5 reasons why ‘The Flight Attendant’ should be on your watchlist

Ladies and gentlemen welcome aboard flight 407 to Bangkok. Turbulence is expected on this route, so please fasten your seatbelts for HBO’s murder mystery comedy, The Flight Attendant, now on Showmax.

The show stars  Kaley Cuoco (Penny in The Big Bang Theory) who plays Cassie Bowden, who wakes up in the wrong bed, with a dead guy beside her, and no idea what happened. Unable to piece the night together, she begins to wonder if she could be the killer.

From its bumper cast to the exciting plot, here are 5 reasons why ‘The Flight Attendant’ should be on your Showmax watchlist.

1. It’s nominated for 9 Emmy awards

The Flight Attendant is nominated for nine Emmys this year, including Outstanding Comedy Series, with Critics’ Choice, People’s Choice and Teen Choice Award winner Kaley Cuoco (Penny in The Big Bang Theory) up for Outstanding Actress.

Its other nominations include Outstanding Casting For A Comedy Series, Outstanding Directing For A Comedy Series, Outstanding Supporting Actress In A Comedy Series, Outstanding Production Design For A Narrative Contemporary Program (One Hour Or More), Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing For A Comedy Series, Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music and Outstanding Writing For A Comedy Series.

But that’s not all, The Flight Attendant has also been nominated for a 2021 Golden Globe and a Critics’ Choice Award for Best Comedy Series.

2. It’s got a stellar cast.

With an Outstanding Casting for A Comedy Series Emmy nomination, The Flight Attendant boats a delightful cast including Oscar nominee Rosie Perez (Birds of Prey), 2021 Critics’ Choice Super Award nominee Michiel Huisman (The Haunting of Hill House, Game of Thrones), Emmy nominee TR Knight (Grey’s Anatomy’s George O’Malley), Zosia Mamet (Shoshanna from Girls), and BAFTA nominee Michelle Gomez (Doctor Who, Bad Education).

3. Location, location, location

The Flight Attendant started filming in November of 2019, in locations across the globe.

Speaking on the locations in an interview on Good Morning America, Kaley said “You can’t pretend Bangkok, you can’t pretend Rome, and so it became this insane worldwide production that I still can’t believe that we did, minutes before the world shut down,” Kaley says.

Like many other series, they didn’t quite make it to the end of production before the pandemic disrupted their plans, halfway through shooting episode six of the series’ eight.

“We had to stop production three days into it because of COVID and then, six months later, come back and pick it up in the middle of one of the darkest, most emotional and wacky episodes,” creator Steve Yockey (Scream, Supernatural), who is Emmy-nominated for his script, told GoldDerby.com.

4. It’s based on a book

The Flight Attendant is based on a novel of the same name by New York Times bestselling author Chris Bohjalian (Oprah Book Club favourite Midwives).

After 12 years on The Big Bang Theory, Kaley says, she “needed to start thinking about what the next path was going to be. The Flight Attendant is such an interesting premise, I knew I had to jump on this.”

And jump she did, even before she’d finished the book.

“I read the first line on Amazon three years ago, and I got this chill up my spine. I know that sounds clichéd but it really happened. I immediately called my team, and the first question out of my mouth was, ‘Did [Big Little Lies producer] Reese Witherspoon get the rights to this book?’ And they were like, ‘Let me check…’ ‘Cause I just assumed, for sure. And she hadn’t! It was a miracle. And I’m like, ‘Okay, I gotta get them.’ Six months later, I won this bidding war and all of a sudden I had the rights to this book. That was three years ago.” Kaley shared.

5. The critics love it

With an average rating of 7.1/10 on IMDb and 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, The Flight Attendant has garnered impressive reception since its debut. The Guardian described it as a “first-class murder-mystery”, while the 97% critics consensus on Rotten Tomatoes reads, “Kaley Cuoco shines as a hot mess in The Flight Attendant, an addictively intriguing slice of stylish pulp that will bring mystery aficionados to Cloud Nine.