Gamble joined the Drama Showrunner Roundtable along with the late John Singleton ('Snowfall'), Nic Pizzolatto ('True Detective'), Sam Esmail ('Homecoming'), Steven Canals ('Pose') and Marti Noxon ('Sharp Objects').
00:00Sarah, you write this show and you have this character at the center who is really doing some pretty awful things.
00:11And yet, the audience, or at least a very vocal portion of the audience, is basically rooting for this guy.
00:18How much did that surprise you or did it not surprise you at all?
00:22It did not surprise me. It's based on a book.
00:24Right.
00:24Joe is at the center of the book.
00:26You're inside his thoughts.
00:27It's called You because he's addressing Beck in his head.
00:30We retained that voiceover for the show.
00:32And there is a very vocal contingent of fans of Caroline Kevnis' book who are like, I heart Joe.
00:38Essentially, what she's done is taken the classic romantic hero and just peeled back the sort of gloss and sheen and John Cusack with the boombox.
00:48And she followed it to its logical conclusion.
00:51I mean, if you just turn off the sappy music and turn on, like, a David Fincher score, romantic comedies are stalker movies.
00:58The plot of pretty much everyone I can think of, and we have watched all of them many times in the writer's room, pretty much all of them are contingent on the guy.
01:09First of all, he has to do a certain amount of fucking up so she can forgive him.
01:12And also, he has to get over some of her shortcomings.
01:15I mean, that's love, right?
01:16But also, he's, like, chasing her through a fucking airport, chasing her on a freeway, watching her sleep because he feels protective.
01:24Romantic comedy behavior in real life is criminal.
01:28So that was basically the starting place for the show.
01:31This guy has read all the great books.
01:33He's watched all the great romances.
01:35And he's a bit unhinged.
01:36How does he process that?
01:37What does he think he has to do to be a good man and a good boyfriend?
01:40And then you have, in your star, Penn.
01:42I was going to say, it doesn't hurt.
01:44Sure.
01:45But also, there he is on social media, sort of clapping back at these people who are, in fact, rooting for him.
01:52What are those sort of conversations that you have?
01:55And do you want to do the same thing, or do you sort of let that unfurl as it will?
02:00I try to have the prime directive to answer the second part of your question first.
02:04I'm happy to interact with people online to talk about, like, how do you outline a script?
02:09But when they're like, why did you do that thing?
02:11It's like, you watch it the way you want to watch it.
02:14For Penn, I think when Greg Berlanti and I were talking about the casting, which I think is, like, maybe the single most important thing when you're making a show,
02:20we talked about how we needed an actor who really felt like Joe Goldberg was on paper.
02:27And Penn is all of that great stuff.
02:29He's thoughtful.
02:30He's a reader.
02:31He is a humanitarian.
02:32He is a feminist.
02:33He is extremely disturbed by Joe's behavior.
02:36Joe is extremely, Joe would never do those things that Joe does.
02:40And a lot of our conversations throughout season one when we were making the show, they were largely about his level of discomfort with each thing I was sending him.
02:49And we would, and by the way, he was so, he was like A plus number one on the call sheet.
02:54He's never like, that feels weird.
02:55I'm not going to do it.
02:56He's always like, we're going to do it.
02:57We're going to do it.
02:58Let's talk about, and by the way, I've never been more uncomfortable in my life, right?
03:03I also think he's got a good sense of humor.
03:06I think there's something kind of funny and glib about the way that he's doing that that's actually very sweet to the fans.
03:11He expected them to be like that.
03:13They're like that about the book.
03:15So I think his approach is kind of admirable.
03:17How much pressure do you feel to sort of strike while the iron is hot?
03:28You guys have a lot of sort of buzz and juice around you guys.
03:31Is there a sense of, I've got to sell more projects, do more?
03:35Is that the pressure from the outside or from you guys?
03:38You're laughing as though the answer is yes or no.
03:41Are you looking at me?
03:41I've never experienced this before right now, actually.
03:44I mean, I was very happily, pretty much today, I was very, very happily working on exactly,
03:51I mean, I had reached a point in my career where I was working on exactly the projects I wanted to.
03:55I don't know how to do this job if I'm not really excited about the writing of it
03:59because the rest of the job is long and it takes a lot out of you.
04:04And so you want to be passionate.
04:05And you was the same.
04:06You was Greg Berlanti coming to me and saying, I have this very unusual book
04:10that I think you and I should write the pilot together.
04:13And we just saw Eye to Eye.
04:15And that show was bought by Showtime.
04:19We had different visions for the show.
04:21Lifetime picked it up to series.
04:23Lifetime was a fabulous partner in season one.
04:26This was a departure for them.
04:27The executives were excited.
04:29They were sending me these beautiful emails with great ideas.
04:31I mean, they were great partners.
04:33Didn't work for their business model.
04:34We got canceled.
04:35So I'm like, this is essentially how I thought my career would be this year.
04:37And now for the first time, I'm working on a show where I go on Instagram or whatever
04:43and there's a meme and I'm like, wait a minute, that's Penn on our show.
04:47So yes, there are people saying, oh, your iron is hot now.
04:50That's what that is.
04:52And I don't know if it's a defense mechanism or I just don't believe any of that is real.
04:58I was happy doing the show at Lifetime.
05:00I was happy writing the script for Showtime.
05:01I'm super happy that so many people watch it on Netflix.
05:03The rest of it, certainly as an artist, as a craftsperson, I have to build a wall between
05:08myself and anything that's about, like, cash money in my life.
05:13I want that to be, you know, I mean, listen, I don't hate money.
05:17I'm not against being paid for your work, but I don't believe that this is a moment and
05:22then the moment is going to go away.
05:23The thing that I'm most excited about is that the next thing will be so different because
05:27of this thing.
05:28And beyond that, I'm in denial about all of it.
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