00:00What inspired you to tell this story about a boxer in such a vulnerable moment in his life?
00:06Yeah, I think we've seen a lot of stories of boxers kind of rising from poverty to make it
00:11and we haven't seen a lot of stories of boxers who have already made it
00:14who are just trying to exit gracefully.
00:16And so I think that's what I was really interested in here
00:18is the thought of a retiree, of a boxer who wants to make sure he's remembered well.
00:24How was the collaboration process with Diego and Gary?
00:27It was amazing.
00:28They came in with very specific ideas for who they wanted the characters to be.
00:32The whole project began with a conversation that they had.
00:35Supposedly they were drunk in Berlin and had a conversation about the characters that they wanted to play.
00:40And Guy really wanted to play a boxer
00:42and Diego really wanted to play a very kind of larger-than-life manager.
00:46So the whole project begins with that conversation
00:49and with them saying, I want to play this kind of a character.
00:51And they know they have that kind of chemistry
00:53and so by the time it came to me, it was a couple years later,
00:55it had kind of grown a little bit
00:57and I knew the thing that we needed to keep front and center
00:59was their chemistry and also their ideas for who these characters were.
01:03What can the audience expect from this TV series?
01:07I think it's a cliche to say expect the unexpected,
01:10but I will say what they can expect is a tone unlike any that they might have seen before.
01:15The tone of the show, it's not just a boxing show,
01:18it's not just a crime show,
01:20it's not just kind of a fun brotherhood, you know, road trip show either.
01:25It's its own other weird thing and that's what drew me to it
01:28and that's what drew all of us to it.
01:29We didn't want to make something we had seen before.
01:31We wanted to make the kind of thing we had never seen before.
01:33The show even has karaoke in it.
01:35What was the biggest challenge for you?
01:37Putting together, like, writing, showrunner, producing, everything, doing everything.
01:43The biggest challenge, there were two.
01:45The biggest challenge was we had a production window,
01:47we knew we had everybody available
01:49because these actors, Asa, Diego, Guy, are all very sought after,
01:52so we knew we have availability,
01:54so we had to hit those dates.
01:56And we did, luckily.
01:58The other big production challenge was probably the big fights,
02:00the biggest arena stuff,
02:02which I luckily, as writer, got to just step back and say,
02:05you guys, I'll deal with it,
02:06but Gabriel, the director, did a great job of making those arena fights,
02:09we have two of them in the show,
02:11making them feel huge and alive and epic
02:13and we rented out whole stadiums to be able to shoot the show.
02:15Besides boxing, of course, La Máquina explores themes like friendship, failure.
02:23What kind of message did you want to tell through this story?
02:28I think the message that we're told through a lot of boxing stories,
02:31through a lot of sports stories,
02:33is that winning in the sport is winning in life.
02:37And I think we all understood something deeper than that and bigger than that here,
02:40which is, like, winning in the ring doesn't necessarily mean winning in life,
02:43and similarly, losing in the ring doesn't mean losing in life.
02:47Basically, that sport is wonderful and sport got these characters as far as it did,
02:50but there's something a lot bigger outside of that, and that is life itself.
02:54What's next for you?
02:55Next for me, I have a musical opening next year on Broadway.
02:59I wrote a musical based on the music of the Buena Vista Social Club,
03:02and that'll be opening in March.
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