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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Hi, I'm Rosie Cordero,
00:06 Associate Editor of Television at Deadline.
00:09 Welcome to Deadline's virtual house, Hulu Showrunners.
00:12 Today we will be discussing the adaptation of three novels
00:15 into Hulu originals.
00:17 We will kick off the series with the riveting Black Cake.
00:21 Joining us today from the series
00:23 is showrunner, executive producer,
00:25 and writer, Marissa Jo Serrar.
00:27 Welcome.
00:29 - Hi.
00:30 Excited to be here.
00:32 - Now, you know, I have a lot of questions about Black Cake,
00:34 but before we get into that,
00:36 first, here's a look at the series.
00:38 - Come to London.
00:41 - What?
00:43 When?
00:44 - We can leave tonight.
00:46 I can find a place before I start school.
00:49 I'll work three jobs if I have to.
00:52 We'll figure it out together.
00:58 - I don't know what I expected you to say
01:01 or do when I called tonight,
01:02 but it wasn't this.
01:04 - Not happy to hear this.
01:07 - In my heart, I've already left with the Gibbs.
01:12 That I can't leave my pa.
01:15 If I go, they kill him.
01:17 - He did this to you, Kobi.
01:20 - I know my pa.
01:21 He's always shown up for me when I really needed him.
01:25 And I have to believe this, he will get me out of this too.
01:29 - And if he doesn't?
01:30 - I'll play along to buy time.
01:34 He'll get his finances in order,
01:35 and there won't be a wedding.
01:38 And one day, we really can be together.
01:43 - I hope for your sake that you're right.
01:47 - What?
01:51 - If you change your mind, come to London and find me.
01:56 - Oh, that love story.
01:58 Marissa Jo, before we get too deep into questions
02:05 about the series,
02:06 "Black Cake" is based on Charmaine Wilkerson's book.
02:11 How did this book enter your life?
02:13 And what made you say, "I have to adapt this for TV"?
02:16 - Well, I was sent the manuscript for "Black Cake"
02:21 almost two years ago.
02:22 Exactly, like late October, early November of 2020
02:26 by my agent.
02:27 And it's actually sent by my feature agent.
02:29 And I was scouting locations, driving across the country
02:34 for my first show as showrunner, "Women of the Movement."
02:37 And like literally the moment I finished the last word,
02:40 I called him and I said, "I have to do this.
02:43 "Nobody else can do this.
02:45 "And it is not a movie.
02:46 "It is a series.
02:47 "There's too much here.
02:48 "There's too much in the book.
02:50 "It's not a movie."
02:50 "It is a series.
02:51 "There's too much here.
02:52 "There's so many layers.
02:53 "I really wanna honor these characters, these worlds."
02:57 And I had such a deep connection to so many of them.
03:00 Now, one of our characters is an adopted woman.
03:03 Multiple characters are mixed race.
03:05 I'm a mother and I'm adopted.
03:07 I'm mixed race.
03:08 Like there's so many things here.
03:10 And I just said, "I wanna be the person
03:12 "because of all these personal connections,
03:13 "but I will protect these characters.
03:15 "I will honor this book.
03:17 "I will not dismantle it."
03:19 And luckily, it all came together.
03:21 - Well, being that you have so many connections
03:24 to this story, I have really not much.
03:28 And I'm crying through so many of the episodes.
03:31 Was this a journey for you emotionally?
03:33 - Oh, such an emotional journey.
03:36 I mean, this one, I've tackled very heavy,
03:40 challenging, emotional subject matter
03:42 on every single thing I've ever written.
03:44 Other people's television shows, my own work.
03:47 And this one, it was very personal.
03:49 And there are a lot of issues we're tackling.
03:52 We're tackling assault.
03:54 We're tackling adoption.
03:56 We're tackling tokenism, discrimination,
04:01 the immigrant experience, the bisexual experience
04:04 and coming out as bisexual and this discrimination
04:07 that comes within that community.
04:09 We're tackling a lot of things here,
04:10 but we're also telling an epic love story.
04:13 We're telling a story about the power of female friendships.
04:16 So it was so personal because I put my soul,
04:19 I bleed for the show.
04:20 And so did all of my amazing writers, all women,
04:23 all women writers in the room.
04:25 So we were all just sharing our own stories
04:27 in order to take these characters to the next level
04:30 and go as deep as we possibly could.
04:32 - This series is a true ensemble.
04:36 And you do, and there's also so much time jumping
04:39 and you do it flawlessly.
04:41 Talk to me a little bit about casting these people
04:46 in these roles.
04:47 While you were reading this, did you have anybody in mind?
04:51 Yes, what can you share about the casting?
04:54 - Well, the casting, I had nobody in mind
04:59 except for two actors who I'd just worked with,
05:02 Adrienne Warren and Glyn Turman,
05:04 who were in "Women of the Movement,"
05:05 my first show as showrunner.
05:07 And so I saw, heard them because I had spent months
05:12 making a series with them and in post with them.
05:14 And they're such amazing actors.
05:16 And I was so grateful that they would join an ensemble.
05:19 The others, the casting put their voices in my head
05:23 because I had never seen anyone like Covey,
05:26 this Chinese Jamaican teenage girl
05:28 coming of age in the 1960s.
05:31 I had never seen Lynn, her father,
05:33 who moved to Jamaica when he was a little boy,
05:36 a Chinese boy, and grew up in Jamaica.
05:38 He's Jamaican, Chinese Jamaican.
05:40 I had never met any of these people.
05:41 So the casting experience put them in my head
05:45 and really helped their voices come to life.
05:47 And they obviously brought them to life.
05:49 Amazing performance.
05:50 Chipo Chung, who plays Eleanor, just really sealed it.
05:54 The moment her first tape came in, I said,
05:56 "This is Eleanor."
05:57 And she happens to look exactly like Mia Isaac,
06:00 which is a gift from above.
06:03 But no, the actors really created these,
06:06 really brought them to life.
06:09 - What can you give us as far as a look inside
06:13 of keeping track of all of these timelines?
06:15 Did you stick to one timeline
06:17 and get that shot all at once?
06:19 Or how did that work?
06:20 - Well, it's challenging.
06:21 I mean, it all goes back to the writing
06:24 because I plan.
06:26 I create a very detailed map before I even pitch the show
06:30 because it's not like when you're pitching an adaptation,
06:31 you just say, "Okay, there's a book
06:33 "and I'm gonna make it into a show.
06:34 "Will you buy it?"
06:35 Not how it works.
06:37 I basically wrote the Bible.
06:40 Every cliffhanger that you see on this show
06:42 was pitched to Hulu.
06:45 Every single turn, the non-linear nature
06:48 was written in the pitch
06:50 because I had to understand it.
06:52 What makes this different than the book?
06:54 How is this a TV show?
06:56 What can I do through the adaptation process
06:59 to heighten the drama, heighten the genre,
07:01 the mystery of it all?
07:02 So that was all planned and pitched.
07:04 And so when I brought my writer's room on,
07:06 I found my writers, I cast my writer's room.
07:09 They already had this really very detailed map
07:12 of where we were going
07:13 and we were just filling in all of the blanks.
07:16 And then the timelines,
07:17 we have a hair timeline for Benny's hair
07:19 'cause we see her all over.
07:20 We have locks, we have twists, we have natural curls,
07:24 and we needed to know what years
07:26 was she wearing what hairstyle.
07:27 So we have a hair timeline.
07:29 Then we have a timeline of Covey,
07:30 from Covey's birth to Eleanor's death.
07:33 We just needed to see that because it is non-linear.
07:37 And what we shot, we didn't shoot it in order
07:39 because we shot all of Jamaica first.
07:42 And we returned to Jamaica in almost every episode.
07:45 So we had to shoot all of that out first.
07:47 And then we moved to our sound stages in Wales
07:50 and then shot everything out,
07:52 in order in terms of episode for the most part.
07:56 But some days we were shooting Benny when she was 20
07:59 and then Benny when she's 30.
08:01 So it was tremendous work,
08:03 but it was all about the planning
08:05 and the communication with all the department heads
08:07 to make sure we were at the right time.
08:09 - I can't wait for the finale and hopefully for season two.
08:13 Everybody, watch "The Black Cake."
08:17 It's available to stream now on Hulu.
08:21 Marissa Joserar, thank you for this beautiful series
08:24 and for joining us today for a chat.
08:27 - Thank you so much.
08:28 This was great.
08:30 - Now, unfortunately that's all the time we have left.
08:34 Up next, we have a chat with the other black girl,
08:37 which by the way, the other black girl,
08:39 they have a rum cake in there too.
08:42 - What?
08:43 I need to check it out.
08:44 (laughing)
08:45 - Thank you.
08:47 - Thanks.
08:48 - Our next series from Deadline Virtual House,
08:51 Hulu Showrunners, is "The Other Black Girl,"
08:54 a wild ride of a show.
08:57 Joining us for today's conversation,
09:00 are co-showrunners, executive producers and screenwriters,
09:03 Jordan Reddow and Gus Hickey.
09:05 Welcome.
09:06 - Hello, thank you for having us.
09:08 - Hello.
09:09 Yes.
09:11 - But before we begin this juicy conversation,
09:15 here's a look at "The Other Black Girl."
09:17 - I am your friend, Nella.
09:20 If you can listen to one thing, just listen to that.
09:23 You don't understand.
09:28 I don't come from anything.
09:31 Diana gave me my way out and this, this is a better life.
09:38 This is a real life where we can be real friends
09:43 and we can work on projects that we care about.
09:46 - And all it costs is our souls.
09:47 - Girl, do you really think white people are out here
09:50 distracted all day about how furious they are at the world?
09:54 Don't you just wanna free your mind from that shit?
09:57 - That's a really great scene from the finale.
10:01 Sinclair, Daniel and Ashley Murray really killed it.
10:05 I love the chemistry between them
10:07 and how we never truly know like who we're dealing with.
10:12 And I feel like even when it ended,
10:14 we still didn't really even know where this was going.
10:18 Talk to me a little bit about casting these two women.
10:21 - Oh, it was kind of an amazing process.
10:25 It took a really long time for both of them
10:28 to discover both of them.
10:29 And I think though, once we found each of them
10:33 and especially once they did their chemistry read,
10:36 it was so undeniably them that it was actually very easy
10:41 in the end, it just took a long time to find them.
10:44 But then it was an obvious answer for us.
10:48 - Yeah, and I think they actually, they both really,
10:55 it's sort of a chicken and the egg situation.
10:56 Like once you cast them, you also learn things
11:00 about the characters that you didn't know before
11:03 because you learn about the actors playing them
11:05 and you want to play to the actor's strengths
11:08 and you see different things that the character
11:11 is now gonna be capable of because of that actor,
11:14 which I think had a lot to,
11:16 it says a lot about the difference between a novel
11:23 and a television series because you're seeing the person
11:26 as opposed to you're imagining the person.
11:29 And often in a novel, I think you're imagining yourself
11:32 in so many ways.
11:35 But I think in seeing them visually
11:38 and their personalities really helped.
11:41 We realized that Nella is a lot funnier
11:44 than we thought she was.
11:46 She's really capable of slinging some jokes.
11:49 And I think we realized that Hazel is a lot kinder
11:54 than we thought she was because Ashley is just this
11:56 very sweet human who really earnestly wants
12:01 to gain Nella's friendship, as well as all of these
12:07 crazy things that she wants to do
12:08 and these underhanded ways in which she may go about them,
12:13 there is this humanity at the center for Ashley
12:18 that we really hoped to translate also into the scripts.
12:22 - But you guys really did a great job at making us
12:27 untrust the Hazel character.
12:30 So even if we saw the kindness from her,
12:32 I didn't really believe it.
12:33 And honestly, there's these little undertones of sci-fi
12:36 that I kept thinking she was an alien.
12:38 - Oh man, that would be great.
12:41 That would be maybe season two, keep watching.
12:45 - Jordan, so the series is an adaptation
12:49 of Zakiya DeLila Harris's New York Times bestselling novel.
12:53 What was it about this title that made you think
12:55 that it was perfect to adapt for TV?
12:57 - Well, I actually just read it as a fan.
13:01 I had no idea that it was ever gonna be made
13:05 into a TV show, but I read it when it first came out
13:07 and it really resonated with me as a black woman
13:10 who has been in a lot of predominantly white spaces
13:15 and so I devoured it.
13:18 And then when we heard that Rashida was adapting it,
13:22 we called our reps and we were like,
13:24 whatever you have to do, please get us in the room
13:27 on this show, please.
13:29 And we had a fantastic meeting with Zakiya and Rashida
13:33 where we had this really wonderful flow of ideas.
13:37 They had great ideas about how to adapt it.
13:40 We had fun ideas and there was a lot of overlap,
13:43 which was really cool.
13:44 And then that continued through writing and shooting
13:47 and editing it, they were both fantastic collaborators
13:51 and Zakiya in particular, who was in the writer's room
13:53 with us the whole time, was just so open to any changes
13:58 or tweaks or expanding that we wanted to do
14:02 of certain characters, which of course led
14:05 to her writing that episode at the end of the season
14:08 with Hazel's backstory, which is totally a new invention,
14:12 which is not in the book at all.
14:14 - Anything you wanna add Gus about what you liked?
14:19 - Yeah, I mean, I think I also wanna add
14:23 that when the book came out,
14:26 I mean, before it was even published,
14:28 Tara Duncan and Adam Fishback,
14:31 who were non-writing EPs on the show,
14:34 they were obsessed with it and they knew
14:37 we would make an amazing television show
14:38 and there was a bidding war for it and all of this.
14:41 So all of this happened, you know,
14:44 much far above our pay grade and we thank them very much
14:48 for getting the book and for trusting us with it.
14:52 But yeah, I think I also, when Jordan had me read the book,
14:57 I really loved that it is this sort of universal question.
15:05 And I think that that's what Jordan
15:09 and I really wanted to put into the series,
15:13 this tussle that everyone goes through,
15:18 this battle that everyone has of how much of yourself
15:22 are you willing to sacrifice to succeed?
15:25 And I think that that's true,
15:26 that everybody has to answer that question in capitalism.
15:29 Every person who goes to work
15:31 has to change a part of themselves
15:33 and leave a part of themselves behind.
15:36 And what is that cost?
15:38 What is that price that you're willing to pay?
15:40 And every single person in the show answers it differently.
15:45 Every character, you see how Diana answers it,
15:49 you see how Nella answers it, you see how Hazel answers it,
15:52 you see how Vera answers it and what she pays for.
15:55 And you see how Eric, you see how Richard Wagner answers it.
16:00 And all of the answers are different
16:03 and all of the answers are not necessarily correct.
16:08 Nobody is right.
16:11 And I think that really, really attracted us
16:13 to the project as well.
16:15 - With that, we need to go into the conversation
16:20 of the finale because someone got a new hairstyle.
16:24 (laughing)
16:26 And so let's talk about her journey across the season
16:31 which ends up with this new, more acceptable,
16:36 Eurocentric kind of look and where that could go.
16:41 What are your plans for season two?
16:42 - Lots of plans.
16:48 (laughing)
16:49 I think we really wanted to play with the ending of the book
16:54 versus the ending of the series.
17:00 It's very different.
17:02 In the book, she actually does take the grease
17:07 and then in the series, we wanted to leave,
17:10 which is in many ways a tragic ending.
17:13 And I mean, somewhat, it definitely says
17:18 what the grease means to Nella in a way,
17:24 but we wanted to make sure that there was room
17:27 for season two and there was a change
17:30 and a growth in the character.
17:32 And it is this sort of like tragic irony
17:36 that the change and the growth in the character
17:38 is Nella deciding that she has to play the game
17:42 even more intensely than she did before.
17:45 She has to sort of have another level of code switching,
17:50 another level of lying about herself
17:52 by creating this sort of small time resistance
17:57 that happens at the end of the finale.
18:01 And so, yeah, we hope that in season two,
18:05 it'll just be discussing even more layers
18:08 of being a fake version of yourself at work.
18:13 And when does that collapse
18:16 and when does the fake version of yourself,
18:19 if you've been it for so long,
18:20 when does that become the real version of yourself
18:22 and how does Nella hold on to her actual identity?
18:28 This is definitely a show that you'll go back
18:30 and watch again and you'll find a bunch of stuff
18:32 that you missed.
18:33 Great, I love that.
18:34 Yes, please watch it again.
18:35 We want the numbers.
18:36 We love that.
18:38 I will.
18:39 Jordan and Gus, thank you so much for the time today,
18:44 for everyone watching.
18:45 If you haven't seen "The Other Black Girl,"
18:47 or if you have and you need to watch it again
18:49 to get everything, it's currently available
18:52 in its entirety on Hulu.
18:55 Thank you.
18:56 Thank you so much. Thank you for loving us.
18:58 And the final series that we're highlighting today
19:01 on Deadline's Virtual House Hulu Showrunners event
19:05 is "Tiny Beautiful Things."
19:07 Joining our conversation today is executive producer
19:10 and showrunner, Liz Tigelar.
19:13 Hi, Liz.
19:14 Hi.
19:15 Thanks for joining us.
19:16 Thank you for having me.
19:17 But before we get into a juicy conversation,
19:21 here's a look at "Tiny Beautiful Things."
19:25 You are in so much trouble.
19:27 Do you understand how much trouble you're in?
19:30 Who is that?
19:31 Who is that boy?
19:31 Just stop talking.
19:33 Is this some sort of pan or poly?
19:34 You're not even supposed to be here.
19:36 Why are you here?
19:38 Because I live here?
19:40 Because I never should have left?
19:42 Because I'm your fucking mother?
19:44 Okay, well, I wish you weren't.
19:47 What did you say?
19:48 I wish you weren't my mom.
19:50 Wait.
19:51 I could die tomorrow.
19:54 Do you realize that?
19:55 I could fucking die tomorrow.
19:57 And if I did, you would never forgive yourself
19:59 because that would be the last thing
20:00 that you would ever said to me.
20:01 What the fuck are you talking about?
20:03 Do not say fuck to me.
20:05 You just said it.
20:06 You just said it twice.
20:07 And you're not the only one that could die tomorrow.
20:09 So could I.
20:11 That is an awful thing to say to me.
20:13 Yeah, it fucking is.
20:14 Liz, this clip really sets up kind of the heart
20:17 of the story.
20:18 It's very much a story about mothers and daughters
20:22 and complicated family dynamics.
20:24 And of course, love.
20:26 Talk to me about how this book ended up on your radar
20:30 and why you thought you needed to do this
20:32 as a limited series.
20:34 Oh, well, this book had been on my radar
20:36 really since it came out.
20:39 I had been a huge fan of Cheryl's book "Wild," her memoir.
20:44 And while I was waiting for the "Wild" movie to come out,
20:48 I read "Torch," her first book that was, you know,
20:52 fiction, but obviously very drawn from her life.
20:56 And then a friend gifted me "Tiny Beautiful Things,"
20:58 and I devoured that right away.
21:01 And then just remained a huge Cheryl fan
21:05 until really years later, I was in the Hulu parking garage
21:10 having just done the pitch out for "Little Fires Everywhere."
21:13 And Lauren Neustadter, Risa's producing partner, was like,
21:16 "Do you know who Cheryl Strait is by any chance?"
21:19 And I was like, went off on all the ways I knew Cheryl.
21:22 And I mean, my kid is named Wilder.
21:24 So I was like, "Yes, I know Cheryl.
21:26 She has inspired a lot in my life."
21:28 And she said, "Would you be up for meeting her
21:32 and maybe coming in to do this adaptation with her?"
21:35 And, you know, at the time I thought maybe I could like
21:38 have dinner and get my book signed.
21:40 And now here we are.
21:42 So it was an amazing, amazing journey.
21:46 Is it just me or was there a little nod to "Wild"
21:50 in the series?
21:52 Yes, there was.
21:53 When Catherine Clare is hiking,
21:58 it actually was really funny.
22:00 We were shooting that and we'd recreated this, you know,
22:03 glacier that she was going to be hiking on.
22:05 And she had, you know, the boots that Cheryl wore
22:09 and her big backpack.
22:11 And Catherine didn't know Cheryl was on set that night.
22:14 And so all of a sudden Cheryl was like,
22:16 "Wait, wait, wait, we have to stop shooting."
22:19 And she was like, "I have to fix her backpack.
22:22 It doesn't look like how you would wear a monster backpack."
22:26 And so Cheryl walked up to Catherine.
22:28 And as soon as Catherine saw her,
22:30 she just burst into tears.
22:31 And it was a really, it was a really cool moment.
22:35 Now that I know the backstory of how much you loved it,
22:39 it makes the scene even more special.
22:42 It was really nice that you intuited that.
22:44 How much did Cheryl give of herself
22:49 throughout this project?
22:52 - Yeah, I mean, so much.
22:54 She was actually in the writer's room every day with us.
22:58 She, you know, when I, yeah, when I,
23:00 I mean, she was basically like a writer on staff,
23:04 obviously at an incredibly high level
23:06 where this was her story, but we really did this together.
23:10 It was a real collaboration.
23:11 She, you know, asked about being in the room.
23:15 And I was like, "Absolutely,
23:17 come into the room whenever you want."
23:18 And I know how busy she is and how many projects she has.
23:21 And I said, "Anything you wanna do is go to me
23:23 if you wanna be in there all the time,
23:25 if you wanna be in there just at the beginning,
23:26 if, you know, any version of it is great."
23:30 And she basically came in on the first day and never left.
23:34 And it was really cute.
23:35 Actually halfway through, she was like,
23:37 "I think I've used up my allocated time being in the room."
23:39 'Cause we'd kind of decided she would like start
23:41 and then taper off.
23:43 And I said, "There is no allocated time.
23:45 You can be in the room as much or as little as you want."
23:47 And so she, yeah, she was so happy.
23:49 She didn't have to leave.
23:50 And it was a gift because there were so many times
23:53 where we were breaking story
23:55 and we would just turn to her one more time and say,
23:57 "Tell us what really happened.
23:59 How did this really come about?"
24:00 And she would tell this amazing story,
24:03 stories that were never in "Wild"
24:05 or in "Tiny Beautiful Things"
24:09 about burying her mom and not being able to bury her
24:14 'cause she wasn't wearing underwear
24:16 or how her mom used to take them out into the-
24:18 - That's a real story?
24:20 - Yes, yes, it's a real story.
24:22 That story was real.
24:24 That was, I mean, not every aspect,
24:27 but the idea that she and her, you know,
24:30 she has a brother and sister in real life,
24:31 but in the show, she and her brother had to, you know,
24:36 go on this wild goose chase for underwear
24:38 on the day of her mom's funeral
24:40 because it was state regulation
24:42 that she couldn't be in an open casket without underwear on.
24:46 And those specificities, you know,
24:49 the specifics of those stories, you, she would,
24:52 she has so many.
24:54 And so the series gave us an opportunity
24:56 to tell these stories that hadn't been told.
24:58 Same with the field of horses.
24:59 Her mom used to take them out
25:01 because they didn't have, obviously, air conditioning.
25:03 They didn't have electricity.
25:04 When it was so hot in the summer,
25:06 she would take them out into this field
25:07 and make it this like romantic, wistful, magical
25:11 kind of, you know, fairy tale experience.
25:15 And really they were just trying to stay cool in the summer,
25:18 but horses would come up and nuzzle them
25:20 and they would sleep under the stars.
25:21 And I mean, it's, it's idyllic in so many ways.
25:25 And so those are the types of things
25:27 we really got to incorporate into the show.
25:30 - I'm definitely gonna talk about that when we,
25:32 a little bit further when we discuss,
25:33 because that's one of the most beautiful moments,
25:35 really the final scene,
25:37 but I don't want to get ahead of ourselves here.
25:39 But again, as we were saying that this is very much a show
25:44 about, you know, mothers and daughters,
25:48 and there's so much generational trauma here,
25:50 and we see it through multiple generations.
25:53 First, Catherine Han, I mean,
25:55 I love her in everything that she does,
25:57 but this is the kind of character
25:58 that she just brings so many layers to.
26:02 When you were looking at the book again,
26:06 to, you know, once you decided to do this project,
26:09 like, was there anybody, Merritt Weaver was so good in this.
26:12 Were there people, did they ever like pop into your mind
26:16 or was it a casting process that brought them to you?
26:19 - I mean, it for sure was a casting process.
26:22 That said, Catherine specifically is,
26:26 I mean, if you put my dream list of
26:29 who would you want to write for
26:30 more than anybody in the world, it would be Catherine.
26:35 So that was like a fantasy that I thought
26:40 probably will never happen in my career,
26:42 but I would wish it would.
26:45 And so when we sent her the script
26:49 and she responded positively and she was in,
26:53 I mean, I was actually on a road trip in Oregon,
26:56 Cheryl's from Portland, and I pulled over at a rest stop
26:59 and I just completely freaked out.
27:02 I was like, how, like, how could this be?
27:05 She is, and the minute she came on the Zoom,
27:08 it was, everything was on Zoom
27:09 'cause it was still like Zoom casting then.
27:11 The minute she came on, I texted the other producers
27:14 and I was like, she is Claire.
27:16 Everything about her is Claire.
27:18 She's just, she's so perfect.
27:22 And she remained that way.
27:25 Her performance blew me away, as did Merritt's,
27:29 as did Sarah Pidgeon's, you know, I mean,
27:31 everybody's, everyone, Tansin, Quentin.
27:34 I mean, it was just so,
27:37 it was such a rich experience in terms of
27:39 what the actors were required of themselves
27:43 to bring to the role.
27:44 I think a lot of the parts took a level
27:47 of real vulnerability and bravery.
27:50 And I think it like kicked up a lot of stuff
27:53 because you're excavating this character
27:55 and you can't help but do that with yourself as well.
27:58 I mean, certainly from a writing standpoint.
28:01 - Tiny Beautiful Things is available to stream
28:03 in its entirety on Hulu.
28:06 Thank you everybody for joining us
28:08 for Deadline Virtual House Hulu Showrunners.
28:12 Watch all these shows, they're so good.
28:14 Bye.
28:17 (upbeat music)
28:19 (upbeat music)