s once-glamourous lifestyle is now replaced by a harsh desert landscape, visits to a methadone clinic and a gig at everyone’s favorite western attraction, Pioneertown.
The opening credits and exterior shots capture the vibes of the high desert with prickly Joshua trees and the 20-foot tall cowboy statue, named Big Josh, that towers over the service-station-turned-gift-shop The Station in Joshua Tree. However, most filming took place in Lancaster, the western portion of what is considered the high desert region, about 2 1/2 hours from Yucca Valley.
Similarly, scenes set in Pioneertown were actually filmed at Sable Ranch in Santa Clarita due to what was cinematically required, according to the showrunners. But Arquette did take the group to get pizza around Pioneertown, Hoppe-House said, which the executive producer still raves about.
Personal connection leads to show
Fichman and Hoppe-House have worked together for several years, both writing and/or producing shows such as “Nurse Jackie,” “Grace and Frankie” and “Get Shorty.” Collaborating on “High Desert” was a no-brainer, especially with Fichman’s personal connections.
Her sister, much like Peggy, struggled with drug addiction, but always tried to find a way to stand up and lead a better life.
“She did have this idea one day that she wanted to be a PI. Although knowing she wouldn’t do it, I thought she’d be very well suited for that because drug addicts have a tremendous radar,” Fichman said. “They can get to the heart of a problem in a person, and she can see people who are similar to her and understands bulls- and lies. I thought it was a great idea for a show.”
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The first episode was written several years ago, and Arquette wasn’t necessarily in mind for the project. But once the Academy Award winner read the script and was interested, “it seemed like, yeah, nobody else could possibly do this but Patricia,” Fichman said.
As the rest of the series was written, the showrunners said Arquette’s collaboration was incredibly informative to what her character goes through.
“There’s so much of a magical quality to Patricia, a kind of effervescent, ‘anything is possible’ (attitude), and she can turn anything into gold,” Fichman said. “I think the character became a lot more hopeful and was able to be scrappy without being too dark, where without her in mind or her contributions it may have been in danger.”
Peggy deals with a number of difficulties in her life, like the grief she feels following the loss of her mother, her siblings set on kicking her to the curb and problems with her convict husband. But there’s still plenty of spunk left to prove everyone wrong, even if she is prone to blunders — like entirely scrapping off the top of her car while backing into and under a semitruck. Fichman compared Peggy to the popular cartoon character Mr. Magoo, who somehow always ended up fine even when hurdling toward a cliff.
Despite all of the missteps, watching her take on the private investigator gig brings about plenty of humor and misunderstandings and sets her on a journey to undercover a possible murder. Hoppe-House called Arquette “a force,” “a tremendous talent” and “incredibly generous.”
The show also doesn’t shy away from a more realistic portrayal of a recovering addict. Viewers see Peggy visit a health clinic to take methadone, often used when treating morphine and heroin addiction, and how she sometimes struggles when drugs are nearby. When the showrunners met with Arquette, Hoppe-House recalled one of the first things the actress said to them was “I’ve loved a lot of junkies.”
“I was almost taken aback by that. There are a lot of people in this world who function for a very long time with terrible addictions and their lives are often a mess, but they get it back and get it on track,” Hoppe-House said. “I think about Philip Seymour Hoffman, who was a genius, and all kinds of musicians. There are people who function pretty highly for a long time before they hit a wall, and I haven’t seen very many of them on television.”
“High Desert” also stars Brad Garrett, Weruche Opia, Bernadette Peters and Matt Dillon.
Ema Sasic covers entertainment and health in the Coachella Valley. Reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @ema_sasic.
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