Main

• Avan Jogia as Ulysses Zane, Carly's best friend
• Kelli Berglund as Carly Carlson, the best friend of Ulysses, who also happens to be a struggling actress and cam girl. According to Uly, Carly also suffers from anxiety.
• Beau Mirchoff as Ford Halstead, Ulysses' straight roommate
• Roxane Mesquida as Severine Bordeaux, Ford's girlfriend

Recurring

• Evan Hart as Lars
• Taylor Hart as Klaus
• Tyler Posey as Gabriel
• Desmond Chiam as Jethro
• Kevin Daniels as Barnabas
• Grace Victoria Cox as Amber
• Mary Lynn Rajskub as Frank
• Chris Aquilino as Kai
• Avra Friedman as Magenta
• Henry Rollins as Mitchell Kent
• RJ Mitte as Leif
• Jacob Artist as Isaac
• James Duval as Homeless man

Development

Gregg Araki was inspired to do television by the mystery series Twin Peaks, which he called "so ground-breaking and artistic and unusual and just its totally own thing". He directed episodes of several television series, but was hesitant to run his own show until he thought about the story potential of life in Los Angeles. Araki presented the idea to writer Karley Sciortino, who started working with him on the script. Gregory Jacobs, who had worked with Araki on Red Oaks, joined the project and brought in Steven Soderbergh. The production designer, costume designer, and director of photography have previously worked on other projects with Araki.^[11]

On March 26, 2018, it was announced that Starz had given Now Apocalypse a series order for a first season of ten episodes. The series is written by Araki and Sciortino, and directed by Araki. The series is executive produced by Soderbergh, Jacobs, and Araki.^{[12][13][14][15][16][17]} On December 10, 2018, it was announced that the series would premiere on March 10, 2019.^[18] On March 22, 2019, the eight remaining episodes of season one were released online and on demand. They also continued to air weekly.^[19]

Starz canceled the series after one season on July 26, 2019.^[20] Araki later stated that he was shopping the series to other networks.^[21]

Casting

In June 2018, it was announced that Avan Jogia, Kelli Berglund, Beau Mirchoff, and Roxane Mesquida had joined the main cast and that Evan Hart, Taylor Hart, Tyler Posey, Jacob Artist, Chris Aquilino, Desmond Chiam, RJ Mitte, and Grace Victoria Cox had been cast in recurring roles.^{[22][23][24][25][26][27][28]} On July 2, 2018, it was reported that Kevin Daniels and Avra Friedman had joined the cast in a recurring capacity.^[29]

Filming

The ten episodes of the series were shot in 40 days.^[30]

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes the series holds an approval rating of 78% based on 32 reviews, with an average score of 6.42 out of 10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Marrying filmmaker Gregg Araki's frisky style with heady conspiracies and literary allusions, Now Apocalypse's bodacious aesthetics and philosophical pondering may prove too deliberately offbeat and garish for some."^[31] Metacritic assigned the series a weighted average score of 64 out of 100 based on 12 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".^[32]

Ratings