Between Transparent, The Mindy Project, and their new HBO series Togetherness, brothers Jay and Mark Duplass have been taking over the world. But it’s taken years for them to get there.

Jay and Mark Duplass

David Bertozzi/BuzzFeed

Officially, the Duplass brothers began making movies together 10 years ago. Unofficially, their partnership began well before that, with a foray into the action genre.

"I was a karate master," said Mark Duplass, sitting with his older brother Jay on a visit to BuzzFeed's New York offices in the Flatiron District. "Our friend Brant was a burglar who came in. I think that was Jay's first shot he designed — deep focus on me in the kitchen, then Brant comes from the outside. He's got a cigarette, holding it out in the foreground, and I run in and kick the cigarette out of his hands."

As much as their adult selves now laugh talking about their so-called debut, it's actually quite an ambitious effort from a 6-year-old and a 9-year-old working with a giant 1980s camera that had to be connected via cable to a VCR. Even then, shooting amid the plastic-covered furniture in their parents' living room in the suburbs of New Orleans, the Duplass brothers established their basic dynamic: Mark was in front of the camera, while Jay was behind it, sharing not only genetics, but a DIY sensibility and a relentless drive to create.

And that's what led the Duplasses — who've spent the last decade telling funny-sad, scarily relatable stories on film about friends, lovers, growing up, and growing older — to create their own television series for the first time. Titled Togetherness, the HBO show is a wonderfully bittersweet half-hour comedy about four fumbling adults approaching their late thirties and early forties with anxiety from all different directions. Jay, 41, and Mark, 38, created the series with their childhood friend and frequent collaborator Steve Zissis, who's also one of its stars, along with Mark, Melanie Lynskey, and Amanda Peet.

"We feel very qualified to make this show," Jay said. "It is the stuff of our lives, intimately."

Amanda Peet, Melanie Lynskey, Steve Zissis, Mark Duplass, and Abby Ryder Fortson in Togetherness

Melissa Moseley

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