As a consultant on the hit television show's 2025 season, assistant professor of biology Kaiya Provost, PhD, played a vital role by teaching cast members to mimic the birdcalls that helped solve the mysterious death of the Arconia apartment building's doorman.
Fans of Hulu’s hit series Only Murders in the Building will recall how the trio of Arconia building residents—true-crime podcasters and amateur sleuths played by Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez—unraveled the mystery of who killed Lester the doorman by decoding bird sounds.
The accuracy of Season 5’s whimsical plot device was due to the advice and guidance given by Kaiya Provost, PhD, assistant professor of biology in Adelphi’s College of Arts and Sciences, who was called in to serve as a consultant on the show.
“I wear many hats,” Dr. Provost explained. “I’m a biologist, computational biologist, environmental biologist and an ornithologist.”
Meeting Steve Martin, Selena Gomez and the Crew
A series of serendipitous connections in early 2025 landed Dr. Provost her role on the show. After coming to the attention of unit manager and co-producer Chris George, she was invited to visit the show’s Long Island City soundstage in Queens, New York, one day in March to spend time with cast and crew members.
“It was a delight to spend time with actors Steve Martin, who is a real-life birder, Richard Kind and Selena Gomez, as well as other members of the cast and crew,” Dr. Provost said. “It was a real privilege to be the person they wanted to be there and to be able to see how the ‘Hulu sausage’ gets made.”
Adelphi’s Expert in Birds and Birdcalls
As the amateur sleuths in the show discovered, Lester the doorman—who was a birdwatcher—had left behind a ledger with bird names he had given to a group of shady billionaires. As he was dying, Lester even left additional clues via a bird whistle. No birdbrains, the trio decoded the ledger and birdcalls to expose Lester’s murderer in the season’s finale.
According to Dr. Provost, the birds whose calls needed to be replicated—the Eurasian Jay, Cowbird, Bowerbird and Kākāpō—had already been picked to identify the nefarious billionaires before she became involved.
“I was asked if I could replicate their noises and tell them how they sound and how actors could replicate them—and whether that would be funny.” Equally important, the birdcalls had to further the comedy-drama’s plot.
Dr. Provost referenced databases, including the one at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology at Cornell University, to determine what sounds would be the easiest and funniest to mimic. “For instance, the Eurasian jay is itself a mimic,” she explained. “So I asked if it mimics blue jays, would the actors be able to be taught to make that sound.”
An Adelphi Professor Who Teaches Actors, Not Just Students
“I’ve always been interested in bird sounds and have become an expert on them,” Dr. Provost said. “And since I have some background in music as a percussionist and in theater, from high school and college, I could get close to imitating the sounds myself in order to teach the actors.”
She added that, as an example, “The brown-headed cowbird makes a ‘glug-glug-glee’ sound. You can mimic it by making a swallowing sound and then a whistle, or a screech, to make it funny.”
“I corrected the actors four or five times,” she said. “We could have continued working to make the sounds more and more accurate, but I’m quite happy with the results. My colleagues have said they were surprised at how accurate the sounds were.”
The Professor Who Made Steve Martin Laugh
“I had fun,” Dr. Provost recalled. “The experience as a whole was so positive. But if I were to pick a favorite thing, I’d have to say that I made some of these actors laugh while getting them to record a bird sound accurately.
“As an expert, I can be bombastic, but I’m not afraid to look silly to get the job done,” she admitted. “When I demonstrated the cowbird’s sound, I made its ‘glug, glug’ and then gave a big scream. No one was expecting me to scream, and I got a good laugh from that. I made Steve Martin laugh—and I’ll never forget that moment. This has been a peak of my career. It’s all downhill from now on.”