- 27 minutes ago
Starring Shawn Levy ('Stranger Things'), Salim Akil ('Black Lightning'), Jason Blum ('The First Purge'), Jonathan Nolan ('Westworld'), Melissa Rosenberg ('Jessica Jones'), Robert Kirkman ('The Walking Dead') and Simon Kinberg.
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00:00:05Hi everyone, I'm Rebecca Ford with The Hollywood Reporter, and I'd like to welcome Sean Levy,
00:00:10Saleem Akhil, Jonathan Nolan, Jason Blum, Simon Kinberg, Alyssa Rosenberg, and Robert Kirkman.
00:00:17Thank you for joining us at our first genre roundtable. If you could tell me about a time
00:00:21when you really had to fight for something for one of your projects, when you really had to go
00:00:25to bat to make something happen that you wanted. Sean? I guess, I mean, we had a few of those
00:00:34moments
00:00:34on season one of Stranger Things, where we, I hadn't really produced television, the Duffer Brothers
00:00:42hadn't really done television, and yet we were just kind of going with the flow of the Duffer's
00:00:47instincts, and it became clear that we did not have enough money. And there's that moment where
00:00:53you either kind of just grind down and figure it out, or you just have the courage to ask for
00:01:00more.
00:01:00And I have to say, on that show, and with Netflix on that show, there was always this feeling like,
00:01:06okay, if they want to say no, they'll say no, but I'm definitely going to ask. And so for us,
00:01:11there were a few moments where our Demogorgon was not working out, and it was clear that we were going
00:01:15to have to go from man in a suit to digi-monster. And so we asked for the extra resources
00:01:21to do it,
00:01:21and we got it, and, um, and, you know, worked out.
00:01:50Jesus Christ.
00:01:53You haven't kind of arrived in Hollywood if you haven't had a handful of those moments.
00:02:00I think that's what's fun about all our jobs is that no one knows anything, and I've been on both
00:02:05sides of that moment. There are things that I've said no to that have gone on to great success,
00:02:08which is not fun. Once you've experienced that, it comes more naturally to fight. But the first,
00:02:14the biggest example for me was Paranormal Activity, which is famous, which is a story that I'm not going
00:02:19to go into, except that everyone said no for so long, and it was such a big success.
00:02:24And I remember after that having much more confidence than what I had kind of, you hear this
00:02:31thing of, like, if you have it, hold on to it and keep fighting for it. That's much easier said
00:02:36than
00:02:37done until you live through Stranger Things or whatever it is. And once you've lived through it,
00:02:43it's easier to fight, I think. I think most people, I would imagine most people that are around this
00:02:47table or that work in Hollywood, how they broke into the business was after a series of no, no,
00:02:52no, no, no's, and then one yes broken through. And for me, literally the first thing I ever wrote
00:02:57that got made was Mr. and Mrs. Smith that every studio in Hollywood passed on. And then I retooled
00:03:03the pitch. It was a pitch at the time. And then pitched it to the same people. And the same
00:03:06people said
00:03:07no again. And we had different actors falling in and out of it. And so that was an odyssey of
00:03:12like
00:03:13four years of no until there were enough yeses to just get the movie started. When grownups tell
00:03:19you no and you believe otherwise until you're proven right, you believe the grownups. Yes, exactly.
00:03:26Exactly. I think for me, our first season of Black Lightning was a test because we had a superhero
00:03:32who wasn't quite like most. And there was a scene where he was arrested. He was, drugs was planted
00:03:37on him and he couldn't use his powers because he didn't want to out himself. And he went through
00:03:43the cavity search. And while he was going through the cavity search, he, he groaned and a little spit
00:03:49fell out of his mouth. SMP did not like that. And they took it all the way to the FCC
00:03:56and we won
00:03:58and it went on television. And it was one of the best scenes, uh, the most talked about scenes on,
00:04:04on our show, because to see this, uh, man who has powers to see him arrested, to see him go
00:04:11through
00:04:11that was, um, was empowering because a lot of black men and women have talked about these things
00:04:18happening and they have to show a certain amount of restraint without having powers. And so to see this
00:04:24superhero go through it and not be able to use his powers, the, the, the juxtaposition of that,
00:04:29I thought was, uh, was well done and you know, it's our show, but it was written well and it
00:04:34was
00:04:34directed well. And I was proud of that because it went through the FCC. The network was actually
00:04:39very supportive. It was SMP who didn't want to do it. And so when they came back and said we
00:04:44could do
00:04:45it, uh, that was a win. That was a great win. It felt good. Yeah. My, my most recent struggle
00:04:51is entirely self-serving. There's a, in a season two of Jessica Jones, there's a flashback episode,
00:04:58episode number seven, and we get to see one of the characters, uh, as she was transitioning from
00:05:03child star to, uh, adult, go through the, her pop princess moment. And we were shot a music video,
00:05:11which I was like, I have to be there for the shooting of that music video. I moved freaking
00:05:15heaven and earth to be there. I had to be home. I had to be back here for a mix
00:05:20session. I'd be,
00:05:21editing, everything was backing up. I was stopping all, everything slowed down of course.
00:05:25I was like, I don't care. I'm going to be there for that goddamn music video. It was just as
00:05:29like,
00:05:30it was the funnest possible thing in the world. I freaking love that highlight of my life. Didn't
00:05:35necessarily help the show. Hopefully you internalize the more that that happens to you,
00:05:40you internalize it. So every, everyone at the table works with other creative people. And when I see
00:05:46that fire, we did the movie, we did a, the movie called the gift with Joel Edgerton and he wanted
00:05:50it to end one way and I wanted it to end the other way, but you could see in his,
00:05:56you know,
00:05:56I could see what I had in my eyes with paranormal activity in his eyes. And I, we did it
00:06:02his way,
00:06:02not my way. And he was absolutely right. And, and that really is a fun thing about making movies and
00:06:07TV shows as it works both ways. And hopefully people have the power to kind of push things forward,
00:06:13recognize it in both directions. Well, you also get galvanized by the energy of your collaborators.
00:06:18I mean, yes, I mean, we all, we all work in, in jobs where, I mean, none of us are
00:06:22doing our thing
00:06:23alone. And I know, I mean, literally weekly on stranger things, the duffers, because they came to this
00:06:31pretty new, they have a fierceness to their vision and it doesn't occur to them like, Oh,
00:06:39oh no, you don't need to play ball. Like they want what they want. And if they think it's right,
00:06:44they're going to lay down. And as someone who's, you know, made some movies and done stuff for longer,
00:06:49I find that really inspiring. And I carry it forward. It's like, Oh yeah, that's what fight
00:06:55looks like. And that's, that's sometimes really, really valuable. Well, I think actually it's, it's a
00:07:00really good point. Cause I think the longer one works in Hollywood, it's you, Hollywood, uh, in a way,
00:07:07I think, um, teaches compromise, teaches compromise. And like compromise is actually
00:07:13just a nice word for surrender. And I think the, the, the sort of, um, what you're talking like,
00:07:18the blind, um, faith in oneself gets beaten out of you at a certain point. But if you take enough
00:07:24chances and are right enough of the time, and it's sort of like baseball, it's like one out of three
00:07:28is like hall of fame, you know, like if you're a 333 hitter, you're a hall of fame hitter. Um,
00:07:32so if
00:07:33you're right enough, I think that people start to trust that they will go with your, I mean,
00:07:38another example for me that isn't self-serving, but is about Ryan Reynolds on Deadpool. Deadpool
00:07:44was a script, a project that was around for over 10 years and Ryan, um, and the writers,
00:07:50Rhett and Paul, uh, and the director, uh, Tim Miller of the first movie just kept on that film.
00:07:55And they wrote a PG 13 version and they wrote a script that had, uh, comic book images and all
00:08:00kinds
00:08:00of other concept art in it. And it just wouldn't get made and wouldn't get in because there were no
00:08:04R rated superhero movies at the time. Um, and it was a kind of groundbreaking original, fresh,
00:08:10different kind of comic book film. Um, and so finally sort of, it took the collective force
00:08:17and the compromise of, okay, fine, we'll do it for a fraction of what these other movies are made for,
00:08:22for the studio to say yes. And then once that worked, then it was like, okay, well you can make
00:08:26it as nice as you want in a very different budget. But I think, I think if people, sorry to
00:08:30keep
00:08:30going on this topic, but I think we will get to a second question. I think it's a key, really
00:08:36important thing, uh, for people who may be watching, who are kind of at the, at a more beginning of
00:08:41their career, because the, the takeaway is not from, I, the takeaway should not be pick your thing
00:08:49and fight every fight. And I think one of the most difficult things about all of our jobs,
00:08:54and it changes as you have more experience and success is knowing when to pick your battles and
00:08:59when not to. And I think, I think that's, and it, and it's very different. And I just went up
00:09:05against
00:09:05a, a network president and I had a conversation with him and I, and I, I messed it up and
00:09:11it was a
00:09:11battle I shouldn't have picked. I went in, I went all in on it. He gave me a really good
00:09:15reason why not
00:09:16to do it. And I realized I approached it wrong. And so it's an important thing not to just come
00:09:20away
00:09:20saying my way or the highway. You just have to know when to say that. It's very hard. It's very
00:09:25hard to know when, and it's very hard to do. I do want to, uh, turn to one of the
00:09:29more
00:09:30important aspects of, I think, working in genre, which are the fans. Jonathan, I know before Westworld
00:09:35kicked off its second season, you did a tease on Reddit for the fans and, and promised to reveal the
00:09:42second season in its entirety. And that was a little bit of a trick on the fans. Why did you
00:09:48do that?
00:09:50And, and because I know what's your home address, no, are you glad you did? And sort of the results
00:09:55of the fan react. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that was galvanizing about the first season was
00:09:59that Reddit community, right? I'm not on social media. I don't give a shit about Twitter or Facebook.
00:10:03I think they're broken systems. The problem with Facebook and Twitter is you can't vote people down,
00:10:08right? You can only vote opinions out. And that sounds polite. That sounds like a, you know,
00:10:12sort of more diplomatic. It actually means the conversation veers towards negativity.
00:10:17With Reddit, one of the things we liked about the community, you'd vote opinions up and down.
00:10:20So what that means is it actually winds up being a more civilized conversation.
00:10:23And that community rallied around the show out of the first season.
00:10:27I mean, I, you don't want to reduce the show to a series of twists and turns,
00:10:31but it's hard not to be charmed by a group of people who are putting as much time into thinking
00:10:36about your show as you did when you put it together. So we have a special affinity for that,
00:10:40that community. And, uh, the, we felt like the, the best way to celebrate that was to, uh,
00:10:46was to fuck with them a little bit.
00:10:47One need to stay here forever.
00:10:53Enjoying
00:10:56running my company, Bill,
00:10:59living in my house,
00:11:04fucking my door.
00:11:08Juliet's dead.
00:11:11She killed herself.
00:11:13I think every week someone comes up with the brilliant idea of, uh, Rick Grimes is in a coma,
00:11:18right? And this is all a dream.
00:11:20I love it. Cause it comes, it's like every four or five days, someone comes at it. Like,
00:11:23it's like a great new idea. And I've been getting it since the comic book started, you know, 15 years
00:11:28ago. So, so that's always fun. But, uh, but I don't know. I mean, I, I love the fan interaction.
00:11:32I think that, uh, you're absolutely right. It does all tend to, you know, uh, skew negative.
00:11:38Uh, but, uh, I think that, uh, being able to get, uh, to be able to decipher that feedback,
00:11:43to be able to like see what people are saying, I think is kind of a gift. I think that
00:11:47that's
00:11:47something that wasn't really around 10, 15 years ago. Uh, you can look at it as a curse. It is
00:11:52also
00:11:52sometimes painful, but, uh, I think as long as you have a thick enough skin to be able to dive
00:11:55in and go,
00:11:56Oh, they hate this. They hate that. They hate that. Well, that thing we're in, you know,
00:11:59like, I don't know, as a writer, I feel like everything I do is terrible anyway. Like I get
00:12:03that feeling where I'm like, Oh yeah, they're going to find me out now. This is just terrible.
00:12:07And, and so, uh, it can tend to sometimes, uh, uh, reinforce those feelings. But, uh,
00:12:13I feel like, you know, having that, uh, back and forth and, and getting a sense of what people think
00:12:17is, is important. Now we're going to need a new understanding. Apologies. Punish me.
00:12:37What did you say? If you have to kill someone, there has to be punishment, then kill me.
00:12:46The challenge there is not to let it steer the ship. Yeah. You want to know what people are saying.
00:12:51Yeah. But you don't want to let that influence you when you go back in that writer's room,
00:12:54because that's a disaster. Well, the beauty of working on something like Netflix,
00:12:57which some of several of us do is you don't have any feedback before the whole, the entire series
00:13:03drops. Yeah. Um, that's a plus and a minus, uh, you know, if you're, if you really want that
00:13:08feedback, but there's no test audience, there's no anything. So you get to, as a creator, you get to,
00:13:15to really form your show with your vision. And it's a very small group of people who have eyes on
00:13:21it,
00:13:21you know, for better or worse. Uh, so, you know, it is, but if it succeeds or fails,
00:13:27it's all on you. There's not like a whole lot of that. But haven't you felt kind of what Jonathan's
00:13:31saying? I know every, when we've gone in to break season two and then three,
00:13:36we get so much feedback, uh, all of us and stranger things, because I think so much of the audience
00:13:43is
00:13:43young and very much living and vocal on social media that balance between like take it in and
00:13:50then, but once you go into the room and you're breaking your next season, don't you find you
00:13:53have to do that magic trick of having taken it in, but now being myopic and a little bit deaf
00:13:58to it
00:13:59and just listening to the quieter inner voices that brought you to the party in the first place.
00:14:03Oh, absolutely. And with, with our, with Jessica Jones in our first season, it shocked us all how,
00:14:10how, uh, well it was received. And, uh, it got itself a little Peabody, which we were happy about.
00:14:15Uh, but then you go back into the room after that, that's your first season. I was
00:14:20fucking terrified. I mean, just terrified. I just staring. I, oh my God, what do I do now? And you
00:14:26know, so the bar is so fricking high over here. We just go, okay, we're not even looking at that
00:14:30bar.
00:14:30We're just going to do something entirely different. They will lump me in with that
00:14:35maniac and they will start pinning every unsolved crime on me because that's what they do.
00:14:40Not that you have a chip on your shoulder. Just fix this. Don't snap at me.
00:14:48You're the one that set price after me in the first place. So stop dicking around.
00:14:52You are far from my biggest concern at the moment.
00:14:57Oh, what? So now I'm on my own? Only if you keep alienating everyone around you.
00:15:02A lot of our work is based on source material and source material that the fans are religious
00:15:06about. And so in the same way that you have religious fundamentalists, you have like fanboy
00:15:11and girl fundamentalists. And you have to understand in the same way that you would,
00:15:14I think religious, that being true to the essence of the book is what you're trying to do as a
00:15:19fan
00:15:20in ourselves. It's the reason that we were drawn to that particular piece of material,
00:15:23but not being true to the every letter. If you actually read the Bible, literally you're a crazy
00:15:27person, like, you know, and stoning people to death. But if you read the essence of the lessons
00:15:31that are being taught and the emotional sort of character stories that are being told,
00:15:36and you're true to that, then I think you're telling the story that got you inspired in the
00:15:41first place. And like Sean's saying, you stick to the thing that got you excited and drew you to
00:15:47Jessica Jones, to Walking Dead, like anything that Westworld as the, as the movie, even though
00:15:53you've strayed so far from the original movie, um, and from me working in a lot of comic books.
00:15:57More Yul Brynner next time.
00:15:59But you do like, you, I think you, you have to acknowledge the fan in yourself first before the
00:16:06fans out there. Well, yeah, and we're not only dealing with as well as the idea of fanboys and
00:16:12girls. We're also dealing with this idea of, you know, being 40 something years, one generation up
00:16:18out of Jim Crow, there are not a lot of African American superheroes. So the thing that I carried
00:16:25in and creating the show was, I can't ignore that I had seen superheroes fighting in space,
00:16:31superheroes fighting in made up worlds. But I was always wondering, like, why don't nobody take the
00:16:36ass down to Chicago and clean that up? You know, we could use Batman down there. Right.
00:16:41And so in approaching the show and thinking about putting it on, I knew I had to address some of
00:16:48those issues, those real world issues, because if I didn't, I would be those fanboys and fangirls,
00:16:54but also the African American audience would call foul. The liquor store just got robbed.
00:17:00And I'm sure the description is what a black man dressed in a suit and tie
00:17:06getaway car, a midsize Volvo wagon.
00:17:18I had to listen to the quiet of my own, my own head, my own mind, my own justice,
00:17:23my own sort of morality and see what I could do with that. And when we opened up the show
00:17:28with our hero being pulled over by the cops, with his daughters in the car, you know, people were like,
00:17:34this isn't a superhero show. And we said, well, we'll show you. It'll be a different type of superhero.
00:17:39So when you talk about the fans, that was a whole different aspect of dealing with them that
00:17:44that I was prepared for and was happy that they accepted the show. Because otherwise my ass would
00:17:51have had to leave the country. Robert, Walking Dead, of course, has killed off its fair share of beloved
00:17:57characters. And a more recent one, I think, sort of strayed from the original material. And that can
00:18:03really piss off fans. When do you... And it did. It did. So when do you decide to sort of
00:18:08deviate
00:18:10from what they may be expecting based on the source material? I mean, it's a weird process on Walking
00:18:15Dead because we have a full writing staff in a writer's room and they're working on things. But
00:18:21I'm an executive producer. I'm there. And so, you know, it's it's I you know, I'm actively like
00:18:28participating in changing material that I myself wrote, which is really weird. But it's fun, I guess.
00:18:37My favorite thing is, you know, early in the seasons, I was in the writer's room full time and
00:18:41we would be around the room and they would kind of forget, you know. And so we'd just be sitting
00:18:45there
00:18:45and they'd be like, yeah, we're getting to that one thing in the comics. But that didn't really work.
00:18:48I wasn't I didn't really like with that. Oh, Robert. Hey, you know. And so I had to get used
00:18:54to that,
00:18:54which was, you know, fun. But but I don't know. I mean, it's just it's it's the comic is a
00:19:00thing
00:19:01that I work on with Charlie Adler that I've written. And by the time we're adapting issues, it's five years
00:19:07old, that material. I'm sick of it. I want to try something new. And then you've got this brilliant
00:19:12staff of writers that are coming up with new ideas and different ways to work with the material. And
00:19:19that's energizing to me. We have the luxury not being at Netflix of people seeing snippets of
00:19:24our material and then judging the rest of the season on that. And so that sometimes can be,
00:19:30you know, a little nerve wracking. Have any of you implemented something into your show or a franchise
00:19:37that was a suggestion from social media or from fans yet? Is anyone going to say yes?
00:19:42No, we know. No, we definitely have. Even if it was true. Even if it was true,
00:19:47it would be such a slippery slope to acknowledge it. Why? We do that like the purge. We did the
00:19:54first
00:19:54purge. Everyone like it's instant. We want to know what happens when we go outside. And then when we
00:19:58did the second purge, we were like, we got to show the streets. We do that a lot. Why is
00:20:02that?
00:20:02Well, that's like a fan. That's a little different than like,
00:20:04actually ripping off somebody's idea.
00:20:06Yeah, that's not like, I want to see that because Sean's worrying about getting sued.
00:20:10Sean has four or five daughters. He's got a family. He can't get sued.
00:20:15I got it. I got it. My bad. My bad. My bad.
00:20:17I mean, there was a moment where we were getting everyone and Barb to somehow be miraculously alive
00:20:24after the first season. We're like, do we do that? Like, because sometimes it's a matter of,
00:20:29well, but it's kind of like, I was thinking about what you were saying, Simon,
00:20:32with kind of understanding what is sacrosanct and what people think they want. But you have
00:20:39to know a little bit better. You have to trust that, you know, a little bit better. And I know
00:20:43that sound more condescending than I intend, but, but you know, in the case of Barb, there were so
00:20:49many theories that she was going to come back. She was actually live. And I'm not going to lie. We
00:20:52spent maybe, you know, 20 seconds talking about it. But I think that sometimes fans stumble into
00:20:59theories that are crazy accurate. That I found where I'm reading something. I'm like, oh my god,
00:21:05when this person realizes. Sean just admitted that he takes those theories and then turns them into
00:21:10episodes. That's what Sean just said.
00:21:26I wrote or co-wrote, um, uh, X-Men 3, which is the Dark Phoenix story, which is probably the
00:21:31most
00:21:31sacred, uh, or beloved of the X-Men storylines in the comics. And, um, people, fanboys and girls and,
00:21:39uh, humans of all ages, um, did not love the movie. Uh, and I lived through many things online,
00:21:45wishing me cancer and hoping my whole family would die and all of those things that, you know,
00:21:49are lovely to read, um, because you were just trying to tell a story. Um, and at the end of,
00:21:54uh, X-Men Days of Future Past, which I then wrote years later, that's a time travel story. Um,
00:21:59and the end of that previous movie that people didn't like, Wolverine kills Jean Grey. And so I
00:22:04thought, well, here's an opportunity, strangely, to, like, rewrite this mistake, let's say, or
00:22:10whatever, but the thing that people was, didn't love as much as they loved the comic,
00:22:13and bring Jean back to life and have Wolverine actually have it as if X3 never happened. And so
00:22:19at the end of Days of Future Past, that is literally what happens. We erase, um, the lineage
00:22:24of X3. So I got to go back with an eraser and essentially erase a 200-plus million dollar movie.
00:22:31But didn't you have a bunch of X3 fans then being like, what the heck, man? I love that movie.
00:22:36Not a vocal group.
00:22:37They weren't as vocal in the echo chamber of the internet as the, as the ones that were not X3
00:22:41fans.
00:22:42But, and also, I, I felt, to go deeper into that for a second, I felt like X3 was,
00:22:48there were things that were wonderful in that movie, and, and, and I'm responsible for a lot
00:22:52of things that were terrible, not as wonderful in that movie. But I think the mistake that we made
00:22:56was actually veering too far away from the source material in terms of X3 and not trusting it.
00:23:00It was the Dark Phoenix story about Jean Grey's character, Frank Jansen's character.
00:23:04Um, and instead of trusting that being a strong enough character-driven story,
00:23:10we put, we created an A-plot of the, if you remember, you probably remember some people around,
00:23:15but, well, I definitely remember.
00:23:16Yeah, you do. That's why I'm looking at you because you're really hardcore. So, um, uh, is that it's
00:23:21The Cure.
00:23:21The Cure plot.
00:23:22The Cure, yeah.
00:23:22So we created The Cure plot as an A-plot of that movie, which didn't need an A-plot.
00:23:27We made The Dark Phoenix story, the B-plot of the movie, and that was the fundamental mistake
00:23:30that we made in that film, not trusting that the story that is the most beloved and complex story,
00:23:35instead of diving deeper, um, sort of, uh, into the vertical complexity of the story,
00:23:40we made it more horizontal and broader.
00:23:42Mm-hmm.
00:23:42Um, and that was the mistake.
00:23:43I like what you said, Sean, about, you know, feeling entitled to know a little bit better.
00:23:48Because, I mean, everything that we do is, it rests on, on the fans. Like, they're the bedrock
00:23:52of everything we made.
00:23:53Yeah.
00:23:53Yeah. Um, the best example of what I saw, and it was instructive to me going forward, you
00:23:58know, I wrote The Dark Knight in 2005. 2006 came, Chris came to try to figure out, okay,
00:24:05we're going to try to tackle Joker. And Nicholson owned the role. You know, whatever you got to
00:24:11the original films. Um, and I liked them a lot, but they were, they were Tim Burton films. Um,
00:24:17that role felt, I mean, it was an enormous challenge for us. And Chris had a good meeting
00:24:21with Heath Ledger. Mm-hmm.
00:24:22And no one got it. I didn't get it. The studio didn't get it.
00:24:25Mm-hmm.
00:24:26Everyone was coming, coming at Chris and saying, we don't see it. Mm-hmm.
00:24:31And the fan community was, I mean, we were fucking pilloried for it. Yeah.
00:24:35Right? This is a disaster. Mm-hmm.
00:24:36This is the, the, the worst casting decision ever made. And Chris just, just hunkered down
00:24:41and stuck to his guns and just kept moving along. That's amazing.
00:24:44Right? Respectfully, it was a question of not knowing, not giving the fans what they're asking
00:24:47for, but what they want. Mm-hmm.
00:24:49Right? What they really want. Mm-hmm.
00:24:51Which is, let's find a really fucking serious actor. Mm-hmm.
00:24:53Somebody's gonna come in here and just, and just tear this role to pieces. Um, and it,
00:24:57for me, I just, you know, casting is such, beyond writing, casting is the most dangerous
00:25:02moment in every, every project. Yeah.
00:25:04Yeah. And the fans have extremely strong feelings. They've, they, they know these characters.
00:25:08They think they know, um, as well as you, and that's totally justified, but you've got to
00:25:13kind of stick to your guns through there. Mm-hmm.
00:25:14We had a similar situation with the character Tobias Well, um, who's an albino. Mm-hmm.
00:25:20And they came up with a whole lot of ideas. Well, maybe we can hire
00:25:23a white actor and put makeup on. I was like, well, yeah, we're, we're not gonna do that.
00:25:28Mm-hmm. And then maybe we don't go with the whole albino aspect of it,
00:25:32but I thought it was central to who he was as a person. Mm-hmm.
00:25:34And why he was the way that he was. And we found this actor who maybe had done
00:25:39one job or two jobs, Marvin Crondon Jones. He was really known for rapping. Mm-hmm.
00:25:46But his look was amazing. And I figured, you know, a lot of rappers act because they really
00:25:50are actors in a lot of ways. And no one thought he was going to do well. Mm-hmm.
00:25:56Even, I remember the first day that he was on set, we gave him the job,
00:25:59all the other actors showed up. And we were all watching. We'd never really seen him act
00:26:04in front of a camera. And he killed it. Mm-hmm.
00:26:07And everybody just took a big sigh of relief. And he's been like the most popular character
00:26:11on the show now. He's amazing. He's amazing. I'm curious when it comes to expanding these worlds,
00:26:17whether it's, you know, a spin-off or I think you've worked on like nine X-Men.
00:26:22I don't know. I honestly have lost track of this. If you count Deadpool and the Logan movies, yeah.
00:26:28Yeah, seven. He knows that too. Exactly.
00:26:31So Simon, maybe you can start by telling me, when is it time, when is it too much? Is there
00:26:37a time where-
00:26:38I hope never is the answer. The honest answer is, well, first of all,
00:26:43the source material in this particular case in terms of the X-Men has survived for decades.
00:26:47And there are hundreds or thousands of characters that you could really deep dive into. Obviously,
00:26:51we don't want to go into all of them. But what we have found in terms of doing standalone movies
00:26:56or whatever you want to call them, spin-offs or like Logan, like Deadpool, is that we do those
00:27:01when we feel as, and I think it's an important thing in general for genre, when we feel as though
00:27:05we can
00:27:06smuggle a different genre into the sort of super genre of the comic book movie.
00:27:12So Logan, obviously, was a Western. And Deadpool was kind of like a Monty Python comedy,
00:27:17R-rated comedy at a time when R-rated comedies were not being made, at a time when Westerns were
00:27:20certainly not being made at the price point that we could make Logan for. So for us, it was if
00:27:25we're
00:27:25going to expand and tell different kinds of stories sort of coming off of the main line of the X
00:27:32-Men,
00:27:33and they have to really be genuinely different kinds of stories, not just cheaper versions of
00:27:37an X-Men movie. And so we really have embraced Emma Watts, whose present production at Fox has
00:27:42been instrumental in this, each time defining for ourselves what is the sub-genre that we are
00:27:49telling within the super genre of a comic book adaptation or superhero movie. And I think that's
00:27:54where you, as an artist, where you can really start to have fun because you get all these,
00:27:57so, it's happening in Hollywood now, and everybody can speak to this, it's one of the reasons why
00:28:01everyone around this table is lucky enough to get stuff made, is that genre material,
00:28:07whether it's horror or science fiction or thriller or action, is sort of pushed out a lot of drama.
00:28:14Studios are making less and less dramas, they're even making less and less comedies. And so if you
00:28:18can smuggle those kinds of movies, what used to be called sort of mid-size movies, the 50 million
00:28:24dollar drama doesn't exist anymore, the 50 million dollar comedy rarely exists anymore. If you can
00:28:28smuggle that and some of those themes into this very digestible genre, then you can have more fun.
00:28:37Yeah, we talk about that with, it's funny exactly the same way, but using different,
00:28:41what I always tell our directors is that our movies, our low budget horror movies, should play like
00:28:47Sundance dramas, like Sundance independent movies. And I always encourage them to think about
00:28:53if you remove all the scares, will the movie be a good stand, will the movie work? Will the story,
00:28:59will it be a fun movie to watch? Would it be a Sundance movie? So, so I think one of
00:29:03the terrific
00:29:04things about genre is that it's a, it's a delivery system for stories that don't go to the big screen
00:29:09anymore. Yeah. Well, we, I, you call smuggling delivery system, I, we call, I refer to it as a
00:29:14Trojan horse basically, because it's true you have, you know, and, and what you have is you have genre,
00:29:20which was formerly kind of, you know, marginalized as the kind of less respectable kind of storytelling.
00:29:26Yeah. It has moved. It's like, we're not even talking about that anymore. We have a round table
00:29:31about the damn thing. Yeah. And it's like, whether it's get out or whether it's a quiet place or,
00:29:35you know, whether it's stranger things or any of this stuff that we work on,
00:29:39none of us spend time going, well, how can we service the genre tropes more? That stuff feels
00:29:44more innate. And we spend at least on stranger things on arrival, which is a movie I produced last
00:29:49year. We're spending our time on character relationships, you know, kind of theme and stuff that you would be
00:29:55asking about any comedy or drama. They just happen to have the kind of trappings of genre appeal.
00:30:01We've always approached Jessica Jones exactly like that. I mean, it's noir is, is what it is.
00:30:06Yeah, right. It's a detective series. And, um, you know, what I say to all of our directors is,
00:30:11you know, if it looks like it came out of a comic book panel, that's not what I want to
00:30:15see. This is
00:30:15not, you know, we don't shoot it as if it's a comic book, you know, series. So that the look
00:30:22is very,
00:30:23in fact, we based our look in some ways with one of our models was Chinatown and not necessarily
00:30:27the palette, but the, the, you know, the very still cinematic frames and a lot of foreground.
00:30:33So, you know, we've had a lot, a lot of the lovely responses we've gotten is from people who,
00:30:38who are like, oh, I don't like superhero movies or I don't like genre, whatever it is, but
00:30:43shockingly, I really like yours. It's probably because I don't actually, I'm like the opposite of
00:30:47you. I don't have the, I don't have the background and, uh, what's Chinatown? What are you talking
00:30:51about? Something really fun. So I bring my own sort of, you know, separation from it. And because
00:30:58the comic book stuff is all there, the genre is all there. So I don't need to lean into it.
00:31:02It's,
00:31:02you know, it's the ground on which we're building the rest of our world. Well, I just want to say,
00:31:06I don't know what you guys are talking about with all this Trojan horse stuff, because Walking Dead
00:31:09is not a soap opera at all. I mean, we're a family drama, you know, that's what we are. We're
00:31:16a
00:31:16family drama. And sometimes I forget that these people actually have to have something
00:31:21fantastical happen. Something's really fun about, um, the notion of protecting that theatrical
00:31:27experience is that's kind of like in the past, that's kind of been like a snobby, like my movie has
00:31:32to be seen in this way. And now you cannot say the protect, the theatrical experience has to be
00:31:40protected and also not embrace genre. You just can't do it anymore, which is, which is kind of
00:31:45fun for all of us. It was moving genre out of the ghetto into the mainstream. And I think it's
00:31:50fun if,
00:31:51in fact, it's, it's your voice. I think you can't fake it. I mean, I think it's not like,
00:31:57I think a lot of the people that, uh, are more naturally pure drama or comedy writer directors
00:32:03have moved into television. And I think the people who love genre, who loved Star Wars and Terminator
00:32:09and all the die art and all the great movies that we were all kind of roughly the same age,
00:32:13we all grew up on. Um, those people now, like Sean was saying, have moved from the margins into the
00:32:20center, very much the center. And the fanboys and fangirls that we're talking about are actually
00:32:24the most vocal in the echo chamber of the internet. They are the loudest voice,
00:32:28even if they are not the largest majority, they are the loudest voice.
00:32:31High school was tough, but we won.
00:32:34Well, having, having written the, the, all the Twilight movies, I will tell you there is nothing,
00:32:40no one more fierce, a critic than a tween girl that you take your life into your own hands if
00:32:46you
00:32:47mess with their stuff. TV has become so big and has so many great stories it's telling right now. And
00:32:53Jason, I know with Sharp Objects, it was originally planned as a film and now it's, it's moving to TV.
00:33:00How hard was it to make that switch? And was that made sort of as TV became what it did?
00:33:05It was, it was relatively hard. We, we optioned the book a long time ago and Marty Noxon, uh, is
00:33:10the one
00:33:11who had the idea she came to. And we were, we were trying to do it as a movie and
00:33:14it was just falling into
00:33:16exactly what you said. Kind of it's even though it's, it is genre, there's a lot of drama in it
00:33:21and there's a lot of character work. And, um, and Marty pitched it as a, as, as a series
00:33:27to me a long time ago. And definitely that was very exciting to me, but there were other financiers,
00:33:33other people involved and it took a long time to actually shift it to, um, to be able to tell
00:33:38it in
00:33:38a longer format, but it's definitely, definitely found the right home. Excuse me? You think bad
00:33:43things didn't happen to little girls when she was my age? I know they did. And you like, and look
00:33:47what
00:33:48happened to her. You need to understand your sister does not see herself in a good light. It's caused
00:33:53her difficulty. You need to be careful with Camille. She is not someone to be admired. What difficulty?
00:33:59No. Look at me. Look at me. You are not safe around her. Do you understand me?
00:34:08I think that's, there's a really cool thing going on. We're doing it. We're doing something with
00:34:11The Purge where we're, we're the fourth Purge movie opens in July and The Purge TV series is going to
00:34:18premiere, uh, 60 days after our July date, uh, in October. And we've, we're, we're starting to, we're,
00:34:25we're, we're, we start to shoot in three weeks or whatever. And we have, uh, 10 episodes of The
00:34:29Purge going on in TV. The stories are going to be a little bit, you know, it's going to be
00:34:34promoted
00:34:34at the very end of the movie, but there's going to be, it's going to be a different storyline
00:34:37between the movies and the TV series. And it'll be an interesting experiment to see how, see how that
00:34:41goes. Well, we've done that on the X-Men, um, franchise with Legion and Gifted. Um, they're totally
00:34:47different, um, in their relationship to the, to, to the movies. Gifted is actually in, within roughly the
00:34:54universe of the films. Um, and Legion that Noah Hawley created is entirely its own thing. It
00:34:59plays by its own rules. When, when someone here was talking about like giving away secrets, like
00:35:04I couldn't give away secrets to Legion. Cause like, I think the only person that fully understands is,
00:35:08is Noah. Um, so like, I'm like the fans where I'm like, I have theories about what's happening,
00:35:13but I'm not a hundred percent sure. Tell me something and don't screw with me. Okay.
00:35:21Am I, am I really here? Cause if I'm not, and I wake up back there with him and you're
00:35:32here,
00:35:34Hey, you're here with me. And I won't let anything bad happen to you.
00:35:42I'm curious when it comes to expanding these worlds, whether it's, uh, you know, a spinoff or a,
00:35:48I think you've worked on like nine X-Men. I don't know. I honestly have lost track.
00:35:53If you count Deadpool and the Logan movies. Yeah.
00:35:58He knows that too. Exactly.
00:36:13I do want to talk about who tells stories in genre. Um, Melissa, I know the second season
00:36:18Jessica Jones was directed by all women and Selim, I know black lightning had a really diverse slate of
00:36:23directors, but in general, I would say genre is, is not a diverse home, uh, for storytellers.
00:36:30Do you, are there conversations going on now more than ever about getting more diverse voices,
00:36:37more diverse directors? The audience is diverse. You know, we were, we horror movies skew female,
00:36:4355% female. Um, so it obviously makes sense that, that there should be more, there should be more
00:36:50at least low budget, scary movies made by women, by, by minorities, African American, Hispanic,
00:36:57you know, they also, they also skew much larger to those audiences. So it would certainly make
00:37:01sense that those are the, those are the voices of the movies. And I think it's starting.
00:37:05The short answer is I, I'm sure we would all, those conversations are very much happening.
00:37:12And, and, and I think over the next couple of years, you're going to see the outgrowth of that.
00:37:18Yeah, I think it's going to be fantastic. But those conversations are pervasive, constant,
00:37:22and there's a massive and rightful course correction taking place. Um, that's certainly on
00:37:28everything that I'm working on, both in film and in television. So I assume, again, it's not going to
00:37:33happen instantly, but it's going to happen. I think it's happening a largely though,
00:37:37because of commercial reasons as if I think like Hollywood's asleep, you know, and get out
00:37:41does what it doesn't. It's a, it's a, it's a wise commercial decision. It's not because everyone's
00:37:47being nice, you know, we've been having this conversation since soul food and girlfriends,
00:37:52you know, we, we've been having that conversation and hiring in the way that we always hired as diverse.
00:37:59I mean, I've always felt like I've worked in a genre because there was a time when if you
00:38:03did black television, that was considered a genre. Yeah. You know, I would, I remember when
00:38:08one of our shows got canceled, I was up to direct a pilot and they looked at my resume and
00:38:14they said,
00:38:14but you've only done black shows. And I said, well, it's not like I'm directing animal. I mean,
00:38:19it's not like I'm directing human beings telling stories. And I think with Mara, especially,
00:38:24she's very much about promoting women and always been, always been that way. And with me,
00:38:29I've just always wanted a diverse because I think a diverse writing room and a diverse crew,
00:38:36because I think it adds to what you're doing because you have all of this different energy
00:38:41walking around and just hearing someone accent may trigger something in your own creativity that makes
00:38:47you say, Oh, you know that it may be good if this came from a Latin perspective. So we've had
00:38:52that
00:38:53conversation for, for a while. And I think, I hope, because the only way that these things will
00:38:59really change is if the conversations are going on and, you know, show runners and casting directors
00:39:04and people who honestly want to see some sort of change. Well, at the Oscars, Francis McDormand brought
00:39:10up the idea of inclusion writers. Is that something you think would be actually possible at any of your
00:39:16companies or any of your shows or something actually in writing about having more diverse?
00:39:21No, I personally, I wouldn't put it in writing because I've been doing it so long that, you know,
00:39:28it's like almost to me, it would be an insult for me to have to write something down. I've been
00:39:32doing
00:39:32this. And so I think if anybody were to come to me, they would come to me and say, how
00:39:36do you do this?
00:39:37Because we've been doing it. I don't think people, and I also don't think people should be forced
00:39:42because if it's forced, it's not going to work. And if it's not part of your heart,
00:39:47if it's not a part of you as a person, then I think you should shy away from it because
00:39:51it's going
00:39:51to change. It's going to change. Well, you're changing it. Ava's changing it. I'm going to help
00:39:58change it. I mean, just thinking about the DGA, for those of you who are directors, the DGA put into
00:40:04place that, you know, every show had to hire two women. And the attitude about that was just horrific.
00:40:09I mean, in the executive suites, it's like, oh God, we got to get the chick in there and she's
00:40:13going to suck and all that. But I think that helped female directors get some experience under the
00:40:20belt, some credits under the belt. Do you?
00:40:21I do. I know.
00:40:22Because every program that I've ever sort of heard about, it's just to your point, it's just a program
00:40:30for corporate America to be able to say we have a program. Whereas I think showrunners and showrunners,
00:40:37the people who actually hire are the change makers. They're going to, if you hire someone,
00:40:43you're making change. If you put someone in a program, you're making them an example.
00:40:47Well, I'm not talking about a program. I agree that the programs are useless.
00:40:52Well, there's a middle ground, which I actually think is super effective. SAG has the,
00:40:57that minority, the minority rule. We cast our, if you cast a certain amount of minorities,
00:41:03it's a, you, you pay a lower rate. It hits you in the pocketbook. I think that gets,
00:41:09gets us used to thinking in a different way. It's definitely affected our, our casting a lot.
00:41:15Yeah. To your point about earlier though, I'm sorry, but to your point about it, I think what's,
00:41:19what's driving this is the, the fact that people now know that there's a business out there.
00:41:26Yes. Yes. Yes. And you're not going to be able to tell authentic stories. Yeah. If you don't hire
00:41:34people who know how to authentically tell those stories. Yeah. I could always watch TV and tell,
00:41:39oh, a white writer, write a white writer wrote that about a black person. So you got to find some
00:41:45authenticity. And I think that's what's selling now. Well, I was just going to say as a, uh,
00:41:50a straight white male, you can never underestimate the ignorance of a straight white male.
00:41:54And so I think that, uh, you know, I'm don't know the ins and outs of all these programs,
00:41:59but I think that, uh, uh, if there is an incentive program that makes you hire more, uh,
00:42:04women and minorities, it encourages you. It, it, it makes you think about that in a way that
00:42:09we often don't, you know, like, I don't think that people are necessarily
00:42:14aiming to not hire women and minorities. It's just something that we don't think about,
00:42:18which is the unfortunate, you know, thing. It's the people around the table that move,
00:42:22the move the needle here, right? It's the producers, the people, to your point,
00:42:25Salim, it's the people who hire. I remember the first season on person of interest named
00:42:30Hassler called me and said, you have to hire at least one female director. I thought we're doing
00:42:3323 episodes. That's ridiculous. We'll hire, we'll go 50, 50. Um, I couldn't hire one female director.
00:42:40They were all booked. All the ones that the studio and the network would sign off on,
00:42:44they were all booked. In terms of getting a higher representation of women in, in,
00:42:48in the director's chair, it goes all the way down the line with the production.
00:42:52When you're a producer, you have to hire women in your camera department. You have to
00:42:56hire them in your AD department. You have to hire them in your writing staff. You know,
00:42:59it's, it's, it's kind of up to us when we look to programs. I think they, you know,
00:43:02there's definitely an argument to be made about the efficacy of that. Um, but there is a personal
00:43:06responsibility here. You, you know, you have to take it, take the bull by the horns and, and start
00:43:12changing it, making the world the way you want it to. I think, um, sort of along these lines,
00:43:17we've heard a lot, um, about the gender pay gap lately. You know, it came out that Claire
00:43:22Fulpoi had actually gotten less than Matt Smith on the crown. And there've been other, um, sort of
00:43:27things revealed about the pay difference between men and women when it comes to actors. Are any of you
00:43:33having conversations about when you have a big ensemble cast, is everyone getting what they deserve?
00:43:38To do it with actors is very complicated because if the man is more famous than the woman, the man,
00:43:45and if the woman is more famous than the man, then the, the woman should make more. Now,
00:43:49clearly there have been instances where that has not happened, but the problem and what really does
00:43:54not help the argument is to insist on parody when the, the level of celebrity is different.
00:44:00Cause that's, that makes men or the size of role or the size of role. Exactly. There are a lot
00:44:05of
00:44:05factors. It's definitely not fair, but the pendulum went too far the other way and it's got to kind
00:44:11of be straightened out. So I'll, I'll, I'll say a version of that. When we did these new deals with
00:44:17our cast, what I can definitely tell you is it was not even a little bit gender based. It was
00:44:23based on
00:44:23the narrative weight of the show, the cultural footprint of the show, and really thinking about
00:44:29these characters and these performers in those terms, not even, not even slightly about whether
00:44:35someone was male or female. And it is complicated, not specific stranger things, because there's that
00:44:40whole story similarly about Wahlberg and Michelle Williams on Ridley's movie. And, you know, we film
00:44:46and television traditionally has been a quote based business, which means what you get paid is what
00:44:51is, is based on what you have been paid. And so there have been instances where it is absolutely a
00:44:57gender bias that is inarguable, indefensible, and kind of just ridiculous and, you know, has to go.
00:45:04There's other situations where it is based on body of work that, again, is not related to gender as
00:45:09much as history. Right. And on quotes. And so these are, we could spend a whole round table on that
00:45:16topic
00:45:16only to say it's, it's incredibly complex. It is complex. For, you know, my wife and I run Westworld
00:45:22together. So this is an issue that we take home with us every day. We felt very strong about it.
00:45:27I think
00:45:27the pendulum still has a little ways left to go. Oh, it definitely does. I'm not suggesting it's
00:45:32a problem. But what I'm saying is what's, it's not helping the pendulum move where it should
00:45:37when you use gender to push for really unequal or unjust pay scales. That's not, that's not helpful
00:45:46to moving the pendulum. The pendulum is not there yet. We, I totally agree. And, but, but to your point,
00:45:51the way that television works, people come in with a quote and the problem with the quote is it may
00:45:55be
00:45:55based on it. That's true. That's, that's the problem with the quote. But for the first couple
00:45:59seasons, it's, it's, it's rational on a level or the first season for sure, when you have no idea
00:46:03what you have, it's, it's rational on some level that you come in with a quote. I'm very proud on
00:46:07our show that moving forward, we'll be in a, in a position in which all our leads are getting paid
00:46:12the same because the show is a hit and the, you know, the contributions of each and every one of
00:46:18our
00:46:18leads is part of that being a hit. To your point, Robert, it's the workload. Everyone's in there
00:46:23working their ass off and they should be getting paid the same. HBO recently said that they were
00:46:28going through every show to make sure there were no issues with this. Was your show part of that
00:46:33review? Uh, it wasn't a review. Lisa and I have been pushing for three years to get to this place.
00:46:38As soon as you know, as soon as the first season hit, we were already in production on the second
00:46:41season. We knew that we had the, the leverage to negotiate in part on behalf of our actors and
00:46:49ourselves and everyone else to say, it's a hit. You gotta, you know, you've got to make, we're
00:46:52gonna make this right. Uh, luckily we're working with a fantastic network whose head was in the
00:46:57same place. It was a very easy conversation. So when it comes to, you know, the, I don't know,
00:47:04fifth season, sixth season of a show, the ninth movie in a franchise, uh, how concerned are you
00:47:09all with barrier to entry with getting new fans to something, uh, a story that's been told for
00:47:15several seasons or years now? Is that something you talk about? I mean, I feel like the modern,
00:47:20like climate of availability as far as entertainment goes, uh, helps us get past that. I think that,
00:47:25you know, Walking Dead is going into its ninth season. If it was 15, 20 years ago, we would be
00:47:30trying to cater the season to people who had never watched the show before. Um, but the fact that you
00:47:35can, I could basically pull my phone out and just go on Netflix on my phone and watch season one
00:47:41and
00:47:41just like get caught up. And so it becomes a little bit of a, you know, one thing we discuss
00:47:45is,
00:47:46you know, are we going to get any viewers who hear about Walking Dead and are like, well,
00:47:49I'm going to sit down and watch eight seasons now in preparation for the ninth season. That's
00:47:53something we worry about. But as far as, uh, uh, you know, like if, if people are all caught up
00:47:58or,
00:47:58I think that it's, it's possible for people to get out there and it's very easy for them to,
00:48:03you know, dive into that show. And as long as everything's available, it's not something that
00:48:07we're really concerned about. I think the, I feel the obligation is, is, is if I understand
00:48:11your question correctly, I feel the obligation is the opposite. It's not actually a barrier of entry
00:48:15in terms of catching the audience up. It's actually a barrier of catching the audience off guard that
00:48:21you actually on the fourth, fifth season on the ninth film, like you were saying, seventh film,
00:48:26however many you can tell me that I've worked on an X-Men. Um, you, you, you want audiences to
00:48:30feel
00:48:31that it's not the same movie that they saw 20 years ago, or it's not, it is as fresh as
00:48:35any other movie
00:48:36out there. It's not being actually compared to previous X-Men movies. It's, it's not, it's being
00:48:40compared to Black Panther and to Avengers and to, uh, Arrival and to anything within the, all of the
00:48:46genre spaces we're talking about. And I think there is an obligation as an artist to keep evolving.
00:48:51And there's an obligation when you're working on a franchise to have it keep feeling fresh, as fresh
00:48:56as the first one did 20 years ago. And that's a very hard thing to do. Yeah. You know, nine
00:49:00movies in
00:49:01or 10 seasons in or whatever it is. Um, but that is our obligation as artists. Ideally, original IP
00:49:08really old original IP should be used as a marketing tool for new stories. That's ideally what, what we're
00:49:16all trying to do. And sometimes we succeed and sometimes we don't, but it's a way to, it's,
00:49:20it's a way to get people in to see your new, your new story. And I think when you repeat,
00:49:24you fail.
00:49:25Absolutely. And if you're going back even to, let's say our collective childhoods in like the seventies
00:49:30and eighties, the movies that sequelized and just repeated, like after, I could name a lot,
00:49:36but I won't. I love Escape from LA. What are you talking about? Yeah. When you feel that you,
00:49:41you've, especially now with all the different, uh, you know, places that people can go for,
00:49:46for entertainment and for storytelling, if you're not fresh and people feel like you're just a
00:49:51retread of something that they've seen before, they're not going to leave their house and park their
00:49:55car and get a babysitter and turn their phone off and sit there for two hours in the dark,
00:49:58you know, in some place, they're just simply not. They, there is a need to evolve that makes the
00:50:05audience feel like there's a need to see. And I think to your point, please, no, go ahead.
00:50:09That goes, it applies absolutely to television, um, and, you know, doing one season after another.
00:50:15And, you know, fortunately on, on premium cable and streaming, probably more so than network, but,
00:50:20um, you know, you, you, you take, it's an enormous risk that you take, you know, because you're like,
00:50:25we had kill grave and Jessica Jones first season, which he was, you know, this, everyone loved
00:50:30hating kill grave and not wanting, as I said before, not wanting to repeat ourselves went with
00:50:37entirely different kind of villain, non-villain. And, you know, it's like you put that out into
00:50:43the world, you go, Oh my God, they're going to kill me because I don't have kill grave. And sure
00:50:47enough, some people did, but I mean, when I was writing on Dexter way back, it was like every year
00:50:53we'd have to just completely do something different. We were, you know, successful a lot
00:50:58of the time, sometimes we weren't, and it's always terrifying and always a huge risk, but you're
00:51:03not, you know, we're not doing our jobs if we're not, we're pushing ourselves.
00:51:07Right. And I think to your point about passion and, and keeping that sort of passion about what
00:51:12you're doing, not just doing it because it's a great job. If it feels like that, you either get
00:51:17someone younger and have them come in and, and, and do it for you. And I think, so to your
00:51:22point,
00:51:22not getting the passion beat out of you, it really, you can come back that following
00:51:27season and be passionate about what you want to say and what you want to do, I think takes
00:51:31that fear away.
00:51:33To those of you who want running shows, do you have an idea in your head how many seasons
00:51:38would be enough seasons and you would actually want to be the one to end it before it ends
00:51:44time?
00:51:49Like a hundred for me. I'm kidding.
00:51:51You know, it used to be in television. That's what you're aiming for, you know, a hundred
00:51:55episodes. And we've had three series, I think, go to that. I, I, one of them, I think should
00:52:01have been canceled like five years before it was canceled, but I think I, which one?
00:52:06Yeah, right. My wife would kill me if I didn't, but I think, I think for me now, it just
00:52:12depends
00:52:12on what I just said. For me, it depends on how passionate I am to go walk in that room
00:52:16and tell stories with, with the, with the writers and the people that I work with. You know,
00:52:21I really enjoy the atmosphere that we create. And long as I'm doing that, as long as I'm
00:52:26getting up and I'm like, Oh fuck, I gotta go to work. Then I'm happy.
00:52:30So you guys, we're going to, we're going to start to wrap things up with some lighter,
00:52:34fun, lightning round question.
00:52:37Excellent.
00:52:38So I'd love to start with, who or what do you turn to, to decompress from the stress of
00:52:44your job?
00:52:45I can answer this already. Angry Birds and CNN at the same time.
00:52:49Wow.
00:52:50I know. I'm embarrassed to say it, but it's true.
00:52:52You said it earlier, so it is true.
00:52:54It's true.
00:52:54Privately.
00:52:55Because he said it off.
00:52:56I said, instead of a vodka, I have 45 minutes of Angry Birds and CNN. And somehow,
00:53:00I find that very soothing.
00:53:01Well, I get it.
00:53:01It shows you my twisted brain.
00:53:03The news soothing.
00:53:05I, you know, I, I have four daughters. And so like, I, I've told my daughters that,
00:53:10you know, once upon a time, there was this idea that when mom or dad would come home from
00:53:14work, there was, you know, leave them alone for a minute. Let them decompress. Let mom or dad
00:53:19have their, whatever it was, right? The second, I literally, I'm sure everyone around this
00:53:24table has done 20 phone calls a day in their driveway. Yeah. Because I know that when I walk
00:53:31in the door, it's the off switch for the workday and the on switch for dad. And so, and you
00:53:36know,
00:53:36I'm going to get, and by the way, it's awesome. Yeah. It's exhausting, but that is also my
00:53:41decompression. That's why I come home later and later every day. Why do you think we're here right
00:53:46now? For me, it's about watching all your shows and movies. That's, I just zone out and watch how
00:53:53other people do it. It's glad it's not, I don't have to just, you know. I'm glad I'm not involved.
00:54:01Everyone here, I watch that. That looked difficult.
00:54:05Wow.
00:54:07For me, it's kids, baseball games and basketball games. I have the best,
00:54:12most relaxed time at those, at those places and just hanging out with my wife. We work together,
00:54:17but we have the same rule that once we cross that threshold, it's just us and we're best friends. So
00:54:23family, family is it for me. Yeah, I can answer both questions at once. It's my children. We've
00:54:29had one child per season. So Westworld, two seasons. How many children do you want to have?
00:54:35It is interesting that you didn't answer the earlier question about how many seasons you want.
00:54:40Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. All right, guys, our next one here. What were you afraid of as a
00:54:45kid? Ghosts. Snakes. Zodiac killer. Really? Wow. You took it to a real place. I know. You reminded me,
00:54:53I was afraid of the Atlanta killer. I was afraid of the Night Stalker when I was in LA growing
00:54:57up,
00:54:58actually. Who was the Atlanta killer? It's narcissism. I don't know. Who was the killer in Atlanta?
00:55:03The member of the Atlanta? I was worrying about snakes. Wayne Williams. What was that? Wayne Williams.
00:55:09Yeah, Wayne Williams. You're from the Bay Area. Exactly. Bay Area at that time. I grew up in
00:55:14Richmond, California. I'm sorry? I grew up in Richmond, California. So you were around that
00:55:17town. So I was afraid of police. All we had in Kentucky were tornadoes. And ghosts. And ghosts,
00:55:25apparently. Oh, man. All right. What is- No one has him. No one has him. Look at him. Just
00:55:35look at him.
00:55:36What would he have to be scared of? No, I had two older brothers that had a VHS copy of
00:55:40the movie Alien,
00:55:42right? And older brothers, right? So I'm the baby. I was the youngest brother. And so I would come home
00:55:47way after school as latchkey kid. I come home way after school age six, seven, eight, and I would watch
00:55:51five more seconds of Alien. I know the first 45 seconds of Alien better than any. And I would
00:55:57just try to advance a little bit further. So my fear is, you know, a parasitic alien life form.
00:56:06That's a good one. Yeah. What superhero power do you wish you had? Oh, invisible. Really?
00:56:11Definitely. That means you're a creep. I know. I'd love to spy on everyone. Only a creepy person
00:56:18wants to be invisible. I know. I know. I'll take it. I say flight, but secretly invisible. Yeah.
00:56:24I think the stopping time for me, I suspect it's for everybody. That would be good, too.
00:56:28It's like all of us. Oh, that's the better. I want that one instead.
00:56:33I get to ask this question a lot. Does the stopping time only work for you, or does it work
00:56:38for everyone?
00:56:38Only for... So everyone freezes around you? Everyone's still frozen. You're not frozen.
00:56:43Really? Oh, yes. That's the best one. That's the best one. No, but that's like,
00:56:46I thought you were going metaphorical, fear of death, mortality. No, no, no. So you're still advanced.
00:56:51It's like, it's, you know, 28-hour days. It's how you do whatever you want to do. You have your
00:56:56private time. You also have time to do more work, less work, watch more basketball, watch listen
00:57:00to more music. That would be the superpower that I would... That's a great one.
00:57:04But you are aging. Better than invisibility, too. But you would be invisible, because
00:57:09they would all be unconscious. You would be. Yes, right. I was saying you'd still be aging,
00:57:12though, and everyone frozen. I don't mind. Yeah. That's okay. I hadn't thought that all
00:57:16the way through. I didn't know you were actually offering a superpower. That's so good. I did
00:57:19not know you were. There was the surprise. All right, guys. Our last one here. Do you have
00:57:25a question that you wish fans would stop asking about one of your projects? Fans are like,
00:57:29when am I going to get to see fill-in-the-blank? Yeah. And there's a certain point at which
00:57:33you're kind of like, you're going to see it when it's ready and awesome. And before then,
00:57:38you're not going to want to see it. Trust me. That's another good answer. That's a great
00:57:42answer. Thanks, guys. I feel like this panel. I like this panel.
00:57:47Mine's like, when are Jessica and Trish going to become lovers? I'm like, can't they just be
00:57:51good friends? No, no, they can't. No, no. Okay, you bring Barb back. Yeah. I'll have them.
00:57:58All right. Great. See, let's go. Bro, bring you something.
00:58:02Jonathan, I assume there's 8,000 West Road questions. No, I don't ever want them to stop
00:58:07asking questions. I love the fact they ask questions. As long as I don't have to listen
00:58:10to them. This is because he's not on social media. Not on social media. Yes, he doesn't hear the
00:58:16questions. Yes, exactly. Very smart. I love the fans, but I get this. I get the same question
00:58:24from a lot of different people where they'll come up and they'll say, it's not even really
00:58:29a question. Why am I answering that? Anyway, they'll come up to me and they'll say, I've
00:58:33got this great idea for a character. And they'll go into this huge description of all the ins
00:58:39and outs of this character. And five minutes into it, I start noticing that they're describing
00:58:45themselves and attributes that they clearly have. And then at the end of it, they always
00:58:50say, and I would be perfect for this character. Perfect for this character. And I'm talking
00:58:56like conventions, sometimes on Twitter, like people that are not actors that have never
00:59:00acted before in their lives. And it's just, why do they do that? I don't know. But that
00:59:05one I wish would stop because so many people do it. It's crazy.
00:59:08It's also one that's like, you know, this great idea for a movie. It's, you know, one line
00:59:13and I'd be willing to give you a piece of it.
00:59:16Like, I have one question for Sean to end. Is it true that the set of a genre, either
00:59:22movie or TV show is much more fun than the set of a comedy?
00:59:26Um, I will, that's a very, uh, unexpected question. Uh, people, it is often more fun
00:59:32because people who work in comedy have a darkness in them that is darker than genre.
00:59:37I always say this and no one believes me.
00:59:39This is coming from you. Yeah, no, people who devote themselves to comedy, there's an innate
00:59:43darkness that actual people who work in dark genre don't have. Don't have. So, good question.
00:59:49Sean, thank you. And I think a true final answer.
00:59:51I have a good answer.
00:59:53And we're getting a bonus question.
00:59:55Don't take your mic.
00:59:56Let's run.
00:59:56Great to see you next time.
01:00:20Transcription by CastingWords
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