Will Sharpe, Luis Felber on Original Music, Felix’s Band

When Lena Dunham and Luis Felber first started dating, playlists were a big part of their love language.

“There were moments when we weren’t together — you know, life gets in the way for mid-30-year-olds — so we’d make each other playlists,” says Felber, a musician in his own right as the frontman of U.K. band Attawalpa, over Zoom. “And that became a really big part of the sort of flesh and bones of this TV show.”

The show in question is “Too Much,” which the now-married Dunham and Felber co-created and debuted on Netflix Thursday. The rom-com series follows Jessica (“Hacks” standout Megan Stalter), a New Yorker who moves to London after a devastating breakup, and Felix (“White Lotus” star Will Sharpe), a struggling musician who is also struggling with past trauma. The soundtrack includes original music from Attawalpa, played by Sharpe’s fictional band Felix and the Feelers, as well as needle drops from all over the musical spectrum including Fergie, Fiona Apple, Nicki Minaj, Jason Molina’s Songs: Ohia, Miley Cyrus, Wednesday, John Cale, Fred Again, Kacey Musgraves, Bob Dylan, Kendrick Lamar, the Dare and Taylor Swift — just to name a few. Most of the show’s music moments were already penciled into the treatment when Dunham and Felber pitched Netflix the show, and many of them came from those initial playlists.

“Lena’s playlists to me were interesting, because it’s more from the pop world. And my playlists were very Americana, country — I didn’t put any Slipknot or anything on there,” Felber says with a laugh. “But you can see a divide … we were both teaching each other things. And that is the beauty of a mix CD, or nowadays a playlist, is you get to sort of show someone how you’re feeling and also where you come from.”

Though “Too Much” is not completely autobiographical of their romance, Dunham — who moved to London in 2021 — told Variety in her digital cover story this week: “It’s certainly not quote-unquote based on a true story, but like everything I do, there is an element of my own life that I can’t help but inject.” The same goes for Felber. When it came time to decide where Jess and Felix’s meet-cute should take place, Felber couldn’t help but suggest a spot that’s part of his “London musician DNA”: The Ivy House in Peckham. It’s where he played his first acoustic show at the age of 17 at the pub’s “Easycome” open mic night, and Felix is doing the same when he first encounters Jess. Sporting smudged eyeliner, cherry-red lipstick and a matching guitar, Felix plays a moody, stripped-back version of Attawalpa’s “Always the Girls” (from the band’s new album “Experience”), accompanied by piano and violin.

To craft the onstage persona of Sharpe’s Felix, Felber says he was inspired by Elliott Smith during his “XO” era in 1998 and Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, especially for that first performance at The Ivy House. “I’m so boring and basic, but I always go back to that ‘Unplugged’ in New York,” he says. “We reference that a lot, especially the Meat Puppets songs [Cobain played] — the musicality in the cello, just the glue of all that music to me is so perfect and so slacker-y. It’s the Beatles, but they’re slacking.”

In terms of actually performing the songs, Felber was lucky in that Sharpe was already a musician himself, having been trained on the piano and playing in bands as a teenager. But he hadn’t performed live in over a decade. “That was one of the fun challenges was working with Lu. I haven’t performed music since literally I was like, I don’t know, 22 or something. So quite a while,” Sharpe says. “I really liked his songs, but some of it was quite scary.”

Felber helped Sharpe learn six songs from “Experience,” including “No Limitations” and “True Love Trajectory.” “Will, bless him, from day dot he was like, ‘I want to be able to just play these songs without looking at a chord sheet, without looking at lyrics. I want to feel them, I want to be in these songs,’” Felber says. “So I was very happy for him to just throw his personality on it, or Felix’s personality on it.”

Then, Felber had to form Felix’s band, the Feelers. He enlisted Prasanna Puwanarajah, who plays Felix’s housemate and best friend Auggie, as the drummer — even though he’d never played before. “He’s a natural drummer, little did we know,” Felber says. The band is rounded out by true-blue musicians Carlos O’Connell (the guitarist for Irish rock band Fontaines D.C.) on bass and David Ashby (frontman of local London band Sleaze, who in fact first introduced Felber to The Ivy House) on keys. Felber even set up a rehearsal space at 3 Mills Studios in East London, where “Too Much” was filmed, so that Sharpe and the band could brush up in between scenes.

“In my head, Felix gives these songs a sort of Echo and the Bunnymen vibe,” Felber says of Sharpe’s singing voice. “He’s an incredible learner, and I think all you have to do is meet someone at their place of taste.”

Sharpe says he thought about crafting a unique flair or signature move for Felix’s performance style — citing inspirations like Ian Curtis, Oasis, the Hives and Julian Casablancas — but in the end he thought, “Just play the song man, just fucking play it. And then whatever your thing is will happen when you’re not thinking about it.”

As for his favorite needle drops from the soundtrack, at the top of Felber’s list is Musgraves’ “Butterflies,” which plays during a tender moment between Jess and Felix. “When we dropped the song over the scene I like, cried because it was so beautiful,” he admits. Also up there is “Farewell Transmission,” by the late Molina’s Songs: Ohia, which Felber says the team used as filler music in edit before the score for the show was finished. “It just worked because it’s such an emotive song,” he adds. “To me, [Molina is] like a modern Neil Young or what a mid-40s Kurt Cobain [would have sounded like].” But there was one wishlist artist that Felber couldn’t get.

“At first, I put a lot of Prince songs on this playlist. And he’s expensive,” he says. “You know, Season 2 could be full of Prince.”

Though a second season of “Too Much” hasn’t yet been greenlit, Felber says he’d “love to see more of Jess and Felix” but acknowledges that “we don’t control that, the universe does.” However, he and Dunham do have “thoughts on what that could look like.”

Until then, the couple are hard at work shooting Dunham’s upcoming film “Good Sex,” starring Natalie Portman, which she’s writing and directing with Felber providing the music.

“There’s going to be lots of exciting original music in it, a really fun score and three cover versions of a great song, but I’m not going to say what it is because it’s a big part of the film,” he teases, adding: “Lena and I, we’re always up to something. We’re raccoons in the trashcan of life.”