EXECUTIVE EDITOR, INTERNATIONAL & STRATEGY Andreas Wiseman
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CALL SHEET
ON THE COVER
Richard Gadd and Jessica Gunning photographed exclusively for Deadline by Violeta Sofia.
Styled by Sarah Harrison; hair by Chad Maxwell; make-up by Zoe Taylor and grooming by Sandra Hahnel at Caren using Shiseido.
In Lessons in Chemistry, creator Lee Eisenberg flipped the script to give Aja Naomi King a fresh and powerful role.
By Antonia Blyth
Premiere
6 JONATHAN PRYCE
The artist formerly known as Prince Philip talks about life during and after The Crown
JAMIE LEE CURTIS
The Oscar winner explains how Inspector Columbo's donut led to a guest spot on The Bear
12 THE JINX: PART 2
How Andrew Jarecki came to find many more skeletons in Robert Durst's closet.
14 PLAY IT AGAIN, SAMURAI
Deconstructing the enigmatic title sequence on the surprise FX hit Shōgun
Cover Story
18 HE SAID, SHE SAID
Behind the scenes of Netflix hit Baby Reindeer, with stars Richard Gadd and Jessica Gunning.
The importance of being early, a Freaky Friday re-do and some drugstore candy.
By Antonia Blyth
Setting sail on a sea of sand for a voyage to feudal Japan.
By Ryan Fleming
Richard Gadd bares his soul to deliver a hit that moves viewers.
By Joe Utichi
PREMIERE
The Prince’s Tale
Jonathan Pryce relished his Prince Philip role in The Crown and ditched his previous retirement plan: “I’m having a great time”
BY BAZ BAMIGBOYE
Jonathan Pryce was more than ready to portray Prince Philip when the call came five years ago for him to embody Queen Elizabeth’s consort in the Netflix drama hit The Crown “He’s someone I’ve lived with all my life,” he says.
From a distance, of course.
“He’s been part of my life, part of all our lives, since 1953, when I watched the Queen’s Coronation aged six,” he says. His family, in Carmel in Flintshire, North Wales, was one of the first on their street to have a television set.
Those memories were summoned once the call came, seven decades later, to play the man, who in public at least, was always seen walking behind his sovereign; hands clasped in the small of his back, his anointed spouse’s “strength and stay”.
Once Pryce burrowed into the whopping reams of background “the size of a book”, given him by The Crown’s “enormous research department”, he realized that the Duke of Edinburgh, the title conferred upon him when they wed in 1947, “wasn’t this dour person” marching dutifully in his wife’s shadow. “He’s a very vibrant, funny, intelligent man,” says Pryce.
“It was great to discover all the things l didn’t know about Philip,” he says, citing the exacting patriarch’s relationships outside of the royal family—his polo-playing friends, his joy of life, his intellect. “It’s very educative learning about him and enormous fun playing him.”
Looking back at the final two seasons of the show, penned by Peter Morgan, in which Pryce appears, he admits to there having been a “little twinkle”, at times, in the duke’s eye when he played him, especially in scenes where he’s with his grandsons William and Harry, played (as older teenagers) by Ed McVey and Luther Ford.
Philip, it’s widely known and acknowledged, had “difficulties” with Prince Charles, now King Charles, when the monarch was a lad. Philip was accused of being cold and aloof toward his eldest son, although it’s often been argued that he was toughening the princeling up for what was to come.
However, Pryce reports that playing opposite Dominic West’s Charles was simply delicious. “It was a lot of fun being horrible to Charles, and Dominic West used to cry, ‘This is terrible! Why are you being so horrible to me?’ And I loved it,” he laughs.
But he rather would have liked to turn the heat up a few more degrees opposite West with “more of Philip’s acerbic wit.” Historically, Philip was known for his long list of shocking verbal gaffes. “I think we could have got a few more gaffes in there. That would have livened it up a bit,” Pryce says.
Because Pryce was playing Philip as an “older and wiser man” who was “slowing down a bit”, he had time for his grandchildren.
“I think you see elements of yourself in your children,” says Pryce, who has three grownup children with stage and screen artist Kate Fahy, his partner since 1972—they married in 2015. “And I think he saw elements of himself in his grandchildren.” This served as a
contrast to Phillip’s younger image as a bit of a bad-boy playboy before he married Elizabeth.
He observes that William, too, had difficulties with his own father, similar to the ones between Philip and Charles. He also notes Philip’s own lack of a father when he was younger.
“I think he wanted to make it right for William,” he says. Pryce mentions a scene where Philip goes to visit William at school at Eaton and plays chess with him “and tries to guide him”. The great thespian grows wistful for a moment. “There’s not a lot of acting required when you’re a 76-year-old actor in the twilight of your career, talking to an actor in virtually his first job, and the advice you’re giving his character, the sounds of it, mirrors the advice you’re giving to a young actor.”
Similarly, when Pryce plays David Cartwright, the patrician, one-time all-powerful British intelligence service chief in the Apple TV+ series Slow Horses, he tries to teach his James Bond wannabe grandson River Cartwright, played by Jack Lowden, the ropes.
“I give good grandfather, is what I do these days,” he chuckles. Grandfatherly or not, his career isn’t remotely slowing. He’s just received two Emmy Award nominations, in fact. One in the Supporting Actor category for his Prince Philip in The Crown,
and the other for his guest role as Cartwright in Slow Horses
So, when I gently tackle Pryce for his earlier “twilight” of his career comment, he agrees that “twilight is not the right word.”
He says: “No, I might’ve said it to you years ago that my ambition was to retire at 60 [he did indeed say that] because I didn’t want to be the old man, who’s the old actor, who’s patronized by the young actors and the crew. And once I feel that, any sense of being patronized, then I will stop. But at the moment, no, I’m having a great time. And I mean, you hear people my age saying there’s a great freedom to being older. Yes. I’m still as ambitious as ever, and I’m as ambitious to get things right as ever.”
However, he confesses to having mellowed somewhat over the years. “I’m a lot more relaxed about it now. I get upset less, I get angry less, which my family will be very happy to hear.”
But Politics can absolutely still rile Pryce. “Try being angry for 14 years,” he says, referring to the period for which the U.K. Conservative Party was in government, that is until its recent ousting by Keir Starmer’s Labour Party in the general election. That result made him “very happy”, he says.
His eyes shine too, when our discussion turns to playwright Trevor Griffiths’ play Comedians, the
Jonathan Pryce and Imelda Staunton in The Crown
first major piece of work he did upon graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
To put it into perspective: Pryce was part of the ’70s wave of RADA graduates that included Alan Rickman and Juliet Stevenson; the previous ’50s and ’60s new wave had included the likes of Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay, Glenda Jackson, John Hurt, Michael Williams and Anthony Hopkins. It took a lot to measure up to such titans of the stage and screen. Richard Eyre, then artistic director of the Nottingham Playhouse, cast Pryce as Gethin Price, one of a bunch of stand-ups waiting to do their “turns” at a local pub.
Price’s act explodes like a bomb let off on stage when he clashes with the established order by declaring that the political reality in his act is not funny, but truthful. The show transferred down to the Old Vic and then to Broadway, where Mike Nichols directed it in 1977; Milo O’Shea, John Lithgow, Armand Assante and Larry Lamb were also in the New York company. When the play was about to open at the Music Box Theatre, Pryce received a telegram saying that his father, who ran a corner shop back home in Wales, had been attacked with a hammer. But Pryce was unable to return home. Then, another telegram arrived informing him that his father had died of his injuries.
Two years later, Pryce channeled his grief into a production of Hamlet, directed by his friend Eyre. It was a Hamlet for the ages.
The one-two punch of Comedians and Hamlet catapulted his career. He was courted for movies and even bigger roles on stage.
He teamed up with Eyre again, this time to star in the movie The Ploughman’s Lunch, which was soon followed by Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, followed by The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Age of Innocence, Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Evita, Tomorrow Never Dies and a host of others. On stage he continued to dazzle, never more so than in Miss Saigon, directed by Nicholas Hytner at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane and produced by Cameron Mackintosh.
All the while, he kept in mind something the legendary acting teacher Lee Strasberg had shared with him. Pryce met Strasberg at one of his open classes and then had lunch with him, his wife Anna and Al Pacino at New York’s Joe Allen restaurant. Another time, Pryce went to Strasberg’s office and had a sandwich lunch.
“And I’m in the office, and I’m thinking, I don’t really know what to say to him, but I’m with Lee Strasberg, for god’s sake, I better ask him a question,” Pryce recalls.
The actor tells the famous acting teacher that it’s his first time on Broadway, first time doing
anything for any length of time, eight times a week for months, did he have any advice on how to keep creating the role? “And there was a silence. And he said, ‘You do it.’ And he bit his sandwich, and he chewed and he chewed. He looked up and he said, ‘It’s your job.’ That was it,” Pryce says.
“That’s the best bit of advice he could ever have given me... There you go. That’s it,” he says.
He has tickets to see his TV wife Imelda Staunton, who portrayed Queen Elizabeth in The Crown, in Hello, Dolly! at the London Palladium, where she has won rapturous raves from the critics for her portrayal of Dolly Levi.
“Yeah, she’s incredible, I’m looking forward to seeing her,” he says.
Pryce respects how Staunton dives into her work, but they still have time for laughs away from the rehearsal room or sound stage.
“We have fun chats away from a set or if we have dinner or drinks on location, but she is very focused on set. I have a different approach. I’m a bit looser,” he says, although he notes that because they’ve known each other such a long time it’s much easier for them to prepare to do a scene.
He’s had good experiences as well on Slow Horses, the fourth season of which will begin streaming on Apple TV+ in September.
There’s enjoyment he says in playing a character “who is known to have a secret, it is fun. I know that at some point they’re all going to be after him for his secrets.”
The fear is that Cartwright has developed dementia and “he’s got his head full of top-secret knowledge, and that he could just blurt anything out at any time. And that’s interesting to watch,” he says.
He and Eileen Atkins appeared in Christopher Hampton’s adaptation of Florian Zeller’s 2018 play The Height of the Storm, and it too touched upon dementia. Pryce
has been an ambassador of the Alzheimer’s Society since then and says he feels “a double responsibility to get it right and not to abuse it in any way.”
He has also recently been shooting, among several other projects, The Thursday Murder Club movie directed by Chris Columbus for Netflix and Amblin. It’s based on Richard Osman’s bestseller about a group of septuagenarians in an assisted living facility who solve murder cases. He plays the husband of Helen Mirren, whose character, a former spy, is central to the story. Pryce also reveals that “there’s a little bit of dancing” involved in The Thursday Murder Club. At some point, he had sent Columbus a link of him performing the show-stopping “The American Dream” dance number in Miss Saigon. “I said to Chris, ‘I can dance. Why don’t we do something, Helen and I?’ Because I thought it was important to show that they enjoy life as they would’ve done when they were in their 20s or 30s. So, it was a bit of jiving.”
He and Mirren dance to a Cat Stevens number, which he’s thrilled about, because since 1972, he and his wife Kate have loved Cat Stevens, “and Joan Armatrading, too”, he says. Then he moves a little to an imaginary beat. Perhaps he’s thinking of this most recent dance, or of the many others he’s yet to enjoy. Either way, there’s nothing “twilight” about it. ★
Pryce as Prince Philip.
Pryce in Slow Horses
Jamie Lee Curtis
The Bear guest star reflects on her career, starting with the fluke TV break that stopped her becoming a cop
BY ANTONIA BLYTH
Jamie Lee Curtis just knew she would be in The Bear, long before she got the part of Donna Berzatto, the alcoholic, unstable mother of the restauranteur siblings at the show’s center. While watching Season 1, Curtis had an eerie feeling. “I went, ‘I’m going to play her.’ I swear,” she says. And then she got the call. “My agent said, ‘You’ve been offered a part on The Bear.’” Curtis called the show’s creator, Christopher Storer. “I said, ‘What do you want her hair to look like?’ He sent me a picture of Monica Vitti. I said, ‘What do you want her nails to look like?’ He sent me a picture of the Desperate Housewives of New York.” Now, in the midst of shooting the much-anticipated sequel to fan favorite Freaky Friday, Curtis details how Peter Falk made her famous, her best advice, and why Lip Sync Battle missed their shot when they didn’t think to cast her.
The Job That Got Me Started I was an accidental actor. I was never going to be an actor, I was going to be a cop. I had three lines on an episode of Columbo as a grumpy waitress. Columbo comes into a restaurant with his coat all askew and his hair all crazy, and he’s holding a donut. The waitress says, “You can’t eat that here.” And he says, “OK,” and hands her the donut. She says, “Have you decided yet?” And he goes, “Yes, I’ll have a donut.” A month later, I’m walking down the street, and somebody says, “Hey, I saw you on The Tonight Show.” Peter Falk had brought that clip on the show. So, my second ever job in showbusiness, I was on The Tonight Show.
The Best Advice I Ever Received
I’m sober 25 years and [I’ve learned] advice is a form of hostility. Advice is somehow saying to
someone, “I have a better idea than you.” And I have felt that many, many, many times when people have offered advice. That doesn't mean that I can’t say to you, “What do you think I should do here?”
That is a very specific question that you can answer. But the best advice is, “Don’t give it.” The way I have adjusted it is I offer ‘suggestions’. My new favorite is, “Can I give you feedback?” But that ultimately is some form of control and some hubris and ego on my part.
My First TV Lesson Show up early. I have a production company, and whenever we have a Zoom, if we’re going to Zoom with Amazon, or we’re going to Zoom with Audible, our rule is we show up 15 minutes before. If it’s scheduled for 10 am, at 9:45 am, Comet, my company,
we’re on, and we do 15 minutes together before anybody else shows up. It’s my rule.
The Shows That Make Me Cry Everything makes me cry. I am just not a trained person. By the way, to say you’re untrained doesn’t mean you’re not thoughtful. I’m super thoughtful. I do my homework. I listen to music and watch movies and wear perfumes of the characters I'm playing. Donna’s is Shalimar, by the way. There was a TV show called My Favorite Martian. Ray Walston played a Martian, and he had these little antenna. Well, my antenna are these frequency receptors, and I am highly aware. I am highly attuned emotionally, and I cry a lot because I am moved by life. I’m just moved by the human experience.
Jamie Lee Curtis in The Bear; Peter Falk in Colombo.
The Most Fun I’ve Had On Set
I found out I was going to do the first Freaky Friday on a Thursday, and I was shooting Monday. I had a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old at home, and I was playing a 15-year-old and a 45-year-old in the movie. That was just one of those movies where you just had to just let go of everything and just go, “OK, who am I today? OK, wait, what do I do?” So that was really fun.
My Most Quoted Role
Well, “Make good choices” is the only line I’ve ever improvised in my life, and it became a banner for Freaky Friday. Donna in The Bear has that incredibly beautiful line where she says, “I make things beautiful for them. No one makes anything beautiful for me.” That feeling of being unseen, and yet so much effort is put into your life, and it isn’t responded back. Or it is, but she just can’t see it. I’ve had a lot of people say that. That line in particular really got them.
The Character That’s Most Like Me
Maybe Tess, in Freaky Friday. I’m sort of like
her a little bit. I’m a weirdo. But I know parts of everyone [I’ve played]. Even in Everything Everywhere All at Once I know Deirdre Beaubeirdre. I’ve met women who’ve been overlooked. I’ve met women who use their job for power. It’s the only power they get. Nowhere else in the world do they get any recognition. She had to have really beautiful nails because I decided that it was the one time a week that someone touched her. And I’m sure her manicurist, excuse my French, couldn’t give a shit about Deirdre.
My Guilty Pleasure
My husband and I are married 40 years. We like to watch a good show. We like to get involved in something and we both loved watching [my friend] Jodie [Foster]’s show True Detective: Night Country. But I really found my guilty pleasure when we were shooting a movie in a closed Walgreens. I said, “Is there a Walgreens employee here that can open a register?” And I went and discovered Bit-O-Honey candy. It’s probably awful for you, but I bought a few boxes. Talk about a guilty pleasure.
My Karaoke Playlist
I cannot sing. I can lip-sync like a bitch though. Fricking Lip Sync Battle, you missed your shot, baby, because I’ve been lip syncing forever because I can’t sing. Lindsay Lohan and I, when we were making the original Freaky Friday, we were stuck on a closed freeway for a driving shot. We had a cassette player in the car, and we were learning the Clipse rap from the Justin Timberlake song “Like I Love You”. She and I were writing down the lyrics to the rap, and then I think I rapped it on Jay Leno ★
A Frozen Maze
How production designer Daniel Taylor conceptualized a chilly cavern in True Detective: Night Country Quick Shot
Dark secrets lay deep below the icy surface in HBO’s detective anthology drama True Detective: Night Country. Set in the frigid fictional town of Ennis, Alaska, the show follows officers Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis), who team up after a group of scientists vanish in the middle of the night and are then found dead with their frozen bodies entangled in the snow. The investigation of their death leads the pair to unearth a conspiracy in a network of ice tunnels.
Production designer Daniel Taylor spent 14 months preparing for filming in Iceland, where he hoped to film inside an actual ice cave. However, the real caverns proved too tricky. “It was a complicated set, not only in the construction but in the pre-visualization stage,”
Taylor explains. “What we did initially was read the dialogue and work out how long our ice caves needed to be to sustain that level of dialogue, along with having Jodie and Kali move around with a camera in small spaces.”
To capture, shape and execute an organic look for the towering artificial ice caverns, Taylor turned to 3D modeler Greg Shaw, who used the gaming software Unreal Engine. “He built a model in the game engine so we could put the 3D VR headset on and walk down the ice caves. And when it came to building day?
“We ended up sectioning off the tunnels into three or four different bits, heating 8x4 sheets of plastic, and gluing them together. It was a high-concept pre-visual and then very theatrical with scissors, string and sellotape for the actual delivery of the set. Once we dressed it up and the crew started walking through it, everyone was like, ‘Oh my god. This is so convincing.’”
—DESTINY JACKSON
Clockwise from left: Jamie Lee Curtis; Ray Walston in My Favorite Martian; Curtis with Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All at Once; with Lindsay Lohan in Freaky Friday
True Detective: Night Country.
A Tangled Web
The Jinx Part 2’s Andrew Jarecki on his 20-year journey into the dark mind of convicted murderer Robert Durst
BY MATT CAREY
Filmmaker Andrew Jarecki knows that voice intimately. It has seeped into his consciousness—the distinctive New York rasp of Robert Durst, scion of a powerful New York real estate family and a man suspected of triple murder.
“Once it’s in your head, you can’t get rid of it,” he says.
Jarecki has heard that voice too many times to count: In interviews, prison phone calls, wiretaps, voicemails—the persistent, insistent whine that conveyed to Durst accomplices, enablers, attorneys, “This is what I need from you.” And his signature sign-off, “Bye bye,” uttered almost mechanically, but with an open-ended undertone that sent a message: “Until the next thing I need from you.”
“His voice was a big part of this kind of hypnotic quality of Bob,” says the director of The Jinx, parts 1 and 2. “He’s able to exert dominance through his voice and through his delivery.”
That larynx, its mesmerizing drone, got people to do things they might not otherwise have done—funnel funds to Durst when he was on the run, say, or dispose of possibly incriminating evidence, overlook his pattern of deceit and homicide. Often with the implicit promise of a payoff. Whenever things looked grim for Bob, someone always came through.
His situation looked particularly dire after the airing of the original Jinx in 2015. In a stunning scene in that series, Durst, unaware he could be heard through a wireless mic, appeared to
confess to offing three people—his first wife, Kathie, his friend Susan Berman, and a neighbor in Galveston, Texas whose dismembered body had been found bobbing in Galveston Bay. “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course,” Durst whispered to himself with that nasal whine. Authorities, armed with that recording and more vital clues discovered by Jarecki, zeroed in on Durst, who was then living in Houston. Back against the wall, Durst used his powers of persuasion, and the purse, to enlist the aid of Chris Lovell, a guy who, it just so happened, had served on the jury that acquitted Durst in the Galveston murder trial. After the trial, capital murder defendant and juror had become friends. Imagine that!
“Lovell, the juror in the Galveston case who basically got him off, then went on to help him escape from his apartment in Houston and go on the run,” Jarecki remembers. “Chris Lovell and his wife got more than $700,000 from Bob for helping.”
Susan Giordano, another Durst friend, performed similar services—making sure he had access to cash when authorities were in pursuit. He compensated her to the tune of $350,000. At Durst’s 2020 trial in Los Angeles for allegedly killing Berman—his closest friend— the chief prosecutor questioned Giordano about the arrangement.
“Your relationship consists of you and Bob talking and him sending you lots of money?”
Deputy D.A. John Lewin asked her. Giordano replied, “We also went to dinner.”
The Jinx, which won the Emmy for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series, was all about Durst and the question of whether he would face justice after people close to him kept being murdered or disappearing. Part 2, also nominated in that prestigious Emmy category, expands the lens to examine those in Durst’s orbit—alleged aiders and abettors like Giordano, friends Stewart and Emily Altman, and his second wife, Debrah Lee Charatan.
“This story was about pulling the camera back and looking at this constellation of people. It
wasn’t just, can Bob Durst sustain another six episodes? It was really, can the world that Bob Durst created for himself sustain our interest?”
Jarecki explains. “And I think the answer to that is we are fascinated by seeing ourselves on film. And when you see people committing acts or helping somebody do some very bad things, it forces you to ask yourself those questions. It forces you to say, ‘What would I have done in that situation?’ And that’s when it starts to get really interesting for me.”
The question of complicity is timely right now, Jarecki maintains, pointing to those who surrounded a certain former president of the United States while he was in office.
“You’ve got people saying, ‘Well, I wasn’t the one that did that thing. I was one of the guardrails. I wasn’t there separating children from their parents at the border. I was one of the grownups. I was trying to prevent it from being really bad.’ Oh, really? But you were accepting the title. You were accepting a government job, you were accepting your association with this regime, and yet somehow you came up with a way of explaining it to yourself or your kids that it was OK,” Jarecki charges. “And that’s what we saw in The Jinx. You see people like Susie Giordano or the Altmans just really going to the mat for Bob when they must have known that Bob was committing murders.”
Jarecki’s journey with Durst, his plunge into the man’s “life and deaths” (to quote the series’ subtitle), began almost 20 years ago. As a native New Yorker himself, he was well acquainted with Durst’s reputation.
“Bob Durst was a guy who had been suspected back in 1982 of killing his wife, Kathie,
Andrew Jarecki
and then was kind of floating around town,” he recalls. “And whenever he would show up somewhere, there’d be a little buzz about him because he seemed to be a guy who got away with killing his wife.”
Flash forward to the year 2000 when then-Westchester County D.A. Jeanine Pirro (yes, that Jeanine Pirro) reopened the case into Kathie Durst’s disappearance. She took interest in Berman, who had acted as a spokesperson for Durst after his wife went missing, and reputedly had provided him with an alibi. Durst, possibly catching wind of this, sent his friend Berman $50,000. Was it to buy her silence? Whatever the case, her silence became guaranteed after her body was discovered in her Los Angeles home, her skull shattered by a bullet to the head.
After Berman’s death, Durst hid out in Galveston, disguising himself as a mute woman. Plenty of raw material there for a screenplay.
Jarecki turned the twisted tale into the narrative film All Good Things, starring Ryan Gosling as a character very much like Durst, and Kirsten Dunst as someone very much resembling Kathie Durst, the wife who disappeared.
“I thought, well, let’s go back to the very beginning of this relationship before everything became this dark burlesque show, and let’s try to figure out what that relationship was all about, hence the casting of Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst,” Jarecki says. “It started with my interest in trying to get to the bottom of who this inscrutable person was and where he came from and what those early days were like.”
Jarecki had reached out to Durst during pre-production on All Good Things, but the centimillionaire (as the director calls him)
rebuffed him. Then, one day, the filmmaker found himself on the other end of the line from that hypnotic New York rasp.
“He called me out of the blue and he said, ‘I’ve been hearing good things about this movie. I know you called me a few years ago… I didn’t know what you were working on. Now it’s clear you’ve done something that’s thoughtful. You’ve done your homework; you’ve done your research. I’d like to see the movie.’ And then we agreed to let him see the film,” Jarecki remembers. “And that’s ultimately what led to the interviews, which became the foundation of The Jinx.”
If Durst had resisted the urge to talk to Jarecki—if he had just kept silent, as he had convinced so many others to do—he might never have gone before a jury in the killing of Susan Berman. Who knows, he might even be alive. (He died in January 2022, less than a year after he was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of Berman). Jarecki learned of Durst’s death while in the middle of an interview for The Jinx Part 2; cameras captured his reaction as he took the call informing him that a heart attack had brought an abrupt end to Durst’s life sentence.
“It was a little perplexing because I had to ask myself how I felt about it, and my emotions were more complicated,” he says. “There’s no question that I intentionally worked to make sure law enforcement had the material they needed to bring him to trial and ultimately convict him. That was a decision I never questioned. And yet getting to know him the way that I did
and seeing that he is a very damaged person, it was just extremely sad. I didn’t think to myself, ‘Well, he got his.’ I really thought, this was such a missed opportunity. This was a guy who had all the resources in the world, absolutely had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, had access to any occupation he wanted, and he could have spent his time, I don’t know, getting unfairly convicted people exonerated; he could have spent his time building homeless shelters with his money, and somehow he couldn’t find his way to that kind of occupation. And all that ended up happening was he kind of ate himself up… I just thought of the opportunity he had squandered.”
After nearly two decades on the trail of Robert Durst, the saga is receding in the rear view. Jarecki has shifted his focus to another project that seems to tingle with intrigue.
“We have been working on a feature-length documentary for the last five and a half years that I would say is confidential… because it’s a volatile subject and it’s something that we’ve needed to investigate in an undercover way,” he says. “It’s a really different project about something that is disturbing and fascinating.”
Of his process, Jarecki says this: “I feel like I wander around, and I have a lot of curiosity, and I talk to a lot of people and stories emerge… Things cross your path, and if you’re lucky, you notice.”
He adds, “Our job as storytellers is to try to be open and try to take in those little hints and clues and try to draw out stories that are going to tell us something about human beings.” ★
“It started with my interest in trying to get to the bottom of who this inscrutable person was.”
ANDREW JARECKI
Clockwise from far left: Robert Durst after his arrest; Durst on trial; Durst with his victim Susan Berman.
Sea of Zen
BY RYAN FLEMING
“The zen garden is the type of garden that’s providing people more freedom in a sense of point of view, because it’s meant to be viewed from a certain distance, and from whichever angles you are seeing objects in the garden, it provides a relativity between those rocks or the landscape and how you see things. It’s like how we follow the protagonist, John Blackthorne, because he’s a foreigner experiencing this entirely alien landscape of Japan and he’s sort of in the onlooker position the whole time. So, we thought that would be perfect to follow his ship in the sequence through the garden.”
How Shōgun main title designer Nadia Tzuo tracked the story arc through the opening sequence
Storyboard for the Shōgun main title sequence.
From far left: Osaka Castle in the sand; the landscape of the Erasmus sailing through the ocean-like zen garden.
Nadia Tzuo
EMMY ® AWARD NOMINATIONS 21
INCLUDING
OUTSTANDING COMEDY SERIES
SUPPORTING ACTRESS MERYL STREEP
“MERYL STREEP GIVES YET ANOTHER KILLER PERFORMANCE ”
THE ATLANTIC
“Using Cinema 4D, we had some good experience with creating sandy, fluid objects in our previous projects, so we decided to use a RealFlow plugin for the sand simulation.”
“We get to see the islands that represent mountains, and then you see the ocean and the villages, and you see a symbol in the sand that’s forming the family crest of Toranaga and you pass through the cross of Lady Mariko.”
“We’ve been careful with the look in the texture and details because the show has been created in such an authentic and thoughtful way, and we want to keep everything as true as possible. For example, the type of trees, or there’s a certain look of the moss on the rock for zen gardens, or even the shape of the mountains… it is so easy to let it look not like Japan if you are not careful.”
Story Beats
Palm Royale choreographer Brooke Lipton on making the script “come alive” through movement
Palm Royale presented some fun challenges for choreographer Brooke Lipton, who actually started as a dancer in the first episode.
“The biggest challenge was seeing 14 pages of dialogue of
a number and going, ‘OK, I have to make this come alive.’ It was all written really beautifully and had a lot of detail, but choreographing a number and shooting something that’s going to have no music playing while we’re doing it,
“The team of the show had been extremely supportive and helpful in providing us all the things for references and the 3D model assets. We received a lot of production shots and items actually used in the show, such as the fire arrows.”
“Some of the story beats would be shared with us as important to feature, like the earthquake, because it’s also part of the idea that everything has this sense of fragility. You see the symbols and they get blown away in no time, and then you see the mountain and it crumbles. So, it’s the prevailing sense of nothing stays forever.”
“There were so many photographs of the helmet with all of the details, so we were able to model that based on the reference. Of course, in the show, all the helmets are real because people are wearing them, so we just had to recreate them in 3D.”
that’s going to take multiple days.”
For one of the nominated numbers, “The Rhumba”, Lipton was able to rely on both her experience and research to recreate the ballroom dancing style in a modern way.
“The rhumba is a little bit easier because it’s still modern right now, with the way ballroom dancing has really come into more television,” she says. “But it was just something in seeing how people moved just a little bit differently [at the time].
Just in how people carried their body, it had a little bit of a different nuance to it.”
The bigger challenge came with the second nominated number, “Maxine’s Entrance”, which relied on set design and costumes, meaning choreography couldn’t be done until the day of shooting. “We had moving set pieces that separated, these jellyfish that were moving, and then the dancer’s
costumes were these picturesque moving artworks that took up so much vocabulary in the room that you really had to wait to see all those pieces come together in the timing.”
—RYAN FLEMING
From Left: Brooke Lipton; Kristen Wiig in Palm Royale.
Quick Shot
ofRICHARD GADD’S Netflix hit, produced for a song and released with little fanfare, beat the odds to become a surprise sensation. It made overnight stars of Gadd and his co-star JESSICA GUNNING, who have been adjusting to life in the spotlight ever since. With the tabloid press, particularly in their native Britain, stirring up reams of controversy, JOE UTICHI travels across London to meet Gadd and Gunning, as they place their emphasis on the lives their show is changing for the better.
Photographed by VIOLETA SOFIA
Richard Gadd and Jessica Gunning photographed on location in London.
Styled by Sarah Harrison; hair by Chad Maxwell; make-up by Zoe Taylor and grooming by Sandra Hahnel at Caren using Shiseido.
ichard Gadd is doing his best to stay anonymous, though it’s no longer all that easy for him. Since April 11, his has been one of the world’s most recognizable faces. He transformed physically for Baby Reindeer, losing weight to better recall the gaunt version of his younger self on which he based his new show, but his large blue eyes and high cheek bones are unmistakable now to anyone who welcomed him into their home on screen—or, perhaps, that he welcomed into his psyche—in the months since the show debuted.
We meet in North London, where Gadd has suggested a walk and talk around a local park. He moves at a pace, a large baseball cap pulled down low, and drops his volume whenever others get too near. He’s not hiding—a conversation like this could easily have been conducted in a private room somewhere if that was his preference—but he wasn’t exactly expecting the nosebleed adjustment to global fame that has followed Baby Reindeer’s huge success.
Anyone who has seen Baby Reindeer, which tells a haunting story of the abuse and stalking Gadd faced when he was an aspiring comedian in his 20s, will understand his trepidation; there’s a sense life was probably a little like this for him even before the show’s outsized reception. And the courage with which Gadd transposed his story to screen, reliving the worst of his trauma through his fictional alter-ego Donny Dunn, has been met with vast swathes of controversial stories stoked by the tabloid press. There is irony to their cries that Baby Reindeer is an irresponsible retelling of real events, given they have been the ones to spend intervening months turning the show into—in Gadd’s words—a ‘whodunnit’, determined as they are to uncover the real identities of the other characters in the piece. In part, their fervor might be fueled by the organic way Baby Reindeer broke out. The show received very little in the way of press ahead of its launch, yet audiences embraced it long before many journalists caught up. But another reason might be that Gadd’s self-critical approach to telling his story has stymied many of their attempts to sling mud. Over the course of its seven episodes, Donny dwells on his own poor judgement as though it is a devil on his shoulders. He is not the hero of Gadd’s story, merely the protagonist, and Martha, his ‘stalker’, is no villain. Life is too complicated for simplistic judgements like those, despite the desperation of today’s news media to paint such goodies and baddies.
Instead, perhaps, the better story might be to focus on what Baby Reindeer has meant to those who have seen it. The charity We Are Survivors, which dedicates itself to facilitating safe spaces for male survivors of sexual abuse and rape in Greater Manchester in the U.K., says it saw an 80% increase in first-time callers since the show aired, with 53% of callers citing Baby Reindeer as the reason they came forward. The Kent Police, too, said they had seen an uptick in reports, with Detective Chief Superintendent Emma Banks, who heads the force’s Protecting Vulnerable People command saying, “Men don’t expect to be stalked and it’s not so widely reported on, which is why Baby Reindeer was such a good program to shine a light on that very important area.”
It has also had a profound personal effect on its audience—how else to rationalize the speed with which it picked up steam, or the 11 Emmy nominations it has earned, even though it wasn’t high on Netflix’s priority list going into the season? To the streamer’s credit, they acted fast, mounting a comprehensive campaign in the wake of the overwhelming response to the show. It’s with this response in mind that Gadd and I begin our walk around his local park.
To lay my cards out from the start, I found the show a deeply cathartic experience, especially as I’ve struggled with my mental health in recent years. And though I haven’t experienced anything like what you went through, it struck at the heart of my own past traumas. You’ve found universality in something that is also so intensely personal for you. But given it is so personal, how much did all this take you by surprise too?
I’m quite moved, listening to you talk about that. I must try to remember those kinds of things that people say to me, because I do find them quite moving, and obviously there has been quite a lot of noise around the show. When I see the human impact of it, especially on an individual level, it really means a lot to me.
I remember, after the show went out, I was taking a little break, I was on holiday, and this guy came up to me and said that he’d been through something similar, though not exactly the same. Then, a little while later, he came back, only it wasn’t the same guy; it was his twin brother. He said, “Our family has been through hell, and [the show] allowed us to finally have a conversation about it.” It’s stuff like that that really helps me weather the storm, in a lot of ways.
I appreciate what you say about finding the universality in it, because I think a lot of people see it as “a stalking show”, but it’s really a show about loneliness, isolation, and the desperate need for connection. It’s not just Donny looking for that, either; it’s Martha too, and all of the characters.
It feels like the world is in a more robust place to have these conversations, despite the tabloid reaction to the show. As you say, experiences like these are isolating, and the revelation of recent years, as people have begun to talk about their traumas, is that there’s a whole world of survivors out there. Absolutely. Honestly, when I first set out, I thought what I was doing was stupid—in terms of owning up to the flaws in my own personality, and the things I got wrong—and that the easier thing to have done would have been to have Donny say, “Here’s a free cup of tea,” and then be like, “Oh, woe is me, I did this amazing gesture and now my life is falling apart.” But I guess I was bored of artistic narratives where the central person is nothing but good. Life is very complicated, and people are a mixture of positive and negative. I wanted to show that, to bring that out in the world.
I think we live in an age of almost moral enlightenment right now, where everyone is terrified of saying the wrong thing. So, to put my hand up in that age of moral enlightenment and be like, “Oh, yeah, I made these fucking stupid mistakes,” was very daunting, and it’s still daunting in the aftermath in a lot of ways. But I think, at the same time, it has led to an appreciation of bringing the nuance back to the discussion about people, and people not being either good or bad, but being a little more nuanced than that.
Jessica Gunning and Richard Gadd.
“LIFE IS VERY COMPLICATED, AND PEOPLE ARE A MIXTURE OF POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE. I WANTED TO SHOW THAT, TO BRING THAT OUT IN THE WORLD.”
RICHARD GADD
Perhaps it’s just my British self-deprecation, but I think most people struggle to see themselves as heroes all the time, so how can we relate? We dwell on the things we feel we got wrong, especially when it comes to trauma. Baby Reindeer isn’t the first show to pick at the artifice of what you’re describing, but at the same time, did it require a lot of courage to be that self-critical?
I do think there was a leap of faith element to doing it, especially given the sort of outrage culture we live in right now. But most people are appreciative or grateful for it, I think.
Now, I don’t consider myself a celebrity—perish the thought—but in celebrity culture there’s this disconnect, where we look at the people sitting on [U.K. chat-show host] Graham Norton’s couch, and they’re describing their perfect lives. But everyone, at any stage in life, has struggles, and I think being honest about them, and especially being in the public eye and being honest about your struggles, and your personal battles, is a good thing to do. I think it would be of benefit to society if people stop being so apparently perfect all the time. I hoped it would benefit television, to present a narrative where somebody makes mistakes, and owns up to them.
People are scared to own up to their mistakes, for whatever reason. I know loads of famous people, and I know they are all struggling, but then everyone is so tightly zipped up in public. I don’t see why, because a lot of people sitting at home are going through those same kinds of struggles, thinking, ‘God, if I were just famous, all my problems would go away.’ And that’s a key part of Baby Reindeer; Donny thinks fame will be his solution, but nothing external will ever solve something internal, and that’s something I’ve learned in life.
So, I think communicating these struggles to the world is good, because it breaks down a barrier that I think is helpful for people.
We equate happiness with money, but there are a lot of very rich people who probably thought becoming rich would solve all their problems.
It probably adds to them, right? Ambition is great, but sometimes setting those kinds of goalposts for yourself is dangerous. Buying a flat is a good example, where you think, ‘I’ll buy a flat, I’ll pick up the keys, twist the lock, and then my life will all come together.’ It never works like that. When you put work out into the world, even if it’s just as simple as sending an email, you
think, ‘That’s it, everything is going to make sense. Everyone is going to understand me, and everything will be fine.’ It doesn’t work like that. Going through a trauma—or really, any internal struggle, it doesn’t even have to be that severe—the solutions have to come from a certain sense of self. Ambition can bring a lot of happiness, but I think internal satisfaction and happiness does come from having a certain ease on yourself, and a certain way of thinking and receiving the world.
It’s an ongoing process for me. I don’t act like I’ve found the secret sauce. I still struggle with a lot of things, but I’ve certainly learned that no external thing can be the solution. Baby Reindeer is one of the biggest shows in Netflix history, and I still struggle with some of the themes in it, despite the fact there’s been a lot of acceptance around them. I still have my dark days.
In terms of the trauma?
Yeah. It’s still there, even though I’ve achieved a certain level of catharsis. The live shows I did [that preceded the show] were very cathartic, because I was doing them in front of 200 people. The show has obviously gone on to receive a lot of critical and audience praise, and it has been viewed so many times, but there are still days where, despite the fact I’ve now got nothing to hide because I’ve explored every dark corner of myself and put it on screen, I wake up and I struggle with the trauma. Like it’s as fresh as it was when it was happening, when I was young, all the way back then.
It’s not something you can ever walk away from or put behind you.
No, it’s not about getting over it. It’s about working to live with it. That’s a phrase that comes up a lot in the work I’ve done. Every person’s journey is slightly different, but there are still tough days. Days you just have to ride out a bit.
You first grappled with these traumas in art in Monkey See, Monkey Do, a show you premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2016. Yes, that was the kind of career shift where I started to, I guess, embrace personal experience. So, I’ve been doing that for eight years now, and it’s probably time to do something else [laughs].
The thing that interests me about that timeline is it coincides with everything we learned about Harvey Weinstein, which was in October 2017, and the rise of the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements. There was a reckoning, particularly in the creative industries, about how women were being treated especially, and what trauma looks like. Do you think the world has shifted in its understanding of things?
I think yes and no. When I did Monkey See, Monkey Do, as you say, it was pre-#MeToo,
“BABY REINDEER IS ONE OF THE BIGGEST SHOWS IN NETFLIX HISTORY, AND I STILL STRUGGLE WITH SOME OF THE THEMES IN IT, DESPITE THE FACT THERE’S BEEN A LOT OF ACCEPTANCE AROUND THEM. I STILL HAVE MY DARK DAYS.”
RICHARD GADD
so people really weren’t talking about sexual abuse. Or, they were, but not on a societal level. Especially men would never dare to have those kinds of conversations. I had a phenomenal anxiety about what I was going up to Edinburgh to admit, because I genuinely felt like I was walking out into a wilderness where I felt I was without a lifejacket.
Just before I went out to Edinburgh, I was watching Oz, do you remember that HBO show? I’ve never told this story before, but I was watching Oz, which was an amazing show, and there was a sexual assault in it. It was a very macho show, and afterwards, these two characters discuss it, and kind of make a jokey reference to it.
I remember having this flood of adrenaline just shoot through my body, like, ‘What am I doing?’ We were about three weeks from Edinburgh, and I thought those men were talking like people were going to talk about the show. I had multiple freakouts. I went up to Edinburgh that year convinced it was going to ruin my career. That people would say, “Well, this kind of subject matter has no place on a comedy stage.” But the universal praise I got was crazy.
It went from me thinking it would be a disastrous month to it becoming, still to this day, the best month of my life. It obviously ended with the Edinburgh Fringe comedy award, but also in the texts I got from friends and family, I noticed this kind of acceptance around it. I would say it was probably a year later that the #MeToo movement started to happen, and it felt like there was an understanding around it.
Now, though, I think we’re in a more polarized place as a society. Everything has become very polemical. Society is split down the middle now, and I think some people want to argue against the other side for the sake of it. What I’ve found particularly difficult, especially with Baby Reindeer—which is the first time I’ve really delved deep into the whole of it—is that I felt I was delivering a very truthful exploration of a dynamic like that, and a very truthful exploration of abuse. The kind of odd attachment it brings, and the difficulty you face when you try to extricate yourself from the situation. To use the show as an example, I have my comments turned off on Instagram, but occasionally I’ll do collaboration posts where the comments can’t be hidden, and some of them are just so brutal. People can’t understand why I would have gone back [to my abuser].
I try not to read the comments, but it can be hard, and occasionally someone will send you something, like, “Ignore this person.” They are so extreme. There have been times where the negativity surrounding the show results in people saying things like, “You knew what you were getting yourself into,” and I think, ‘God, I put my personal life on screen as a commodity, and will I ever get a sense of privacy back?’
Those have been the daunting times in the past three or four months, where I read something, or someone shouts something at me on the street, and I realize I’m twinned with this now. And that’s fine, because the majority of people are really kind and understanding, but there is definitely a section of society that has splintered off. They don’t want to hear about this stuff anymore, they can’t accept the nuances of it, and they think that I was, I don’t know, asking for it. That’s very hard to live with. Then, of course, there’s the fact that the debate around the show has become a sort of whodunnit narrative, which is not something I ever wanted. People in the street, or at 7 a.m. on the tube, saying, “Oh, I saw Baby Reindeer So, who’s Darrien? Who’s Martha?”
Another part of that has been the suggestion that you must have known people would speculate. As though guessing the identities of people was the point of the show, and the trauma you describe is a b-plot.
I sometimes think to myself that I don’t know why I expected there to be a sphere of respect around it, because it was so dark, because it was so personal. There are times where I wobble and I think, ‘God, this is kind of tough,’ but I have to remember that other people are responding to it in the way I intended, and I have to cling onto the positives.
If I scroll through the comments—which I don’t, but if I did—I’m sure that for every joke about abuse, for every comment slagging me off, there are two or three that are like, “This changed my life. I spoke to my parents finally about what happened to me,” and I have to remember that.
And then, of course, there are the charity statistics as well, which I know I harp on about, but the coverage around them has been good but not as much as I’d like. It’s something like a 47% increase in stalking referrals, and a 53% increase in sexual abuse charity referrals. That shows a phenomenally positive impact, but I think the show has, at times, been lost in this
kind of noise surrounding it. Some of the good of the show’s aims, which I do think were pure, has been masked by that noise.
It’s just a crazy time, and it’s quite a lot to take on because it’s very niche. It’s almost like a British independent film, the show. We shot it on a very small budget, and it went onto have a level of success that I don’t think any of us were expecting.
The Netflix megahit is not necessarily something that is being curated by the human beings at Netflix. There’s always an element of fate involved in a show catching the zeitgeist, but in the case of Baby Reindeer—or Squid Game was probably another example—there seems to be something about the penetration of the Netflix platform, and perhaps the algorithm, that is quite hard for anyone to understand or prepare for. It does seem to be restoring power to the audience. It’s really interesting. There were times when we were making the show where, because it was quite weird and quite dark, and the characters were quite hard to wrap your head around, we couldn’t even believe we were doing it, even for a price. I kept thinking, ‘Surely the jig is going to be up at some point.’
It’s credit to Netflix for sticking with it—and I say ‘sticking with it’ like it was some sort of awful thing for them to do, but—there could easily have been a point where they’d had all these massive hits, and they could have looked at a small British show made for so little money and thought, ‘Oh well, let’s just put a red line through that.’ But they didn’t, which is great.
I think it gives me hope, in a way, because everyone talks about the algorithm as some ominous thing that’s going to take over all of our lives, and we’ll start to be told what we want, but shows like Squid Game and Baby Reindeer suggest that humans will always be able to cheat an algorithm. It’ll never fully be able to predict human emotion or soul, to the truest extent. So, yes, it’s given me a lot of hope that it’s taken off like this, but I can safely say on the record that nobody expected this level of take-off. I think it’s the 10th biggest Netflix show of all time now, and that’s mindboggling to me when you consider the budget and the subject matter. People ask me, “What do you think it says about the state of the world?”
And I don’t know for sure, other than I think it proves that a lot of people are going through a certain degree of struggle that is quite hard to
articulate, and that’s why the show is resonating with them to such a degree.
The bottom line is I always felt there was an honesty to the show, in a way that I hope has been refreshing for people after so many years of disingenuousness, in politics, in television; everywhere. Succession popped off in a massive way, and rightfully so because it’s one of the greatest shows of all time, because I think even though it’s set in a fictional world, there is such truth to each of the characters, in the way they talk, and the way they’re likeable and dislikeable in equal measure. People recognize the characters in that show as human life staring back at them. I think the radical honesty of Baby Reindeer has worked in its favor.
Precisely, and I think it’s because the audience has made Baby Reindeer a hit against everyone’s expectations that certain sections of the press—perhaps frustrated at not having had the opportunity to crown it themselves—have taken against it and turned it into the whodunnit you describe. I’ve done quite a good job of trying to duck out of all that a bit, as you can imagine. But it was surprising, because I was known as the nichest of niche comedians. You see in the show, the kind of comedy I was doing; I was so niche that some people described me as a performance artist. To go from that level of being too niche for comedy, to reach the point where almost everything I do gets written up in the press—I even went to the Euros in Scotland, and that generated stories, for some reason—has been weird. I never, ever thought I would be a selling point for the mainstream. I never thought I would be of tabloid interest to people.
It's so odd to have been told, throughout my career, that the work I’m doing is too niche and that I need to broaden it up, only to make the nichest of niche shows, and have it become this massive mainstream hit. It took a lot of adjustment. I thought the show would be a success in a critical, artistic sense. I know a lot of people are like, “Oh, I just thought it would go so badly, and then it didn’t,” but no, I believed in the show, and I believed it might generate a bit of conversation. Maybe at a level of like The End of the F… ing World, which is a really great show, with a lot of critical admirers and a real audience, but not this sort of global, talked-about thing.
What was release weekend like for you? How quickly did you notice the show taking flight?
I remember thinking, ‘Maybe some people will watch it this weekend.’ It came out on a Thursday, and I thought people would probably catch up with it on Saturday or Sunday, and I might get a few messages on Monday. Maybe a few more the weekend after. My hope was that the reviews would be good enough that perhaps I’d get to make another TV show off the back of it.
So, it went out at 8 a.m. on the Thursday, and I haven’t watched the show since it came out. I probably never will again, to be honest. But I loaded it up on Netflix, pressed play, and muted the television, because I thought, ‘Maybe the algorithm will catch it.’
I realized by about midday that there was no need to do that, because my phone was just exploding. For the most part, the reviews were very positive. Then weird things started happening, like a famous person would tweet about it, or a big newspaper would blast a positive write-up to their mailing list. I just suddenly became aware that it was getting swept up into this huge thing, and then it was difficult to leave the house without someone lurking outside.
You mean paparazzi?
Yeah, I’ve been papped outside the house. Then the odd fan, or the odd person asking about it. My doorbell ringing, or the neighbor going, “There was a gent that wants to know what you’re like to live next door to.” I love LBC [a U.K.-based talk-radio station], but I remember turning that on, and they were talking about the show. I had to switch it right off. There was a time where I would be stuck inside, but even there I couldn’t escape it. It was this weird feeling that it was becoming too big to control. Not that I wanted to control it, but it was becoming too big for its own good. It just felt like it was everywhere on the news, on the radio, outside my house.
Then, it was like everything I would say, everything I would do, would become a news story. I’d get these text messages on my phone; I wouldn’t even recognize the number. “A certain paper has been in touch, what do you want me to say?” I’d be like, “Who’s this?” and it’d be someone I hadn’t seen since primary school.
“How did they find you?”
Was that just in the immediate aftermath of release? Because it feels like the conversation has never stopped.
It has been so overwhelming that it has felt like almost a blur. I can’t remember when it was at its height—maybe in week three—but it felt like that for a while.
I stopped wanting to get the tube, but I remember I had to, so I went on with a cap, sunglasses, trying to hide as best I could. I sat next to a mum and her son, and then suddenly, they’re discussing the show. I think, ‘Are they just doing this because I’m here and they recognize me?’ But they hadn’t noticed. They were just talking about it, in a really sort of
Donny and Martha meet at the pub.
coarse way. “I don’t think they should be putting that sort of thing on television; we don’t want to see that.” And I’m literally there, listening to this. Then I have to get up, and when I’m at the door someone else says, “You’re the guy from Baby Reindeer,” and I look back at the mum and son and they’ve heard it, and… It’s not like I wanted to get away from it, but it really felt like there wasn’t a moment’s peace to be had.
And I think people have a lack of sympathy for people in the public eye who are like, “Oh, it’s so tough being recognized.” It’s just, I wasn’t expecting it to become this phenomenon. As I was talking about earlier, there’s this myth of celebrity, because of all the gloss and all the talk shows, that if you achieve fame then you must be fine, you’ve got nothing to worry about. You’ll have all the money in the world, and you never have to work a day in your life. But I think it adds its own pressure, because people feel, “Well, I’m famous, I need to hide that I’m struggling.”
I think that life exists in a very difficult juxtaposition where they’re kind of falling apart while presenting this perfect image to the world. That’s when you hear of celebrities having extraordinary breakdowns, or addiction issues. They’re scared to admit they’re struggling. And I sort of don’t understand why, because I think I’d find it very refreshing and helpful to society for people to hear, “Well, look, I might have fame, I might be on these shows, but I’m still the same scared person I was four years ago.”
I suppose, then, the question becomes: has it been worth it?
I hope so, I really hope so. I think it has. I hope that the legacy of Baby Reindeer that remains is really the kind of good that it did. The charity stuff, the comments from people who were moved by the show, and the way it helped them understand themselves. I think trauma responses are so difficult to understand when you’re going through them. To see a trauma response play out on a television show, I think, has been very comforting to people.
There are others who don’t want to admit that these kinds of things happen in the world. I sort of can’t blame them, to want to live in that kind of ignorance if it helps them. It’s just not how they want to spend their time, and I think that can come down to a bit of self-preservation in them. But there’s that old phrase: disturbing the comfortable and comforting the disturbed. I think that applies to Baby Reindeer, because it has really achieved its aim which is to provoke a conversation. Even when people are like, “If he didn’t want it, why did he go back?” As much as I find that difficult to read when I’m sat on my couch at 7 o’clock at night, at least it has challenged them to ask that question, to have a response of any kind. I think that’s a good thing, even if it can be difficult to read.
“I HOPE IT DOESN’T TAKE ANOTHER 17 YEARS FOR A CHARACTER LIKE THIS TO COME ALONG, BUT I FEAR IT MAY BECAUSE I DON’T KNOW HOW MANY PARTS THERE ARE THAT ARE THIS RICH.”
JESSICA GUNNING
fter a couple of hours recovering from multiple circuits of Richard Gadd’s local park, I find Jessica Gunning in South London. A river separates the real Donny Dunn from his Martha, though Gadd and Gunning are much more inclined to spend time with one another than their onscreen counterparts. To my immense relief, Gunning has suggested a more sedate coffee at a local gallery where, as we talk, locals pop in to the polling station that has been temporarily set up for the U.K.’s General Election. Our time together will be interrupted briefly by a group of women who ask Gunning if they can take a photo with her. She chuckles at their request and quickly agrees—she, too, is adjusting to life in the public eye, and there’s a sense she’s bemused by the sudden interest.
Born in Holmfirth in West Yorkshire—a surprise even to Scots who have praised her flawless Scottish accent in Baby Reindeer—Gunning has been acting for nearly 20 years at this point. She started in the National Theatre, and quickly checked off that most reliable of British actor career progression boxes by starring in an episode of Doctor Who in 2008.
Prior to Baby Reindeer, I knew her as one of the ensemble cast of Matthew Warchus’s Pride in 2014, but she was perhaps most recognizable for her role over the three seasons of Stephen Merchant’s 2021 comedy series The Outlaws
Nevertheless, she hadn’t become a household name. Gadd knew her work, and loved her guest appearances. “She would come in and steal whatever show it was,” he notes. But pitching her to executives wasn’t easy, especially when they were already taking a shot with an unknown lead. “We auditioned loads of people for Martha; maybe 20 or 30 people,” says Gadd. “But she came in and played it very much against type. We saw some amazing Marthas—different Marthas who could have been really interesting—but a lot of people played her a little evil, and I never really saw Martha that way. [Jessica] captured her vulnerability.”
Gadd wasn’t the final arbiter on casting, but he says he “begged” for Gunning to get the role. “Everybody could see how amazing she was, so it wasn’t anything to do with that,” he says. “But questions of star casting came in. She did probably five or six auditions, and most actors would probably have said, ‘To hell with this.’ But, one by one, she just knocked everyone down, including Netflix, and the rest is history.”
History indeed, for Gunning is now the odds-on favorite to make good on her Emmy nomination for Supporting Actress. She will move ahead as a star in her own right, though she admits she didn’t see any of this coming while she shot Baby Reindeer
Baby Reindeer has become a hit nobody— not even you and Richard—could have fully foreseen; but how do you rationalize this crazy success?
What’s so clever about Richard’s writing is that even at the table read, when Episode 4 came up you could have cut the tension with a knife. Then, when Martha comes back at the end of Episode 4, you felt this collective relief, like, “Thank god he’s got her.” It’s so warped, because obviously that relationship is very messy as well, but I realized immediately how clever that was, because it stops you in your tracks. And I think Episode 4 is really the key to it all, because if you remove that, Donny doesn’t make sense. Suddenly you understand why he does what he does.
I think as an audience, we want messy things. I always remember this great story about [British author and screenwriter] Lynda La Plante, when she was first starting out. She pitched an idea to a big ITV executive about a split-screen show. At the end, she said, all our main characters divide off into corners of the screen and we see them going about their business. The executive said, “Well, I think Mrs. Jones who lives in York might find it quite hard to follow those things.” She said, “How dare you? Mrs. Jones has packed her kids off to school, gone about her day, gone to bingo in the evening, and played five different cards while catching up with her mates. Don’t you underestimate Mrs. Jones from York.”
And I think that’s often what happens. It’s the same with casting names, which is why I’m so pleased they took a chance on me, because if you’d have had anyone well-known in the part, you’d have a stamp on it already that just doesn’t fit with the show. I think you needed to meet Martha as a character and not go, “Oh, that’s so-and-so from whatever.” I’m sure a few people might have recognized me from other things, but I think predominantly they took in the character first, and with Richard as Donny, he was unknown too. In doing that, you’re allowed to see the story for what it is.
I think it’s a myth that audiences will watch something just because there’s a name in it. I think people want to watch good stories, and you’re constantly having to battle with broadcasters and go, “Trust the story.” The irony is they use shows like Fleabag and I May Destroy You as examples, and you’re like, “Nobody in those shows was famous when they made them.”
I think the ambition of making the show was to do a good job—that was literally everyone’s
dream, everyone on the crew. As soon as we all read the scripts, we felt we had something special, but in none of our conversations about it was the topic of how many millions were going to watch it, let alone whether it might have any kind of life in awards season or anything like that. It was just about getting it made so that the people we care about could see it. But I hope the success of Baby Reindeer will be used as an example of how stories can be told in a messy way, and that people can not only handle them, but embrace them too.
The industry has a nasty habit of refusing to learn lessons, but I think the success of Baby Reindeer took even Netflix by surprise. Do you think streaming represents a new paradigm; that perhaps the audience holds more sway than the algorithm does?
I think so, and I think the only way to make something a hit is to focus on telling the story, because as soon as you start to think outside-in, you ruin it. The core team of Weronika [Tofilska], our main director, and Richard, and all of our producers who are on the ground, I think they actively fought against any of those bigger discussions because they wanted to protect, not the smallness of the story, but the preciousness of it, really.
That was the victory, because it kept the focus on what mattered. Nobody was thinking, “Wait ’til the whole world sees this.” It’s why it’s always difficult to do a second or a third season of something, because when an audience loves something, you can’t, as an actor, shake your awareness of that. It’s really hard to forget that people love the show and to focus on telling the story.
How familiar were you with Richard’s work before the show?
I’d seen his play Monkey See, Monkey Do. I hadn’t seen Baby Reindeer [on stage]. So, I already knew of him, and I’d tried to get tickets to see Baby Reindeer, but it was fully sold out. Back in 2019, I read the play text, and I’m really glad I didn’t see it, actually. I was really intrigued when I read the play about how it would have gone on stage, but I think I’d have started the show with a preconceived notion of who Martha was.
I got an email that said, “Baby Reindeer audition,” and because I knew of the play, I thought, ‘Oh god.’ Then I got sent the sides first, which were the café scene and the scene where she
says she wants to unzip him and climb inside. Then I got the rest of the scripts.
What was your initial reaction? I read them all in one go, and that voicemail at the end, I just cried my eyes out. The final bit with the barman gave me goosebumps, and I remember thinking it was a genius way to end the show.
Even the scene where she says she wants to unzip him and climb inside, I remember telling a friend who was running lines with me, “This is the most romantic scene of the whole thing.” We read it together and she was like, “That’s fucking freaky.” [Laughs]. I realized I hadn’t read it as creepy. I had just read it as: what a beautiful thing to say to somebody. How lovely that she feels so safe with him [laughs]. In a way, I’m glad I read it like that, because it meant I never saw her as a weird villain or anything. I just saw the human in her, which I think is because he wrote her so well. I think he saw the human in her, too.
It’s hard not to feel empathetic toward Martha, for sure.
Yeah. When we were going to America to do some promo, the driver I got was this quiet guy, but he was a proper cockney lad, and I just assumed he probably hadn’t seen it. Then, one moment, he said, “I love the show, by the way. We’re all a little bit Martha.” And it’s true. We’ve all had obsessions, or people who we’ve been in love with just a bit too much. It made me quite emotional, because it was true.
How do you see the moments where Martha blows up at Donny and yells at him? Those are the key signposts of a villain, I suppose, but it feels like she’s expressing a frustration, like a kettle that has boiled over for just a moment. It’s a definite response to frustration. But I think the show in general is about trauma, and all of the characters in it have experienced some version of that. From my character’s backstory, I thought maybe he had triggered something from her past, where she doesn’t like to be told what to do. She feels quite exposed during those moments, but I think part of Donny’s fascination is how exposed she makes him feel. During that scene in the café, she says, “Somebody hurt you, didn’t they?” She wants to know, and he wants to feel heard. “It was a man, wasn’t it?” He’s thinking, ‘Who is this woman, is she magic?’ She feels that too, about him.
Also, he’s a comedian and she laughs at everything he says. That’s another thing I found fascinating, because when I was doing a bit
of research—and I didn’t do a lot, because it was all there in the script—there is obviously the classic movie about stalking, Misery, but I also watched King of Comedy. The thing that fascinated me about that, and also talking to friends of mine in the industry who have experienced stalking, is there’s this knowingness to the people that you forget.
I think if you were to draw a stalker, you’d assume that they’re always sycophantic, always gushing, always praising. If they have fantasies, it’s about that person loving them back. The thing that’s fascinating about Martha, and it’s in King of Comedy too, is that the fantasy is letting the guy down. If you remember, she comes to him and says, “Oh, can you do it?” And he’s like, “I’m a bit busy.” With her, it’s like, “Your comedy’s not actually that great.” There’s a real matter-of-factness and a knowingness to the fantasy, which I found really interesting. She wants to know him better than anyone else, she wants to criticize him. It’s that fantasy of love. Feeling seen, and knowing someone better than anyone else. I always used to imagine her going home and improvising in her head how the next day might go. The thing about Donny is sometimes he was even better than her improvisations. When she says, “I want the Scotch broth, I’m just trying to figure out if it’s on the menu.” I always imagined she had freestyled that in her head a little bit beforehand, so when he says it’s not, she’s disappointed, but then he goes, “You want to find out the specials?” She wouldn’t have even dreamed he’d say something like that back. I think there are so many moments where it feels inevitable to her that they’re a couple.
I’ve seen some footage of Richard’s stand-up. Some of Donny’s jokes are lifted wholesale from that. I think he’s being harsh in the way he suggests it is too esoteric for anyone to like.
Have you really seen it, though? I’m not sure he’s being too harsh [laughs]. Oh, don’t tell him I said that.
No second season for you! But it certainly does play better in context than it does in the show.
Yeah, even on the day in the nightclub with some of those props, he was ad-libbing a bit, and the crowd was really laughing. He is naturally funny, but he does love that kind of anti-comedy bit. One of mine and Richard’s favorite scenes is where Martha comes back in the pub after she’s been banned, and she’s mocking him with the other barman. It’s such
“I TRY HARD TO ARTICULATE HOW I FEEL ABOUT RICHARD, AND I CAN’T REALLY PUT IT INTO WORDS BECAUSE I DON’T HAVE ANOTHER PERSON I FEEL THE SAME WAY ABOUT.”
JESSICA GUNNING
a great scene because it’s so charged and revengeful, but it’s funny too.
How much did it weigh on you that you were helping to tell a story that had personally affected your co-star in such profound ways?
I try hard to articulate how I feel about Richard, and I can’t really put it into words because I don’t have another person I feel the same way about. I think a lot of people who meet him feel an instant protectiveness towards him; you kind of want to make sure he’s OK. I fiercely admire him, and I’m in awe of him really, especially after watching Episode 4, because I obviously wasn’t part of filming those days. I was aware it was happening, and I was checking in on him, and Weronika was obviously amazing throughout all of that. I was checking in on her too, because it was so traumatizing for everyone, really.
The whole of the crew I think found that whole time very, very intense. Tom Goodman-Hill who plays Darrien, who I know as well, he was amazing, but obviously that is a really tough ask of any actor to have to go through that and go home at the end of the day. It’s so strange to do it, especially when they know it’s based on a true thing that happened to the actual person that’s in those scenes. When we were doing the show, I felt a constant connection to Richard just because of the nature of everything, but also being Martha meant I studied him in a way I probably wouldn’t have with most people. I can really read his face now, so I know if he’s doing OK or not. If we’re doing interviews together, I can tell, “Oh, he’s feeling something right now.”
We had an intense seven months together, filming the show, but for him there was the whole aftermath too, because he was really involved in the edit. His life has been Baby Reindeer for nearly two years now. So, it’s great to see him now, while all this praise is happening, because he just feels lighter.
That’s good to hear given the way the show has provoked discussion in the tabloid press. Yeah, it’s great to see and I do think he’s in a really good place at the moment. I think we were all worried about how he was doing during the shoot, because he was having to relive it all every day. It would take a toll on anybody, let alone someone who has been through what he’s been through. But I think the response with some of the charities he’s worked with has been immense.
It's interesting, because the other conversation has really swallowed those charity statistics, which he spoke about to me, in the press reporting on the show. It’s almost like there’s an agenda there.
I know. That’s why I’m his champion in every interview we have; I just shout it from the rooftops, because I think it required a real sacrifice from him to show us what he showed us.
I NEVER SAW HER AS A WEIRD VILLAIN OR ANYTHING. I JUST
SAW THE HUMAN IN HER, WHICH I THINK IS BECAUSE HE WROTE HER SO WELL.
I THINK HE SAW THE HUMAN IN HER, TOO. JESSICA GUNNING
Everything that happened to him, especially in Episode 4, he suffered to relive it, and if it made one person feel less alone, or one person able to go and tell their family what they went through, how amazing is that?
There have been so many shows, films, and plays that I’ve watched that have literally changed my life. I know that’s why I’m in the industry, because the fact that art has changed my life is what made me want to be an actor. You want work, obviously, and when you’re an actor you’re lucky to get what you can, but when you can do work that really changes people’s lives, that’s amazing.
This is an industry that’s seen as entertainment, as escapism, which of course it is. People go to watch those Marvel films to feel great and get sent into a different world. But sometimes people want to watch things to be moved, and challenged, and seen, and all that.
Before Baby Reindeer came out, I think they predicted that 7% of the Netflix audience would watch it. But now that it’s just gone absolutely stratospheric, it’s mad. You realize how many different kinds of people are watching it and feeling something in it. It’s pretty incredible.
Some of the worst parts of the press around the show, I think they can’t possibly have watched it. They’ll say things like, “He led her on,” and you’re like, “Yes, he did, and that’s the point he makes in the show.”
The thing that I hadn’t realized before is how they seem to get away with outright lies. There are quotes from me where I know I’ve never said them, and yet they just put them out as if they’re fact. We’ve deliberately not spoken about any of the stories like that which have circulated, because it’s not the point of the show. Like Richard said in his statement, none of us have made any comment on anything,
but there’ve been things that have said we have, and you want to fight and ask for a correction, but actually you just have to throw up your hands and say—whatever the phrase is—“Tomorrow’s chip paper.”
It’s Richard’s life. It’s his story and what happened to him, and I think that’s another way I get protective, because it’s not just trivial stuff. It’s someone being really brave and putting themselves out there. If those stories are misinformation, or they’re wrong, then that’s really frustrating. But you have to just hope that most people are seeing the show for what it is and taking the right things away. I don’t think anyone expected the show to be as massive as it was, and I think inevitably people want to tear down things that are successful and go, “We’re sick to death of hearing about this now.”
Richard said he must try and remember that for every negative comment about the show, there are two or three more praising it, or saying that it has helped them.
So many comments like that. In so many directions. Nava [Mau], who plays Teri, says her life has been transformed by the response she’s had from the trans community and the Latin community. We saw her while we were over in New York, and she said she hasn’t seen anything like it. She’s so brilliant in the show, and her character is so refreshing, and she’s the heart of it, really. You root for them so much, and you’re gutted when it doesn’t work out.
This is such a rich show, and there are so many responses to it that aren’t dominating the headlines. But they’re happening.
Where do you go from here?
Well, I’m slightly worried that nothing will compare [laughs], though I’m hoping that isn’t true. Doing [2014 movie] Pride is a good flag post for me, really, because I’ve done so many things I’m proud to have been a part of, but they’ve maybe been a little lighter on the ground since Pride. When Martha came along, I think that’s why I really fought for her, because normally I am very “what will be will be” with auditions. But with this, I suddenly became a different person who was like, “You have to give this to me because I know how to do it.”
I hope it doesn’t take another 17 years for a character like this to come along, but I fear it may because I don’t know how many parts there are that are this rich. I think the danger now is that I’m not looking for another Martha, but beyond that I’m not going to worry too much about what’s next. Business as usual. And I’m enjoying the response to the show and enjoying talking about it, which has been great. It opens doors to opportunities and chats with people that you never thought you would speak to, which is amazing because so many people have seen it and want to talk to you about it, which is great. Maybe some sort of collaboration might come from that with a new director or writer or interesting person. ★
Dialogue
Aja Naomi King
BY ANTONIA BLYTH
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Janelle James
In Lessons in Chemistry, Aja Naomi King is Harriet Sloane, a 1950s lawyer and mother who lives across the street from the protagonist Elizabeth Zott (Brie Larson). In Bonnie Garmus’ original novel of the same name, Harriet was an older white woman who helped Elizabeth to raise her baby. But for the Apple TV+ series, creator Lee Eisenberg gave King a more powerful role, one that sees Harriet organizing a protest against a freeway that would force Black residents from their homes. Here, King describes how she connected to Harriet and a storyline that could be ripped from today’s headlines.
Didn’t you initially audition for a different role in Lessons in Chemistry?
Yes, I was going to play this other part. I can’t even remember the character’s name now. It was a totally invented part, not in the book at all. And I remember having a conversation with Lee after the fact and him just being like, “There’s something missing in this story. Harriet’s a pivotal character in the story, and for the people that love the book, we can’t take that away from them.” He told me he originally wanted to merge these characters. But it was like that other character that I was brought into play, she was gone forever, and now I’m Harriet. I also read the book, and loved the book, and I also thought Harriet was a really pivotal character, but I didn’t see how that could fit me. I was like, we’d have to have a lot of conversations around this because it genuinely feels inappropriate, the notion that I’m a Black woman with my own kids living across the street, and I’m just going to drop everything in my life and come take care of this woman’s kid. And Lee was like, “The essence of what Harriet was, that’s what we want to hold onto. But you will be in a very healthy, wonderful marriage and you will already be employed.” He was like, “Harriet will have her own things going on. She will be her own person who’s standing on her own and isn’t going to exist solely in service to Elizabeth Zott.”
If anything, your version of Harriet tolerates Elizabeth rather than being in service to her. Well, what’s so wonderful is we see this true friendship being built. And I mean, the way they created it, these two women have this close relationship with [Elizabeth’s partner] Calvin [Lewis Pullman]. And at the time of his death, these two women were his only family. And so we connect on that immediately. Harriet’s immediately on this crusade to right the wrongs of what’s being written about him in the newspaper and that’s what brings her to Elizabeth’s door, or technically, what was Calvin’s door in the first place. And I do think a lot of that was also guilt-related because of Harriet and Calvin’s last interaction where she felt let down by him. And it’s just a beautiful reminder of, you never know when it’s the last time you’ll speak to someone, so don’t hold a grudge, be an adult, have the conversation. And I think Harriet does beat herself up about that and she needs the same kind of closure, I think, that Elizabeth is craving after his loss. And then of course, there’s Elizabeth’s pregnancy and what it is to be a mother and Elizabeth also being a recluse and not having any friends or anyone to lean on. Harriet is the one person who has spoken to her in even a remotely kind way, so I think they are in service to each other. They’re standing on equal footing with one another, and it becomes
this very necessary relationship for both of them to grow and connect. They crafted something that I found profoundly beautiful in terms of female friendship and connection and community.
I read that a lot of the photos in Harriet’s house come from your own family. Tell me about building your sense of Harriet. I remember talking to our set designer, and it was funny because it was actually recently that my parents had gone to my Nana’s house to get all these albums, and I think that’s why all those photo albums were top
of mind for me. I brought it up to the set designer and she was like, “Oh, can we see some of the photos? Since they’d be from the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s?” And a lot of it is baby pictures of my mom and dad and photos of my great aunts and just candid captures of my grandma at a party sitting next to my grandfather, these really beautiful pictures. We also had a lovely cultural consultant, Dr. Shamell Bell. We spent a lot of time together talking about what did Black life look like during this time, and how central the church was, and the way education informed people.
I felt like Harriet would’ve gone to a historically Black college, she would’ve been somewhere on the East Coast and traveled west with her husband to start anew. And I just imagined her being very educated and very purposeful and someone who knows that she has to appear a certain way and sound a certain way. And I think about stories from my mom who was born in the ‘50s. I think it was very much that mindset of, you have to create these things for yourself. It doesn’t matter if you have a lot or a little, like your fashion, the way you walk, the way you move, your confidence,
you have to create an aura around yourself because that’s how you build success for yourself, right?
I love the scene where Harriet lets her guard down with Elizabeth by showing her how to pop the top off a beer bottle using the edge of the kitchen table. Did you know how to do that already? [Laughs] That was rigged. It would make me the coolest person in the world if I could actually do that.
My husband [who is Austrian] has tried to teach me, because he can do it. I feel like it’s very Austrian to know how to pop a beer bottle.
There's also that great scene where Elizabeth calls Harriet all excited to say she wore pants instead of a dress on television, but Harriet’s in the middle of something that's life-and-death, talking with her husband about civil rights violations. That was one of those most perfect days of filming because I got to shoot the scene with Paul [James] and we went right into the phone scene afterwards, and it’s just great to see the dichotomy of these two different worlds.
Some of the unspoken moments with Harriet I think are some of the most powerful in this. I love that you brought that up, because that really was one of my favorites too, because I’m having this conversation with my husband and the crux of that conversation is really, what is safety? What will keep us safe as Black people in this country? And for him, it’s, we keep our heads down, we keep working, we stay together, that is safety. And for Harriet, it’s, no, we will never be safe if we don’t stand up and fight for something, because the way it’s going, this house can be taken away from us, our money can be taken away from us. Until we stand firm and say, “No more,” there is no such thing as any kind of safety.
Harriet and Elizabeth are just
having such wildly different experiences in their lives where standing up for something for Elizabeth in this moment is wearing pants. For Harriet it’s, I am trying to help Black people in America.
How was actually shooting that protest scene? What was the feeling on set that day? It was really powerful being there. I’ve been to protests, I know that feeling very intimately. And I think about the things that we see in our lifetime, the things that you think you’ll never see again, the things that continue to happen no matter how much you fight against it. I will say, the key takeaway for me and what is beautiful about the way we continue to evolve as human beings, are the people who stand beside you when you fight. When you are fighting for your rights, for equal rights, for people being treated better.
We were taken by surprise, because in the rehearsal it wasn’t as intense as it was on the day, so the reactions are very real because it feels so intense. And so just thinking about the brutality of it in that moment and just
the brutality that continues to this day, it feels disheartening to think that the things that my mother witnessed growing up, the things that my father witnessed, that my grandparents witnessed, that I witness, my son will most likely witness. And so, it’s part of that reality that feels devastating and it feels like an unending cycle. But again, it is about the people who do show up on the day, who stand beside you. Because there were the Elizabeths of the world standing beside the Harriets of the world and saying, “No more.”
If there was a Season 2 would you want to do it?
Oh, of course. I’d totally do it. Because the writing, every part of this experience was so wonderful. I would do it again in a heartbeat.
I’m excited to see your next film, Grosse Pointe Garden Society. What can you tell me about it? What I love about this character so far is she’s very different than anything I’ve ever played before, so that’s really fun for me. As an actor, you want a varied body of work and I’m like, I’ll say there’ll definitely be a little bit of mischief and a little bit of murder. ★
From top: King as Harriet Sloane; King with Larson.
Aja Naomi King and Brie Larson in Lessons in Chemistry
Matt Berry
The fruity-voiced British actor goes out to bat for FX’s cult vampire comedy What We Do in the Shadows
BY DAMON WISE
With his booming delivery, and an uncanny ability to draw out every last vowel and consonant from even the dullest of words, Matt Berry has been a cult comic actor in the U.K. for 20 years now. He broke out there in 2012 with Toast of London, a surreal sitcom in which he appeared as the bitter, buffoonish jobbing actor Steven Toast. But in 2019, the FX show What We Do in the Shadows took his homegrown appeal overseas, as the shape-shifting 300-year-old vampire Laszlo in the mock-doc comedy show inspired by Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s word-of-mouth movie hit from 2014.
How did you first get involved with the making of What We Do in the Shadows?
I was doing a film with Jemaine Clement, An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn, and he casually mentioned one day that he had an idea to make a series out of the film that he’d made with Taika a couple of years before. Would I be interested? I asked him if he was going to be in it. He said he was. I asked if Taika was going to be in it. He said he was. So, I said, “Yeah! Of course! I’m in!” And then I got to Los Angeles and neither Taika nor Jemaine were in it. But they did direct it. So, all was not lost, put it that way.
For people who haven’t seen the show, can you talk a little bit about who Laszlo is and what attracted you to the part? He’s 300 years old, something like that. He’s an aristocrat who was bitten by an attractive young Greek vampire and he never looked back after that. He just carried on with a fairly hedonistic lifestyle from that moment on, doing all the things he’d wished he could do before he was bitten and became a vampire, basically. That would attract any actor, I think. I mean, because all these characters are dead—or undead, whichever you choose—they can say and do anything. That’s what attracts me to it. We don’t have to be cautious, because these people don’t exist, and while they may be based within our times, they’re not from our times. So that gives them credit to do and say whatever they like—within reason. And as a result, he’s always been very free to play.
When you signed up, did you realize the show would be an ongoing thing?
Well, no one does. You just sign up and see what happens. There isn’t anyone that expects their TV show to run for more than a couple of seasons, let alone six. It’s very rare now, and we were all very lucky.
When did you know it was working out?
Well, it’s difficult because I’m based here and over there, so I had to be told that it was working over there because I wasn’t over there enough to see it for myself. I’d be sent pictures of billboards, and all these kinds of things, but unless you’re actually there, you don’t know. I had no sense of it either way—over here or over there. It was just a job. I finish a job, do some other jobs, and then go back to that job. Do you know what I mean? That sounds weird, but I don’t know how else to explain it.
How does it work on the show?
Do you have input in the writing? How does each season develop? Everybody was chosen due to their abilities to improvise, so that was always encouraged. I mean, that was a big thing for Jemaine and Taika. They were very keen for everybody to be able to improvise and basically make the scenes seem kind of natural, but at the same time sort of preposterous. That was the main aim from them. They wanted to get to a certain point within the plot, but in as many flowery ways—as in, funny ways—as possible, and that was encouraged right until the end.
You have a very particular delivery. Do they write to your strengths?
No, not at all, which is a good thing. My dialogue is bonestraight, without any sort of flower, and then I’ll add whatever it needs, depending on his situation within that episode.
How has Laszlo developed over the past five years?
It’s difficult to say, because it’s not that sort of show. These characters are hundreds of years old. They’re stuck in their ways, so you can’t really stretch them and take them on journeys that will alter the characters. The characters have been the same for hundreds of years, so you just hit the ground
with a fairly loud start and then keep going. That’s the thing. I didn’t really do anything different in the last season that I wasn’t doing in the first, I don’t think. Or even the pilot.
There’s also a lot of guest stars. How does that work on a show like this?
Well, it’s like any kind of TV show: It’s a battle of scheduling. We’re in Toronto, which isn’t the easiest place to get to for a lot of actors. For some it is. If they’re in New York, it’s not much of a problem. But if they’re in Los Angeles or over here in the U.K., then it’s not so easy. So that dictates who turns up. That’s been the art. If you want to be in it badly enough, then you’ll come out to Toronto. [Laughs.] Nothing against Toronto, don’t get me wrong. It’s a lovely place and I’m very, very grateful to it and everyone there. But, yeah, I mean, that was how
we got the guest stars: Do they want to come over?
Do you get recognized much from the show?
Yeah.
At the risk of making it worse for you, is there a particular line they quote to you?
It’s not just things from Shadows, it’s things from all kinds of shows. But if it’s Shadows, then I’ll hear someone shout, “Bat!” And people don’t do it within a meter of you, they’ll make sure that they’re at least 50 meters away. It’s weird, because it can happen any time of the day, day or night, I could have been out somewhere and be walking home in the early hours, and someone will shout, “Bat!” in the distance. Or I can be up first thing at five in the morning and I can hear someone shouting “Bat!” in the distance. So, it really doesn’t make any
“There isn’t anyone that expects their show to run for more than a couple of seasons, let alone six. It’s very rare.”
difference what time of day, I’ve found out.
Outside of What We Do in the Shadows, you’re probably best known for the British TV series Toast of London. What appeals to you about that character? Well, because he’s pompous, and he thinks that better things should be happening to him. There’s a never-ending supply of things you can do to him to put him back in his place each time. But it’s just fantastic to play because it’s not set in any particular time. It has a foot in the ’70s and in the modern day, so we’re not limited to what we can do. A bit like Shadows These characters are in their own world so they can do anything.
Will you be going back to him?
Well, I did Toast of Tinseltown, the fourth series, where he went to Hollywood and, if you’ve seen that, you’ll know what happened to him at the end. I don’t know. I mean, I’m happy with it. It did everything that I wanted it to do.
What are you working on at the moment? Any hints?
I’m doing my own film. That’s hopefully going to be the next thing that I’m doing. But before that, I’m doing something called Citadel The second season of that.
And what part do you play? A spy.
You also recently appeared in The Simpsons… It was only one episode. Just a guest role.
But was that a milestone? Surely every actor dreams of being on The Simpsons?
Yeah, I mean, it was an incredible year for me, because a month before I did The Simpsons I did Curb
Your Enthusiasm. So, it was two things in the space of a few months. I was like, “Fucking hell…!” I mean, Curb Your Enthusiasm has always been one of my favorite shows, so to actually be part of it was a huge honor. I know everyone says that sort of shit, but it’s true. I really mean it, because I’d watched it when it first came out, before I got into the business, so to be part of the last season was crazy. It was Bruce Springsteen’s episode as well, so that was even better.
How does Larry David work? Is it true that there’s really no script? No, there is no script. No, no, no. Larry picks people that improvise, and you’re just given a starting point and sort of an end point. He explains what he wants, and then you just go at it. You do as many takes as you like. It’s completely free. He’s amazing, and he reacts perfectly to everything that you do. He gives you stuff back and lets you make a load of noise. He’s just perfect. I loved every minute, to be honest.
You’ve already filmed Season 6 of What We Do in The Shadows. What can you say about it?
I’m excited about the last season coming out because there’s some pretty cool stuff in the finale, things that I’ve never seen anyone else do. So, I’m quite excited to see what people’s reaction to that will be. There are lots of special guests, but it contains what I think is a pretty cool finale. I mean, they can go one way or the other, can’t they? People can spend days and days talking about how much they hated a finale or how much they loved it. So, who knows? But I think it’s cool.
Is it a particularly, shall we say, emphatic finale?
You’d have to see it. ★
From top: Natasia Demetriou and Matt Berry in What We Do in the Shadows; Berry in Toast of London
Nikki Glaser
What’s next for the comic who ruled The Roast of Tom Brady and set records with her special Someday You’ll Die
BY ANTONIA BLYTH
When Nikki Glaser took to the stage to join in The Roast of Tom Brady, she made headlines with her close-to-the-bone whip-smart jokes. Then, just days later, she broke viewing records with her comedy special Someday You’ll Die, which has now earned her an Emmy nomination. Now she has a show in the works called Unsettling, written by Jamie Lee, about two childless women who decide to parent together. Here, she mulls over her compulsion to say unspeakable things, explains why she doesn’t want kids and expresses compassion for Tom Brady. Then there are those big awards shows she would love to host…
You’ve been doing this for 20 years but this one-two punch of The Roast of Tom Brady and then your Max special Someday You’ll Die coming within days of each other has really shot you to household-name fame.
It all lined up kind of perfectly, and I wish that I could say that I masterminded it that way because I wish I had that kind of thoughtfulness when it came to my career and planning and doing Taylor Swift Easter egg-type stuff because I admire how she works, but it is just a complete coincidence and sometimes it just works that way. But when you work as much as I do, I think that it’s not even coincidental that things just end up being double-booked like that.
The show you’re working on now, Unsettling, about two childless women, seems so timely, as does your special.You talk about not having children, and now we have JD Vance referring to “a bunch of childless cat ladies with miserable lives.”
I was like, “I got to get some cats. I want to be the girl this guy hates.” And more of us are doing it. I just
read a study. This is in The New York Times. 47% of U.S. adults younger than 50 without children said they were unlikely ever to have children. When asked why, 57% of those people said they simply didn’t want them, which I really like. I’m just like, “I don’t know, because I don’t want them.”
It’s just nice that that number is creeping up because I felt, and continue to battle with feeling, like there’s something wrong with me that I don’t want them… I wouldn’t be able to play a ton, I would be extremely bored, I would be resentful, and I would feel guilty all the time for being those other things I mentioned.
I would want a front row seat with popcorn if you were talking to JD Vance about this. In the meantime, I can’t wait for Unsettling to happen. I just think the concept is so, like you said, timely, but then the script is so funny. I just don’t read scripts this funny that often. Jamie was the original writer and then we worked on it together, and it’s just so punchy. It just feels like a show I would watch, and I’m really
selective about comedy. It’s not pandering and it’s not cutesy, and it really is a real representation of female friendship that I felt like, “Oh, the people who wrote this actually have female friends,” because a lot of times I watch stuff and I’m like, “This is not how women talk to each other.”
Yes. Save us from those sitcoms where the only thing women do to connect is get a bottle of Chardonnay out of the fridge. Or eat ice cream when they’re sad, yeah. Also Sex and the
City, I just cannot ever get past, Charlotte and Samantha would hate each other.
They would never ever be friends. It’s just so funny that that was sold to us as what defines true friendship. I found so many flaws with it.
You’re on your Alive and Unwell tour right now. How’s it going? It’s great. I love touring. I tour with my best friends. My tour manager and my openers are all my best friends. My boyfriend comes out with me. I get to bring my dog. I
look at my schedule and people go, “How can you do that?” I’m just like, “This is just what my life is.” I don’t really know any different and it’s not as exhausting as it seems. It’s actually really fun. And I sleep on planes very easily. I fall asleep before the plane takes off, and I usually wake up when someone’s tapping me on the shoulder because they’re cleaning the plane. I feel a freedom in travel. And then I love hotels. I love just being somewhere one night and I love the process of building a new act. I dumped all the material from the special and I am just rebuilding and writing stuff on the road while also writing stuff on stage. It’s a blast. I love it.
What did you think of Tom Brady saying his kids’ feelings had been hurt by the roast? I feel like the implication was that you had directly done damage. But you were hired to do the job of roasting him.
Yeah. And what did I say about his kids? I guess I said he lost his family?
You didn’t say anything directly about his kids. You said stuff about his marriage breakdown. Yeah. There was a little bit of backlash. I’m a team player. If someone would’ve said, “Don’t say something,“ I would’ve not said it. And I simply wasn’t told not to say things. And so, I just think that that’s not Tom’s fault. He probably just didn’t think people would go where they went, including me. And so, he didn’t even know that he was supposed to say, “Don’t say those things.”
I imagine he wasn’t prepared, but I did feel bad. I don’t like being mean when it’s not allowed. I love roasts because it is allowed, and I’m like, “OK, I can really do whatever I want because I’m not offending anyone because everyone signed up for this and they’re literally asking for it.” I can be like, “Well, you asked for it. Look at the way you were dressed.” I have that scapegoat in it, but I did feel bad. I
didn’t read any of the articles that came out about it because I didn’t want to feel sad and sorry for what I did, and I thought, maybe I should write to him. And I’m like, it’s not even going to get to him. No one’s going to let me write to him. He’s not going to see some statement I put out. He was up there and was allowed to do the same thing that I was allowed to do, and he could have gone to the same places that I went to, and so I just felt it was a fair game.
It’s all in the title. It’s a roast. Yeah. It really is, but I really have had some moments of like, “Wow, why do I find that it’s OK to say these things just because someone signed up for it or asked?”
There have been moments where I’ve looked back on what I’ve said, and out of context, I’m like, “That seems really cruel and really out of line, and is this a good thing for the world to be putting out there this kind of negativity?” I just did what I was asked. Tom is participating in a sport where people are injured in ways where their lives are ruined, literally ruined. And I’m watching all these documentaries about football because I’m just trying to appreciate it more because now I’m kind of in this sports world and I’m getting asked to do sports things and I really want to appreciate it on a new level because of my involvement in the roast and reading about Tom and what it took for him to get to where he is. But I’m like, these guys beat each other up so bad and a guy will be on the ground injured and all the medics are rushing out and the team member that just slammed him to the ground just walks away. They move on very quickly from things. And so, I think it’s a very similar thing.
That’s an interesting parallel. I think that it was an interesting backlash, but I really didn’t read any of it because I really am a sensitive person and I don’t like hurting people’s feelings.
You said sorry a bunch of times during the roast.
Yeah. I had practiced that roast a million times and I had never said sorry once in the practice of it, that was not a part of like, “Oh, I’m going to just apologize throughout this and this will make me more likeable.” I just started doing it because it was what I felt in the moment.
Because he was there in the room, because you were looking at him. That’s different. That too. I felt bad. I don’t want to run into him again. I feel bad.
Something that really interests me is why certain people like to look under the emotional rocks in life. They go after the thing no one wants to see, like, “Let’s drag that into the light. Let’s talk about that.” When did you become aware of that in yourself?
As early as I can remember, I was clocking things that I would either talk to my friends about and they would not notice it, or it wouldn’t bother them, these kind of injustices that I would witness or just hypocrisies that would happen all over.
I think growing up in a house and in a family where alcohol was consumed a lot… In most alcoholic families, no one talks about what’s going on, but when kids are witnessing a parent or a family member who’s drunk, you go, “What the hell? What’s happening? This person who’s usually articulate and in charge of me is not functioning properly anymore and they definitely changed, and I don’t like it, but I can’t put my finger on what it is, and when I ask about it later on, everyone acts like it didn’t happen.” I think that was the root of it.
I just have always been extra sensitive to how people are feeling, or what’s going on, and if I’m safe. And I think that’s also a product of being in a family that likes to drink and just feeling like I’m on my own, like I’ve got to figure this out… But yeah,
I remember just always saying really weird things and having my parents say, “Don’t ask that person that again,” or, “Why did you say that?” A lot of, “Why do you think that way?” Less of, “Wow, you’re so funny,” and more like, “That’s weird.”
It seems like the next step for you would be to host some awards shows. What do you think?
Thank you. That is a goal. After doing the roast, which was the scariest thing because it’s live and it’s in a bigger theater than I’ve ever performed in, and it’s about football and I don’t even know football. That was such a scary thing to do. And now I have a system in place of, I can tackle any hard task. And also, I’m not scared to maybe upset a couple people if I’m overall creating a product that most people enjoy. I’d want to please the network, but I’d also be bingeing Ricky Gervais hosting the Golden Globes.
You’ve said in the past if you could do clean comedy, you would, but it’s not where you’re at. But what if you were asked you to host the Oscars, could you keep it clean?
Yeah, I like proving people wrong and I like clean comedy… I like being told you can’t do something. I’ve done this a lot. I’ve done The Tonight Show. I’ve done, I think, four sets on different shows, and you’ve got to be clean on those, and I’ve found ways to do that. That was early on in my career when I was even filthier, so I definitely know I could do it. ★
Someday You'll Die
Charlie Brooker
The Black Mirror creator is coming to terms with AI: “It’s like having an extra limb, but we can’t quite control it”
BY DESTINY JACKSON
From dubious social algorithms to killer surveillance systems, the dystopian anthology series Black Mirror is not afraid to shine a black light on the complex relationship between humans and technology. The decade-old series, created by Charlie Brooker, straddles the line between bleak and thought-provoking technological and psychological horrors brought to life through varying degrees of mortality in each episode. “Joan is Awful,” the standout episode of the latest Season 6, follows the ordinary goings-on of a smarmy woman named Joan (Annie Murphy), who finds out that through the powers of AI-generated content, her life has turned into a glossy TV show starring Salma Hayek on Streamberry, a Netflix-alike streaming service. Here, Brooker discusses veering into absurdist humor while still maintaining the process of creating a permanent state of mesmerizing horror.
Where did the concept of “Joan is Awful” come from?
Ideas were spinning around in my head for a while. One, I wanted to do a story about a news network that pumped out constant deep fake footage of things and political candidates doing ridiculous things to humiliate or make them look heroic. But it was about them claiming it was satire while also doing deep fake disinformation. But I couldn’t work out how to get into that story. The other thing was that the phrase “Joan is Awful” wouldn’t leave my head for some reason. What if one day your name was Joan, and you wake up to an exclusive story running on the front of the newspaper that says, “Joan is Awful?” And it’s just interviews with everyone you know saying you’re awful for minor things. But I couldn’t work it out beyond that.
Then, I started watching [2022 Hulu series] The Dropout with my wife, which I really enjoyed. And we were commenting on how close to present day it was in dramatizing things that just happened. And so, I imagined what would happen if Elizabeth Holmes switched on the TV and there was The Dropout. So, all those ideas I had came together, and that’s what “Joan is Awful” is. It’s a story about an average person who switches on the TV, and there’s a deep fake show dramatizing her life and making her look awful.
The release timing for “Joan is Awful” amid the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes couldn’t have been more appropriate since this episode deals with the problems of Artificial Intelligence in the filmmaking industry. What’s it like being a soothsayer?
The soothsaying aspect comes up quite often. Unfortunately, I seem to have an early alert system for people sending me things like, “Have you seen this news story? This is quite Black Mirror.” And all I can say is, “Well, I’m just exaggerating something I’ve seen.” And it’s just the way that, unfortunately, the world works. It seems that things get worse, so reality did catch up. But the timing of the episode was crazy. Sometimes, with a story, you’re like, I have to write this before someone else does this. At the time of writing, ChatGPT hadn’t blown up yet. But, you know, you type something into it and get an immediate first reaction: fear. Because it’s doing a convincing impersonation of coming up with thoughts, the more you play with it, the more you see how limited it is. However, the timing of this massively spiked public interest in AI as a threat to the creative industries and the creative arts. And so, it was nuts because we were in post-production on the episode at that time, and the timeliness of that as it came out around the strike, I couldn’t have foreseen, but [it was] gratifying to have done something about it. If the episode was helping to—in its own comically grotesque way—articulate
some of the dangers and some of the problems and fears, then that’s especially satisfying. What was interesting was both Salma Hayek and Annie Murphy, when they had the script… any woman in the public eye, any celebrity in the public eye, they’re bound to deep fake imagery and things like that. They’re already disturbed, and they’re already thinking about what control do they have over their literal image. So, it was interesting to explore all of that, and the episode is probably the most overtly comedic one we’ve ever done.
Let’s talk about the casting of Annie Murphy and Salma Hayek in the role of Joan. I imagine you didn’t have them in mind while writing this script. How did you go about building the script to fit them in? And what was it like working with both actors as they played off each other?
The earliest version of the script just said, Hollywood A-lister. We thought Salma Hayek would be perfect, but there would be no way she should do this. I believe we had Annie at that point, and then we spoke to Salma and got her on board. She was immediately hilarious, and her major note was that the character Salma Hayek could
be more outrageous. Because obviously, what I didn’t have in the first version I sent to her was have the character shit in a church. It was written so blandly because I wouldn’t have had the balls to write in some of the stuff she says in the final version of the draft. She was a more strait-laced character. Salma was a really good sport and was like, “Well, can you mention… Can we say that I’m…” Some of the lines in the episode that she says about herself, like, “I am a dyslexic, talented actress with questionable English,” I think that might have been an ad-lib of Salma’s that we left in because I would not have dared write that in the original draft. So, she encouraged me to parody her, making the character more outrageous and scary.
Quam-puta was just as cheesy as it was a brilliant play on words. Yes. She would throw in loads of stuff to jot down. She was gusty and gung-ho, just a very funny person. And Annie Murphy, for me, like a lot of people, ended up watching Schitt’s Creek during the pandemic. I became a huge fan, so getting her as well was nuts. There was a point where we sat down and had time to workshop a couple of scenes just to give them more outrageous things to
say. Our director, Ally Pankiw, did a really good job. She’s a writer as well. She worked on Schitt’s Creek and directed a show called Feel Good in the U.K., so she’s really funny. And good Christ, we also have some bloody cameos in that episode. It’s crazy. We’ve got Michael Cera showing up. He wasn’t in the original script. Ayo Edebiri, too. I don’t think I’d seen The Bear when Ayo came on board. We had an absolutely stacked cast, but it was great.
Considering how meta the episode is regarding its own Netflix-esque streaming service, Streamberry, along with quips that dig into cinema being diminished into a streaming app, did Netflix have any feedback for you?
It slightly happened in a stealthy way. In the original draft, I referred to Streamberry as a Netflix/HBO/ Disney+ style streaming service. And then, during pre-production, we looked at the graphics and said, “If we’re going to make it look a bit like the Netflix homepage, why don’t we make it look exactly like the Netflix homepage?” So, we asked permission to do that and even to use the noise at the start. It just struck us as a funny idea. Netflix were good sports about it.
You’ve said in the past you never wanted Black Mirror just to be this thesis statement of “Tech is bad,” but more about people being the destructive force. “Joan is Awful” seems like a little bit of both. What do you think people are responding to overall about the show?
Getting recognition has been amazing because when I first started, I had no conception that this was a show that would ever travel beyond the shores of the U.K. I get frustrated about people going, “Oh, it’s the phones are evil and tech is bad” show. It’s because I think I’m impressed by the technological tools that we create because they’re fucking amazing, and phones are amazing. Just like
any powerful tool, it’s what you do with it. AI-generated imagery, for example, is impressive and incredible. You could use it to completely fucking destabilize our society by pumping out terrifying misinformation, or just use it as a tool in Photoshop that fills things in, or use it to bounce ideas back and forth, or something innocuous as a list of names for coal miners in the 1930s that I can pick. However, if you were using it to generate a pitch and then try to turn it into a show, I think that’s not good. And you’ll end up with dog shit, and you’ll be putting people out of work. So, with any of these things, it’s how you use it. So, if anything, it’s not the “tech is bad” show. It’s the “tech is impressive but neutral and the humans, it’s not that we are fuck-ups, because we’ve invented this stuff, we’re amazing” show.
I often liken it to suddenly growing a new limb. Something like social media, it’s incredible. It’s like having an extra limb, but we can’t quite control it. We are clumsy. We’re still knocking things over. Similar to the printing press, no one would say that the printing press was a terrible invention. It revolutionized the way knowledge is disseminated throughout the world. As a result, it did have people publishing really ugly propaganda to disseminate horrible ideas. So, all of these things come at a cost. If anything, I’m a natural neurotic worrier generally, and I worry all the time about how these things are impressive. And as a former video games journalist and current dweeb, I love all of this
stuff. I couldn’t write Black Mirror if I hated technology. Because half the time, I’m looking at images of phones and saying, “Oh, can we change the design of it?” It would be an awful job if I hated technology. But I worry about our propensity to be clumsy.
This is partially why we don’t tend to write stories on Black Mirror about an android that learns to cry or something like that. In the episode “Be Right Back,” the problem was that the android didn’t feel emotions. The problem was that the android wasn’t a good substitute for the person that someone’s grieving over. And I think that’s an interesting space, and hopefully, I think maybe that’s a thing people respond to. There’s a creepiness to be mined in the slight disconnect we feel sometimes when our human emotions are butting up against the cold, hard screen. Technology has been a universal wave that’s transformed all our lives in many ways.
What thematic elements can fans expect in Season 7?
We’re doing some things we’ve not done before. People can expect quite a lot of emotion and, hopefully, a good mix of chills. I wrote one script, and the general consensus was that it was one of the bleakest, heaviest gut punches yet. There’s also techy episodes and ones that are making people cry. So, hopefully, it’s a full emotional workout, but we shall see. The viewers will be the judge. ★
Annie Murphy in Black Mirror.
D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai
Reservation Dogs’ Bear on bringing Native American life to the masses: “We weren’t doing it for the money”
BY LYNETTE RICE
Before FX gave us The Bear, it first introduced us to Bear Smallhill, the unofficial leader of a quartet of Native misfits at the heart of FX’s Reservation Dogs. Exuding equal parts warmth and extreme mischievousness,
D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai is the only actor from the comedy’s threeyear run to earn an Emmy nomination—an honor the 21-year-old Oji-Cree First Nations actor isn’t taking for granted. Here, WoonA-Tai talks about working on the Sterlin Harjo comedy that’s competing for the first time in the Best Comedy category, and how he hopes this won’t be the last time he works on a series that offers a fresh view of Native American Life.
So where were you when you found out that you had been nominated for the Emmy? I just got back to LA from visiting friends and family in Oklahoma. I woke up to a notification from my friend Michael, who was like, “Congratulations, next time I’m in LA we have to celebrate.” I had no Idea what he was talking about. I was very confused. He
was like, “Man, your Emmy nomination!” It was the best news to wake up to. Actually, that’s how I first found out that I was cast in Reservation Dogs
Wait, what?
My mom woke me up from a deep sleep to tell me I got the job. I was like, “Oh, cool.” And I just fell back asleep. So, my idea is just to sleep and hopefully wake up to good news every single time.
How much did you and the other Rez Dogs cast members talk about the Emmys? Did you wonder why the show was overlooked in its first two seasons?
We’re one of only a few Native shows ever to accomplish what we have accomplished. So even if I wasn’t on the show, I would feel the same way… we were overlooked for both Season 1 and Season 2, which I felt like were amazing. The cast and crew put their hearts into it. It was something that people have never seen before. So yes, we had our little conversations about getting snubbed, but I’m happy the voters are recognizing how great the show was.
Did creator Sterlin Harjo warn you ahead of time that Season 3 would be the last? How did that make you feel?
It’s funny. When we shot the very first episode in Season 1, we all thought this was going to be a limited series. Little did we know that it would be picked up. But by the end of Season 2, Sterlin said it was coming to an end. It was a bittersweet moment, but I
accepted it because the writers and directors knew what they were doing. It was beautiful because we weren’t doing it for money. If we were, we would be still on the air. They knew that every story has a beginning, middle and an end. We opened that door for more Native representation on the screen to be presented later.
What was that last day on set like? What did you shoot and where were you?
Tears, just tears. Everybody from the stand-ins to the extras, to the lighting crew… just everybody. I cannot stress it enough. Everybody was crying. The last scene that we shot was the last scene of the series, which was the funeral episode. We really got to show a whole community coming together in Season 3. Everybody who was there the whole time for the past three years came together as one big happy family. And as soon as they said “cut”, there were hugs and tears were all around.
What an extraordinary experience you had on Reservation Dogs, being surrounded by an all-indigenous cast and crew. That must be so sad to walk away from.
It really is. But one thing I do know is that if I ever get the chance and opportunity again to be a part of a cast that has a full Native writers’ room, a full Native directors’ room, and a full Native cast, it will turn out the exact same way. When you put a bunch of Native Americans in one room together and give them a camera and some dialogue, they will make the best show.
Can you talk about Bear’s journey since Season 1?
I have a very big connection with Bear. We are very similar. I think he’s a really, smart kid. He’s learned a lot, trying to figure out his path. In the beginning, he saw his best friend’s death. He blamed that on the Native community. Just like his friend, Bear felt trapped in this community, and he put all of that guilt onto the people. He didn’t realize that the community is what helps us and makes us heal. That was his arc, really. In the beginning, he thought the community wasn’t right for him. He thought that he could be better off with his father in California. And when he left to go to California, his dreams were shattered. He realized the biggest thing that was keeping him sane was his community
in Oklahoma. You can see it in the last few episodes. He accepted the fact that home was where he’s supposed to be. When we’re on reservations or in urban communities that are very poor, we feel like the grass is always greener on the other side. And then when you go there, you realize it was way better where we’re from, where your community is.
So, if Bear was a real person, do you think he’d still be back on the rez today?
Yes. I mean, honestly, I think Bear is a real person. It sounds corny but these characters really do represent a good portion of the Native community in urban cities. Every character you see on that show is real. We didn’t just create them out of thin air.
The laughs on the show were top notch. Would you often break character because of how funny it would be?
All the time. I would hear everybody behind the camera dying of laughter. That’s what broke me a lot more than the actual scenes. In the first episode, when we steal a truck and the driver goes into the store and talks about his truck being stolen, there’s a cutaway
scene where he’s sitting right next to me, telling me I’m a bad guy [for stealing it]. That scene was very hard to do because originally it wasn’t even in the script, they just added it on the spot. They were like, “It would be so funny if he just came up right next to you and told you all the bad things you did wrong and how you have messed up your life.” I wasn’t prepared to shoot that! I was just cracking up laughing the whole time.
You were the first Bear on FX. Were you worried that the Bear on The Bear would take away your thunder?
I was like, “Who’s this guy?” No, not at all. I got to meet Jeremy Allen White a few times when we were at award shows. He’s an amazing, talented actor. I love The Bear. I just am honored to be in the same category as those guys.
What is next for you?
I recently finished Warfare directed by Alex Garland. I spent a few months in England, my first time. I went to Amy Winehouse’s house, her grave site, the bar where she would chill at. I also went to Abbey Road. I did the whole tour that I always wanted to do since I was a little kid. ★
“Every character you see on that show is real. We didn't just create it out of thin air.”
From left: D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai as Bear; Bear on his mystical journey.
Janelle James
Abbott Elementary’s principal on “poignant” dancing, Season 4, and what could make Ava call HR
BY KATIE CAMPIONE
Janelle James, who plays the self-involved yet surprisingly dedicated principal Ava Coleman in Quinta Brunson’s Abbott Elementary, knows that the show faces a distinct challenge as a network sitcom that consistently sheds light on the concerns plaguing low-income schools. It has to be funny, of course, and family friendly too, without distracting from the social issues it addresses on a near episodic basis, such as constant funding problems, the home lives of the kids, and even recreational drug use. Here, James talks about how she’s spent the last three seasons getting to know Ava, a character with much more going on than might first meet the eye.
How do you feel like Ava, and your performance of the character, has evolved over the past three seasons?
She’s more varied. She’s gone from a more wacky character to maybe a more well-rounded, believable person. This season, especially with the opener, her taking her job more seriously gives her a different flavor. Her having to stand up for her employee Barbara, this season. She was less antagonistic this season and more riding on the side of the teachers and students of Abbott, so that was a new twist to her this season.
Do you think it was validating for Ava in that first episode when the teachers got tired of her strictness so quickly?
I mean, she was dedicated to being different, but she also knew that the way that the school is supposed to be run is not the way to get things done. So, she was happy that the teachers realized that as well, but she still didn’t lose her educational trajectory. Now she’s in the book club. She’s in the library. She’s more curious about learning. Even though she went back to her quote-unquote old self, she’s still got some new personality. I don’t want to say she’s a new person, but she has some new interests, which is always something that I liked about Ava, because she has varied interests. She’s knowledgeable about things in a surprising way, and also curious about things in a surprising way. So now, that has led her to education. I don’t know where it’s going, but that’s a good factor for the show.
How did you find out that the way the teachers would get her back to her old self would be by blasting Juvenile’s “Back That Azz Up” in the gym? And what was your reaction to that?
Quinta told me I would be dancing to it. All she said is, “You’ll be dancing to ’Back That Azz Up’ in the season opener.” Which can
be anything. It’s very much in her character. That song means a lot to Black people, particularly Black women. It was just such a smart way [to bring out that side of her] character. That’s exactly what would happen. So, it’s a curveball, but then it was like, ‘Duh.’ That’s what’s so smart about Quinta [Brunson] and our writers. They really, for lack of better words, keep it real. It comes off as a comedic moment, and it is, but it’s a very real thing that would happen. Everything has such realism and heart underneath it, and that’s what I enjoy about the writing. No matter how silly it comes off, no matter how crazy the idea sounds… it’s such a poignant moment at the end of the day. So, I really enjoyed that.
Did you get any direction on how to react? Or did they let you improvise it? How many takes are there of you trying to fight the beat before giving in?
Just, “Dance.“ That was the direction, and I knew I would be in the gym under a spotlight, so I was already sweating about that. But the scene itself, it’s two parts. The first part is me running full speed into the gym, because I’ve heard someone say something bad about Harvard… I ran in heels maybe eight times full speed into the gym screaming. The dance itself was 20 seconds of dancing with the camera guy on wheels circling me. I think that’s also what made that scene so great. The camera work was amazing. The spotlight was so dramatic. In my performance, I am thinking, ’One, don’t look like you’ve done this nine times already. Two, this is a family show. Keep it cute. Three, how can I make this poignant yet still comedic? How can I look like this is something that she’s fighting inside to be her new self and then reverting?’ It’s almost, if you watch Family Matters, when he would turn from Urkel into Urquelle. That’s a goofier version of what I’m doing. And then also, [I’m thinking], ’Wow, this skirt is really tight.
My feet hurt.’ But, just not showing that on my face, and then really showing her transition from this new Ava back into her old self.
You do so much physical comedy in this show.
Yes, Ava is always on the move, and that is different for me, Janelle James, because I am very stationary. I am always sitting down.
How do you prepare to do a lot of that physical comedy and really embody Ava in that way?
I’m literally training. I’m running on a treadmill at night. I am stretching. I am doing squats in between. Last season, I messed up my back. I was hanging upside down on one of those contraptions in between scenes. I was on that for a couple episodes, because my sciatica was acting up. I refuse to wear flats, even though it’s been offered to me, because I feel like it’s part of the character. She has to be tall, she has to be commanding. She has to walk a certain way. I’ve been wrecking myself, basically. [Laughs] This role is very physically demanding in a way that I am trying not to show on my face, because Ava would never.
So, was this season about finding balance for Ava, after that debacle in the first episode?
No. I think she went right back to how she was, and the school’s better for it. This season was to show that, yeah, Ava’s way of running this school may be unorthodox, but it’s what’s best for the school in the situation that they’re in. If you do it in the quote-unquote correct way, nothing gets done. This season was for the teachers to realize that and for Ava to continue to do what she does. Now, if she comes up for herself every once in a while, all the better. It keeps her interested, sticking around.
You previously said, around the premiere, that this season was going to be edgier. Now that all
the episodes are out, can you point to moments that made you say that?
I mean, you saw that kiss in the finale. That came to mind first. I think I have a religious joke every season, but those are my faves, because I like dark humor. I had the joke about Jesus having many holes, such as Barbara, and why would he be mad at that?
That’s breathtaking in a sitcom, I think. I love that. I love the smoking episode, when we find out that Janine not only smokes weed, but she smokes it every night. For a family sitcom, we not only got away with it, but did it in a real way. Nobody was like, “Oh, this is out of character for this show.” We’re making a point, and it’s still funny, and everyone’s not like clutching their pearls.
How do you think Ava will react to Janine and Gregory, if that kiss prompts them to finally get together in Season 4?
She’s all upset in the finale. We just got our first script for the first episode of next season, and I haven’t read it yet. I just got it, like 10 minutes ago, actually, so I too am curious about why she’s so upset. A clue was in the
playground scene, where she talks about going to HR. I really think, based on how self-involved she is, she’s afraid that this relationship thing is going to mess up the flow of the school. Now she’s got something else to worry about. Like, “Oh now Gregory and Janine are fighting,” and she has to deal with that instead of selling her clothes on Etsy during lunch or whatever. She just doesn’t want another problem. I think that in any environment, you date a co-worker, and it can be a recipe for disaster. As a principal, she would have to deal with the fallout. That’s my guess. I would hate it to be that she’s simply just a hater. I think she has more going on than that.
I read that you pitched an idea for Season 3, but it was likely being delayed to Season 4 because of the low episode count. Do you remember what it was? How do you decide when you’re going to pitch an idea?
I don’t even remember what that pitch was now, so that sucks. I determine when there’s a good time to pitch when Quinta asks me, “Do [you] have any ideas?” I don’t just go, “Hey, I have an
“This role is very physically demanding in a way that I am not trying to show on my face, because Ava would never.”
idea.” Usually I’m hanging out with Quinta, and she’ll say something, and then I might pitch on top of that, but I’m not really trying to insert myself into the writers’ room in any way. Sometimes she’ll run things by me like, “Oh, I was thinking this. Do you have a problem with that?” I never have a problem with anything, usually. I trust the writers. We’re in Season 4. They’re killing it. It’s great for me to only have to worry about acting.
What haven’t you gotten to explore about Ava that you are hoping will be touched on in future seasons?
Just her backstory. Who was her family? Did she actually grow up in Philly, or did she just end up there? Why is she a principal? My theory about Ava is she’s pretty well off, and this is something that she just does. This is her way of helping kids, even though people don’t see it that way or give her any credit for it. This is a way to give herself some social standing. This is a way for her to compete with her sorority sisters. This is a way for her to get attention. I think she’s just so layered in her motivations. I’d like to see what those are. ★
From left: Tyler James Williams, Chris Perfetti, Lisa Ann Walter and Janelle James.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 24, 2024
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