“The Boroughs” Creators Jeffrey Addiss & Will Matthews on Creating an “Evil Cocoon” For Modern Audiences

Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews, the creators and showrunners of Netflix’s new sci-fi series The Boroughs, are the first to admit it’s a love letter not just to classic films and shows, but also to New Mexico, where it’s set and filmed.

It’s set in an idyllic retirement community where grieving widower Sam Cooper (Alfred Molina) reluctantly resides, placed there by his caring if frustrated daughter, Claire (Jena Malone). Just as he’s coming around to the idea of his new home, an encounter with a wall-crawling monster sucking the life from his new friend, Jack (Bill Pullman), inspires Sam to assemble a misfit crew of fellow residents to get to the bottom of the creepy secrets buried beneath the Boroughs’ clearly false idyllic mask. His crew of fellow sleuths, Wally (Denis O’Hare), Judy (Alfre Woodard), Judy’s husband, Art (Clarke Peters), and Renee (Geena Davis), aided by Renee’s new squeeze, security guard Paz (Carlos Miranda), set out on a dangerous mission of revelation and confrontation. Together, they uncover a secret hidden beneath the Boroughs, a nightmare that’s a one-part vampiric, one-part elder abuse, and wholly unsettling.  

Here, Addiss and Matthews discuss melding real-world Albuquerque with the community they built from scratch, and celebrate the leadership, local crews, and communities that made their critically acclaimed new series possible.

People have described this as Stranger Things meets Cocoon, but it also draws on a bit of Amazing Stories, Eerie Indiana, and Cold War-era films. Were those all influences, and did you come at this from the same place?

Addiss: I’m more of a genre fan, while Will is somebody who’s scared of horror, which is great when you’re testing out designs of monsters. If he’s like, “Meh,” then that’s not good. If he goes “No, no, no,” then that’s going to work. I’m pulpy and modern, and Will’s a little bit more classic. I’m more in that place of the late 90s and early 00s, the second-generation Amblin. For instance, you had M. Night Shyamalan doing Signs. There are many homages to science in this show because Signs was a major influence.

Matthews: When people say it’s like Stranger Things meets Cocoon, we don’t mind it. Stranger Things was so great, and Cocoon really affected me.

Addiss: We had a poster of Cocoon hanging outside our office, with the word ‘Evil’ on a Post-it stuck above the word ‘Cocoon‘.

This hits a marketing sweet spot with the cool AARP crowd and Gen Z, an engaged younger audience who are seeking out what we grew up with.

Addiss: Younger generations are looking for great stuff. The beautiful thing about the streaming age is that you can sit and watch all of Friends, The West Wing, and those shows that are so amazing and beautifully done. People are looking for something they can connect with emotionally, and great work is timeless. Our show is very genuine. That Amblin vibe is pre-irony, and I think that is refreshing to people.

You shot this in New Mexico. The state is set up for film and TV and has a great network of local talent. How did you tap into that?

Addiss: We used a lot of Albuquerque, but we also built a lot. The Boroughs doesn’t exist anywhere. It’s a very specific world. We built the cul-de-sac where the characters live, all nine houses, on the Netflix lot. The entire downtown was built in an old mall called Traditions in Algodones, between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. It had been empty for years, so we took it over. We built the insides of everybody’s houses on stages. The community center, the inside of it, is a location in Albuquerque, but Sam’s apartment, which is supposed to be in Chicago, is an old restaurant on the ground floor of a house. It’s a haunted restaurant from the 1920s. If you open the side door, there’s a bar and a kitchen.

Where was that, and how did you find it?

Addiss: The amazing Shani Orona. Shani and her team did an incredible job of finding stuff. It takes somebody with an eye, it takes somebody like Shani and somebody like Ruth Ammon, our production designer, who goes to this old restaurant and thinks, “I could turn this into a Chicago apartment that’s supposed to be four stories up.” I had a hard time seeing it at first. That’s the truth.

Matthews: I think the corporate offices are the original Gap headquarters. Ruth was explaining that it actually has very important architectural work that was done and then forgotten about.

What about shooting in New Mexico appealed so much to you?

Addiss: One factor is the beauty of the desert, another is the spirit of the people. It’s a city that’s proud of itself and should be. Because so many things are shot there, it understands what production is, and they want to be part of it, so Albuquerque is a friendly city to shoot in. I’ve shot in cities that aren’t production-friendly. Also, all these productions train people, and those people train other people, so you have pools of talent allowing a couple of shows to shoot at the same time. Vince Gilligan was shooting Pluribus down the road.

Matthews: The beauty of the desert is really spectacular, and that natural beauty is overwhelming and specific. It doesn’t look like everywhere else. A lot of cities I’ve shot in can look like Paris or New York, but New Mexico is a vibe.

Addiss: Shout out to the governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, and to Netflix, because they built big studios there. They have these giant stages, they’re gorgeous, new, and have the Whisper AC, which is key when it gets as hot. 

There are a lot of practical effects in The Boroughs. Why was that important?

Addiss: If you have something to react against, it’s always better. Jerad S. Marantz designed an amazing creature, and Onyx Forge built beautiful busts and full-size versions.

Matthews: It also helps the lighting, and it helps the VFX people later when they’ve had a real thing in the shot to work with.

Addiss: I also have to give a lot of credit to ILM. There’s a shot of the creature that I would argue is one of the best creature shots ever put on a TV show. It is better than most features.

Was it hard to come up with a creature design we hadn’t seen before?

Addiss: There was definitely development, but it was shorter than you might think. I would argue that you can’t make anything totally original anymore. There are so many good people out there making amazing stuff all the time. If you’re watching what people are doing in Procreate right now, you’ll see artists making these amazing creatures and bringing them to life. I think the key is specificity.

Matthews: You start with the story, too. Why this monster? Why does it move the way it does? Why does it hunt people of a certain age? Why does it do it at night? Has it always done it that way? Has it changed over time? Story informs design so much.

There are lots of Easter eggs. In episode two, there’s a beautiful Indiana Jones reference with the idol.

Addiss: You’d be surprised how many people don’t notice that. It’s in the shot, we’re not even hiding it, but I think a lot of people don’t realize that’s what it is. Even some of our editors didn’t spot it. The minute they did see it, they burst out laughing. Raiders of the Lost Ark was Fred’s first movie. How crazy was that?

Did Fred know you were doing that?

Addiss: He knew, and he actually even signed that for me after. Will had him do that, and it’s in a place of honor in my home. We wouldn’t have done it without checking with him first, and he thought it was cool.

Is there anything people should look out for?

Addiss: Shout out to Ruth and the production design team because there are monsters hidden in a lot of the architecture and design. They’re hard to see, but once you see them, you realize they are staring you right in the face.

Also, the soundtrack in certain episodes contains sonic triggers from films such as Back to the Future and E.T., right?

Matthews: Yes. Our composer, John Paesano, had John Williams as his first mentor, so he developed that big movie sound. He’s one of the few people who have brought that Amblin sound to the small screen. We really thought that was important for the story to feel big. It had to contain a lot of different tones and genres in one piece and still feel like one piece. We kept telling him, “Go big.”

Addiss: We spike cues. It’s not something you see much on TV anymore at all. We’ve moved towards a soundscape thing in TV because there are so many hours of it, but John was writing to somebody pulling out a pencil. It feels different and classic.

Matthews: It feels fun. There’s no drudgery. The show isn’t like trying to be dour or super cool, so those music notes bring back a time when movies could be fun.

All eight episodes of The Boroughs are streaming on Netflix.

Featured image: The Boroughs. (L to R) Denis O’Hare as Wally, Alfred Molina as Sam, Alfre Woodard as Judy in The Boroughs. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026