Only Murders in the Building season four trailer spills its secrets

If you’re going on a trip to Hollywood, you better call in some stars.

And Only Murders in the Building has some big names in addition to the core trio of Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez for the upcoming season. Its guest stars will include Melissa McCarthy, Molly Shannon, Eugene Levy, Zach Galifianakis, Eva Longoria, Richard Kind and Kumail Nanjiani.

Two weeks out from its premiere, a full trailer for the fourth season of Only Murders in the Building has been released, and it reveals who McCarthy will be playing in the series.

McCarthy’s involvement had been previously announced but only today has it become clear she will play Charles’ (Steve Martin) sister. The trio fled to her house in Long Island after they suspected Charles was the intended target of a murder.

If you forgot how the previous season ended, Charles’ stunt double Sazz (Jane Lynch) was killed by a sniper’s bullet when she entered Charles’ apartment in the titular, murder-infested New York City building.

Keeping the promise in its title, the new season will focus on the investigation over Sazz’s death while faced with the threat that someone is after Charles.

The second but inevitably intersecting storyline involves Charles, Oliver and Mabel heading out to Los Angeles after a studio buys the rights to adapt their podcast into a feature film.

Levy, Galifianakis and Longoria play exaggerated versions of themselves as the actors who will be playing our sleuthing heroes in the film-within-the-TV series. And from what the trailer has teased so far, there will be some conflict, including Oliver mistaking Galifianakis for Macauley Culkin.

It also seems like they fancy themselves investigators and want to help look into Sazz’s death.

The trailer also hints that Shannon will portray a Hollywood producer or power player, and that Kind and Nanjiani are residents of the building and therefore suspects in Sazz’s death.

The returning recurring cast includes Meryl Streep, Michael Cyril Creighton and now Oscar winner Da’vine Joy Randolph. Previously, Longoria let slip during a red carpet interview that she had shot a scene with Paul Rudd (who was in the third season), but he has not been confirmed by the production.

Only Murders in the Building premiered in 2021 and was an immediate hit with its unexpected combination of Short, Martin and Gomez. While long-time friends Short and Martin have had many collaborations over their careers, it was the addition of Gomez’s younger voice that gave it its intergenerational alchemy.

The series was created by Martin and John Hoffman and was inspired in part by Martin’s NYC residence, the San Remo building on Central Park West.

The show was conceived as a cosy murder mystery in which three lonely residents of a NYC apartment block came together to solve the killing of one of their neighbours, Tim Kono. They’re all followers of a popular true crime podcast and in the course of their investigation, they start their own.

The second series explored the death of the building’s domineering board president while the third centred on the death of a famous actor.

Across its first three seasons, it has been nominated for 49 Emmy Awards, including 21 nods for the upcoming 2024 ceremony in September.

Previous guest stars have included Tina Fey, Sting, Nathan Lane, Amy Schumer, Matthew Broderick, Jimmy Fallon, Mel Brooks and Andrea Martin.

Only Murders in the Building season four will be released on August 27 on Disney+