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JODIE TURNER-SMITH
“Spy thrillers DON’T GET MUCH BETTER THAN THIS. Every element is operating at the highest possible level.”
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“ SIDE - SPLITTINGLY FUNNY AND CHARMING.”
“YOU’LL LAUGH, YOU’LL CRY AND YOU’LL DEMAND THAT MORE EPISODES GET MADE IMMEDIATELY.”
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“WINNING PERFORMANCES FROM STARS/CO-CREATORS PATRICK BRAMMALL AND HARRIET DYER .” “ EXCELLENT.”
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“AN EPIC JOURNEY. A
miraculous match-up of
HARRISON FORD and HELEN MIRREN.”
FOR YOUR EMMY ® CONSIDERATION
“ THRILLINGLY CINEMATIC. A work of crazy ambition rendered on the largest possible scale.”
8 JASON ISAACS
Going down the rabbit hole with The White Lotus. 12 KATHY BATES
The Matlock star on the things that bring her joy—and Misery.
Noah Wyle on the surprise success of The Pitt.
16 THE KIDS AREN'T ALRIGHT
Two docs report back from the classroom jungle.
20 FIVE THINGS
Words to live by from Your Friends & Neighbors’ Amanda Peet.
24 ABOUT A BOY
Why Netflix show Adolescence is more than a one-take wonder.
62 MATTER OF
How editors lighten up a murder-mystery.
68 NEW KID IN TINSELTOWN
Seth Rogen takes over The Studio for Apple TV+.
72 THE PARTNERSHIP
Sterling K. Brown and Dan Fogelman offer a taste of Paradise.
78 PRIME EXPERIENCE
On the scene at the Amazon Prime Experience.
82 DEADLINE STUDIO AT CANNES
Check out an exclusive gallery of photos from our Cannes studio.
describes what it was like to go viral in the most talked-about show of the year
BY DAMON WISE
Jason Isaacs made his movie debut in 1989, in British romcom The Tall Guy, and has worked solidly ever since. He’s used to being recognized, mostly for his role as Lucius Malfoy in Harry Potter, but also for his small-screen work in Star Wars and Star Trek spin-offs. He expects that, given the fanatical audiences they attract, but he’s been blindsided by the amount of attention he’s had since the April finale of Mike White’s hit HBO show The White Lotus, in which he plays shady U.S. businessman Tim Ratliff.
“For the last few weeks, I’ve been recognized a lot, and in the most surprising places,” notes the deadpan 62-year-old Brit as he makes short work of a mushroom donburi at London’s White City House.
“But that’s what usually happens: I’ll be recognized for a few weeks, and then it stops. I clearly have a kind of anonymous face, because I get the tube every day, I go to the supermarket, I walk down the street and maybe there’s occasionally a kind of double-take when I’m 50 yards past someone, and they’ll say, ‘Wasn’t that some bloke from a thing?’ But people forget very quickly.”
Tim Ratliff, though, will not go so quietly: The tycoon trapped in a loveless marriage, tormented by a past crime that’s coming back to bite him, and driven to consider the ultimate crime, famicide, using the seeds of the deadly pongpong fruit. “Granted, it’s my duty to talk about the show,” he says. “But I’ve noticed that the more I’ve talked about it, the more I’ve thought about it, and the more I’ve
appreciated the depth of Mike’s writing, and the opportunity he gave us to tell such complicated, nuanced stories.”
He must be bored, though, of all the old questions; about the nudity, the on-set tensions and the spat with Duke University, whose college gear Ratliff wears to bed? Surely, he won’t want to touch them with a bargepole now?
“I don’t mind touching them,” he shrugs. “The thing is, this brilliant story has captured so many people’s imaginations. And it’s not just their imaginations, it’s not just that they appreciated a story outside themself. They found themselves living vicariously through these extraordinary characters, or these ordinary characters in extraordinary situations, and they were stimulated and provoked to think about their own life choices, I hope—if not consciously, then unconsciously. I thought Mike went much deeper even than the previous shows.”
“I’m so happy to be associated with something like that,” he continues, “because it has meant so much to so many people. Maybe because we all miss the community noticeboard. Maybe because we’re all living in our own silos, maybe because the world is becoming darker, and more fractured, and the show provided a little oasis for people for eight weeks. But one of the shames, possibly, is that in deconstructing it—and talking about how we made it, and who we are, and how we are with each other—it takes away from the power of what Mike did, and what those characters in those stories do.”
Isaacs freely admits that he was
“My favorite way to watch a TV show or movie is to know nothing about what the story is going to be.”
not the first choice for the role when he was first contacted. “I was in New York publicizing the Cary Grant miniseries Archie,” he recalls, “and so I was on a high, doing interviews all day. And then I got a call saying, ‘Mike White is interested in you for The White Lotus, but you’re going to have to put yourself on tape.’ And that’s an unusual experience for me, not because I think I’m better than that, but because people either offer me parts they think I can do, or they just ignore me, and I’m not on those lists. So, it was a novel experience.”
It had been a long time. And in order to get to the casting director’s office, he had to walk through Times Square, where his face was on gigantic billboards, constantly advertising him as Cary Grant. He laughs. “Not that I need humbling, ever—my wife and kids and dog do that—but should anyone else have been looking at me, they would’ve been reminded of where the actor really lives on the great totem pole of showbusiness.”
The audition was a disaster
(“I was every bit as nervous and fumbly and stumbly and flushed and convinced I’ve blown it as I was when I first did 30 years ago,” he recalls). Nevertheless, he got the job, and his first act was to “make good” the lie he’d told them. “I’d said that it was my favorite show, that I thought it was a work of brilliance, and that Mike was a genius. Now, I do think Mike’s a magnificent writer and director, because I’ve followed him since I was at Sundance when he first emerged with Chuck & Buck. I’d watched everything he’d done film-wise ever since, but I hadn’t seen The White Lotus. So, of course, I watched it, and I became a huge fan after the fact.”
When he got the script, Isaacs immediately understood why several others had turned it down. Why?
“Because Tim’s a guy who’s out of his head for five or six episodes on downers, not on entertaining uppers like Murray Bartlett was in Season 1. And with virtually no words to communicate this enormous story he’s got. I mean, the
story of the three friends on holiday is completely relatable. But this is the story is of a billionaire losing all status in life. Many people go to Thailand in search of genuine spiritual enlightenment, but the last thing in the world he wants is to be stripped down to the bare essence of his soul, to review his entire life and see it fall apart in front of him.”
“His money and power and influence have always managed to solve his problems before, but those things are useless here. And he’s facing a personal apocalypse, having to look at his children and his wife and realize that they, too, are going to be cast into the abyss. To do all that, with no words, while taking pills that make you fall asleep, felt like a pretty big challenge. I was worried about two things: Was I good enough—and was it even possible?”
What was his strategy in the end? He laughs. “Oh, fuck knows. I don’t know. I mean I’m an actor—I was scared of it, and then I thought I’d try and do it. There are different types of actors. There are some
people who plan everything, and you find—with young actors particularly—that they’ve often given their most magnificent performance already, in their bathroom mirror, and that’s what they’re going to do in front of you. You could spontaneously combust, you could strangle a dog, and they wouldn’t blink. But, for me, I want to be in the moment. I cross out any words in the script that tell me what I’m thinking, whether I’m angry, or whether I’m sad. I just want to be able to feel it.”
The mysteries deliberately left in the script by White and created online by gossip sites meant that reporting on The White Lotus frequently blurred the line between fact and fiction. “By god, were there some crazy theories online, just like there were theories about the [real-life] relationships between the cast that are all wrong. But it just shows how much interest there was. That, I didn’t expect, but it was interesting to behold. What was fascinating, and slightly more worrying, was to see how
proper websites, proper journalists—because they needed to have something about White Lotus every day—would just make stuff up. There was an interview I read somewhere with me that I never even gave, saying things I would never have said. Not even lies, just utter fiction.”
One online scuffle that he did enjoy was with Duke University, who claimed the show had brought their institution into disrepute by making Ratliff an alumni. “I did stir the pot slightly,” he laughs. “I was stuck at Charlotte airport. My bags didn’t arrive, so I had to buy a T-shirt and all that was there was a Duke outlet. I bought one that didn’t have the word Duke on it, just the symbol. But even that caused a lot of trouble. I thought it was entertainingly ridiculous that they made a fuss, because, clearly, the T-shirt I wore in the show would’ve been cleared. So it wasn’t like it was a breach of anything. And, besides, they have some extraordinary real-life alumni that they should be slightly more worried about than a fictitious character who, in the end, finds spiritual enlightenment.”
Isaacs has been talking now for the best part of an hour, and
though he speaks, self-deprecatingly, about “talking about myself endlessly”, he actually doesn’t do that. “I’ll talk about myself a bit and it feels flattering,” he admits. “But there’s a part of me that grew up admiring that famous generation of ’70s actors—like Pacino, De Niro, Hoffman, the great Gene Hackman—and I knew nothing about them. It really helped me suspend my disbelief. I’m asked about my accent a lot, because that also went viral too for a while, but the truth is, I don’t want people to think about where I’m from.”
“People shouldn’t watch a screen and know whether someone’s straight or gay or Jewish or Catholic or what their political beliefs are,” he says, as the conversation closes. “My favorite way to watch a movie or a TV show is to know nothing about what the story is going to be beforehand. To not read a preview. To be at a film festival when someone says, ‘I’ve got a spare ticket for something that starts in a minute…’ And you go in, and suddenly this big screen lights up, and you’re in someone else’s world for two hours. I wish people could just watch stories like that, and that we didn’t have to unpack everything for them.” ★
The Matlock star reveals her desert island shows, the trick Dustin Hoffman taught her and the story of a stranger forever changed by Dolores Claiborne
BY ANTONIA BLYTH
As undercover lawyer-turned-detective Madeline Matlock, Kathy Bates has helped make the CBS show Matlock the most-watched new broadcast series in its first season ever. Perhaps this success is no surprise, given Bates’ 1990 Oscar win for her role of homicidal nurse Annie Wilkes in Misery, three more Academy nominations and myriad roles in hit projects, from the much-beloved Fried Green Tomatoes to the Clint Eastwood-directed Richard Jewell In Matlock, Bates relished both the opportunity to pay homage to the original detective show starring Andy Griffith as attorney Ben Matlock, and the show’s exploration of societal issues, including the opioid crisis that caused the death of Madeline’s daughter. “I feel so lucky now to have a part that’s so deep and wide,” Bates says. “It speaks to my soul as a human being, and it gives me an opportunity to use everything I’ve learned over so many years.” Here, the actress recalls some of her favorite career memories, the part that got away, and the film that always makes her cry.
My First Screen Lesson I did a movie called Straight Time with Dustin Hoffman [in 1978]. I didn’t know anything about angles. I didn’t know how to be on a mark. I didn’t know how to be out of somebody’s eye line. I didn’t know any of that stuff. And I was sitting next to Dustin, and when they got the camera on me, suddenly I felt myself tensing up and I was paralyzed, really. I said to him, “I feel like an apartment building with all the doors and windows slamming shut.” And he said, “Can you hear Owen setting up the shot?” Owen Roizman, one of the great cinematographers. I said, “No, I can’t.” He said, “Well, listen.” So, I started listening to Owen and hearing the set decorators and everything. And then Dustin said, “That’s it,” because he could tell the moment when I relaxed. The secret to an actor’s creativity is the object of his concentration. When you put your concentration on another actor in a scene, then that’s what you’re doing. You’re not being afraid and nervous. So that was a very important lesson to learn.
The Best Advice I Ever Received I was doing press in the U.K. many, many years ago, and it was a very unpleasant experience. I ended up leaving the publicity tour. It was a movie that was produced by Saul Zaentz, who produced incredible films—a brilliant, brilliant man— but it was his one film that was a real clunker. But anyway, we were doing the press event. It was just an awful, awful experience. And [I was doing] that kind of four-year-old
crying and went up to my suite and just stayed there. Finally, he managed to get in and he said, “You’re going to have to get a lot tougher.” That was a whole other muscle that I needed to develop. And along with that, Ed Sherin, a wonderful director I knew years and years and years ago, doing theater, told me, “You have to have a head like a bullet and a heart like a baby ”
The Part I Always Wanted I guess it’s a part that I did on stage, Night, Mother, which we did in 1983, with a wonderful actress by the name of Anne Pitoniak,
written by Marsha Norman. It won the Pulitzer Prize. And they ended up doing a film of it with Anne Bancroft and Sissy Spacek. And I was tremendously disappointed, not in an “Oh gee, I want to play this part” way. It was, “Oh gee, we’ve been doing these roles for two years. How phenomenal would that be to put all of that experience on screen?” Both actresses I tremendously admire, and Anne Bancroft actually sent me a note after she saw Dolores Claiborne, and she said, “This is an Annie Award,” because she knew how important it was for me. So, I love them
both. But the film did not succeed. And now, especially when we see independent features that are so respected, I think, “Oh gosh, I wish we could have done it.” And I’m too old now for it.
The Most Fun I’ve Had On Set
I did a film called Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret I loved being on set with Kelly Fremon Craig, a wonderful director, and Jim Brooks was there, and Abby Ryder Fortson, a brilliant young actress. And it was just a joy. When Judy Blume came, it was so much fun to see her on set, and to really
laugh and be free to play and to know how much she loved it. At the very end, I was still full of myself playing Sylvia, I must say. They just gave me my head and I just ran with it. And then the moment I wrapped, I got in the car and the heavens opened. It was the drenching storm, and I just thought, It’s biblical. Of course. I’m done. It’s biblical. It’s all over.
The Shows And Films That Make Me Cry
The one that always pops to my mind is a film called Never Look Away, directed by Florian Henckel
von Donnersmarck and Caleb Deschanel was the cinematographer.
The Part That’s Most Like Me
Well, my ex-husband would say Misery. And there are days that I don’t disagree with that. And I think my mother also agreed with him. So yes, I think that would probably be that. I wouldn’t hobble anybody, but I think I do have that wide range of emotions, let’s put it that way.
My Most Quoted Role
It’s mostly from Fried Green Tomatoes. The line about, “I’m older and I have more insurance.” Or “Towanda!” Although I did have an amazing experience when I was over in a village where some shops are, near where I live. I was walking down the sidewalk and a woman flew out of a beauty salon with her cape still on her and her daughter not far behind. She grabbed me and she said that she had seen Dolores Claiborne. And she said when she saw that film, she finally had the courage to leave an abusive relationship.
My Biggest Challenge Yet
Two things: one, I would say, would be the opportunity to play more leads. It’s not that I wanted to be the star of the movie. I wanted roles that would ask more of me, instead of dropping in, in a supporting role. And also, an unexpected thing that I found very difficult for many years is, when I’m wrapped, when a film is done, who am I before the next one? What is my life in between? Because I’ve devoted all of my energy and all of my passion and all of my years to this. For a long time, I would come home and I would think, after having gone through a divorce, ‘Well, what do I do now?’ Over the last few years, I’ve met some wonderful friends and they really fill my life. We’ve really created a family
together, and that has become my life. And I thought I’d paint, I thought I would write. I thought I would do all of these other things when I retire, blah, blah, blah. But life is now, isn’t it? And my niece, Linda, whom I adore so much, said, “Well, it’s like John Lennon said, ‘Life is what happens when you’re busy doing other things.’” And she says, “Getting lost in the right direction.”
My Guilty Pleasure
I love to watch Meet Joe Black. I love that movie. It has two of my favorite actors in it. Well, three. Of course, Anthony Hopkins. Brad Pitt is phenomenal in that film. And Marcia Gay Harden, who was kind enough, when I was directing years ago, to come and do a little bit for me. She’s a phenomenal actress. But also, the story, the music, is phenomenal in that movie. And the famous scene with the old woman from the islands who’s in bed and she’s in pain, and she wants him to help her move on to the next world. I’ve been studying actors on The Bear. Jamie Lee Curtis was brilliant in that. I watch things over and over to learn from other actors, especially from younger actors, how the craft has gotten so subtle over the years. And that’s another reason why I’ve enjoyed Matlock is because I can do that. That’s a goal that I’m reaching for.
My Desert Island TV Shows
Really it would have to be The Pitt, which was amazing. And Disclaimer was brilliant, I loved that. I guess I would just have to have a streaming service on the desert island. Nothing excites me more than a fantastic performance, a fantastic script. And it makes me want to go back and watch Noah Wyle and all the characters in The Pitt again and again, and study their performances and just say, “I want to be like that someday.” ★
BY LYNETTE RICE
This was clearly not the reaction that Noah Wyle was expecting from his starring role on The Pitt. While appearing on a recent installment of The Jennifer Hudson Show, the eponymous host caught the actor off guard by blurting out, “I don’t want to get you blushing again, but the internet be crushing on you.”
As Wyle’s face turned cherry red, Hudson began reading off social media comments like “thank you for setting unrealistic expectations about how hot my male doctors would be in my life” and “you got no business being that sexy.”
“Do you ever get used to that kind of attention?” asked Hudson.
While attempting to mask his rouged mug, Wyle could only laugh and shake his head.
Ever since Max began streaming the drama about life in a fictitious Pittsburgh emergency room, it’s been one pinch-me moment after another for Wyle and his fellow executive producers John Wells and R. Scott Gemmill. Before he began work on The Pitt, Wyle believed that his old series ER was the “best medical show that ever was” and that no one since then had been able to “bring more sense of tension and immediacy than what we created with some
of those Steadicam shots” on the long-running NBC drama.
Many have tried, of course. Mad props to Shonda Rhimes and her Grey’s Anatomy, now the longest running primetime medical show after 21 seasons. But Meredith and her dead hubby Derek have been out of the zeitgeist for years, and no medical show has truly been able to recapture that magic—that is, until we first met Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch last January on the anniversary of his mentor’s death.
Part of what makes The Pitt so appealing (it averaged 10 million viewers per episode in the first season) is the way in which it unspools the story of Robby and his band of ambitious interns.
Each episode represents an hour in the staff’s frenetic, 15-hour day that culminates with a mass casualty shooting and an incomprehensible case of the measles involving an unvaccinated child. Adding to the intrigue is how the action never really leaves the confines of the ER, so extras that appeared in the beginning of the series can be seen in the background by the season finale.
“It was very financially advantageous to shoot this way, but it’s also the best way to tell the story,” Wells
explains. “We live in these smaller worlds, in these smaller spaces. It’s a human-level show. It exists where we exist. We are going into spaces and meeting people who you meet all day long in your own life. Audiences love both. They want to go to places they’ve never been before. And they also want to be connected to what’s really in their day-to-day life.”
And viewers have truly connected with Wyle’s Robby, however flawed the character may be. Though not unlike the intelligent and compassionate Dr. John Carter, the character Wyle played for 11 seasons on ER, Robby becomes increasingly prone to fits of rage, like accusing a patient’s mom of engaging in “Dr. Google Bullshit” before melting down and hiding away in a peds room. His mental instability is rooted in the death of his mentor during the pandemic—a life-altering moment first revealed in the drama’s pilot.
“When the shit hits the fan and you expect the white knight to come charging in on the horse, it would be very disconcerting to see the hero on the floor having a breakdown,” admits Wyle, whose character name was inspired by his own Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish family roots. “Suddenly the metaphor for the strength of our healthcare system is the strength of the individual practitioners in our healthcare system. Their health is our health and the degree to which they can have access to mental health resources is how we’ll determine the fabric of our safety net in this country and how well we care for each other. It’s really a fragile system, and if you read the papers, it just got a lot more fragile. I think we’re asking too much of them.”
At least he’s eager to continue giving them a voice. The Pitt, which is both a nickname for Robby’s ER and the city in which
“It’s a really fragile system and if you read the papers, it just got a lot more fragile. I think we’re asking too much of them.”
the show is based, has already been renewed for a second season. The next shift planned for 2026 will pick up on the 4th of July with new med students and a bevy of fresh cases. And with any luck, a few of the unanswered questions will be answered, like whether Patrick Ball’s Dr. Langdon deserves to keep his job as a senior resident after getting caught stealing drugs, and whether the mama bear charge nurse played by the excellent Katherine LaNasa will want to return to the job after she was clocked by an angry patient.
In the meantime, the tidal wave of goodwill toward The Pitt (not to mention its chances of success at the upcoming Emmys) has managed to lift all boats: medical dramas are suddenly hot again, with Fox finding unexpected success with Doc, starring Molly Parker, and planning to launch a remake of the Doc Martin series in 2026 with The Good Wife’s Josh
Charles. NBC continues to generate good ratings with Dick Wolf’s Chicago Med and ABC has already renewed Grey’s Anatomy for an astonishing 22nd season.
The fact that any new show like The Pitt can immediately resonate with fans—not to mention the medical world that appreciates the gritty realism—is a bit of a headscratcher for the team behind the Warner Bros. drama. But they’re not taking any of it for granted.
“You make shows that you just hope will connect with people,”
Wells says. “What’s been great is that this show connected so quickly. As an example, we made Shameless for Showtime, and it really didn’t become a hit until its fifth season because it just takes a long time with so many shows in the market. The thing that’s been really gratifying is that a lot of people found The Pitt quickly, and that to me is a miracle in the world we live in now.” ★
Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez reveal how their song for WandaVision led to Agatha All Along’s “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road”
After their Oscar-winning Frozen song “Let It Go”, husband and wife team Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez are used to their songs becoming part of pop culture. But with Agatha All Along, for which they wrote “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road”, things became a bit more surreal. “They ended up naming the show after our song from WandaVision, and then each episode of the show was named after lyrics from the ballad,” says Lopez. “It’s the most composer service I’ve ever seen.”
Not only did they need to come up with a song for the new series, they had to write it in eight different styles, from ancient folk to ’70s-style pop. “We wrote the ’70s version first, but it had to feel like a hit and have a love song element to it,” says Anderson-Lopez. “Then we could peel back the layers as we wrote different iterations, like the sacred chant version which came next.”
Since the concept of the song had to derive from a children’s walking song, the pair chose to use nursery rhymes as inspiration for the chorus, with “down, down, down the road” sounding similar to “row, row, row your boat.” “The core of it was already this song that a mom might make up with her kid as they walked along a road,” says Lopez, “and you might be surprised to find this out, but a lot of pop hits contain elements of nursery rhymes because they’re really sticky. They unite everybody.” —RYAN FLEMING
Emmy contenders Social Studies and The Class reveal high schoolers gripped by crushing new pressures heightened by Covid and social media
BY MATTHEW CAREY
“Kids today.” The phrase used to be spoken with a whiff of disgust by an older generation displeased with the behavior of young people compared to their own youthful comportment.
Now, when adults utter those words it’s usually with worry bordering on pity—a fundamental recognition that kids today are coming of age in unprecedented circumstances, caught in the merciless crucible of social media.
The impact of immersion on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, etc. on American teens is the terrain of Social Studies, the Emmycontending FX documentary series directed by Lauren Greenfield.
“Wanting attention, wanting to be liked, wanting to be popular has always been the case for teenagers,” Greenfield observes. “That’s perfectly normal for teenagers, but social media has just amplified it because now instead of looking for a friend group or to be popular in your class or in your school, now it’s in the whole world… We see how fame is very important to young people now—getting ‘likes’, being known, how many followers you have.”
Greenfield filmed with students from multiple schools in the LA area.
“The kids in the show, even though they were all from Los Angeles, they were from very, very different backgrounds,” she notes. “They were
also kind of amazed that wherever they were from… they were dealing with some of the same things, whether it was slut-shaming or comparison culture or not feeling good enough because of all the things that they were seeing [on social media].”
The filmmaker spent time with the series participants in their home and school environments, and with the kids’ permission examined their social media accounts.
“Everybody shared their social media their whole year, so that was a huge thing for them to do,” Greenfield says. “There, we got to see this other self that was presentational, that was who they wanted to be with their friends, that was sometimes in contradiction to what we saw in real life. Sometimes it showed the lie of real life, or sometimes real life showed the lie of social media. Sometimes it showed the lie to the parents or to the school. We saw all of these kinds of alternative worlds, presentational worlds.”
But meeting in group therapy-style circles with the filmmaker (cell phones banned), “They really became truth tellers, and they were so honest. And I think that’s part of why at the end they say, we wish we could be in a space like this without phones because they don’t really have that honesty in their lives. And so, this was kind of a unique space.”
Greenfield, whose mother is a professor of
psychology and author and whose late father was a physician and healthcare researcher, brings intellectual rigor to her exploration. What’s more, her two sons are members of Gen Z.
“I was the mother of teenagers when I started [this series],” she explains. “I learned a lot about what was going on in their lives. And we talk all the time, but there was still so much I didn’t know. I think the biggest surprise was that we think young people are so addicted to this thing. And as a parent, I was always battling my kids about screen time and kind of blaming them for being on it. And I realized that they don’t want to be on it either. That was a huge surprise to hear almost every kid [in the series] say they would rather be in their parents’ generation if they had a choice. But as Stella and Cooper [Social Studies participants] say, in the end they don’t have a choice because it’s like an existential question now, if you are not on social media, do you exist? Are you a person? Are you going to have a social life? And the fact is, it’s the way people communicate now.”
If there’s a villain in Social Studies, it’s the builders of social media platforms whose imperative is to keep young people using their products as much as possible.
“A lot of my work has been about these insecurities, whether it’s body image [in Thin] or comparing in Generation Wealth,” Greenfield says. “The algorithm will take that insecurity which comes out in the form of an interest and take you by the hand and lead you down into more and more triggering places because that’s what creates engagement and that’s what these capitalist for-profit apps are going for.”
Another documentary series in Emmy contention this season—The Class—centers on teenagers struggling through the pandemic. Directors Jaye and Adam Fenderson shot at Deer Valley High School in the San Francisco East Bay during the 2020-2021 school year when the Covid outbreak relegated students to remote learning. The profound impact on kids’ personal and educational progress hasn’t been adequately acknowledged.
“We have a whole generation of students that missed all sorts of developmental milestones,” notes executive producer Nicole Hurd, president of Lafayette College in Pennsylvania.
“The amount of anxiety, the amount of things that were lost… They’re more attached to their phones than they are to each other. They’re
more attached to technology than they are to humanity in some ways. That empathy muscle just atrophied, and it is scary to watch.”
Along with students Ahmad, Ebei, Emily, Javonte, Kaydnce and Raven, the six-part series from KQED and Three Frame Media features Mr. Cam, the only college adviser at a school of more than 2,000 students. He dealt with the daunting task of trying to keep kids academically motivated and on track toward higher education.
“58% of the students have at least one F,” Cam says in the series. “And senior year is the critical year, so this class specifically, they’re gonna have to grind.”
Cam, a graduate of Deer Valley, returned to the high school as part of College Advising Corps, a national college access program created to assist low-income, first-generation and underrepresented students. The organization was founded by Hurd in 2005.
“We took recent college graduates like Cam,” Hurd explains, “and we placed them in high schools to say the four words that we all need to hear, which is ‘I believe in you.’”
Fellow executive producer Daveed Diggs— the Grammy- and Tony-winning actor, singer and rapper—grew up in the Bay Area himself
before attending Brown University. The Ivy League school was recommended to him by a college counselor.
“There are these moments when you’re young and hopefully there’s somebody who slows down long enough to A, tell you that it’s going to be all right, and B, say that they believe in you,” Diggs says. “And then C—and this part I think is really important—just show you what it is like to live as an adult and do that in front of you and let you ask questions about that. And if it’s somebody that you admire or that you respect, that can be incredibly gratifying… And someone like Cam coming into these students’ lives is incredible.”
Hurd says she continues to witness the effect of Covid on students now in undergraduate school. “On my campus, I’ve seen it, the mental health needs are way higher,” she notes. “My concern, I can say as an educator, is we almost lost this class. Thank goodness for Cam and others. We didn’t lose a lot of this class, but we lost some of this class. You’re seeing the happy story. And so, what I worry about is we’ve got students that had all these barriers and some of them are still recovering from those barriers.”
Costume designer Nancy Steiner explains her eclectic choices for the Apple TV+ dramedy Government Cheese
In Apple TV+’s surrealist dramedy Government Cheese, a family that prays together possesses unique threads together. Set in the San Fernando Valley during the 1960s, the series tells the story of the Chambers family, an eclectic bunch of individuals with their
own awe-inspiring passions and desires. The striving family is soon plagued with drama and hijinks upon the return of Hampton (David Oyelowo), the husband of Astoria (Simone Missick) and father of their two children, Harrison (Jahi Di’Allo Watson) and Einstein (Evan Ellison),
after he is released from prison. After three years away from his family, Hampton comes back to his two teenage boys. Harrison harbors great resentment towards his father, and, as a result, rejects his own culture to instead pay respects to his father’s Chumash Native American
Greenfield began initial work on her Social Studies series before the pandemic and started shooting once in-person classes resumed.
“Kids just amplified all of their social media use during Covid and became so much more dependent on it and isolated,” she says. “And so, it was kind of a perfect natural experiment coming out of Covid. And then the habits didn’t really change. They had gotten this [attachment] and they continued, but I think it also really amplified the anxiety.”
Greenfield recently screened an episode of Social Studies at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival in Greece for a group of local high schoolers. She held a rap session with the students afterwards, discovering a commonality of experience between kids in the U.S. and abroad.
“Social media actually has a huge impact on our everyday lives and on our social lives mostly, but we don’t seem to realize it,” one of the kids told her. “And through this film, I actually got to think that it is a huge deal, but no one talks about it, or rarely talks about it.”
If there is a key takeaway from Social Studies it’s that opening channels of communication— in real life, not social media—is essential. Like Mr. Cam in The Class, the human factor can make all the difference.
“I feel like that’s kind of the realization kids come to in Episode 5 is, ‘We want to just talk face to face!’ When I was cutting it, I was like, is this the ending? Is this anti-climactic that the answer is they just want to be together? But actually, no, what was the hiding-in-plain-sight solution is people just want to connect, humans, in person.” ★
cellmate through clothing and other accoutrements after growing close to him during prison visitations. For costume designer Nancy Steiner, this led her to research Native American assimilation in the 1950s. “A lot of Native Americans transgressed into workwear,” Steiner says. “Levi’s workwear became fashionable in the ’50s. There’s a museum out on the Chumash [reservation] where
a descendant made the necklace Harrison wears. Then we added the feather and the hat, which is an interplay of when Native Americans had to adapt to the white man’s clothing. [1971 movie] Billy Jack also inspired us.”
Hampton’s other son, Einstein, less plagued by spite and more motivated by a spiritual, free-flowing mindset, was a breeze to dress up. Steiner leaned into Einstein’s brainy, easygoing and sports-loving
nature. “Evan, personally, is such a beautiful soul. He’s got this quiet confidence, but he’s such a quirky character. He’s this genius that wants to pole vault and quotes scriptures,” Steiner says. “But it didn’t really matter what he put on. He just wore a lot of shorts for his pole vaulting, but that wasn’t necessarily a put-together look. It was just like, “OK, here’s this top and shorts—just like a teenage boy.”
—DESTINY JACKSON
She's smashing “sad divorcée” tropes as Mel, ex-wife of Jon Hamm’s reprobate character Coop in Apple TV+ series Your Friends & Neighbors. The actress talks us through five things to consider...
BY ANTONIA BLYTH
1Know your creator
I had read Jonathan Tropper’s novel This Is Where I Leave You, and then I read the last one, Everything Changes, which actually has overlap. It’s about a divorcé who ends up living in this apartment complex with these dudes. It has a lot of similarities in terms of midlife and anxiety, and there’s an ex-wife.
Tropper gave me the first two episodes. I thought it was a really fun idea that she’s a shrink who then steals self-destructive behaviors from her patients. And that was the moment I wanted to play her. But I knew he was a great storyteller and that the characters were going to have depth, and that he had a wonderful sense of comedy in my
opinion, and also a wonderful sense of dialogue.
2
Break the mold
Tropper didn’t want her to be ‘a wife’. His big thing was that he really wanted to convey this spark between them that they can’t let go of, and obviously, I’m a huge romantic comedy fan, so I thought that was really fun and different. A lot of the depictions of middle-aged divorcées, they’re sad. We have a bunch of girlfriends on the couch on a Saturday night with white wine, being lifted up by their girlfriends and forced to go on a date, that kind of thing. And I didn’t see that at all. He didn’t write that for her. That wasn’t what he was interested in.
Tropper had told me in the very beginning when he was pitching me the show, he said, “This is a real romance,” which is so weird when you have divorcées who are having a romance. So, I just didn’t know how he was going to do that. But I found it to be so poignant when I read it, and I’m assuming he did too, because I think we gave a lot to it. You can just drive something into the ground, and then despite having had the best intentions and having such promise in that romance, especially when you meet
when you’re so young, I find it even more poignant because obviously it’s hard to grow with someone for that long.
3
Have crush-worthy chemistry
It was just really easy. I knew Jon Hamm a little bit in passing, from seeing him at a party or something like that, and I’m a huge fan of his work. He’s very crush-worthy. But yeah, whenever I was playing the scenes very angrily, they were like, “Don’t forget, he
“I thought it was a really fun idea that she’s a shrink who then steals self-destructive behaviors from her patients.”
melts you a little bit.” And they kept wanting to find that part underneath, I felt was really fun. I think it’s on the page so I can’t take credit for it. The biggest thing that Tropper kept saying to me is that he kept just talking about the heart of the show. He wanted it to be this very strong connection between them that never dies. So, I wonder if maybe that was part of what drove him to write her a bit darkly, because they are alike in certain ways. For the scene where we go back to college, we shot basically in order. So, Jon and I knew each other really well by that point. That episode meant a lot to me because of the romance.
4Collaboration is key
This is going to sound corny maybe, but Tropper is so feminist in his approach on set. He’s so collaborative. He seems to be OK with hearing from me if I want something to be slightly different and he’s open to getting
into it with me. And then, he also is so thoughtful about the fact that my children are in school in LA. It’s like when you’re visiting schools with your kids, they’ll say, “Oh, this school, they really see the whole child.” And then other schools, they’ll say it’s just academically rigorous, but nothing else. It was little things like blocking or, the part where Mel is upset before the birthday party and the daughter’s
putting makeup on her. He’s just very open. I was like, “How about if I’ve taken to the bed and then we go to the bathroom to do the makeup?” Or the fight scene with Olivia [Munn]. I was like, “Let’s really make it weird. Let’s make it go on slightly too long. It’s slightly weird.” He’s very collaborative. But anyway, he just is sane, which I think is incredibly rare in a showrunner. And generous. He doesn’t lead with
his ego. He’s really a proper storyteller. Olivia and I will say, “Hey Jonathan, let’s try this.” And he’ll be like, “OK, that sounds cool.” And if he doesn’t like it, he’ll just say, “No, that’s stupid,” or whatever.
All work and no play…
The self-defense class scene was really fun. It was really great. Olivia and I had such a good time. Yeah, all those ladies who make up the group of the friends and neighbors are master theater actors, and we just had a ball. For the punching scene, we had to get a stunt person because we had to both be careful, and I had a frozen shoulder, so, we really actually choreographed it. We had stunt people help us make it so that we would look like we were having a pretty nasty fight, a pretty good brawl.
I’m still madly in love with acting, and I’ve gone on such a huge journey, and I think it’s true what some people say, the older you get and the more you do it, the more you realize you shouldn’t be working so hard. Holland Taylor, my best friend’s partner, always says, “No one wants your 100%.” I don’t want to overthink it because it just speaks to me, but I think it’s true for athletes too. Something about being in a state where you’re not trying too hard can be very critical. I think what’s so exciting is to be given the chance to keep learning. I keep testing myself. How much more real can you make it? How much more can you not try to arrange your face or orchestrate this take? I still find it so delicious, the whole process of trying to pretend that it’s real. It sounds so simple, but I still feel challenged by it. And so, it’s been very exciting for me. I think it’s just about really good writing, it’s not really a particular kind of role. Even if it’s like one scene, it’s about looking for that challenge of really good writing. ★
Netflix show Adolescence— a four-part series about a British teen accused of murder, with each episode shot in an unbroken hour-long take—has been a surprise global smash hit. The key players sit down with Deadline to discuss the making of a world-changing phenomenon.
Graham, star and co-creator of Adolescence, finds it slightly trickier to do his weekly food shop since the four-part crime drama became one of the most-watched shows ever on Netflix.
“It’s dead hard getting round the Tesco these days,” he jokes, speaking two months after the show's launch.
Adolescence tells the story of 13-year-old schoolboy Jamie Miller, played by Owen Cooper, who is arrested after the murder of his classmate Katie Leonard. The show, however, is not a whodunnit, that becomes clear early on in Episode 1, but rather, it asks the question: why? It’s a question that his family—dad, Eddie Miller, played by Graham, mum Manda, played by Christine Tremarco, and sister Lisa, played by Amélie Pease—are asking, as are detective inspector Luke Bascombe, played by Ashley Walters, and others, including therapist Briony Ariston, played by Erin Doherty.
“We thought it would just be a lovely little colloquial British story. You can see it’s made with love, compassion and respect and we served our story properly and stayed true to the subject that we’re covering. But, sometimes, those kinds of dramas obviously just resonate,” Graham says. “I’ve always tried to pick stuff that I do on television which can create conversations. This one, particularly, was a beautiful little stone. We threw it in the middle of a lake, and it caused a tsunami.”
It certainly made waves; the show recently became Netflix’s second most-watched English-language series of all time.
Some of the reasons it resonated are clear: it’s a powerful story about teenagers, one that hasn’t been widely told on TV, exploring how internet culture and certain bad actors are influencing youngsters; there are tremendous performances throughout, particularly by newcomer Cooper, who was only 13 when he won the role, and Graham.
Then, there’s the incredible technical side to the show: all four episodes were filmed in a oneshot style, pioneered by director Philip Barantini, who had previously worked his magic on intense chef drama Boiling Point, and brought to life by cinematographer Matthew Lewis.
However, you wouldn’t expect that a four-part drama series, shot in South Yorkshire, and set near Warrington, between Liverpool and Manchester, started with a phone call from Brad Pitt’s production company Plan B Entertainment.
Jeremy Kleiner, who is co-president of Plan B, alongside Dede Gardner, had watched Boiling Point, the 2021 one-shot movie directed by Barantini and starring Graham, and called Barantini to discuss doing an eight-episode series in a similar fashion with the same team.
This was before Barantini and Graham, who had worked together as actors on HBO’s Band of Brothers, started working on a television spinoff of Boiling Point for the BBC. “They wanted to do something with me and Stephen with a one-take,” Barantini says.
Graham adds, “They pitched that idea to Phil and he mentioned it to me, but I said ‘I don’t really want to do [that eight-part series].’ I didn’t think it’d be interesting enough but I told him I had another idea. It was a moment of clarity.”
Graham and Barantini were “obsessed” with a British documentary series—24 Hours in Police Custody, primarily following the Bedfordshire police, that has run for 11 seasons on Channel 4. Graham says that the idea for the story came to him like he was completing a children’s dot-to-dot book.
He had also come across a
number of stories about young girls being stabbed to death by young boys (although not, as Elon Musk has suggested, the murder of three young girls at a Southport dance class, a crime that happened after Adolescence had wrapped).
“There were incidents like the young girl who got stabbed in Liverpool and other incidents that had just been infiltrating my mind. I remember being deeply saddened by each one of these situations. It wasn’t long before Christmas, I just remember thinking, what’s going on?” Graham says.
He was also influenced by two stories even closer to home involving the children and grandchildren of friends. One daughter, who went to an affluent private school, and one granddaughter who went to a comprehensive school, had been asked by their male classmates to send them naked pictures of themselves. The former did and they were shared widely at school.
“I just thought that’s really fucking strange. It has nothing to do with culture, nothing to do with class. Something’s going on with the young lads that are asking for pictures of these girls. I just thought that was really interesting as well, and when I had these little ideas for this patchwork quilt, I said, I’m going to ask Jack to write it,” he adds.
Graham had worked with Jack Thorne on six projects, including some made by one of Adolescence’s other production companies Warp Films, such as This Is England and The Virtues. Thorne is also the prodigious and prolific writer behind series such as HBO’s His Dark Materials, the Enola Holmes films and the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child stage play.
But Thorne didn’t immediately say yes. In fact, he challenged Graham to write the series with him.
“[Stephen] started talking about knife crime, and he talked about the things he’d seen, and he talked about four episodes. There was some flesh on the bones in terms of some things that he was interested in. Then we just talked and kept talking until there was a lot more flesh on the bones. Then we took it to Phil and tried to give it even more flesh on the bones,” Thorne says.
Thorne says Graham has “a soul a mile wide. He makes you all
part of his mission in life. I always knew that he had this stuff that he needed to get out and that in his acting, he found ways to express it in all sorts of different ways. But I thought it would be really interesting to work with him as a writer. I knew he was shy about writing. I knew he was dyslexic. I knew that there were things that he would find difficult with it all, but he was brave enough to say, ‘Yeah, let’s give it a go,’ and so we just went from there.”
Barantini says Thorne’s initial script was like nothing else he’d ever read before. “It just hit me,” he says. “By the end of the episode, I was bawling my eyes out and I’d never done that with a script, and because I knew we were going to do it in one-take—that was the first spark of the whole thing—I was reading it with that in mind, picturing the camera moves and where we’re going to go. It was just this magical ride that I was on.”
The one-shot style also played in to how Graham and Thorne, with some help from the latter’s writing assistant Mariella Johnson, penned the series. The rule was essentially that the camera never goes anywhere without a story, or without a character to take them there.
“You write it in completely different way,” Thorne says. “It’s a completely different grammar to the way you normally write a show. It encouraged me to be a completely different writer, because normally you would try and tell a complete story with the audience [having] had the full experience and understood everything. With this, I’m going to take four big gasps of air, I’m going to blow out, and then at the end of it, they’re going to have some
“When you do one-shot, it always has to serve the story, but it also has to serve the performances as well. Those two things have to come first, and the one-shot should be a subconscious thing that’s happening for the audience, it’s an extra feeling for them.”
PHILIP BARANTINI
sense of the story, but we aren’t going to answer every question.”
He highlights the example of Episode 1, where a number of stories are told, such as Walters’ DI Bascombe and his partner, detective sergeant Misha Frank, played by Faye Marsay, leading a police raid into the Miller household to arrest Jamie, and then interviewing him alongside his father Eddie and his solicitor. None of the threads are fully explained in the moment.
In Episode 2, Bascombe is searching for the murder knife. Thorne says, “Normally, you’d find it, it’s Chekhov’s gun, right? You’ve got to answer it later on in the show, but that question is never answered. You never find out where the knife is because there’s no opportunity to. It would be inauthentic to suddenly… throw in a bit of exposition there.”
Thorne says he wanted to “celebrate the fact that this is incomplete” because that’s how life is, and credits Disney+’s WandaVision as one of the few TV shows that “challenged how you tell TV stories” for him. “I think the grammar of TV has become a bit tired. People are very used to certain answers done in certain ways. Actually, film is ahead of this, but TV is a little bit behind,” he adds. Between Adolescence and Apple TV+’s The Studio, the oner (oneshot) is really having a moment. While Seth Rogen used his oner for laughs, Adolescence used it to heighten the drama and tell the four-part story through the eyes of a specific individual or individuals.
As a result, Barantini and DoP Lewis had to meticulously plan every element of the shoot, including finding a camera—in this case the Ronin 4D—that could easily fit through windows and be light enough to be passed to different crew, as well as plan the exact distance between specific locations such as the Miller’s home and the police station and the school and the murder site.
Each episode was made in three weeks; the first week was for rehearsals, the second week for the technical aspects and the third for filming. The plan for filming was to shoot two takes a day, allowing the team to have around 10 takes to ultimately choose from (although,
“One of the beautiful things about Phil as a director is he’s very collaborative and he allows there to be a really beautiful space and place for us to be able to find it as a collective.”
STEPHEN GRAHAM
as one would expect, this went up slightly with a few false starts).
For instance, the first episode used its second take, shot on the first day of shooting that block, the second episode, set in the frenetic environment of a school, with a cast of around 370 extras, was filmed in take 13, the third episode, essentially a bottle episode featuring almost exclusively Cooper and Doherty, was filmed 11 times, and the final episode, where the family are wrestling with what has happened over the last 13 months, used take number 16.
“When you do one-shot, it always has to serve the story, but it also has to serve the performances as well. Those two things have to come first, and the one-shot should be a subconscious thing that’s happening for the audience, it’s an extra feeling for them,” says Barantini.
But he adds that only certain kinds of actors react well to the oner. “There are a lot of fantastic actors out there who would potentially crumble at doing a one-shot. You have to find actors who are open to it, they listen, they feel it, they’re in the moment as opposed to coming on set and being like, ‘This is what I’m going to do in this moment’ or, ‘This is how I’m going to say this line.’ You need to find actors who can really be free with it, it’s important to let the actors feel that freedom.”
Episode 3, set in a youth detention center, was the first episode
to be shot. It is almost entirely a conversation between Doherty’s forensic psychologist Briony Ariston, and Cooper’s Jamie, as she is preparing a pre-trial report on his mental capacity.
“It’s a game of tennis, and it’s important that these actors feel like they are able to really go there,” says Barantini. “It’s about giving them
the confidence and the support. You’ve got to wrap your arms around these actors and go, ‘I’ve got you. You trust me, and I trust you, let’s see what happens.’ I think something really magical happens when you allow actors to do that.”
Doherty agrees, “You’d get to the end of shooting [the episode] and you just couldn’t really grasp what
you’d just done, because you’ve got to completely surrender and just be present. Without sounding bizarre, you actually start believing you were doing it. It was the most freeing opportunity to shoot something that I’ve ever experienced. I’ll always treasure it because you don’t get it very often.”
Many have compared the shooting style to being in a play. Walters says it reminded him of being on stage. “That’s always a harrowing experience. I don’t care what actors tell you about how much they love it. It’s joyous when you’re on stage, but when you’re learning it before opening night and that curtain goes up, you’re absolutely shitting yourself. It was the same for me [on Adolescence]. But it was really a freeing experience. I wish you could shoot everything like that, you can’t obviously, but it definitely leveled up my craft,” he adds.
Walters says that when he first heard about it, the idea of a oneshot series sounded “fun” but that the reality didn’t hit him until he was on set. He was also nursing a bad back at the time.
“It just dawned on me, as we were rehearsing, that I’m kind of driving this first episode a lot of the time.
It was struggling to sink in in the beginning, but that was because I was so anxious. Once I let go, I knew the words, it became a lot more fun, and I was raring to go,” he says.
Fatherhood is a key message in the series, and not just with Eddie and Jamie. In Episode 2, Bascombe’s son
Adam, played by Amari Bacchus, helps his father decipher what certain emojis mean as he searches for a motive on the teens’ social media. Walters says that this moment reveals more than one would first assume. “The son has used it as a cry for help. It’s an opportunity for him to have something to talk to
[his dad] about, that maybe he will be interested in. It’s not about not loving your kids, he feels like he’s been a good parent, but I think this is a wake-up call for him, and it was a wake-up call for me in my real life with my own kids,” he adds.
Doherty, who starred as the young Princess Anne in Seasons 3 and 4
The number of people who have watched Adolescence is staggering; the drama just became Netflix’s second most-watched English-language series of all time after the first season of Wednesday, overtaking the fourth season of Stranger Things and Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story and making U.K. TV history as the first streaming series to top Britain’s weekly ratings chart.
It also made U.K. TV history after becoming the first streaming series to top Britain’s weekly TV ratings. Per BARB (Broadcasters Audience Research Board), the first episode of Adolescence was watched by 6.45M, more than the number that tuned in to watch The Apprentice or Death in Paradise, which both air on the BBC. Thorne was also invited to Downing Street after Prime Minister Kier Starmer praised the show, saying it “hit home hard”, and it would be available to watch in schools across Britain.
“It’s testament to the fact that there’s no substitute to a really great story that’s passionately told by a group of talented people. That’s the most gratifying thing, and the thing I take most pride in is that it has resonated and has managed to break on to that [chart]. It’s the power of storytelling,” says Mona Qureshi, Netflix’s director of U.K. content.
Former BBC executive Qureshi joined Netflix in spring 2022. When she joined the team run by former Sky drama chief Anne Mensah, she says that the strategy was “very much local for local content. There was a real focus on finding shows that would really resonate first and foremost with the U.K. audience,” she says.
But Adolescence would not be on the horizon for at least 18 months. In fact, it was another show written by Jack Thorne—Toxic Town that would be Netflix’s first British drama that would carry on the legacy of British kitchen sink realism that started in the late 1950s. Britain has a solid history of socially realistic TV series, from Alan Bleasdale’s 1982 series Boys from the Blackstuff to Franc Roddam’s Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, Hanif Kureishi’s 1991 series The Buddha of Suburbia, Peter Flannery’s Our Friends in the North, which kickstarted the career of Daniel Craig, and more recently Toby Jones-led Mr. Bates vs. The Post Office. Toxic Town, written by Thorne, premiered just two weeks before Adolescence. The four-part series told the story of three mothers involved in the Corby toxic waste poisonings, which resulted in a number of women in the Midlands town giving birth to disabled babies, and the subsequent
court case. It had a starry cast with the likes of Doctor Who’s Jodie Whittaker, The White Lotus’ Aimee Lou Wood, The Full Monty’s Robert Carlyle and The Diplomat’s Rory Kinnear, and was produced by Black Mirror duo Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones.
“Toxic Town also did really well for us. Adolescence is incredible, and we all love that adolescent, but characteristic to its name, it has outshone everything. It’s sort of taken up the conversation. Yes, it’s within the tradition of social drama, the British audience loves shows where there’s triumph against adversity and a cause at the heart of it,” Qureshi says.
Shortly after Toxic Town started production, Thorne and his partners brought Qureshi and her team another four-part drama that would hit the nerve of even more everyday people.
Qureshi had worked with Philip Barantini on BBC crime drama The Responder with Barantini directing the final episode of Season 1 as well as having a recurring role on the show. Barantini had already made Boiling Point, a short that later turned into feature starring Stephen Graham, and Qureshi had suggested turning the chef drama into a series. However, she never got the chance to work on it because she was “pinched by Netflix”, joking that she had “unfinished business” with Barantini.
That unfinished business turned out to be Adolescence, which had previously been in development at Amazon but was ultimately turned down by Jen Salke, who, coincidentally, left the streamer two weeks after it launched on Netflix.
“The whole team came in around Christmas 2023 and they had a script that that they left Anne [Mensah] and I with. They told us about it in the room and then we went away, read that script in one gulp, and instantly knew it was something,” she adds.
It turned out it was truly something. Qureshi recalls reading the script for the first episode.
“From the very first scenes with DI Bascombe (Ashley Walters), where initially it was here’s this
guy who’s trying to do a job… but his kid’s calling him and trying to take a sickie. We can all relate to that and that’s just the beginning of the day. Then you go through the door into that experience with Eddie (Graham) and Manda (Christine Tremarco), and suddenly your heart’s in your mouth, because you really felt in that script, ‘Why are they coming after my kid?’ You travel with that emotion all the way through everything that Eddie and Manda experience and then to that awful rug-pull of a moment where they reveal the CCTV,” she says.
Because of the way that the show was filmed, there was not much opportunity to give notes in the edit, but she says she watched a lot of takes. “From the very beginning, much like the script, we would watch it and say to each other, ‘This is amazing.’ It blew you away, you felt it every time.” She knew audiences would agree. “There’s so much content, I think our palates have become so sophisticated and [one] can sniff a bum note, we can sniff authenticity. Adolescence is the best example of that. You come to it as a parent, you come to it as a woman, you come to it as a grandparent to a child who’s concerned about these things, and you feel you’re inside the lives of those people. Beyond the incredible bravura filmmaking, that’s what’s really special about it and that needs to be celebrated. For me, it’s raised the bar on how we should be doing and championing shows like that,” she adds.
Qureshi, who is also involved in upcoming series such as the Dolly Alderton-penned adaptation of Pride and Prejudice starring Emma Corrin and Olivia Colman, wants a drama slate with “breadth and range”, she says. “We’re looking to speak with specificity to one person. We’re thinking about who that audience is and making sure we can reach as many of them and cater to as many of those tastes and that diversity as we can. It’s as simple and as complicated as that. We’re absolutely about the next Toxic Town as much as we are the next lightning strike.”
of Netflix’s The Crown, is currently starring alongside Nicola Walker and Stephen Mangan in Mike Bartlett’s play Unicorn in London’s West End.
For her, Adolescence is “the perfect marriage of theater and the screen,” but, “it’s not like theater because the magic of theater is that you are in a room with people and you’re vibing off their energy and that dictates where the play goes. But this was different in the sense that, particularly for our episode, it was just me and Owen. There was something about our co-created energy. When you are on set normally, you’re so acutely aware of the boom operator, the sound guy, the props, but this just wasn’t that. I’ve just never experienced anything like it,” she adds.
The theater comparison is appropriate given that for the episode, Graham tasked Thorne with writing a David Mamet play. Another difference to normal sets was Thorne was present, particularly during rehearsals, so that if they needed to change a line, they could do that up top, as there’d be no reshoots.
Episode 3 was also the first scene that Cooper had ever filmed, a remarkable feat for anyone, let alone a teenager fresh from drama club.
“I didn’t know what was hard and what was easy, so I just went with it,” he says. “I didn’t know any better to do the one-shot and do all those lines. Whatever I got asked to do, I did it because I wanted to prove that I was right for the part of Jamie, I wanted to impress everyone. I went in there knowing my lines, which I didn’t think I’d be able to do.”
Cooper also reveals that something that Barantini said to him in the audition process might have been the reason he was off book from the start, something not all of the actors could say. “Phil brought me to his office and said, ‘It’s going to be shot in this onetake thing where there’s no cuts. So, if you get a line wrong, then you’re going to have to go to the very beginning.’ I don’t know why he said it that way, but it scared me a lot. I didn’t want to be the person that restarted it and I’m very happy I wasn’t,” he says. There’s a moment in the episode,
where Cooper yawns, which was not in the script, and Doherty comes back with a perfect line. “I wouldn’t have been able to [do this episode] with just any actor. Anything I’d say, she would be able to come back with something you wouldn’t expect. When I yawned, she then said, ‘Am I boring you?’ It was just a natural yawn. It was on Friday, the last day shooting and it was the last take so I was very tired,” he says.
Doherty adds, “He was genuinely exhausted. In a weird way he was saying it just happened. And then in a weird way, for me, I couldn’t not respond. That was the joy of where we got to. We were genuinely both just so entwined. Our layers of improv were just, they were working their minds of their own, because me and Owen didn’t even remember I said that. That’s where we got to, which is insane.”
Hannah Walters, who runs Matriarch Productions with (her husband) Graham and is an executive producer of the show, calls it a “chess match” between Cooper and Doherty.
It’s a chess battle that is essentially about power. Briony is trying to understand Jamie’s motivations and the boy veers between emotional moments, asking whether she likes him; anger, most notably in a terrifying scene when he knocks over a chair; and a strange
sense that he’s not as bad as other kids (“I could have touched her, but I didn’t. Most boys would. So, that makes me better”).
How on earth did 46-year-old Thorne get inside Jamie’s head like that? “Probably easier than I would like. I do feel like I had a lot of Jamie in me when I was that age, and I was that confused about the world and about my relationship with the world, and about whether I would ever be liked, actually, whether I would ever have friends. That’s how I sort of saw the world, as this great morass of unfriendly faces.”
Thorne explains that, in the episode, Jamie doesn’t understand what he did. He knows what he did but doesn’t really understand why he did it. He’s also trying to hide it because he likes Briony.
“He’s in a place where he can’t talk to anyone and suddenly there’s this interesting person that comes and talks to him and makes him feel like a human being for an hour,” he adds.
Briony is also showing generosity towards Jamie, as evidenced by a cheese and pickle sandwich, a packaged lunch that has fascinated the internet.
Two months after the show aired, Barantini texted Thorne to ask, “What does this fucking sandwich mean because everyone’s asking me?” Thorne laughs when he recounts this story, because, he
“I’ve always tried to pick stuff that I do on television which can create conversations. This one, particularly, was a beautiful little stone. We threw it in the middle of a lake, and it caused a tsunami.”
says, “The sandwiches don’t mean anything. She saved half her lunch so that she could start this relationship in this final interview with a tender act of generosity, in the same way that she’s brought a little bag of marshmallows to put in the hot chocolate. She is aware of what he needs, which is comfort, and she offers him comfort.”
Now, Thorne says to Barantini, “We went through the whole shooting process. I would have told you if it meant anything. I hate metaphors.”
A similar item also sent some down an internet rabbit hole: the wallpaper in Jamie’s bedroom. Some viewers took to Reddit to question if the murder knife is stashed behind the wallpaper in his room. “That makes me laugh
because that was me saying to Adam [Tomlinson], our production designer, ‘Do you remember when you were a kid and you would rip the wallpaper by the side of your bed?’ That’s what that was,” says Barantini.
Thorne says he’s really “grateful” that people are taking such an interest in such details. “I’ve craved this sort of attention on something I’ve written my entire writing life. There have been details of stuff that I’ve written where I’ve wished people had noticed.”
Cooper’s remarkable performance is even more astonishing when you find out that Adolescence was his first ever audition, having previously attempted to audition for ITV soap Coronation Street. He spent a couple of years doing drama club before sending in a self-tape for Adolescence that landed him an audition in Manchester and five more chances to impress and beat out a number of other boys (all of whom got to appear in the show in Episode 2’s school scene). He reveals it was the chemistry test with Graham that was his favorite part of that audition process.
“Me and Stephen, we just clicked straight away. It was weird, but it just happened,” he says.
Cooper learned that he got the part when he returned home from school one day and his mum revealed the news. “It was a relief because there were so many nerves going into it. I wanted Jamie. I wanted that part so badly so to finally hear, it was amazing,” he says.
Graham brings it back to when he starred in This Is England, Shane
Meadows’ 2006 movie about young skinheads set in 1983, and he met the film’s star Thomas Turgoose, who was a similar age to Cooper when they started.
“When I was fortunate enough to be part of This Is England, that was a breakout role [for me]. But to work with Thomas Turgoose and what El Tomo brought was just pure authenticity, unadulterated talent, fresh and unique. It’s something I thought I’d never see again,” says Graham. “When [Cooper and I] were in that room I just looked at him and said, ‘I’m going to be your dad,’ and he went ‘OK’ and I just felt something then. He just had this magic.”
Barantini admits that the whole team was nervous about casting a 13-year-old, particularly because of the subject matter and the workload. They considered casting someone older but decided against it. Casting director Shaheen Baig looked at more than 500 boys during the process.
“We saw a lot of kids,” Barantini says. “When you’re auditioning people like that, you’ve got to take it slowly. We knew that this was going to be a bit of a process. Shaheen is amazing at finding new talents. Owen was quite early on. He had the screen test with Stephen and something about Owen was just so real and natural. Everything I threw at him, he would just take. On day one, he turned up with no script and he was like, ‘I’ve learned it.’ Sure enough, he was completely off book and at that moment I knew we were going to be alright.”
It turns out they were alright. Graham has compared Cooper to Robert De Niro, who he worked with on Netflix’s The Irishman. In a serendipitous moment, Graham, Cooper and De Niro all appeared on BBC talk show The One Show in March as De Niro was promoting The Alto Knights. “I told Bob about Owen and he touched Owen’s knee and gave him this lovely smile. He was so lovely with him and Owen’s got this signed Taxi Driver poster from him too,” Graham says.
While much has been made of the technical aspects of filming Adolescence, many of the actors praised the emotional side of Barantini’s directing, particularly with Cooper. “One of the beautiful
things about Phil as a director is he’s very collaborative and he allows there to be a really beautiful space and place for us to be able to find it as a collective. He never tells you what to do but he points you in the possible direction to go. Maybe that comes from the fact that he was an actor, and he understands a lot about it in that respect, and what it takes to get to certain places,” says Graham.
Thorne adds, “He does create this incredible atmosphere. It was like being on holiday on that show. He’s one of the most musical directors I’ve ever worked with in terms of how he deals with actors, but also how he deals with scripts. That first week with Owen was like nothing else I’ve experienced in terms of the delicate work he did.”
Barantini, who is currently shooting Enola Holmes 3, is also aware that he doesn’t want his one-shot to become a “gimmick”.
In Adolescence, it’s never a gimmick, as highlighted by its devastating use in the fourth and final episode as Graham’s Eddie and his wife and daughter drive to local hardware store Wainwrights after his van is graffitied with the word ‘Nonse’—a moment, soundtracked by Aha’s “Take on Me”, where they’re trying to get their day (and life) back.
Christine Tremarco, who plays Manda, has known Graham since they were kids in Kirby. She jokes that the “nanna dancing” in the van wasn’t in the script.
But a call from Jamie in prison to let them know he’s changing his plea changes the mood. As
the family returns home, Eddie and Manda have a seismic heart-to-heart.
“[Manda] is trying to keep it together; she’s trying to stay strong. From Episode 1, when the police burst in and take her baby out of their home and put him a police cell, it’s horrifying. She breaks, obviously, towards the end of Episode 4 but then she still pulls it back in. She’s trying to keep her family together,” she says.
A story about young, male rage is exemplified in these moments and one can’t help but think of Andrew Tate, who faces 10 charges of rape, actual bodily harm, human trafficking, and controlling prostitution for gain in the U.K., and how the manosphere, particularly online, has influenced these boys.
“He never left his room. He’d come home, slam the door, straight up the stairs, on the computer,” Manda says.
“It takes a village to raise a child,” says Graham. “There’s a responsibility and we are all accountable. Maybe the school is responsible, to an extent, society in general, the community, the family, of course. Then on top of that, today we have what we didn’t have, but the internet can educate and parent our kids just as much as we did.”
Cooper himself says he wasn’t even aware of the issue. “I am so glad I didn’t know about any of that. Me and my friends hadn’t come across the manosphere and the dark stuff. It definitely is happening, which is shocking, and obviously knife crime, I’ve
“I do feel like I had a lot of Jamie in me when I was that age, and I was that confused about the world and about my relationship with the world, and about whether I would ever be liked, actually, whether I would ever have friends.”
JACK THORNE
been told about those since like year five.”
In the closing moments, Eddie, Manda and Lisa have a sweet moment on the stairs before Eddie says, ‘How did we make her?’ and Manda replies, ‘Same way we made him’.
Graham says they condensed that scene. “I remember it being such a beautiful moment.” Eddie then goes into Jamie’s room to grieve and apologizes that he “should have done better”.
To achieve this heartbreaking moment, Barantini and Hannah Walters, surrounded by her and Graham’s children Grace and Alfie, surprised Graham. “My wife, what she’s done is she got some photographs of me and them when they were kids and put them all over the wardrobe, and they’d go, ‘We love you, dad. We’re so proud of you.’ I just looked at it for a second, and I just went,” he adds.
It was a fitting end to the show. What nobody expected was the reaction.
Cooper, who is starring alongside Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie as Young Heathcliff in the upcoming feature adaptation of Wuthering Heights, has his mock exams coming up and is lucky to have friends that aren’t overdoing it.
“Well done is the best compliment I’ve got off my mates. I’m glad they’re not overreacting,” Cooper says. “I’ve been trying as hard as possible to have a normal life. It’s just been a lot busier than normal. I’ve been waiting so long for the show to come out, and now it’s finally out. I wasn’t expecting such a big response. I don’t think anyone was really.”
There’s been talk of another project between Graham, Barantini, Thorne and production companies including Plan B. But more than anything, Adolescence has given Graham the self-assurance to get more stories out of his head.
“Being a part of that creative process, I think it has given me confidence to be able to have communication and conversations with directors and writers about what is the truth? What are we trying to get to? What is the truth that we’re telling here. It’s something I really enjoyed, and I hope it’s something that I do again.” ★
BY ANTONIA BLYTH
Chloe has to maintain appearances for her public persona. How much did you relate to her sense of being constantly observed and scrutinized?
That’s definitely one of the parallels that she and I share. I do know what that’s like. And there is a separation on some level of who you are at work and who you are at home, at least in my business. But I think that’s true for many businesses. I do relate to that side of her job and her life, and she has a lot more hard, extreme secrets that she’s keeping. But it doesn’t matter, I still understand that presenting in a certain way. But I also feel like everybody understands that now, with our social media lives and what we want to curate to show the world. We all do that on some level.
Chloe’s clothes are such a way in to immediately understanding how she presents that front. She had an all-white dress, and a form-fitting very chic dress on in the first episode. How much did that help you and did you have input on her looks?
In The Better Sister, Jessica Biel stars as Chloe, a successful magazine editor whose polished surface belies the tangled mess of her past. In the wake of her sister Nicky (Elizabeth Banks)’s descent into addiction, Chloe has somehow taken over Nicky’s life, marrying her ex-husband Adam (Corey Stoll) and even raising her son Ethan (Maxwell Acee Donovan). But when a sudden death upends everything, Nicky reappears, and the past begins to rear its head. Here, speaking via Zoom from Europe where she has joined husband Justin Timberlake on tour with their kids, Biel muses on if she would feasibly return for a second season and what’s next, including the possibility of directing. about where Nicky shopped. What would she actually have bought and been able to purchase? And not caring that she looks sloppy or rough around the edges, or whatever it is you want to say about how Nicky appears, was super important. And on the other extreme of that was Chloe. She would spend a last dollar to have the right label, to have the right trending beautiful power suit to give off a persona of strength and power but also understanding and I’m here to fight for you, I can be your voice, I’ll stand up for you, but don’t mess with me. All these different things were going on for her, and it always helps so much, specifically I think a character like her, where those choices are really deliberate. She’s making really deliberate choices about her image and how she wants you to perceive her, how she wants to be observed, how she wants to curated. It wasn’t necessarily the easiest costumes to wear all the time and I think that was important, because comfort is just not part of what is important to her, so she will suffer. She will suffer for that fashion. She will suffer for that image. And she does that over and over emotionally, energetically. She does it all the time.
Oh, yeah. Working with Stacey Battat, our amazing costume designer, was a dream. We really collaborated well together, and she had a real idea of what she felt could be right for Chloe and I just agreed with her pretty much on almost everything… I feel like I’ve heard Elizabeth say this, that she really wanted to be specific
Chloe has this core personality trait where she can just be pure steel. Some of that comes from trauma, some of it is an inherent
trait maybe. Where do you feel like her steel comes from? She has a real self-worth issue, but you would never know that. And that’s by design, but I don’t believe that she feels worthy of the life that she has. I don’t believe that she feels worthy of the son that she has and this ‘great’ husband and this perfect life, even though she worked so hard to curate it and make you think that she’s this confident person who can teach you how to be the same, or who can bring you down her golden pathway to confidence and power. And that’s what’s so interesting about her and such a dichotomy about her, because she’s 100% the opposite of what she is showing you. I think she’s riddled with shame and guilt about the decisions that she’s made surrounding her sister and her sister’s life and Ethan and helping Adam take him away from her, and now she’s with Adam. All of these moves, she never wanted to have happen, and yet it happened, and she was, in her mind, almost too weak to stop it. And what kind of a person does that? She’s a self-loathing human, which is why she really is intrigued by reading all the comments about her [online] and the violence against her and people saying those horrible things about her. There’s a part of her that needs to feel that pain, that’s that suffering part of like, “I deserve that. They’re right about me. They see me.” I don’t know if you can say she likes it, but it’s almost like that self-flagellation thing, that shame. That is her underneath this shining ‘stand up for women, stand up for what’s right’ kind of persona, I think. That’s what I was working with… But also, all the things that she’s done, that life cannot be for nothing because of all the wake of the decisions in the past. If it doesn’t work out, how do you live with yourself? If this doesn’t work, I am
nothing. I am nobody. I am the grossest. I think she thinks she’s a disgusting human being.
You’ve talked about drawing on Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and maybe even Anna Wintour, just for the way that you comport yourself as Chloe.
Yes. I started thinking about just those legacy New York families and those women who are effortless in that world, in those power media spaces, or fashion. Even somebody who is just born and bred in that world and knows how to carry themselves and is super smart, goes to the right school, has the great interesting job, has amazing, interesting academic friends and artist friends. In her mind that is who she needs to be. And somebody like Anna Wintour would be that person who is just New York royalty and the Kennedys are New York royalty, but they don’t have to try. That’s just who they are. They’re part of those families. They’re part of the fabric of that place. She is not part of that, so it’s a lot of effort. Those women do it effortlessly and she has learned over the years how to do it pretty seamlessly, but you scratch under the surface just a little bit. And that Ohio—nothing against Ohio—but that particular family in that particular Midwestern kind of feel, it’s right there under the surface that she’s just trying to push it away.
At this point in your career, what kind of producing opportunities are you looking for specifically? What do you and your Iron Ocean producing partner Michelle Purple talk about in terms of where you want to go next?
We always talk about complex female characters. That will always be a focus, whether I’m playing or somebody else, it doesn’t matter, that’s always something you’re looking for, and that I’m interested in. But I think [about] opening up the genres a little bit for the company and for
myself. I can’t do murder mysteries forever only.
I do love them though. I love them. I do too, and I will always watch, but it’s a certain kind of performance. It’s a certain kind of itch that I needed to scratch, I guess. And I feel like it would be a disservice to myself to just continue to stay in that same lane. So, I’m just curious about other genres, I think, more than anything at this moment, but without ever taking the focus off the psychological thrillers or suspenseful, complicated female stories. I just love them and I just love human beings. I’m constantly fascinated by these positions that we get into. I feel like so many times in my life I’ve been like, “I never thought I would be in this position.” And then times that by 100, and that’s what these characters are going through. So, I can’t help but be fascinated by humans and the decisions that they make.
I say I want to do other things, we’ll see. I just want to be inspired. I want to be excited. I want to read something that I feel like isn’t derivative of anything that I’ve read before, that just feels like, “Whoa, I don’t even know how to do that. Maybe I should try it. Oh, that’s scary.”
That’s the feeling I want to feel. I want to feel like I don’t know if I’m capable of this.
You’ve directed a short. Would you direct a feature or television? Is that of interest?
I’ve thought about it. Directing an episode or a couple episodes in a show that we’re producing that I really understand would be a really good, more safe learning environment. But I also really want to make sure that I’m not just hiring myself instead of hiring the right person for the job. It has to be the right thing. I really have to understand how to do it properly. I really want to make sure that I feel confident, so maybe. I think when my kids are a little bit older,
it’s something that maybe I can engage with a little bit more. I feel like I’m just in that hot spot of time where I’m already gone from my family quite a lot and my little one’s still really young and I know parents are gone all the time, and female directors are leaving their families all the time. And I think it’s amazing. And I hope that continues to happen, and I hope we have more female directors that feel confident to do that. I just haven’t found the right thing. It hasn’t been the right moment. I haven’t had enough confidence in myself, I think, to say, “I really understand. I’d do this better than anybody else.” You know?
I know The Better Sister is a limited series, but what would you say if a Season 2 was floated? Well, I would say that I loved the experience. I loved working with our entire cast and [showrunners] Olivia [Milch] and Regina [Corrado], they were amazing. They just made such a beautifully safe and warm set, as I know we’ve talked about before. But for me, it’s always like, “OK, where’s the level of believability? Where do we begin again? Do we have enough to say?” Because, same with The Sinner, for me, that was obviously always a limited series, and then it had different legs and went on this other journey that we didn’t expect, but we talked quite a lot about, “Well, could Cora Tannetti come back for Season 2? How would that work?” This is just one example of how it didn’t work for that one, but we just couldn’t
find a way in that didn’t feel like we were like, “Well, we don’t want to watch her do this. What’s the fresh feel? What’s the new thing?” And it was obvious that she just couldn’t be in it, which was a bummer on some level. And also, we knew it was the right decision from a producerial standpoint. So, I would put a producer hat on at this point and go, “OK, so what are the options here? How are we going to be believable? Of course, we love seeing these women together. Of course, it’s so fun. How does it work? And is it enough to be as good or better than the first season?” So, I would ask those technical questions, but it was a dream job.
Is there a part of Chloe that stays with you?
Yeah, probably. I feel like what has stuck with me is sitting in that courtroom in those sequences and envisioning your child up there and just the nightmare of that. It would be horrible enough to think about you as a grownup having to go up there and be accused of something like that, but your child being accused of something like that, I think that’s what I will wake up at night going, “Oh my god, I know how this plays out. I’ve got to make sure my kids are on the straight and narrow.” I think about that. That’s the thing that comes up for me is that mother/son horror of your kid has just been swept off into this thing that you have no control over. And that, for me, takes my breath away. ★
The Dope Thief star opens up about enduring loss and embodying love in his latest drama for Apple TV+
BY DESTINY JACKSON
For Brian Tyree Henry playing the role of a messy but wellmeaning ex-convict was oddly cathartic. The Apple TV+ crime drama Dope Thief follows Ray (Henry), a man forced to make tough decisions alongside his best friend Manny (Wagner Moura) after leaving prison. While posing as DEA agents to steal drugs and cash, the pair trigger a drug war after robbing a major East Coast narcotics operation. Even surrounded by danger, Ray retains his heart and humor. For Henry, it’s this endearing quality that pulled him in. Here, the actor-producer talks about how channeling vulnerability, love and loss for this role aided his mental health journey.
What were some real-life inspirations that went into Ray? It was loss. I realized I looked up and hadn’t had a place to lay that down yet. So much was being asked of me at a time when I was dealing with such great loss [Henry lost his father, Marion Henry Jr. while filming] and it was easy to put my head down and work and be these characters. Dope Thief gave me a place to expose it without having to say too much. It gave me a place to
unburden myself of it because grief is an ongoing thing. You won’t wake up one day and be like, “I’m over grief.” And if you’re fortunate enough, oddly enough, you’ll keep counting losses. Isn’t that the craziest thing? If you’re fortunate enough to keep living, unfortunately, you’ll lose people. And what’s the most unfortunate thing is that we are rarely given the tools to go through it. And that’s where you’re meeting Ray.
Ray’s whole life has been loss,
from when he was a baby to then losing his freedom because he lost the love of his life in a car accident. Then he lost his father, and then in getting out of prison, he still doesn’t have freedom, because he’s being told he can’t get a job or do anything. He had to come up with something. Loss was something that I wanted to expose for myself and for anyone else who was going through it. Then I ended up experiencing a loss while filming the show
anyway. Then it was about being able to use the tools that I acquired in my recovery and trying to deal with my loss and grief and extend them to Ray. I knew exactly where he was at. And I was hoping that maybe by me stepping into that part, it would help me and help him understand what he was going through as a character.
The humor helped too. The show has a lot of humor. It’s the best connector and transcends
language. It transcends any prejudice you may have, too. So, when you peel back and recognize how close loss and humor are to each other, it’s just something I wanted to explore, too.
You served as an EP on this series. How did you work with showrunner Peter Craig and different directors—including Ridley Scott, who directed the first episode—to get everyone’s vision of the show across? Because TV is strange in that you have this overarching story of a character, but because it is episodic, that usually means you’ll have a different director for each episode. So, what you have to do as the actor is know your character through and through. Because if a director’s coming in and out, basically taking the baton from someone else’s vision to try and build the same world and make the throughline feel connected, you have to stand on your own and know your character in and out, truly. That way, you can show the director where you’re going and have this dialogue about how they envision it going. All the directors for this show were incredible in understanding Ray’s journey. But I’m the one who’s living with Ray every single day. I remember Marcela [Said] doing Episode 4, and there was that crazy scene of Manny and Ray in the back of the truck with the grenade, and you can read that script all day long, and be like, ‘Alright, this is what’s happening’. But what really is going on underneath is that these two best friends have gone through so much that one of these friends has decided to end it all. And in a way of saving the other friend, they think the best way is to blow themselves up with a grenade. Not only that, but Peter had now written this scene in the back of a pickup truck, and so I remember me and Wagner looking at each other. We got to this point where we were thinking, ‘Wait, I’ve never held a grenade? I don’t
even know how many seconds you have before it goes off.’ While we’re having a crisis, Marcela just lays out the scene for us and tells us to just go, and we hoped for the best. But that’s the kind of storytelling I want to do, because it was just me and Wagner, and on top of how much I love him, you have to remember the love and connection that Ray and Manny have for each other before Episode 1. Acting is such a living, breathing thing. And as an EP, being able to sit down and see what it takes to make that explosion happen, like all the makeup to put that gash on Manny’s head or the dirt that went under our fingernails. It’s all that stuff that informs and it elevates everything.
Kate Mulgrew and Ving Rhames play your parents. What bonds did you form on set with them? It’s a dream come true, right? I remember when it came to casting and having a say about that. At first, I was like, “Ya’ll want my mom to be white? Did I miss something?” Then, when it was Kate Mulgrew, I was like, “Say less.” It was interesting because you hope chemistry is going to be in a place that feels lived-in, but they’re both such amazing consummate professionals and legends that you don’t have to do any work. I don’t have enough to say about Kate. She’s a legend. They don’t make broads like that anymore. She cared for me in ways I cannot express to you. When you look at the show and see me putting my head on her and holding her, that’s real. We talk to each other to this day, and I only call her ma, and she calls me son.
Then adding Ving, that’s a man, you know what I mean? He can do so much by doing so little. It probably wasn’t easy to step into the shoes of being this absent pieceof-shit father. I remember our first day on set was in Episode 2, and it’s me visiting him in jail and we’re having that talk. I’ve been
wanting to meet Ving my whole life, and I was like, damn, this is the way we’re going to start? This is a tough scene, but I was like, I can’t hold back. He’s so good in the series because you’re seeing him brought to such a low place, he’s weak, he’s dying. He’s not the strong man he used to be. But my favorite part of that scene is the reflections in the glass. [Director] Jonathan [van Tulleken] would do this thing when I’m talking to Ving, where you can see him on one side of the glass, but not my face. Then, on the opposite side, you’d see my face, but not his face. Kate and Ving elevated this entire thing. Their relationship and love for each other was remarkable to watch and witness.
You and Wagner Moura exude brotherly love. How were you able to build that?
We started with fear. We hired him on a Friday, and he was in front of the camera on Monday. My goal was to talk him out of it. Because I admire him so much and I knew what we were asking of him as a professional actor, this felt very kamikaze. It wasn’t giving him a lot of time to prepare. So, I talked to him and told him that I loved and respected him, and that I was a huge fan of his work, but that I absolutely understand if he wanted to say no. And he told me that he knew he would do it as soon as he spoke to me. Our first scene together was where we’re about to rob this trap house, and he pulled me into this makeshift green room, and locked the door, and we stared forehead to forehead, holding each other’s forearms. He was like, “My name is Wagner, I’m really scared, and I am from Brazil,” because he
hadn’t had a chance to do any of this. And I introduced myself and said, “I’m scared too. Any moment that you need me, you tell me. I won’t leave your side. I’m going to be right here with you, no matter what.”
We realized in that moment that there was Manny. That vulnerability, that sense of care, that frustration, those things were needed. And the biggest thing that I knew that was needed was proximity. So, after that, the intimacy building was easy. If you look at the series, you’ll notice that Ray and Manny are never far in proximity from each other. They are never far apart. They have no problem leaning on each other. They have no problem touching. They have no problem grabbing each other’s faces. I figured that proximity wouldn’t be a problem for two men who had been friends since they were teenagers and had to be confined in a small space in prison. We knew that the connection and intimacy had to be there, because technically, this is a love story. In my mind, me and Wagner are always like, this is a love story because who am I without you? And who are you without me?
I have never met anybody like Wagner before. I think he was placed in my life exactly when he was supposed to be. I owe him so much gratitude for being there and elevating this story, for what he did. Anytime I hear about him, my shoulders go up. My relationship with him, I want to ring through the test of time because it’s so easy to see a Black and brown man in a show involving violence and drugs and automatically be like, “We’ve seen this before.” But I don’t think you’ve seen love like this before. ★
The Long Bright River star reveals the story of that viral Joni Mitchell performance and surviving teenage fame
BY DESTINY JACKSON
Despite tackling one of the most daunting roles of her career, Amanda Seyfried is all smiles. It’s the first sunny day in LA in a while, and she willingly moves from the indoor bar of West Hollywood's Sunset Marquis Hotel to bask in the warmth of the poolside. She talks so fondly of her love for the sunlight, you’d never guess she spent the past year navigating the bleak darkness of an opioid-afflicted Philadelphia neighborhood in Peacock’s Long Bright River. Seyfried is maverick cop, Mickey Fitzpatrick, and as she investigates several murders and the disappearance of her estranged sister, Mickey must face the opioid crisis and its many tragedies head-on.
How did you find out about this project? Had you read Liz Moore's novel prior?
I’m in awe that I hadn’t heard about the book before, because I’m usually up to date on whatever is on the bestseller list. I’m an Audible listener, and I’m obsessed with that app. Because I’m always doing something, I just eat up books on that app, so I’m surprised I have never heard of it before. But someone I respect greatly—who was a producer on The Dropout—texted me and said, “I just sent your agent a pilot, a bunch of scripts for a show that we’re adapting from a bestseller book. I would love for you to look at it.” And I was like, “Well, if she likes it, then it must be good.” It was right at the tail end of the strike, so I got used to not working, which was nice. Then I was like, “Oh, this is just the kind of role that is incredibly rich and has a lot of opportunities to teach me some things, and in a world that I didn’t know about, but in a city that I grew up very close to.” So many elements made it seem like it was the obvious next job.
This subject matter is tough. Are you someone who takes their character home with them?
I’m good about clocking in for work and clocking out. The subject matter is a survival mechanism. In terms of work, I take my relationships home with me, for sure. I’m always on group text with my producers and castmates or whatever. That’s the fun part, the human connection. We’re all artists creating this thing that we’re passionate about. And when we visit dark places like this genre, it’s so much easier to come to work when the environment is fun. Sometimes you can’t help but take some of it home, though. I didn’t have anywhere to go every night. I just went back to my apartment alone, and my kids were in Upstate New York, so it was tricky. But I also think there’s just a mechanism that we create
over the years of, we know what it feels like when this stuff really infiltrates, and you start feeding off the drama of the content and the context and situations you’re shooting as an actor. And so, as you get older, you just know how to filter it out quickly.
When thinking about the themes of the show, like grooming and battling addiction, there’s a lot to say about young celebrities and their struggles with fame. You entered the industry as a young person. How did you navigate it at the time? Some of it was luck that nothing happened overnight for me. When something goes from 0 to 60, I can’t imagine you’re not completely knocked off your balance because people are feeding off you. The attention must become something like a responsibility. There’s the impostor syndrome aspect of it. There’s also the lack of development. If you’re much younger, there aren’t enough tools for someone to thrive or even survive with that kind of attention, and I think it’s only gotten worse because of social media. I was never in that position.
I’ve seen it happen many times. Some people survive, have rough patches, or have the right people around them, and it works. But I just can’t imagine it’s easy for anyone to be that recognizable and needed.
Do you have advice for young actors facing this?
It’s important, as hard as it is, to really have some outlet where you can easily find grace. Because the truth is that it’s easy to be entitled. I think a lot of people get very entitled very quickly because people are just giving you everything because you have power. I get that. It’s like a mathematical equation, but it’s also like there’s a push and pull, there’s a give-andtake, everything costs something. I believe there’s a time and place where you’ll need to perform
outside your performance zone, like taking pictures. You should say hello, be kind and gracious. But when all that fame comes on too fast, I can only imagine it’s too hard to keep your mind. Again, I’m very lucky. I was in Mean Girls, but I wasn’t being harassed like Lindsay [Lohan] was. Lindsay had a whole other experience; I can only have compassion for that. But with that said, I think there are more tools now and more compassion. It’s easy when you have power, money and fame because people come to you and you’ll be surrounded by some nefarious fuckers, and they will take advantage. I think that’s how a lot of that happens, and I didn’t have to deal with that. Was I partying in my 20s? Hell yeah, I was. Did I know what a club was? You should have seen me in London. You know what I mean? I was never into drugs because my obsessive-compulsive disorder is pretty severe, I’m not medicated, and I don’t trust drugs. But I do love alcohol. So, it’s like, I would just do that when everybody else was doing something else. And I for sure could have gotten into trouble. I never drove drunk, but I might have. It’s just like we’re all so close. This ties into Long Bright River, too, because when you watch a
show like that, it’s very grounded, even though there’s the thriller aspect with the murders. But the foundation of it is that we are all more similar than we think, and the judgment comes from fear more than anything else. It’s like fear of the other. And it’s funny because we are so much closer to becoming the other. One or two mistakes or choices made back in the day, and you can end up somewhere else. Let’s be honest about that.
None of us are perfect, and a lot of us come from generational trauma, and that’s very hard to overcome, unless you’re doing the work, so it’s like, who has the right to judge anybody?
Mickey is often being told she’s too uptight, as well as being admonished for the lies she tells to keep people away from her chaotic life. How did you interpret her?
She comes from a place where she doesn’t feel safe in the world, so of course she’s going to behave the way that she does. And on top of that, it’s going to manifest in ways that aren’t helpful. She hasn’t really done the work to heal, and she doesn’t trust people, so that’s going to naturally harm her interpersonal relationships, so she just
needs a lot of work. But I also think of the scene at the end where Mickey and her sister are on the dock together. Her sister tells Mickey she doesn’t need her help. Despite getting clean and having another child, she doesn’t want Mickey to feel like she owes her. Mickey is the last person to get the joke or the message, and that’s another thing about the book and the series that I liked: it doesn’t have to be happy, but you can see that people are thriving. Mickey is not a marionette or puppeteer to anybody, and she thinks she is. She even seems more even-keeled than she is.
Was Mickey written initially as a character who loved music, or was that your influence? No, I had nothing to do with it. It was Nikki Toscano [the showrunner]. In the book, Mickey was obsessed with something else, and they made it—for the sake of the show—be an English horn and orchestral music. They had me learn the English horn, which is not an instrument that many people know, but because I played the clarinet as a teen, I picked it up very quickly.
You had another major musical experience that went viral—your dulcimer performance of Joni Mitchell’s song “California” on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Cameron Crowe is making the biopic of her starring Meryl Streep. Was that your bid to play the younger Joni? Can you believe that? I’ve never gone viral before. That was my one moment. There’s a history in the Joni Mitchell of it all. I learned the entire Blue album
over the course of a year and a half during the pandemic. I had a teacher who taught me the dulcimer, four songs on the dulcimer, three songs on the piano and the guitar. I knew Joni Mitchell, but I wasn’t that close to her music until this project came about. I can’t give that many details though, because it was put to bed. She’s an icon though and part of me feels like everything worked out the way it was meant to be. But her manager [Elliot Roberts] passed away and so the project just went away. And Cameron’s her close friend, so he’s been working on a separate project for someone of Meryl’s age, and I didn’t know about Meryl until the dulcimer thing. The producer on Fallon had asked if I knew how to play musical instruments, and I mentioned I had learned the dulcimer and only knew Joni Mitchell songs, so that’s how that happened. I decided to play “California” because of the California wildfires. Joshua Jackson was on the show, too, and unbeknownst to me, he lost his house and talked about it on Fallon. So, I went on first and did that, and then he came out and talked about losing his house. It touched so many people in the studio. I only wanted to do one verse, as I was afraid I couldn’t do it because I don’t do live singing. I was terrified, but it went so well, and I just felt like I had a great time doing it. I got through it. On the backside of that though, people were calling Cameron, and he was saying he couldn’t stop the calls coming in. Then people called me and my agent. And it was great attention and affirmation of my love for music, and that’s what that is. But it wasn’t an audition, and everyone’s like, “Oh, she should play Joni. I won’t watch the movie if she doesn’t play Joni.” All of that is great, but there’s no room for me in that movie, and I don’t know if that’s what I want to do. Because there’s so much fucking pressure to do that. ★
The Mid-Century Modern making a “joyously gay” sitcom
BY RYAN FLEMING
It’s hard to find an actor with the talent of Nathan Lane, especially someone who has the ability to make you laugh in one moment and cry in the next. So, it’s no surprise that when David Kohan and Max Mutchnick created Mid-Century Modern, the role of Bunny was already tailor-made for Lane. If that wasn’t special enough, this series—co-starring Nathan Lee Graham and Matt Bomer, and often referred to as the “gay Golden Girls”—gave him the opportunity he’d always dreamed of: the chance to work with Broadway legend Linda Lavin, who sadly passed away during production.
How did you get involved with Mid-Century Modern?
I was in Los Angeles, about to start Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, and Ryan Murphy called and said he had had a dinner with Max Mutchnick who told him about this script and thought it was hilarious and, even though he had never done a multi-camera situation comedy in front of a live audience before, if he was going to do one, this was the one he wanted to do. And he said they had written it with me in mind and then mentioned that it was kind of a “gay Golden Girls”. I read it and I thought it was extremely funny
about telling those stories in this climate with this format?
and touching and a great setup for a potential series.
Did you also see it as a gay Golden Girls when you started reading it?
No. I don’t think Max and David did either. It was just a quick elevator-pitch way of saying this is kind of the world we’re entering. Yeah, it seems to have become something that people have latched on to in an obsessive way. It’s about a group of older friends and they move into my home where I’m living with my mother, so there is that similarity, but I think it goes off on its own path… But you can’t
stop people from trying to decide who’s Dorothy and who’s Blanche and Sophia and all of that. So, as we’ve been saying, if it gets people to tune in, great. But it’s a very different kind of show ultimately than The Golden Girls The Golden Girls was a wonderful show, and it still lives on today. And God bless them all, but I think this turns out to be a different kind of show.
One thing that I really enjoy about the show is that lot of it is about queer joy amidst the drama, rather than just sad stories which I feel like we’re used to seeing. Can you talk a little bit
It’s such a different animal doing this in front of a live audience every week. We’re doing a little one-act play, so it’s a wholly different kind of energy than a single-camera show. And the parameters of what is a comedy or a situation comedy has widened to a point that people are questioning what is. We look like we’re doing commedia dell’arte It almost needs its own category of other multi-cams in front of a live audience. As far as the tone of the show, because we’re on Hulu, there is a lot more freedom. There are several veteran writers from Will & Grace, so there is that tone to it, although they go much further.
With the first season, you’re trying to figure out what the show is. The advantage I think we all had, aside from a great writing staff and a leader like James Burrows, who’s basically the godfather of the situation comedy, is that there was an instant rapport and camaraderie with this cast because we all come from the theater. Certainly, Linda and I knew each other from the theater, but we had never worked together and that made this extremely special.
And they were also writing very, very funny stories that ranged from the frivolous, of hiring a hot housekeeper, to the political, where Matt winds up being pegged by a congresswoman not unlike Lauren Boebert who turns out to be a hot mess party girl, to that wonderful episode where Matt meets his daughter on a flight from California to New York, whom he hasn’t seen in years, and it’s very beautiful. And to the
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episode that no one wanted to write and we hoped that nothing like that would ever happen, but the episode after Linda passed, they really rose to the occasion and were able to pay tribute to her in a beautiful way as well as keep the show going. And I thought they really knocked it out of the park.
I think it would have remained the Golden Girls if they had cast two other men in their 60s, but because Ryan Murphy said, “What about Matt Bomer for this character of Jerry?” and Max and David had worked with Matt and loved working with him, and they thought, “Oh, we hadn’t really thought of that.” That all led us into, maybe now it’s really more of a show about gay men at different stages of their lives, which I think has made it more interesting for different kinds of stories.
How did Linda Lavin get involved with the show?
I think there were many names bandied about, and then, finally, it was a process. I mean, I was involved when Nathan Lee Graham came in and we read together. There were a few other people, but it was obvious he was the guy. He was it. And then Matt, of course, was Ryan Murphy’s suggestion. And I know Matt because he’s married to my publicist of 30 years, so I’ve known him socially, but we’ve never worked together. He’s a total sweetheart and such a fantastic actor.
The original conception of Linda’s role was sort of based on [fashion icon] Iris Apfel. The notion was she had white hair and huge glasses,
“It’s great for people to see that men of a certain age are still out there living their lives openly and freely.”
those big, black glasses that looked like they were created by Pixar, and bracelets and scarves and lots and lots of colors and fabulous dresses, et cetera. And so, finally, the notion was, should they cast a little younger like with Estelle Getty and then put a white wig on the person.
Finally, thankfully, it was Linda Lavin. They finally decided that, which was a no-brainer. And, of course, Linda said, “But I look fabulous. I don’t want to wear a white wig, hide behind big glasses. I don’t want to do that kind of transformative character performance. I just want to look great, as great as I look at 87.”
I was just a huge fan. I had seen her in the Neil Simon play Broadway Bound, for which she won the Tony. It’s one of the most unforgettable stage performances I’ve ever seen. And I’d seen her in an off-Broadway, and it was three one-acts [Death defying Acts]. One [titled Hotline] was written by Elaine May and it was just her on a suicide hotline. She was heartbreaking and screamingly funny. She was just somebody I greatly admired, and so, whenever we would meet, we would say, “I really hope we get to work together.” This was incredibly meaningful and she had reached
this great place in her life where she was just so kind and loving and gracious and fun… She was just a remarkable actress who could easily do comedy or drama and just... She was beloved on that set by everyone.
I can’t imagine anyone else in that role other than Linda Lavin. She was perfect. Well, I mean, you would never guess she was 87. We were in shock when she died, it was like... even though she was 87. That’s how vital she was. She’s just indelible, and it was very difficult to come back to finish those last three episodes when she wasn’t there. It was just... We all had to go through the grieving process and, at the same time, do that particular episode.
What do you think the importance is of having this kind of show out now in this political climate where it really seems like the government is trying to erase the LGBTQ+ community? Well, yeah, I would say we’re on their to-do list in terms of gay marriage. I think it’s very important. We see people protesting in all 50 states, what’s going on. It’s not just tariffs, people’s rights are being attacked. I just
think it’s healthy for the environment. Look, there are 365 million people in this country. This is not a show for everybody. Just as Yellowstone has its demographic, we have ours. And it’s not going to be to everybody’s taste because it is naughty and because it’s so joyously gay, without shame, and just reveling in their gayness. That’s upsetting to some people, but I think it’s healthy and it’s great for people to see that men of a certain age are still out there living their lives openly and freely and having a great time doing it and figuring it out; figuring out trying to grow old gracefully.
Is it going to change any minds? I don’t know about that. Trump, if he knew we were on the air, would probably try to shut it down, come after Hulu. But, I think it’s a great thing to have right now, in the midst of books being banned and, “Don’t say this and don’t say gay and don’t do that.” I think it’s a perfect time for a show like this. It goes back to the very roots of situation comedy. We’re doing it like I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners folks, so either you find that refreshing and fun or you go, “Oh, it’s like we’re making them use a VCR.” We go out and we have to be funny because 300 people are staring at us.
We’ll see what happens with our little gay skit. We’re not in the cool kids’ club, let me put it to you that way, but I think we’re doing an honorable job. ★
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The Dying for Sex star on facing mortality and making the final journey
BY CARITA RIZZO
When Michelle Williams first listened to Molly Kochan’s podcast, Dying for Sex, her reaction to the story of a woman choosing to begin a journey of sexual exploration after being diagnosed with terminal breast cancer took her by surprise.
“This podcast was cracking me open in a way that is unusual for me,” she says. But as is the case with Williams’ selection process, it was the unsettlement that made the project irresistible.
“That’s really why you take a part, because you feel some deep connection, but also you are under the spell of its mystery and you go there to discover what it is that has moved you.”
What was it about Molly Kochan’s journey that touched you on a personal level?
I really didn’t know at the time. I went back and I listened to it again, because I didn’t understand why I was having such a strong response. So, I listened to it again and I had the same reaction: cracked wide open. And I think in that moment I knew, OK, well this is for me.
Were there themes or moments that touched you more than others? Were there parts of that journey that really hit you?
It was the whole thing for me. It was the female friendship. It was reclaiming a body. It was taking something to the very edge of experience. It was pleasure. It was medical process and healthcare systems. It all worked as a whole for me.
This series doesn’t just feel like a woman’s final journey; it’s the full range of a lived experience. Yeah, all rolled into one big, messy ball.
What is the importance of being surrounded by the right people on a project like this?
You want to be excited to greet people. You want to look forward to the faces that you see, and the time between cut and action is also a very valuable part of your time and also a lot of where your workday is spent. A lot of your workday is spent waiting, preparing, talking, discussing, planning, brainstorming, which is also just your time on Earth as a human being. And so, to be with people in that space who you respect and admire and trust, it expands your human experience, not just the experience of the specific project that you’ve gathered to do, but it makes your life as a whole more meaningful and feel like time well spent.
What was it about series creators Liz Meriwether and Kim Rosenstock that made you realize you, as lead and EP, and the show, were in the right hands?
The scripts. I read that first episode in tandem with listening to the podcasts, and I thought, “My god, I think I’ve just looked at a perfect thing.” The way that it was able to balance themes and tones and ideas, I thought, “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything like this before.” And that’s a real guiding principle. I knew just based on the work that they had done, and what was in front of me, that this was a journey. These were people I wanted to walk down the road with.
How did the casting of Jenny Slate as Molly’s best friend Nikki Boyer come about?
All of us were such huge fans and admirers of her incredibly varied body of work. And then we had an instant kind of connection point and chemistry, really. And it’s very
easy to fall in love with her and want her to be your best friend.
I feel like that is the love story of the show. Did it need a person that you knew that you would gel with instantly?
I think so. I think it’s a kind of intrinsic understanding and also curiosity and desire to meet in the middle and find what’s discovered in the space between two people and how you can enrich each other. And I think that feeling was very much present in the room.
In the show your character chooses to die with her best friend, telling Rob Delaney’s character, “I don’t want to die with you. I want to have a dog with you.” That was the part where I thought, I have never, until this show, thought about who I want to die with. Yeah, exactly. “I don’t want to die with you.” That struck me. That line was so resonant because, similarly, I hadn’t asked myself that, but at other points in my life I know I would’ve turned to my best friend and said, “Everybody else out of the way.” Like, “You and me,” right? So often, the A storyline is romantic love, and this idea that, actually, a platonic friendship can be so full of passion, that it is befitting of end of life, that’s another thing that has been so resonant for people. It really forced people to ask questions that they never would, or look at death in new ways.
Also, the fact that her journey is sexual rather than going on a road trip, which for some reason feels like the way the end of life is often portrayed in film and television.
I think the thing that it’s doing is that it’s taking death on your own terms rather than something that happens to you, that overwhelms you and does itself to you. She managed somehow to grab hold of it and make it what she wanted it to be. It was her own ending. I
MUSIC COMPOSITION FOR A SERIES (ORIGINAL DRAMATIC SCORE)
VOLKER BERTELMANN
find that incredibly moving and so brave, and a testament to this very real woman, this real Molly, this real Nikki. That is how they took hold of the worst possible news, which is going to happen to all of us, and made it theirs.
For some of the sex scenes, you worked with a body rig with a camera. How was that used?
I loved that thing. God, I loved that thing. It was called SnorriCam, and it’s a light rig. And I wore the camera, it’s like a teeny tiny little steady cam. You’re performing and you’re operating, so you’re both in the throes of the performance, but you’re also having the control of the camera, and I just loved it. I kept saying, “Can this be in SnorriCam?” It’s meant to alter the perspective of how you’re experiencing what the character is going through. I like learning new things, and this is a new phase for me, being a producer on a show. Stepping into roles that are slightly outside of what I do normally has been exciting to just grow these parts of myself and figure out where I feel passionate about.
I’ve never heard of a SnorriCam before. Is that something that is commonly used?
I’d never heard of it either.
We often talk about sex scenes being through a male gaze, and to some degree not even knowing what a female gaze means because we’re so used to seeing things a certain way. Do you feel like being in control of the camera changes that perspective? I always feel very neutrally towards the camera itself. I don’t have an awareness. I try to not have an awareness of how it sees me, but what I do have an awareness of is who is behind the camera. And that’s the relationship that I actually really enjoy bringing into the scene. I feel a tremendous closeness with the men and women who are behind the camera because I feel like it goes to their
eye first and they’re in the scene with you. And so it was interesting to have myself as that person.
Did you then look at the footage after the scene?
No, I’m not at this point able to watch my performances. It’s a skillset I would like to grow, but right now I don’t have that ability.
In terms of portraying the sexual fulfillment scenes, did that make you nervous as an actor?
You know what? I think both things are possible. I think it’s possible to be both scared and brave at the same time, but to let the right one win.
Are you in general a selfconscious actor?
No, I don’t think so. I hope not.
These experiences are so intimate and personal. Does it feel technical on camera or does it feel like something you’re able to give into?
I think I’m always looking to let go, relent, allow. That’s the experience that I want to have between action and cut, and I aim to let it be a place that is both conscious, but free from judgment.
How vulnerable do you have to be in those moments, and do you control the environment so that you feel safer?
There’s a way that you want to set the room in terms of your relationships with the real people who are there. Hair, makeup, camera, boom, first AD—the people that are having this experience with you in real time. That’s really what I’m more concerned with. When it goes out into the world, it doesn’t belong to me anymore and it’s no longer my experience, it’s an audience’s experience. But what I really care about is that room, and I care about the safety and the sanctity of that room, the same way that I care about the safety and the sanctity of the set at large. I need a safe space where I can work, and now that I have begun to produce, my great passion is to expand the safe space and be responsible for that. Yeah, it’s very meaningful to me.
Ten years ago, I don’t think that we would have been so concerned with a sense of safety on set, in terms of vulnerability and comfort. Have you sensed a change or is this you as a boss creating it?
I think that we’ve seen these two movements, between #MeToo and the social justice reckoning, I think that there is a greater consciousness. And the Women’s March of 2017. In my lifetime, I hadn’t seen change in the air like that. So, do I think it’s
“I'm not at this point able to watch my performances. It's a skillset I would like to grow.”
still living and breathing? Yes. And, for me, it feels very personal. I’ve been doing this since I was 12. I’m 44. That’s 32 years. So for me, my greatest accomplishment would be to be a part of social change rather than just my own personal growth as an actor. So these sets, these environments, are where I can practice that.
In terms of Molly’s journey, did you take away lessons about the fragility of life or about sexual awakening?
It really continues to evolve as I hear from people who have seen the show. And now what I think I’m really connecting to are other people’s stories, and trying to understand how the show is being received as a healing modality. That’s what I’m holding onto right now.
What’s next? Are you going to be taking a break?
I’m about to start shooting a movie right now called A Place in Hell. I’m going home tomorrow to start shooting on Sunday. So, it’s just a New York job with Andrew Scott and Daisy Edgar-Jones and written and directed by a woman named Chloe Domont.
Is there a professional challenge that really drew you to that?
That’s what I’m about to go find out.
Is the Peggy Lee film happening or did it happen?
No, it didn’t happen. It didn’t happen and not as far as I... I don’t know. Not as far as I know.
What is it that draws you right now to projects?
It needs to work for my family. It needs to work for my life. So location is pretty crucial for me. And then it just needs to have that quality that I was talking about earlier where it’s like I know that I’m going to do it before I can say that I’m going to do it. It’s like an impulse that I can’t control. ★
“A
The actor, playwright, producer and director on finding his funny bone, directing himself, and the many ways to find a soulmate
BY DESTINY JACKSON
Colman Domingo is waiting to exhale. Working primarily in the drama sphere, he’s snagged an Emmy for his role as a drug recovery counselor in Euphoria and Oscar nominations for Sing Sing and Rustin, where he played men oppressed by systemic inequalities. Unsurprisingly, he was more than happy to give himself “the gift of a comedy” with Netflix’s latest dramedy, The Four Seasons. In this reimagining of Alan Alda's 1981 film, Domingo and Marco Calvani are paired as husbands, who, alongside their coupled longtime friends, go on multiple seasonal vacations while weathering the many highs and lows of marriage.
Co-creator Tina Fey initially reached out to you about starring in this project. Why did you decide to take up the offer?
Right. She asked if I would be interested in this, and I was. I already knew the source material because I watched it; she also had watched it when we were both young. So, we met and talked about it, and I thought, ‘Oh, this is fascinating. I love what you’re going to do with it, especially reimagining this couple [that I’m a part of].’ Then she said she wanted to put together a group of people to tell a very sweet, simple story, have fun and go to Upstate New York. Also, just have some lovely dinners, work with some good people and create something that’s just about
folks in their 50s trying to make some breakthroughs in their lives.
And the idea of doing more of a lighthearted comedy felt good too, especially after the run that I’ve been on with drama or historical pieces. I just thought it was time to do something like that because I felt my bandwidth had been stretched from carrying the weight of these series and dramas. So, I thought it was time to give myself the gift of a comedy.
You have a knack for never really doing the same role twice. What’s your barometer for picking a good piece?
My secret sauce is doing things that feel like a bit of a challenge or something I’m curious about. I’ll lean in toward that. It harkens
back to my theater days, where I was always in plays, playing five different characters with five different motivations and intentions. I’m varied in my experiences, and I want to show, tell and be in my body. I ask myself, “How does that fit in my body? How does it feel to play a villain, hero or nuanced couple this way?” It’s always about questions that I have about the character.
In The Four Seasons, your character’s husband is played by Marco Calvani. Is it true that your husband Raúl chose him for you? What did he see in Marco?
We had dinner at Marco’s house with his husband on a double date. We had been friends for about a year before the show happened. And at this time, we were looking for the guy who would play my onscreen husband. And my husband literally leaned over to me in the car as we were driving home, and was like, “What about Marco Calvani?” And I said, “Really?” Because we didn’t know if he still acted. He acted years ago, but I knew him
more as a writer-director. My husband said, “There’s something about Marco that I feel makes a lot of sense for you.” I think he saw the way Marco cares for people in his home. He was making a big Italian meal for us and fussing over us, making sure we were well-fed. He really is just a lot of joy, fun and very sweet. So, Raúl said, “Why don’t you see if that makes sense?”
I reached out to Tina and asked if she would like to see a tape from him, but then I also told him to make the tape, but didn’t tell him what it was for. He responded by saying, “I haven’t acted in years, but why not?” So, he put himself on tape and Tina saw it. She saw hundreds of people. When I met with her in New York City, she sat there with me, opened her laptop and told me it was down to two candidates. She said, one was this wonderful gentleman who people know from comedy in a great way, and the other was my friend Marco. And I was like, “Get out of here.” So, then she showed me his tape and we both knew he was perfect.
The dynamic is so rich. Danny loves how Claude is so doting but he also feels suffocated sometimes. But he knows that Claude is ultimately right about their communication issues. It’s a dynamic that has worked very well for them, especially in the beginning of their relationship. But now they’re at a bit of a crossroads when we find them, and it becomes a little suffocating instead. All that doting becomes suffocating because Danny needs more space. That’s what I love about the show. When their relationship works, it’s fabulous. Like when Danny has a health problem, Claude is doting, but this causes Danny to need more space to try and work things out. This show examines people who are having things happen to them when they’re in their 50s. And they’re still trying to grapple and hold onto some of their youth.
There wasn’t a gay couple in the original. Was there any pressure for both of you with this new addition to the story?
What was part of my initial conversations with Tina was that there are many tropes that folks could lean into when it comes to having a gay couple. I wanted to go against those tropes in many ways—the template of people that I know who are in same-sex relationships all do different things. For example, me and my husband don’t go to gay clubs and things like that. I’m not necessarily ‘in the culture’ that way. I feel like I’m around a lot of diverse people in terms of age and gender, but we don’t usually see those stories. You usually just see a group of gay men hanging with another group of gay men. I love in the show, Danny and Claude make a reference that as a couple, they have other gay friends outside of this core friend group.
It was important to me that they were part of this chosen family, and that they’re not
“I love directing half-hour comedy, who knew? Especially directing a bunch of comedians.”
doing anything because they’re gay. They’re just gay people who are navigating life like everyone else. And that’s why they’re folding into this long-lasting friendship group.
There’s a great balance between humor and drama in the series. How did you and Marco work together to get through these tender moments?
You know what’s brilliant? This is the true work of Tina Fey, Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield. That’s the showrunners’ sense of humor, and they have an incredible writers’ room. So, we just had to play those notes. Marco and I would talk about our parts here and there about how we play off each other. I think that at the end of the day, we knew that there was a baseline of deep love and deep frustration, and that they were not understanding each other in these moments. So that creates pain, and it becomes a more complicated situation. Therefore, the comedy can live, but it’s also living with the drama at the
same time, and sometimes in the same scene and the same breath. I think that’s the reality of most relationships, so we both leaned into that. We leaned into their love and their complicated nature of not finding each other at this moment.
Marco and I were very comfortable with each other because we’re friends, and it was just really nice to play off of him. It’s funny because I know there were times when he would pitch something higher with his energy, and he would notice that I would be a bit more still. Sometimes he would ask me, “Are you OK? Is everything OK?” I said, “I’m literally fine, I’m just reacting as Danny.” I think he wanted my enthusiasm in certain moments, but I felt like comedy works off of the obstacle of the other. One has to be the straight man when one is the fool. So, while I knew that he was leaning into the fool, I stood a bit more still, silent and measured.
You also directed the episode “Ultimate Frisbee”. What was that experience like, and what
did you try to make sure came through thematically?
This was my first time directing myself at the same time. Prior to this, I was always directing episodes of shows that I wasn’t in. I had a great time doing it. I didn’t have time to get nervous or question it. We built a great schedule for me to be able to switch hats very quickly so I could direct while I’m in the scene. I would have a monitor and would look at the playback. I’m very collaborative that way. I would also ask my showrunners about their feelings to guide my acting. But there’s something that sparked. I love directing half-hour comedy, who knew? Especially directing a bunch of comedians. I knew that as a baseline, it would at least be funny. I know what I bring as an actor and director is that I have to find the emotional truth and throughline. And if I could have that balance, we’d make an incredible episode. And it’s a really beautiful, heartfelt episode.
Considering how viral your interview with Graham Norton went—where you shared the serendipitous story of meeting your husband through an ad in Craigslist’s Missed Connections— what are your thoughts on finding a soulmate?
I believe there are soulmates [plural] with an ‘s’. I believe that we have many soulmates. I think it’s not just romantic, it’s also platonic. I do believe that we’ve been here on this Earth before or in this plane before, and the people that you meet, you’ve probably met before in another life. I think we’re all energy and we’re all passing through. And as we are, we’re meeting people, and we are remembering things from the past. And I think that’s connected from your soul. So, I don’t believe there’s one soulmate, I think that there are many, and in many forms. ★
stuns in Dan Fogelman’s sleek, timely political thriller. He proves impossible to look away from.” + COLLIDER +
The Black Mirror star on romance, dying and protecting yourself from the perils of technology
BY DESTINY JACKSON
Rashida Jones is trading laughs for tears in Black Mirror’s Season 7 opener. The bleak episode follows a lower-middle-class couple, elementary school teacher Amanda (Jones), and construction worker Mike (Chris O’Dowd), whose lives come crashing down when Amanda is diagnosed with a brain tumor. When she falls into a coma, Mike has to decide whether to let Amanda die or agree to let a subscription service, Rivermind, operate her brain. Upon agreeing to the experimental procedure, the couple learns just how nefarious the deal really is. Here, Jones talks about dystopia and love in the time of increasingly unchecked technology.
There is a lot going on in this Black Mirror episode. From the flimsy healthcare system, infertility, low wages, relationships and euthanasia. Where would you like to start?
Honestly, if I didn’t know [series creator] Charlie Brooker, I would absolutely see Black Mirror as full tech panic. But I don’t think that’s what it is. It’s hard to say with this episode because it’s so dreadful and bleak. The couple’s situation is intractable. There are very few choices in this episode for them. I think the idea that tech is so exciting to people who work and innovate in tech that sometimes there is a rush. There’s an excited momentum that bypasses a moral compass.
Chris O’Dowd, another actor like yourself known for their comedic prowess, plays your husband.
However, this episode leans more towards drama and tragedy than comedy. Tell me more about working together to create this dynamic.
We’ve worked together before, so we’ve known each other for a long time. But Chris is an excellent actor. I think people know him the most for comedy, but he’s a classically trained, Broadway on the West End, real-deal actor as well. You can see that in this episode. He’s so emotionally available, and I think this doesn’t work unless you have a realistic relationship. But it also doesn’t work if you have somebody who’s too comic because there’s a lot of deep, dark shit happening here and you need somebody who can do both.
Amanda’s agency comes into question in this episode. She’s not the one who decides to get the procedure; Mike chooses for her. And then, eventually, ads start running through her body when they get priced out of the top ad-free tier. What’s your take on her agency?
If you’ve ever had a loved one who’s sick or goes to the ICU or ends up in a coma or has a Do Not Resuscitate... to me, this is not genderized. Your emergency contact has a lot of responsibility and Amanda is not conscious, so he didn’t have a choice. She was going to die, or he had to sign up for this thing. There wasn’t a third choice. In the fear of losing her altogether, of course, he’s just going to cobble together whatever to make that work. In the end, Charlie intentionally wrote it for them to make the decision
“I am obsessed with dystopia; it's been that way since I was younger. I love Ray Bradbury and The Twilight Zone.”
to [end her life] together. There’s stuff that clearly happened offscreen before that moment at the end when Amanda says, “It’s time.” They’ve had that conversation and she’s making that decision from a place of serenity because she’s on Rivermind Lux, which I think is really beautiful as somebody who believes that there should be dignity around how we die. That’s your last active agency in this one precious life. And my interpretation is that he does, and does his own thing [to end his life] because he can’t live without her afterward. There’s something slightly romantic in that they’re in this together. They did everything they could for each other to live a meaningful life, and they just no longer have that option.
You and Tracee Ellis Ross have worked together before too. What was it like working with her in this capacity?
She’s a beautifully dressed, humane villain. It was so great actually because we’ve known each other for a really long time and we have a deep friendship and connection. And Black-ish was just so fun because what a ridiculous character I got to play on that show. But this was nice because it’s almost like our friendship. I trust her. So, to enter this relationship trusting somebody who is upselling me in a pretty malevolent way, at the end of the day, it really works. Because I could feel my own disappointment as she kept upselling us.
What would you like people to take from this episode?
I don’t know if it’s blind acceptance or surrender to the fact that we live in the tech era. In the smallest ways, we could probably be more tech-literate
about how we move through the world. I’m guilty of this, but for example, you agree to the user agreements when you get a new update from an app. You’re not even looking at those. I don’t think we necessarily take these freedoms for granted, but we think that systems are set up for us in a way that’s really considering our best interest, and the truth is they’re not. There’s a lot of evidence to support the idea that we should maybe be more suspicious and slightly more discerning when it comes to how we use tech in our lives and how we invite tech into our homes.
What app are you mind-numbingly obsessed with right now? I really like TikTok. It’s just so good. It reminds me of watching TV in the ‘80s because I just scroll through, and I get to see people from all over the world doing great dances, being funny, telling me about gut health, and showing me their beautiful apartments. I do occasionally take breaks from it; I’ll take it off my phone a lot.
What did you do during the Great TikTok shutdown of 2025?
Oh god, what a couple of days. I was sad, but then I was like, “This is probably better for me. I don’t actually need this.” You know what I mean? If it did end up being permanent, it would have been OK. Though I do think it’s a great place to get news. There’s some truly great global content on there. I watch this guy who makes these beautiful meals for his son in the mountains of Nepal. I would have missed him.
Between Black Mirror, Sunny and the upcoming sci-fi In the Blink of an Eye, are you in your dystopian era right now?
It seems that way, right? I didn’t design it that way at all. I think seeing me in Black Mirror and thinking about me being on a beloved comedy like Parks and Rec or The Office, there’s something familiar about me that makes people feel cozy. So, I think people probably want to see that character in this bleak circumstance. There’s something about that combination that feels like they can enter through the lens of somebody they trust or something. But I love it. I am obsessed with dystopia; it’s been that way since I was younger. I love Ray Bradbury and The Twilight Zone So, I guess my soul has come home to this.
Your next project, The Invite, for which you co-wrote the
screenplay, is being directed by Olivia Wilde. It also stars Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton. What can you tell us about that?
It’s a great cast. It’s going incredibly well. I am so excited about it. It’s very much in the vein of the movies that I grew up loving and the movies that [co-writer] Will McCormack and I have written in the past. We started with Celeste and Jesse Forever, but we like to write movies about the nuance of relationships, and this is a movie that is the interrogation of what it’s like to be in a marriage and a long-term marriage. Within that long commitment, what parts of you die, what are the parts of you that you forget, what are the parts of you that you miss, and how to come back to that. ★
You might think smart people have it all figured out. The star of High Potential isn’t so sure…
BY RYAN FLEMING
Kaitlin Olson and Morgan Gillory—the supersmart LAPD cleaning lady Olsen plays in crime procedural High Potential—have one thing in common: people quickly learn that they’re not to be underestimated. While known mostly for her comedic roles in shows like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Hacks, Olson came up through the theater, so she’s no stranger to more meaty dramatic roles. That doesn’t mean she shies away from adding her own brand of humor, leading to a character that is as comfortable tackling a mystery as she is making witty comebacks.
What made you want to be involved with High Potential? I didn’t think I was interested in doing an hour-long procedural on a network, but I read the script and I just fell in love with the character. I thought she was so fantastic and I thought that Drew Goddard just wrote such a beautiful pilot, which is hard to do. It’s certainly hard to find that balance of the perfect tone between a true crime procedural and levity, humanness and comedy, but he did a really wonderful job. I was really impressed. For something like this, you need to buy into the fact that there is an actual crime that has been committed or there’s been a murder and there’s real danger, and you also need to really trust the police department and not have them just be goofy. So, if you lean too far into the comedy, I think you don’t buy into the story. It’s just not realistic anymore.
The show is very serious, but has a lot of humor in it, like you mentioned. Can you talk more about bringing some of those elements of comedy into the series? It’s the fact that she’s human and allows for things to happen. I wanted to create a character that was very well-rounded, and there’s a lot going on in her life, she’s always overwhelmed. There’s always a lot going on in her brain, and sometimes she’s able to laugh at herself. She definitely feels fine making fun of people, especially when they’re underestimating her, so there’s comedy in that. That’s just human nature. I think that the best character-driven dramatic pieces of material, whether it’s TV or movies, have comedy sprinkled in, because that’s life. There are funny moments and there are snarky things to be said that can be funny, and you have to be able to laugh in dark times. That’s just the way the world works, it’s also just more fun to watch.
I wanted people to fall in love with this woman and really root
for her. If it was just serious all the time, I think you’d feel like you’re watching a TV show.
In switching from being a completely comedic actor to a more drama-focused role, was that a change for you?
It was a huge change for everybody else to see me do it, but it’s been a while. I grew up doing theater, so I’ve done all kinds of things and you get to see little glimpses of it in Hacks and the film Champions So, I think it was more of a surprise to everybody else than it was to me.
What were some of your entry points in connecting to Morgan?
The fact that she’s a great mom. That’s a really beautiful part of this person, that you get to see so many different sides of her. It was nice to have that be in conjunction with how scrappy she is and how she’s had to rely on no one for her whole life. She doesn’t need a man or parents. She’s got it. She’s been forced into this position. So, the fact that she has found a way to figure it all out and still give everything of herself emotionally to her kids, I just really loved that about her.
The fact that she is incredibly smart I think is wonderful for the story, but really what connected me to her is how that’s a struggle for her. I mean, I consider myself to be a smart person, I don’t have a crazy-high IQ like she does, but I do know what it’s like to have anxiety. I do know what it’s like to be up in the middle of the night worrying about something or trying to figure something out. Or even trying to put pieces together and not being able to relax and let it
go until I’ve figured it out. That’s something the two of us share, and I think that’s something all parents share. Also, the fact that she’s underestimated. I’ve certainly been in situations very often where I feel people underestimate my ability to do something. Those are the main things that I’ve latched on to.
It’s funny you mention the high IQ, because I feel like in a lot of shows that feature an incredibly smart person, it’s always romanticized in a way where the person’s life is perfect because of how smart they are. Right. Their life is great and they always save the day. That’s so boring to me to play. I didn’t want to do that, and I think we’re going to try and dig into that even more in the second season. It’s so much more interesting to me to have a person who is not perfect and who’s still trying to figure it out and who makes mistakes. So, I want her to make personal life mistakes. I want her to make professional mistakes as well, but be really convinced that she’s right, but be wrong. I mean, also it just would get boring if you just are like, OK, well, Morgan’s going to figure it out. You know what I mean? You want to surprise people and you don’t want to do the same thing over and over.
I keep saying that it would be boring and predictable, but also, I don’t know how much it’s been
explored on TV. Someone with an incredibly high IQ like that, I believe that’s classified as a neurodivergent brain, and there are so many people in the world who are neurodivergent in some way. I think most of the world looks at that and thinks of that as a disorder, and it’s upsetting and it’s bad, but oh, if you’re super smart, it must be really great. And that’s not necessarily the case. There’s a lot that goes on in there, and I’m sure it can be very lonely and people can feel very misunderstood, and people who aren’t as intelligent or don’t have a crazyhigh IQ can maybe be jealous of that and lash out, and their way of feeling good about themselves is putting those people down. I mean, it’s a rich world that I think we can tap into, and I think it’s too common to have the perception that because someone’s smart, they must have a wonderful life. It’s the same thing with anything, right? Just because someone’s rich, they must have a wonderful life, or if someone’s attractive, they must have a wonderful life. Not necessarily true. People are well-rounded human beings, and that’s why I wanted to make sure Morgan was multifaceted and not just a smart person in short skirts.
Having a show centered around a single mother is not something you see all the time. Morgan does have her ex that she’s friendly
“People are well-rounded human beings. That's why I wanted to make sure Morgan was multifaceted.”
with, but how did you make this aspect be a part of the story without it eclipsing everything? It was really important to Drew to show that it’s possible to co-parent in a peaceful way. It would’ve maybe been the easy choice to have it be that she’s just a single parent or that she hates the ex-husband. I think it’s nice to see that they weren’t right for each other, and to cast it in a way where it’s like, OK, yeah, they just weren’t right for each other, and that it’s another way that Morgan has not been able to maintain relationships. You now know that she’s had two different fathers to her children, there’s multiple failed relationships.
I like though, that ultimately, she’s got him and the kids are safe, but at the end of the day when she lays her head down on the pillow, she’s alone, she’s figuring this all out pretty much by herself. I just think that that’s interesting, because it adds that element of having the weight of the world on her shoulders, especially now that she has this job and is emotionally invested in it and has to figure out what’s happened.
There’s been a murder. Adding that on top of everything else that’s been going on in her life and having her not treat it just as a job, appreciating the money, loving being appreciated that she’s actually capable of holding down a job and being of value, but oh, no, she’s now feeling deeply for either the victim or whoever was left behind.
Going into Season 2, what topics would you like to explore with your character?
In the pilot, she’s got that wonderful speech with [Selena] Soto where Soto says she has a gift and she’s like, it’s not a gift, and
names all the reasons why. As in any first season of television, you’re trying to figure everything out, and looking back, I got a lot of feedback from people just loving that part of it. The fact that there’s a lot of really exceptionally intelligent people in the world who don’t necessarily find it all that amazing. I think it must be very lonely at the very least, and then all of the other things that Morgan states in that first episode. I felt like it really touched a lot of people, and I was like, oh, yeah, there are people who are identifying with that and would like to see more of how difficult it can be. I definitely want to do more of that, and I also want her to make mistakes, like I said before. It’s not fun to watch somebody just hit it out of the park every single time, it’s going to get boring. I love the stuff with the kids. I would love to see some more examples of her son and the way that he’s gifted and how that’s challenging for him. I mean, we touched on it a little bit with friendships at school this past season, but I think that there’s so much to be explored there. Same with Ava and how it’s a struggle for her maybe, or maybe not. Maybe Ava starts to have a really, really great life and great social life, and that’s enviable to Morgan and Elliot. Also, obviously, I want to know what’s going on with Morgan. I want to know what’s going on with Ava’s dad. There’s a lot of stuff, I want to do it all. I want to have really fun, dramatic stuff, and I want to have really funny moments and explore relationships. I think it’s important to dive deeper into the other characters on the show. We didn’t have the opportunity to do that as much as I think we should, and so we’re going to definitely be digging in there, too. ★
The editors of Poker Face, Only Murders in the Building and The Residence reveal some murder mystery-making secrets
The light-hearted murder-mystery was a big deal in the ’70s, with shows like Columbo, McMillan & Wife and McCloud bringing in big ratings for NBC. Today, the format is coming back, most recently with The Residence, which debuted in March. Poker Face is midway through its second season, while Only Murders in the Building, with its fifth outing on the horizon, still finds new ways to blend humor and tension.
The formula might seem simple enough. However, the key to a series being successful is in striking a delicate balance between keeping things light and fun while still giving weight to mystery itself. How do you make the audience care about the forensics of a gruesome murder but also land the humor? It’s not as easy as it looks…
As opposed to most murder mysteries, the mystery of Poker Face is usually not who the murderer is, but how they are caught. That’s what led editors to refer to the genre not as a whodunit, but as a “howcatchem” instead. Since the tension isn’t in the discovery of who did the crime, the editing process is more about finding the tension in the “rhythm, space and timing” of the edit.
Editor Bob Ducsay was in charge of Episode 2 opener, “The Game is a Foot”, which needed to bring the audience back into the Poker Face world after a hiatus. “The way I always describe it is there’s a Poker Face tone, but it’s a little elastic,” says Ducsay. “It can go from slightly goofy to a little bit darker, but the tone, you know it when you see it.”
That tone is a difficult one to match, as the series doesn’t shy away from violent murders while still keeping comedy as a priority.
“That’s the real trick, and it’s a slightly difficult tone to wrangle because if the stakes aren’t real, you’re not as invested,” says Ducsay.
“The murder that takes place in the first act, even though there’s often very comedic elements to it, you have to work very hard to make sure that you don’t go too far and that people have something that they can take seriously...” Even when the murderer, victim and three other roles are all played by the same actor, Cynthia Erivo.
Shaheed Qaasim edited Episode 3, “Whack-A-Mole”, which begins a bit differently from other episodes. While usually Charlie (Natasha Lyonne) isn’t shown in the first act of the episode, this one starts with Charlie held at gunpoint by Beatrix Hasp (Rhea Perlman).
“It has this little bit of an accordion effect,” he says. The episode actually starts with a conversation between Beatrix and Charlie from
“It's a slightly difficult tone to wrangle because if the stakes aren't real, you're not as invested.”
the finale of Season 1, told from the other point of view, similar to the beginning of the first season's finale. The goal in this episode was to have long scenes of drawn out tension, to contrast with the high paced scenes. “So, when we got to the actual shootout of the scene and it’s fast paced, we’re cutting so quickly that even if you look down, you’re probably going to miss a crucial moment of the scene.”
“I believe editors help to shape the emotion of a scene,” he says.
“We’re not just cutting the picture, we’re trying to carve out the truth.”
Bob Ducsay
There have been four seasons of Only Murders in the Building, but the series stands out for being able to constantly stay updated without getting stagnant. Editor Shelly Westerman attributes this mostly to working with “the greatest comedians in the history of the world, Steve Martin and Martin Short. You’re trying to follow what they do while also keeping it sharp, fast-paced, so it’s a constant exploration and playing around to see what works.”
Editor Payton Koch also says the writers are part of what creates the balance between tension and comedy. “When we read these scripts, they do such a great job in a tense scene,” he says. “We are building tension and we’re tracking the murder, then Marty comes out and drops a hysterical joke… and it shouldn’t work, but it does because it’s just his delivery.”
Although each season revolves around a single mystery as a through line, Koch and Westerman say they approach the finale as its own entity, rather than a culmination of the season. “Every episode is approached as a single entity because each episode is sort of a little vignette into a
suspect or a different character, and it’s always going somewhere else,” says Koch. “But because it’s a murder mystery show, it’s so interconnected and involved in the other episodes so it is one big thing, but I certainly feel like the approach when we dive into the finale, it is its own thing.”
The pair edit each episode separately, but come together to work on the finale together. “We started on Season 2, we did the finale together, so then it became a thing,” says Westerman. “It’s
“We're building tension, we're tracking the murder, then Marty comes out and drops a hysterical joke... and it shouldn't work but it does...”
Payton
a lot of back and forth and sharing and collaborating. It’s so much fun.”
Editing as a pair for the finale also gives them a chance to see alternative perspectives from the season. “On the finale, you are tying up loose ends throughout the season,” says Koch. “You are going back to other episodes and seeing this beat here, and you pull that and we are seeing the murder, so we’re even going back to Season 3, and then you’re going to the finale of Season 3 to tie up the murder.”
As the editor of a show in its first season, Ali Greer says the most important part of the job was to strike the right tone in the first episode. “You’re establishing that someone’s been murdered and people take it seriously, but there’s also these wacky characters. That was a big push, especially in the first 10 minutes of the pilot. We had to figure out, where is the first laugh and where do we establish that this is a comedy? But we also had to show you that it won’t just be a straightforward murder mystery, in terms of figuring out who did it and why.”
Luckily the scripts, written by Paul Davies, already had a lot of humor in them. “There’s a lot of intricacies about how the story unfolds that continues to be more and more funny as you get to know the characters,” says Greer. “Even just reading the pilot script, there’s tons of interjections and crazy things, and the way that the script was written was extremely funny.”
Although the humor is a major aspect of the series, Greer still had to make sure to balance it with the seriousness of the plot as well. “Part of that balancing is making sure people are still engaged in the actual plot and fitting in the jokes,” she says. “What is so great about the script of the show is that the jokes are
intertwined with the plot. As they’re telling jokes, they’re also expressing exposition, things that you need to know. For this particular show, there wasn’t a lot of choice of, ‘Do I include the exposition or do I include the joke?’”
“What is so great about the script of the show is that the jokes are intertwined with the plot.”
Ali Greer
That question came in a bit later, when the flow of the story had to shift or be interrupted to show events happening on the night of the murder. “A lot of that was trial and error,” says Greer. “There’s a mix of having the script be super engaging in terms of the comedy and the exposition. And then a part of that is just making sure that within all of the exposition moments we’re finding the places for editorial to insert jokes and to keep it lively.” ★
“ONE OF THE BEST ANIMATED SERIES EVER MADE” THE OBSERVER
Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg admit they were a couple of big talkers when they first pitched The Studio to Apple TV+. With grandiose promises of starry cameos for scenes about real-life Hollywood shenanigans, the duo quickly backed themselves in a corner as they “frantically tried to deliver.”
Case in point for their self-described “workplace comedy” about a newly-installed studio head named Matt Remick and his burning desire for approval and box office success: Rogen and Goldberg wanted to write an episode about a relatively nascent female director who’s famous enough to cameo in her own movie, while fancy enough to enamor a sycophantic studio head. She’s female-forward and approachable, with an affinity for attracting headlines.
There were less than a handful of women who fit that bill, and “if we didn’t get one of them, we’re fucked,” recalled Goldberg.
Luckily for them both, Olivia Wilde said yes. The result was an episode in which Wilde hides a reel of her neo-noir crime film because she was desperate to reshoot a gunfight with star Zac Efron.
“Getting people on board was one of the biggest challenges we had for the first season,” reflects Rogen, who already had his hands full
playing the character of Matt, a harried suit who is, says Rogen, “constantly doing what he needs to do to survive and fight another day.”
“We’ve called in all our favors many, many years ago. We got everyone who was only willing to do this stuff because we were friends with them,” Rogen says of his longtime partnership with Goldberg. (The two met aged 12 at a bar mitzvah class and have collaborated on such films as Superbad, Pineapple Express, This is the End and The Interview.) “But we had a few of those left, I think.”
“We knew we had to top ourselves, then top ourselves again, and then triple-top ourselves this time, as is usually our best strategy,” adds Goldberg. “And that was by far the hardest part of the show, delivering those cameos. It was exhausting. Every single day at lunch during pre-production, we had to go and do a phone call with a different celebrity of some nature, or the filmmaker. And it was really draining.”
When setting out to create this latest comedy that also features Ike Barinholtz, Bryan Cranston and Catherine O’Hara, the duo were looking to create a realistic version of Hollywood, one in which there are no more “scumbags and egomaniacs here than what you could find in
finance, real estate dealings, the construction industry or manufacturing.”
“They’re just more seen,” Goldberg says of those, ahem, Tinseltown scumbags and egomaniacs. “They get this bad rap, but most of the people in Hollywood are beautiful, wonderful people who could have done anything else and chose to do this because they love it—from the props master to the PAs, to the craft service producers, to the actors. So, when we’re showing the dirtier, shittier sides of the industry, it doesn’t feel like we’re taking cheap pot shots because the whole thing is a love letter. And one that we want to be, again, a realistic portrayal of Hollywood, not a shined-up one or a dirty one.”
Job one, of course, was to keep production in Los Angeles. “If we didn’t shoot in LA, we would’ve failed before we even started,” says Goldberg.
The next step was to deliver on that promise of realism by populating their world with bona fide, high-wattage guests. To plan for the cameos, Goldberg and Rogen would either recruit a celebrity first and write his or her scene later. Or, in situations like the one involving Martin Scorsese, the duo wrote a scene specifically for the iconic director and, “to our absolute shock and bafflement,” he said yes to appearing in the pilot episode where he pitches Matt on a big-budget movie about Jonestown.
In the scene, Scorsese describes it as being about “Jim Jones, the United States Senate, America. It’s sprawling, it’s big, it’s fun, it’s fucked up. Granted, it’s fucked up. But I see it as a meditation on cults, hero worship, mass murder, suicide, everything. It’s life.”
“We never FaceTimed with him. We’d never met him until the day he came to shoot,” says Goldberg. “He just liked the script and agreed based on the script, which was an absolute miracle.”
Even before Scorsese blew them away with his rhapsodic pitch about the cult leader, Ron Howard was actually the first celebrity to sign on to the series. He shows up in Episode 3 after having directed Anthony Mackie and Dave Franco in a film called Alphabet City. Though artsy and action-packed at first, the movie ends up being almost three hours long because of an
“interminable” motel sequence at the end that’s an ode to Howard’s dead cousin.
“Ron wanted to really take it seriously,” remembers Goldberg, whose relationship with Bryce Dallas Howard in the 2011 film 50/50 opened the door to a meet-and-greet with the famed director. “He got an acting coach to brush up on his skills. We had many, many calls with him about character, how to do it and what was the balance. We would read with him sometimes over Zoom.”
More important, Howard was game to send up his reputation as one of the nicest men in Hollywood—particularly when it comes time for the Continental execs to address how he needs to ax that final scene. Their inability to have the hard talk with Howard begins a whole dialogue about how everyone cowers in the face of celebrities; even former studio head Patty Leigh (O’Hara) didn’t have the heart to tell Howard in person that she “almost drilled a hole into my brain to kill the part of me that senses time” when she watched the movie’s third act.
What Goldberg and Rogen ended up writing was a knee-slapping moment in which Howard berates Matt for giving him the much-needed editing note and the director responds by getting violent and dropping several f-bombs—which, apparently, is completely in character for the guy who once played Opie.
“Ron was like, I’ve been around a long time, and if you don’t think I’ve screamed at an executive in a room full of people, you’d be dead wrong,” recalls Goldberg.
Sarah Polley had similar thoughts for her cameo in Episode 2, in which she’s trying to get a “oner” with Greta Lee before they lose the natural light. Initially, the Women Talking Oscar winner registered her concerns that Rogen and Goldberg made her on-screen alter-ego in the second episode too nice and boring when Matt visits—and ends up disrupting—her set.
says Goldberg, “She was like, ‘I should have some kind of insidious thing I’m doing. Let’s play with my character and the fact that people think I’m this super nice lady, but she’s also a bad ass. She knows how to get shit done and be tough when she must be.’ So, she was like, ‘Let’s take that and exaggerate it and blow it out.’”
That’s exactly what attracted Zoë Kravitz to the series, in which she plays a “more psychotic” version of herself as she campaigns for a Golden Globe. (Her appearance in Episode 8 was so delightful that Rogen and Goldberg ended up penning more for her in the final two episodes).
“If you can’t make fun of yourself, I think there’s something wrong,” she told Deadline in May. “And so, I was really excited to make fun of myself, or the idea of myself, and the awards cycle, and all of that. I think it’s something to laugh at and to explore—it’s not just pointing and laughing.”
So, what is it about celebrities who raise their hands at wanting to come across as bigger jerks than they really are? Goldberg and Rogen have their theories as to why they were able to recruit the likes of Nick Stoller, Charlize Theron, Adam Scott, Ice Cube, Peter Berg, Steve Buscemi, Lil Rel Howery, Paul Dano, Johnny Knoxville and more.
“You don’t want to run the risk of people thinking you are a jerk,” says Goldberg. “This is legit material going out into the world to be seen by the masses. And if you’re close to who you are and just kind of an asshole, then people’s brains will be like, Olivia Wilde’s like a fucking asshole. You’ve got to make sure that people know it’s a joke. Otherwise, yeah, you might just come away with some icky feelings about how you’re perceived.”
“In general, famous people in the industry are viewed as tyrannical and have this persona of being egotistical and narcissistic,” adds Rogen. “Not everyone plays themselves. There are two versions of the joke. Either you play
into the persona that you have or completely against persona that you have. It’s a pretty 50/50 split as far as who is portraying themselves as a terrible version. Because for every Ron Howard, there’s a Johnny Knoxville who’s portraying a normal version of himself.”
Rogen did that in Episode 6. In the episode called “The Pediatric Oncologist”, Matt attends a charity gala with Sarah, a doctor girlfriend played by Rebecca Hall. Matt grows increasingly irritated when Sarah’s friends belittle his line of work—something that Rogen has experienced first-hand in real life while raising money with his wife for their Alzheimer’s charity.
“It’s something that I have definitely felt at these events from time to time,” admits Rogen. “I find that that doctors take joy in sort of diminishing the work of people in the entertainment industry. I think they know people in the entertainment industry are used to having smoke blown up their asses and having an outsized amount of praise they don’t deserve. As people who literally save people’s lives, I think they appreciate they’re able to sort of recalibrate the amount of respect one receives for the work and to be part of that recalibration.”
Now that The Studio has been renewed by Apple, Rogen and Goldberg are feeling more confident about their ability to recruit even bigger names for Season 2. It helps that one is actually a holdover from the first season.
“We actually have one script that I assume will be in Season 2, that’s finished, called ‘The Test Screening’,” says Goldberg. “We worked on it for months because it required a very specific actor, and we almost got that actor, but then they were too busy, so we had to move on.”
And though there will always be those select few who would prefer to not spoof themselves on the small screen, the phone hasn’t stopped ringing since all 10 episodes streamed on Apple. And that’s a good thing, because the duo has only just begun to depict their absurdist vision of the industry.
“This show has legs,” says Goldberg. “It just keeps writing itself. Things keep happening. We’re in an industry that is ever-evolving. Before, we sat with studio heads and heads of marketing to get their input to help us. Now people are just coming up to us, telling us stuff. So, the influx of stories is never ending.” ★
When Dan Fogelman created Hulu series Paradise, he envisaged Sterling K. Brown in the lead role of Secret Service agent Xavier Collins. And once Brown read the script and heard Fogelman’s three-season plan for the show, he agreed. Since their first collaboration began almost a decade ago with Fogelman’s hit series This Is Us, the same-age duo have remained friends, having been simultaneously launched into serious success and bonded by its six-season run. Now, with Paradise, together they would describe a dystopian world where a weather event has driven a select 25,000 people into the safety of an bunker underneath a Coloradan mountain. Set up to resemble Anytown, USA, and headed by President Cal Bradford (James Marsden), the community is rocked by an unexpected death and the uncovering of sinister secrets. In conversation with Antonia Blyth, Fogelman and Sterling reveal not only what’s coming next for Season 2, but what they themselves would pack for the apocalypse.
“I think Sterling and I have a lot of trust in one another. I trust his instincts as an actor and I think he trusts me as a writer.” – DAN FOGELMAN
I just rewatched Paradise, and now I have the Phil Collins version of the song “Another Day in Paradise” going around my head.
Dan Fogelman: I just had some new versions of it designed for us for Season 2, like some darker covers of that song. I’m literally finishing the finale right now of Season 2, writing. I also just got the first episodes of the edits and it’s so good. I’m so excited.
Oh, my god. Don’t dangle that carrot.
Sterling K. Brown: Dan doesn’t understand how this whole press thing works. He’ll start playing you clips of the show, and I’m like, “Dan, you got to hold it, man.”
Fogelman: Your death scene is unbelievable. Brown: [Laughs.]
You said you’re writing the finale. What have you shot so far?
Fogelman: We shoot two at a time, so we’re finishing three and four this week and we start shooting five and six already next week. So, we’re pretty much at the halfway mark.
And Shailene Woodley is a part of Season 2…
Fogelman: She’s so good. I’m watching a lot of her right now.
Brown: She’s awesome. She’s a wonderful human being. She fit in handin-glove. Shai is the...
Oh, you’re on Shai terms. That’s nice. Brown: Well, we’re on first syllable terms right now. Sterl and Shai.
Obviously, we haven’t met her character before, so it is most likely that she comes from outside the bunker. Is there anything you can hint about her role?
Fogelman: Yes, it’s somebody who’s not from the bunker. I think the fun part of our current coming season is that it lives partially in the bunker and the world that we all know. And then you also explore what life has been like in the time we’ve missed while our main characters have been in the bunker and some of the outside world stuff. And then paths start crossing as the season progresses, and so she’s one of those people, and I think she’s got a kind of interesting backstory and a very interesting profession that affects one of our early episodes of the season. It’s a big swing. It’s a big, ambitious... The show has always been a big show and when I told Sterling what the three-season plan for was it, I kind of broad-stroked what Season 1 was, what Season 2 was, and the big movements of it and we’ve executed that, and so it’s partially the same show you’re returning to. It’s a lot of Sterling just being a badass and there’s this world below and there’s secrets, but then there’s also these new elements of it that are really exciting and really ambitious and I’m starting to see it now and I’m very excited by it.
Brown: I’ll tell you this much, I went into the writers’ room earlier this year, and what I love about Dan—he did the same thing with This Is Us he’s like, “I got six seasons in my head.” And for Paradise, he has three seasons in his head and I’m sure when we start shooting Season 3, folks at Disney and Hulu will be like, “Are you sure?” And I am pretty sure that Dan will be like, “Yeah, I’m sure.” And I feel pretty confident in that too, because it’s nice doing television with a beginning, middle and end, because you’re always building towards something. You’re never just
putting filler out there for the sake of filler. It’s building and culminating towards something, and you feel it as an actor, like, “Oh, it’s progressing.” Right? When we get to the end of this show, people will be fucked up, because when he pitched it to me, I cried. Just off the pitch. I was like, “That’s the way to land the fucking ship, bro.”
I just came from Cannes where I watched Tom Cruise do all of that stunt stuff in his new Mission: Impossible film. When you geared up the plane in the Season 1 finale, I was like, “OK, this is taking a turn. He’s going to fly the plane.” What’s next? Are we going to see some Cruise-level stunts and aerobatics?
Brown: I got a whole biplane thing that he tried to steal from me for his movie. Fucking T.C., man. But I’m going to look like I’m second out of the gate when I shot mine way before. It does get very physical this year and it’s a lot of fun. We’ve got Ken Olin directing this episode, because he does a lot of Tracker and he’s like, “Sterling, we got to tell Justin [Hartley] he’s not faster than you.” And I need him to tell him that, because I’m pretty damn fast and it’s really just about beating Justin. But no, we have a lot of fun. There’s, like Dan said, exploration of what’s been going on in the world and trying to find my wife. Will he find her, will he not find her? Who does he meet along the way, who is friendly, who is nefarious, et cetera? And sometimes you got to call on a special set of skills and it is fun. I’m just excited that I can still do the shit, right? I mean, I’m a year away from 50 and it all still works. All the shit still works. The recovery takes a little bit longer and the prep before is like, “Man, you better stretch your ass out, bro, before you start doing this stuff.” But I can still do it and it’s still a lot of fun, so I’m thankful.
Tell me about the evolution of your working relationship, because you obviously met a long time ago and with this, Sterling, you’re an EP on the show.
Brown: What would you say? What would you say, Eric? That’s his middle name.
Fogelman: I think there’s a lot. I think Sterling and I have a lot of trust in one another. I trust his instincts as an actor, and I think he trusts me as a writer. I imagine there’s many times when Sterling’s going through scripts where things don’t quite maybe track for him, because that’s just inevitable. We’ve done so much television together that there has to have been scenes here and there where he’s like, “Oh, why is he doing this?” But he never really questions it. He kind of finds a way into it. He trusts that even if maybe he’s not seeing it, I have it, and similarly, I’ll be in an editing bay and go, “I didn’t expect Sterling to do that in that
scene and then now we’re going to roll with it because he’s so fucking good that I’m just going to trust the process.” It’s not a very verbal thing between us. It’s not like we talk about it a lot… It’s just an easy relationship. What did you say, Sterling? I don’t keep up relationships. I’ve never really worked with somebody multiple times in a lead of anything. I’ve had all these movie stars I’ve had these great relationships with, and I tend to let them fade because it’s always fraught and stressful for me. Their lives are just so gigantic and I don’t want to be a thing that they have to deal with, and so I’ve had these great relationships for moments in time with the Ryan Goslings and Oscar Isaacs of the world, but then it kind of fades and Sterling and I have... It’s a pleasure when Sterling comes in the room to hang. Not that it wasn’t with those guys, but it’s never stressful for me. It’s easy.
Brown: I would agree with all that. Yes. Stamos doesn’t have the same relationship with him as I do. He’s very good at what he does. There’s a lot of trust. I remember I asked him one question on Season 1. I was like, “Hey, man, you think this Jane thing is going to work out? She’s fucking nuts.” He’s like, “We kind of need somebody crazy.” And I was like, “All right, you say so.” And I was like, “Ah, Jane, everybody hates Jane in the best way possible.”
Fogelman: No, but in that first draft of that final episode where she’s really going bad, and I had, in my mind’s eye, been going, “Have we pushed it too far?” And when Sterling says it to me, I go back to the writers and I’m like, “Hey, let’s take a look and just make sure a couple of these jokes aren’t [too much].” As she’s killing people and taunting her dying boyfriend. We have lines where she’s like, “Oh, you bleeding?” And it was so fucking crazy. You know what I mean? And I was like, “If Sterling’s saying it, I should go check it.” Because he doesn’t say things often. And so, it’s not like I give up on my plan, but I do monitor it.
I love Jane. The moment where in the midst of absolute horror, there’s just the scene of her playing the Wii tennis game, I laughed out loud.
Fogelman: We have an episode coming this season called “Jane” where you really learn more about this person and how she came to be.
I just think she’s a sociopath, isn’t she? There’s something very wrong. Fogelman: There’s something very wrong and you learn about it.
Brown: Shout out to Nicole [Brydon Bloom]. Nicole is wonderful as Jane And also, people, don’t be mean to Nicole because she plays Jane. People have this weird way of not being able to distinguish between the actor and the character. She’s a sweet young lady, she’s newly married, cut her some slack.
Speaking of sociopaths, I have no sympathy for Julianne Nicholson’s character Sinatra. I find her to be the most effective villain I’ve seen in a long time.
Fogelman: I mean, her performance in the second episode of the show is so grounding. I think the loss of her child and the performance she gives when she’s in that therapy sequence is one of my favorite scenes I’ve ever worked on in anything. Just watching an actor do that, it’s hard. By the time you get to Episode 8 and she’s got guns on Sterling and is threatening his daughter and his wife, you’re like, “Oh, I hate her.” And it’s hard to remember that character from Episode 2. So, it makes her obviously the villain, but her second season is also incredibly interesting and
revealing and there’s even more to her story and to what she’s doing than meets the eye. She has quite an interesting arc in the second season that I think people are going to really enjoy.
Brown: I think Dan likes to write himself into a corner purposely and then he can write his way out of it. You know what I mean? I think it’s a challenge that he enjoys. I mean similar to This Is Us, I think, with Miguel. It was like, “Oh, you’re going to sleep with my mama now? You ain’t going to tell nobody, your best friend’s [wife]?” You’re going to do the worst shit a man can do and then see if I can write my way out.
You have your therapist character Gabriela losing faith in Sinatra, saying, “I told everyone the monster wasn’t a monster.” And there is that line Sinatra crosses where you can’t excuse her behavior.
Fogelman: In the second season, you’re going to have more context for some of her behavior that goes beyond what you know so far.
So, this is where you teach us to like her again. I see.
Fogelman: We’ll see. Part of this show that’s been fun is the pulling back of the onion of the mystery of the show, and I think there’s more mystery. It’s fair to say we solved all the questions about what the bunker is and why it was created in Season 1, but there’s kind of a deepening of it as you get into Season 2 and what’s really behind it all. There’s more science fiction in it in the second season intentionally than even was in the first. And that involves climate change and science and the things that were coming behind it.
There is more of that kind of survivalist [story]. How did the people that made it out in the world outside of the bunker do it? And we explore that in the season. I’m kind of at a point where I think television, there’s comfort in some shows which give you what you want consistently, and then in a show like this, that’s an eight episode show that is really propulsive. I wanted to keep taking it to new places and be challenging and exciting and you don’t know what’s really coming next… That’s really fun and exciting for me at this point in my career, probably for Sterling as well.
[To Brown] Why are you laughing at me?
Brown: Because I called you Daniel Lindelof. Lost was always sort of an influence on the show, but there’s things that even sort of go a little bit more in that direction, which I think are going to be very interesting.
OK so what TV shows would you bring in your bunker? Let’s assume there’s Wi-Fi or some ancient VHS situation.
Brown: I think The Studio is one of the smartest comedies out there right now. I hope it’s not too inside baseball and it’s just people in the industry
that love it, but it’s so fucking good. [Seth] Rogen is... I mean, it is genius and it’s not only funny, but it is artistically beautiful. The way that it is shot is gorgeous. I love the whole thing. It’s great.
Fogelman: For me, TV is so nostalgic that I always go back to older shows. I find the West Wing inherently rewatchable, because I’m factoring in the fact that I’m in a bunker, per your question, and I have limited resources, it’s something that I can watch over and over again and that’s one that makes my list at the very top. I loved The White Lotus this year. I think that show can always be polarizing for people, depending on what season they attach to or not. I just think the execution of the conceit is so brilliant there. That was probably my show this season.
Brown: Season 2 is my season. But you see what I do is I pick shows that are not in the same [awards] category as our show because I’m smart.
Fogelman: Right. This is why you always get nominated.
Brown: I’ll say in terms of that nostalgia thing, any of the Michael Scott American The Office.
Fogelman: And Everybody Loves Raymond hits that for me. That show used to make me laugh. It’s so well done. It’s such a perfect sitcom.
Brown: And of course I could name dramas too, but I’m not going to right now.
Fogelman: You know who’s a wonderful actor? Adam Scott.
You just wind him up. Keep going.
Fogelman: I’m going to promote all of them [Brown’s category competitors]. Pedro Pascal needs a break.
Brown: [Laughs.]
Stop it. You are so funny. You can take three things into the bunker. What are you taking?
Fogelman: Are we doing the thing where I have to say my family or-
Let’s assume all your loved ones are safe. We’re talking things, just things.
Brown: This is going to sound really weird. My attachment to things is fairly minimalistic. There are certain things, I guess, that would have nostalgic meaning to me. There’s this one picture of my mother. This is a true story. She has this picture of herself when she became a school teacher and when she went to the bank and cashed her check, she took the first dollar bill, put it in the frame of this picture and she keeps it in the house, right? And my mom has ALS right now and she's been fighting it for a long, long time. I told my brother and sister, “You guys can have everything. You can argue over this and that. I want this picture of my mom. And that’s pretty much it.”
Fogelman: It’s interesting. Similarly, when the fires happened, we live in the valley and we weren’t directly affected, but as it was creeping a little closer, we had that thing of, “Let’s pack up shit and get ready.” I’ve got a young kid and in this current day and age, there’s not that much that has import anymore, because it’s all kind of digital. If I want pictures, they’re on my phone. But I found it was loaded for me because my mom passed away when I was young and I found myself at that last minute when we were like, “Shit, the fire’s getting kind of close.” I was scurrying around, and my mom had this crazy obsession with collecting little frog knick-knacks. That was every birthday, every Mother’s Day, people would get her frogs. And when we cleaned out her little condo in New
Jersey, I just grabbed a bunch. I was packing up our house, the fire was coming and I was just grabbing random frogs that I’ve taken from my mom’s house. Literally, I grabbed this [holds up frog toy]. I don’t even know what it is. It didn’t have great deep meaning for my mom. But it like there’s some tactile things, I think, that hold a different value when they’re older from the analog age and especially if you’ve lost someone or that picture’s important to you, because your mom’s ill. There’s something different about that stuff.
Brown: Totally.
Dan, I want to tell you, you may remember, a few years ago, you wrote a guest column for us at Deadline and I think about it a lot. It was about your mom when she was sick.
Fogelman: I was trying to get a consult from a doctor on what to do for her and I made a connection to a doctor who needed the stuff overnighted and I couldn’t get it in time. And the sweet man at the Fedex store who was telling me they were closed, it was the only time I started melting down, because we were getting bad news on my mom, and I was flustered and I started spilling the papers all over the ground. I started emotionally cracking a little bit in front of this guy and this sweet man with a deep accent came out from behind the counter and put his hand on my shoulder and told me, “I will get these out for you tonight. You take your time.” And it was this very sweet human moment I had with this stranger at Fedex as I was trying to get her medical reports to get them to San Francisco.
It was beautiful writing, and it really stayed with me.
Fogelman: Well, I had another one. I don’t think I’ve ever told you this Sterling, but when I did my first movie, I was hired for Pixar to write the movie Cars. And when it came time to do the premiere, they did it at a speed track, a raceway in North Carolina or South Carolina. I was excited and I called my mom and dad. My mom was still alive, and they were divorced, and they hadn’t really seen each other since their divorce when I was 15 years old. It would be basically their first time seeing one another. And they came down and it was this loaded, bizarre week. And they both fell asleep at the movie, by the way. But the night before, we were sitting in the hotel lobby and it was just me and my mom and my sister. And Paul Newman walked in, who was one of the voices of the cars. My mom wouldn’t have known a celebrity if they kicked her in the face, but Paul Newman walked in and she turned to me and she said, “Danny, do you think I could go get a picture with Paul?” And I was like, “Mom, I’ve met him twice.” I was 25 years old. I go, “We can’t go over to Paul Newman and ask to take a picture.” It wasn’t even the cell phone era when that was common. It was like she had her little disposable camera. I said, “I can’t. But go walk behind him and I’ll try and take a picture while you’re behind him.” And so, in my office now—it was one of the things I grabbed during the fire—is a picture and it’s Paul Newman standing in a bar and you just catch a glimpse in the corner of my mom’s ear and her blonde hair. And I printed it out for both of us and framed it. And then my mom never got to go to any of my big stuff after that. That was my life lesson. Just go ask Paul Newman to take the fucking picture with your mom next time. Or the equivalent thereof. It was like, don’t be so nervous about everything all the time. ★
Amazon Prime Experience
May 4 - 22, 2025
Amazon Prime Experience
May 4 - 22, 2025
Nya Studios West, Los Angeles
Deadline Studio at Cannes May 14-21, 2025 Cannes, France
ONE OF THE MOST WATCHED streaming original series of 2024 #1 original series ever
35 MILLION global streaming viewers for the premiere episode
“AN OUTSTANDING ENSEMBLE. Billy Bob Thornton dominates.”
FOR YOUR EMMY ® CONSIDERATION
