00:00One of the fun things about going backwards is meeting a whole new generation.
00:03The first episode kind of does a bait and switch where half the kids are killed by the end,
00:07so you need to meet all new characters.
00:09Can you tell me how you wanted to build out this new quote-unquote losers club for the series?
00:14This group of losers was the product of a lot of talking and considerations.
00:19That is the part that, among others, makes justice to a little bit of, you know,
00:25the reflection on childhood that the book has.
00:29So there was no version of this story without the voice of the kids
00:35and especially the angle and the perspective of kids.
00:39But also I think we learned a lot from our first group of losers,
00:44the original one from the book and from the movies,
00:49and knowing that you need different voices in the group.
00:54You can't, you know, make it too homogenous because then it's boring.
01:00And different from the movies and the book where the only girl is Beverly.
01:04You know, that was like, you know, it's six kids, six boys and one girl.
01:09So we wanted to make that a little more even this time.
01:12Jason, I know that you wrote episode one, so I have to ask about the cold open.
01:16Sure.
01:17It's so messed up.
01:18Why is the Music Man kind of the...
01:20Hey!
01:21Literally!
01:22We just talked about the fact that nobody today has asked us about the Music Man.
01:25I said to Brad, I said, what is the one question we haven't asked yet?
01:28And we were like, oh, no one's asked about Music Man.
01:30So I started out as an actor on Broadway, like my co-showrunner Brad.
01:34I love musical theater.
01:35When we started talking about the opening,
01:37we actually initially entertained the idea of writing an original musical number,
01:40which quickly seemed like that was going to be a heavy lift.
01:44And we also...
01:45I think the other thing we realized was we wanted this to feel grounded in the period.
01:48And then we also realized that opening the song...
01:50Trouble.
01:51Trouble.
01:52Trouble.
01:53Trouble.
01:54Trouble.
01:55Trouble.
01:56Trouble.
01:57Trouble.
01:58Trouble.
01:59Trouble.
02:00Trouble.
02:01Maddie, is that you?
02:02We wanted to, you know, find that inciting it kill, that inciting it abduction.
02:17Obviously, the book, the movie begins with Georgie being taken.
02:20And so it felt appropriate to have Maddie Clements have our first It abduction.
02:25But we wanted to do it in a fresh way.
02:26We wanted to do it without Pennywise.
02:28We wanted to see another manifestation of It.
02:30And specifically a manifestation that took advantage of the fears of the time period.
02:34It's 1962.
02:35We're in the heart of the Cold War.
02:37Fears over nuclear radiation and fallout and mutation.
02:40And all those things combined into us coming up with the sequence that you see at the beginning of 101.
02:45Which really is the inciting incident of the entire season, right?
02:48And then, you know, the story of Mary Clements' abduction is what sets the rest of the story in motion.
02:51I feel like people would be surprised by how many of those children don't survive on the first encounter.
02:54Come on, we're gonna get you out!
02:56No, you're welcome.
02:59You're the reason I'm in here.
03:01Because you lied.
03:03Why was that sort of important for you guys to sort of set the stage that none of these children are safe?
03:09And why did you choose Ronnie and Lily to be our two that carry over to this new Losers Club?
03:14Well, you're coming into this with expectations about what an It show is gonna be.
03:17You've seen two movies.
03:18Maybe you've read the book.
03:19And so we wanted to take those expectations right from the start and upend them.
03:23We wanted audiences to feel like anything is possible.
03:26No one is safe.
03:27That you can care about characters and they'll still be taken from you.
03:29And it also felt like in doing that we actually thrust you into the point of view of our lead characters,
03:33who are very much trying to get their wits about them and figure out what it all means and what the rules of this world are.
03:38We were interested in their journeys.
03:40We were interested in the journey of Ronnie, you know, Amanda Christine's character.
03:44And for Lily Bainbridge, you know, Derry is a town where if you see the truth, if you see the evil around you,
03:51if you're sensitive to it, if you're aware of it, your truth is denied.
03:55You're told you're crazy, you're different.
03:57And so it felt like a character like Lily, who actually has been told she's loony Lily Bainbridge,
04:03as the mean kids at school say, it felt like she was someone who had no credibility with the characters around her,
04:08who putting her in a situation where she knows the truth that no one else does
04:12and putting her in a situation where she's desperate to get people to believe her,
04:16that felt really dramatically interesting and fertile.
04:19And so we were excited about what that relationship could look like between those two characters as well.
04:23We were seeing a true band of outsiders come together and these two really represent that.
04:27Amanda and Clara, I have to ask about the end of episode one because I did not expect it to get that violent,
04:32that gruesome, that scary so soon.
04:34At what point did you know how bad it was going to be for your co-stars that you guys were going to make it through?
04:47And what is the most challenging part of filming that kind of very intense, bloody, gory sequence?
04:52Honestly, one of the challenges, but also one of the things that I was most excited for was dealing with the performance,
05:01but also the like kind of intense blocking of the scene.
05:04It's a very action packed action, horrific sequence.
05:08So I think trying to truly portray the fear and endow the emotion while also remembering cues, remembering where to go.
05:16So I think that was a really cool thing to kind of balance out.
05:19I loved doing that scene. I love like horror kind of intense scenes.
05:23So getting to scream like that and getting drenched in blood and and seeing in the in the actual series how everything turned out.
05:30I think it's super cool.
05:31The crazy thing was the way we filmed it, like we did it kind of separately and we filmed in like different chunks, different parts and everything.
05:38So some people got to film together, some people didn't.
05:42So it was definitely cool to see everything come together.
05:45But actually, for Ronnie, I had to learn how to like actually work the camera thing and put the film in and make sure that it was all going and running.
05:53So that was really, really fun to learn and experience the scary parts of it.
05:58All the goriness, seeing it all come together was just so amazing.
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