On an early March day, Selena Gomez, Steve Martin and Martin Short are taking a stroll down a bustling New York City block — it’s the start of filming for Season 4 of “Only Murders in the Building.”

In the scene, they witness a series of vignettes: A guy who looks like a background actor in “A Bronx Tale” hollering at a taxi that won’t stop; an annoyed kid in a Knicks jersey evading his mother’s calls from the fire escape of an apartment overhead; a group of kids uncapping a fire hydrant; and a hot dog vendor sluggishly pushing a cart down the sidewalk lined with garbage bags.

You know, just everyday New York things in New York.

Or is it? The cliche- riddled scene is really just showbiz. The actors, who play true- crime-obsessed, murder-solving New Yorkers in Hulu’s comedy series, are actually wandering a Hollywood backlot on a Los Angeles set doubling for New York, as the show finds a new way to get meta.

After spending last season dabbling in the theater world, the trio are nearly 3,000 miles west of their stomping grounds — the murder-prone Arconia building on the Upper East Side — as their characters juggle a new mystery and a tempting opportunity. Season 4 picks up with Mabel (Gomez), Charles (Martin) and Oliver (Short) investigating the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Sazz Pataki (Jane Lynch), Charles’ longtime stunt double who was shot and killed at the end of last season. While they’re searching for answers, the friends also are mulling a proposition from Hollywood to adapt the first season of their popular podcast, which solved the murder of a man who lived in their building, for the big screen.

John Hoffman, who co-created the whodunit series with Martin, seems pleased with himself for bringing his cast and crew to the land of glitz, glamour and golden sunsets. He hadn’t thought this far ahead when he pitched the show. But it was only a matter of time before Hollywood came calling once the podcast at the center of the series found success. And a few of the show’s characters already have ties to the world of entertainment — Charles is an actor who starred in the ’90s crime drama “Brazzos,” while Oliver is a struggling theater director.

So, here we are at the Paramount Pictures Studios lot at the start of the show’s three-day visit to the West Coast.

“It really has become a sweet spot for us to lean into a season of a thing,” Hoffman says. “What we’re doing here in LA is very purposeful for the case, but it’s also purposeful for the underlying story we’re telling. I watched the three of them sitting out there by the Paramount Theater, and Steve was saying, ‘This is a dreamy way to start the season.’ ”

In following the friends- turned-amateur sleuths and podcasters, the series has spent its run satirizing the true-crime ecosystem and celebrity culture within its whodunit storylines each season. The opening scenes of the fourth season feature a brief montage of home videos of the trio that signal this round, with its movie-making backdrop, will grapple with the idea of a version of oneself being captured and frozen in time.

It brings us to the other scene being filmed today: Gomez, as Mabel, is leaving the big meeting with the studio team. She takes refuge on a bench near the fountain in the lot’s famed circular courtyard as she considers how the trio will be immortalized by Hollywood: Oliver as someone we all want to strangle and cuddle at the same time; Charles as everyone’s un-fun uncle with a grouchy turtle face; and Mabel as a traumatized, homeless and jobless mumbling millennial.

“If they make a big movie about that Mabel — what if I don’t want to be that person forever?” Mabel says.

As a person who has been in the public eye from a young age, Gomez is pragmatic about that concern. “I have been able to grow up as best as I can. I’m definitely not perfect, but doing this my whole life, there’s not really anything else that I’d want different about my life, even though it comes with complications.”

Hoffman considered making the podcast adaptation a TV series rather than a film, but he opted for the latter because, he says, it simplified the storytelling and kept it within the confines of a season while still giving due to the overarching murder mystery.

Of course, the head- scratching meetings and deal-makings of Hollywood remains a steady source of fodder for satire on television, as it’s become more difficult to distinguish gag from reality. That was part of the thrill, Molly Shannon says, of guest starring this season as fictional studio executive Bev Melon — that and, like Martin, she’s a true-crime buff: Her latest obsession was watching recaps of the Black Swan murder trial on YouTube.

“I’ve never really played a Hollywood executive, so that was really fun because I love the business side of Hollywood,” Shannon says by phone. “She wasn’t based on anyone in particular, but it’s fun to play a character like that now, with what’s going on post-strikes, post-COVID. Behind the scenes, it’s just like the greatest Hollywood party that you’ve ever been invited to.”

That’s because “Only Murders in the Building” has featured a who’s who of A-list guest stars, including Sting, Tina Fey, Nathan Lane, Shirley MacLaine, Paul Rudd and Meryl Streep — the latter returns this season as Loretta Durkin, a veteran actor on the rise and the love interest to Oliver. The Hollywood-ness of this season brought even more stars into the mix. In addition to Shannon, Zach Galifianakis, Eva Longoria and Eugene Levy appear as heightened versions of themselves playing the actors cast as Oliver, Mabel and Charles, respectively. Kumail Nanjiani and Melissa McCarthy also join this season’s lineup.

“There’s moments on the set where I couldn’t contain my laughter,” Gomez says. “But it actually worked really well, because my character can make fun of Hollywood, and (she) doesn’t understand it.”

Martin talks about the energy the heft of their guest stars bring to set. “Here’s the thing, yes, they are celebrities and famous, but the main thing is they’re really good. Anytime we’re working with any actor who’s really good, whether they’re famous or not, we really enjoy it. It’s like the old tennis adage, when you’re playing with someone who’s better than you, you rise to the occasion a bit.”

“Except for Marty,” he deadpans.

Part of the show’s three-day visit also included shooting at a lavish home in the Hollywood Hills, for a swanky party meant to entice their characters to make a deal, and the apartment complex where Sazz lives. “We really looked long and hard for the perfect, evocative place that could be the seed of something else,” Hoffman says.

On this day in March, the lore of Hollywood is in play as Oliver and Charles attempt to comfort an overwhelmed Mabel while background actors dressed as cowboys walk through the famed arches that lead to the lot’s many soundstages. And with Oliver and Charles doing the comforting, comedy is bound to take over, particularly when there’s mention of late film producer Robert Evans. Muffled laughter is heard around the monitors.

The scene ends with the trio hopping into a ’80s-era black limo, which someone on set claims is the same Lincoln town car featured in “Die Hard” and is driven by Charles’s old chauffeur from his “Brazzos” days. And, so, the New Yorkers set off for their big tour of Hollywood and begin their Sazz investigation.

The amateur detectives are, once again, on the loose. And, yes, they’re making a stop at In-N-Out. Some LA cliches can’t be helped.