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00:00When we were actually shooting this in Bucharest, Romania, and so while we were over there,
00:05we had this amazing Romanian crew, and a lot of the crew would come up, and they had just
00:10found Fosse Verden on Disney Plus.
00:12Oh, wow.
00:13So there it was, all those years later, you know, being absorbed, whereas I've directed
00:16lots of plays that I wish more people had had a chance to see.
00:19Not Hamilton, my friend.
00:20Well, that one's still around, so that one's still around.
00:23I don't think that's ever going to close.
00:25Well, it's from your mouth.
00:30I'd like to come to Paris.
00:36Maybe I'll stow away on your train tomorrow.
00:38But what do you want to do in Paris?
00:39Do you have a plan?
00:41You are doomed as an artist if you insist on being so practical.
00:44Easy to say before you have to pay for food and rent.
00:50I have plans.
00:51Such as?
00:55That's unfair.
00:56How?
00:57Take for granted how lucky it is to be sure.
01:01Sure about what you love, sure about what you want to do with your life.
01:05If I wait to be sure, I will get stuck.
01:13Welcome to Behind the Lens today.
01:16Tony winner, of course, for Hamilton, and nominated for many others in the Heights,
01:22and Emmy winner, Grease Live, which I talked to you about when that was happening just
01:28before, which was exciting, and such a terrific show that turned out to be.
01:32And now, a terrific limited series on Hulu.
01:37We were the lucky ones.
01:39This is Thomas Kail.
01:40Tommy Kail.
01:41Hi, welcome.
01:42Thank you for having me.
01:43I'm very happy to be here.
01:44Thanks for coming in.
01:45You're here visiting Slummin' in L.A. for a little bit.
01:48They told me they were screening the last episode, and I said, I get to talk to Pete.
01:51I'm here.
01:52Don't threaten me with a good time.
01:54And that, as we're sitting here, you are about to screen it in front of an audience,
01:58the final episode.
02:00First of all, I think it's great that they drop, as they say in the business, these episodes
02:04weekly.
02:05I mean, you start out with three, or whatever the number is, but do that, because a lot
02:09of these places just dump them all there, and I always liked the old days when you could
02:14talk about them and then wait for the next week's show.
02:16Doesn't it seem like we're getting back to a thing, in that regard, that we used to be
02:20in?
02:21It looks like it.
02:22Which is called commercials, and once a week.
02:23We felt the same way, which is, with this show, the first three really are of a piece
02:29that really sets up the world, and then the idea of being week-to-week for the last five
02:33episodes, it seemed like the right cadence.
02:36I also find that sometimes when things come out all at once, regardless of whether you
02:40worked on it for 20 minutes or 20 years, it just feels like it gets consumed and it's
02:44gone, and it just gets sort of tossed aside, and you're on to the next thing that people
02:48can be hopefully finding.
02:50But it felt like this was the right rhythm for our show.
02:54It's so true.
02:55I once talked to the director, Paul Schrader, and he was down on streaming because he said,
02:58you know, it just gets dumped in what he called the larder.
03:01Never to be heard from again.
03:03You get a couple of weeks of billboards for big ones, and then you just got to remember
03:08that it's on there if you want to watch it.
03:09Well, I think that a lot of the shows that are coming out now that are now doing this
03:12one or two, and then Weekly Shogun, another example of that, where people are talking
03:18about it week-to-week.
03:19It's found an audience, obviously, and then there's anticipation, and so that was something
03:23that felt, again, right for the one that we were making.
03:26Exactly.
03:27You have such sterling theater credits and television credits as well, but this is a
03:35limited series, this format, and you did really well with one of my favorites, Fosse-Verdon,
03:42multiple Emmy nominations, an Emmy-winning show.
03:44Michelle Williams won very deservedly.
03:47They both should have won, quite frankly.
03:48Sam Rockwell was amazing as Bob Fosse.
03:51You're not going to hear any argument here about that, with all respect to how it went
03:54down.
03:55And so you did great with the format, and now you're back here, executive producer and
04:00directing a couple of episodes of it, too.
04:02What do you like about the limited series format?
04:05I like the size of the canvas, you know, and I work in the theater mostly, and there's
04:09a great theater director named Peter Brook who said that making theater is a little bit
04:14like writing messages in the melting snow.
04:16And so there are certain stories that I feel, when you put them in that ephemeral mold where
04:21they're there and they disappear and you have to go and remake them, it feels like the right
04:24format, and that's something that I think about a lot with whatever story I'm imagining
04:30doing.
04:31Like, where should it live?
04:32What's the relationship we want it to have with an audience, and how do you tell it?
04:34And there was something about this book that felt like it needed expanse, and also I wanted
04:39to etch it in something that maybe could stay just as it was whenever you find it.
04:46I was excited to tell something that could take its time, you know, and so we could just,
04:52we could let the story unfold as Georgia Hunter's wonderful book did, which is moving from character
04:58to character and spending time and investing, and then also accelerating through time.
05:03You know, you can then say one year later and there you are, even though you might sit
05:06for a whole episode in a couple nights.
05:08So I liked that you could move and bend time like that.
05:10It's so cool.
05:11It's such a remarkable story.
05:13If we put it in the sub-genre of Holocaust dramas and things that we've seen, this one's
05:19very different.
05:20I mean, the title even tells you, but it's true.
05:23And I think you did it in a very authentic way to the story, to Georgia Hunter's recollections
05:29and research and everything she put into the book of this family, her family, and what
05:36she learned about them and how over the course of eight or nine years, it's just like amazing
05:44what happened there.
05:45I appreciate that.
05:46And obviously Erica Lopez, my partner at every, you know, at every step, you know, who ran
05:50the show, was our head writer, ran the room.
05:52And we just, when we partnered on this, we knew we wanted to do a couple things.
05:57One is tell a story about something that happened in the past that needed to feel urgent and
06:02vivid and in full color.
06:03Yeah.
06:05The life for anybody that was in the past was not black and white.
06:08That's our own sepia, you know, nostalgia tinged reach back or what the technology was.
06:13So we wanted the color to be as vivid because it was to them.
06:16We wanted the emotional depth to be just as true and large and full bodied as it is today.
06:22And so we wanted to eliminate that distance.
06:25And we also wanted to make sure that our experience was that of the families.
06:28If the family didn't know it, we don't know it as an audience.
06:30So there was nothing that allowed us to be reflective or look back or know more than
06:34any of the characters.
06:35Yeah.
06:36And because the story focuses on this family, which is five siblings, all living at the
06:41time in Rotten Poland with their parents.
06:44And then one of the characters who was in France comes back.
06:47And so we see them around the Passover table and that's how our story begins.
06:50That's how it opens.
06:51And that was so key to see that and to meet them and this family in that circumstance
07:00there so that you could refer back to it as the show goes.
07:04Very interesting.
07:05Not afraid to focus on all the different characters here as you go along like, you know, a lot
07:10of shows, you know, I'm going to lose them if I don't do it just on these two characters.
07:15That was intentional the way you did that.
07:17Absolutely.
07:18And we thought that that was honoring the spirit of Georgia's book and what happened.
07:21You know, this was written as a novel.
07:23It came out in 2017, but Georgia spent nine years researching, retracing the footsteps
07:28of her ancestors.
07:29So this is a story that is steeped in deep truth and the events that happened were true.
07:34She wrote it as a novel because she wanted to get into their heads.
07:37She wanted to imagine what it might be like, but all of the things that happened, happened.
07:41So to that end, what we wanted to do was tell this, it's a very simple story.
07:45It's about a family that has dinner together and they want to try to have dinner together
07:48again and it takes them as long as it takes them.
07:51And that first dinner was the Passover.
07:53In the book, we hear about that Passover dinner, but for our television show, we went back
07:57a year earlier and started in 1938 so we could see it, so we could show it and not
08:01just hear about it.
08:02And then that gave us a touch point because we only have the family together for about
08:0520 minutes before they're pulled apart by the world and then they work to try to find
08:11each other.
08:12And look, there's a lot of shows, and I say this genuinely, Game of Thrones was a big
08:17inspiration for us.
08:18Really?
08:19That was a show.
08:20I wouldn't have thought that watching this.
08:23We had a few less VFX shots than they did, but one of the things that that show demonstrated
08:30was that we can track so many characters.
08:32I remember watching that show and I was someone who watched week to week and all of a sudden
08:36you realize, oh, I haven't seen the Lannisters for 48, but that's okay because I was engrossed
08:40here.
08:41And then the next episode, they're heavy.
08:42So if you look at how our show modulates between, we do that.
08:46There's a character who might go away for a whole episode and then they come back very
08:49prominently in the next episode.
08:50And I think the totality is one that says to the audience, we trust you.
08:54Audiences are smart.
08:55And we think that they can do lots of things, including track those stories.
08:58It's very cool because I think it's incredibly important to see them as a family or together.
09:04People often ask me, what's your favorite movie?
09:06And I always try to think, but I always loved the movie, The Great Escape, Steve McQueen
09:10and James Garner.
09:11And they're all in that camp.
09:13You meet all these characters, these different ones.
09:16And then halfway through the movie of 45, they escape and they all have to go their
09:22separate ways.
09:24And here you have that separation of all these characters we've come to know.
09:29That's right.
09:30And so they get scattered as far as you can imagine, many continents and city after city.
09:37And some of them stay together throughout the course of it.
09:40Some of them might not see each other for years.
09:42So again, those dynamics meant that we had to try to do something that was far reaching,
09:46but never lost the intimacy, never lost the deep connection.
09:50And we have to establish that familial love so we know what they're after.
09:53We know what they want to chase and touch.
09:55And there's a lot of examples of this.
09:58Long Day's Journey Into Night is a play that I loved.
09:59It was very informative for me.
10:01And that's a play where you have three hours of a family sort of tearing each other apart.
10:05Right.
10:06It's very different than our story.
10:08Let me say that.
10:09But the first 20 minutes, that family is functioning beautifully.
10:12So you know what they're fighting for.
10:13They're trying to get back to that feeling in that play.
10:16And we have a family that loved each other, but their love didn't mean they sat around
10:20telling each other how wonderful.
10:21They were a family.
10:22They sat around smoking cigarettes, talking about how this one did that, and that one
10:25did that.
10:26And there's a modernity to that that I think we all relate to.
10:28I'm in the middle of two sisters, which is quite a defining characteristic of all of
10:32my work.
10:33But I'm also fascinated by sibling love, those dynamics and how they change through time.
10:37And because our show takes place over these nine years, you really get to see that evolution
10:42and how they're processing and moving through this time, and that their spirits and those
10:47lights remain undimmed.
10:49Yeah.
10:50And the casting is superb here.
10:54Not just the Logan Lerman and Joey King, who are terrific, but the entire ensemble.
11:02Props to your casting director for finding these terrific actors.
11:06Many from Israel.
11:07Yes.
11:08Six of our main casters.
11:09Six of them.
11:11I live in Tel Aviv.
11:12Yeah.
11:13Fiona Weir was our partner in that way, obviously, and with our friends at the studio and network.
11:18And Joey, I knew a little bit.
11:21Joey had worked with my wife on a movie in the early 2010s.
11:26That would be Michelle Williams.
11:27That would be Michelle Williams.
11:28Yes.
11:29If you don't know.
11:30Also a very good actor.
11:31Wynn Verdon and the aforementioned Fosse Verdon.
11:34Yes.
11:35They did a movie, The Great and Powerful Laws, together.
11:37Oh, yeah.
11:38And Michelle and Joey just clicked.
11:40I think Joey turned 12 on that movie.
11:42And Michelle, who grew up in the business, just said, her.
11:45Really?
11:46They just immediately clicked.
11:47So she's almost like an auntie to Joey.
11:50And I'd met Joey just through Michelle, and we'd started talking about some other stuff.
11:52And I'd given her the book, just as a friend, months and months before we ever heard that
11:59Hulu...
12:00We were developing it for Hulu, but I just said, I think you're going to like this.
12:02She read the book.
12:04And then as we were getting closer to the show, gaining momentum internally, I called
12:10Joey and I said, hey, you remember that thing?
12:12My friend Erica wrote a script based on that.
12:14I'd love to show it to you.
12:15And Joey, to her great credit, before this thing was fully greenlit, she said, let's
12:20go wherever you want to do it.
12:22And it was an enormous piece of energy to just kind of push us over the finish line.
12:28And then everybody else I met on the show.
12:32I met them all through Fiona.
12:34I didn't meet a single one of them in person until we got to Bucharest.
12:37It was all done on Zoom because we were casting coming out of COVID.
12:41And we were trying to make a family.
12:43And so that ain't easy to do no matter what it is.
12:46But it was something that we paid a lot of attention to.
12:49And Erica and I were just in lockstep along the way.
12:51And everybody we loved, we would share with George and made sure that she felt good about it.
12:55The character played by Logan Lerman is George's grandpa.
12:58So George's grandpa on her mother's side.
13:01And so we wanted to make sure that Georgia could give us her blessing.
13:06And Georgia was involved the whole way.
13:07She was a co-EP on this.
13:08She was in the writer's room.
13:09She was on set.
13:11She was there through post.
13:12She was an enormous asset.
13:13That's so unusual for the author.
13:15It's the second show I've heard of this year that had the author.
13:18Oh, which was the other?
13:19The other one is Ex-Pats.
13:20Oh, yeah, yeah.
13:21On Amazon.
13:22Right, yeah.
13:23That's a good show.
13:24That author actually was in the writer's room, too, and wrote the finale.
13:27I mean, you never hear about that.
13:29No, no.
13:30Oh, that's wonderful.
13:32So it's a new trend now.
13:33Well, I mean, look, there's a lot to offer other than just being the keeper of the flame.
13:37I mean, you know, in Georgia's writing, as Erica said, she has the soul of a TV writer.
13:41If you read the book, boy, does it have propulsion and movement and momentum.
13:45And so Georgia, like most showbiz stories, my relationship with Georgia goes back to
13:49Alderson, West Virginia in 1992.
13:51I was going to ask you about that.
13:53Weren't you involved in this before she'd even written this book?
13:56Yeah, so I'll take you back for a minute.
14:00So I grew up in Northern Virginia, and I went to summer camp starting in 1988.
14:04I was 11 years old in West Virginia, a little town called Alderson.
14:08One of my early and best pals there, who was two years younger than me, was a guy named
14:12Robert Farenthold.
14:13That was in 1992 we met, and Robert and his brother became two of my closest pals.
14:18They both went to University of Virginia, and I would go visit them.
14:20And one time I went down to visit in 1999 or so, and Robert said, I met somebody, and
14:24I fell in love, and her name's Georgia, and that was Georgia Hunter.
14:28So I met Georgia in 1999.
14:30So we've been friends for 25 years, and she started telling me the story as she was just
14:36living it.
14:37It's not like we called and got on the phone every day.
14:38You're never going to believe it, but she discovered after her grandfather had passed
14:42of his Jewish heritage and that he was a Holocaust survivor.
14:45He didn't talk about it.
14:46And it was a high school English assignment that basically said, go back and investigate
14:50your past.
14:51And she talked to her grandmother who told her the story, and then she started paying
14:54attention to different stories at the family reunions.
14:58And in 2008, 2009, she realized, I'm the one who needs to write this down, and she
15:02worked for eight years researching.
15:04And then the book came out on Valentine's Day, 2017.
15:08Georgia asked me to do a little Q&A with her at the Barnes & Noble on the Upper West Side.
15:11There were 30 chairs set up, 28 of them were with Georgia's relatives, and then one person
15:16who was lost, and then one was empty.
15:19And Georgia's father was a guy named Tom Hunter, who's a wonderful actor and writer.
15:23He wrote the movie Final Countdown that Martin Sheen was in, and he was in a bunch of spaghetti
15:26westerns.
15:28I didn't start getting interested in the theater until I was 21, my junior year of college.
15:33And I would visit Georgia and Robert, and her dad was there, and he would tell me about
15:37the business.
15:38He would tell me about this or encourage me, and so he was really a meaningful and early
15:42professional who said, maybe you can do this and go forth.
15:46So when the book came out, I just couldn't stop thinking about it.
15:50Through the specificity of her family, I saw my family.
15:53And that's the hope.
15:54As Donald Margulies said, a wonderful playwright, through the specific, we can transcend and
15:58become universal.
16:00And so my favorite story about that is Fiddler on the Roof, which is another story that I'm
16:04obsessed with.
16:06They were doing it in Japan, and one of the Japanese investors came up to the writers
16:09afterwards and said, we love this story here, but how does it work in America?
16:12It's so Japanese.
16:14And not a word had been changed.
16:16And so that's always been a beacon for me, a North Star, about telling something with
16:19integrity and truth, and then from there.
16:22And universality.
16:24This is obviously a very personal kind of story for you, to have that kind of investment
16:28of time and knowing about it your whole career.
16:31Yeah, I know.
16:32I mean, before I did anything.
16:33Before you did anything.
16:34So it's kind of like, got to feel great to see this finally come to fruition.
16:39It moves me deeply, and to be standing on set with Georgia and my pal for 24 years at
16:47that point, we just look at each other and say, can you believe any of this?
16:50None of it makes sense.
16:51And actually, if you look closely, I put Georgia and her husband and her two boys in
16:56the final episode, and there's a scene when Adi is moving quickly through the streets
17:01and he runs through this family, and that's Georgia.
17:04And then as Adi stops and is looking out onto the water, Georgia's mom is in it.
17:10So you see Georgia's mother standing behind the actor playing her grandfather, as he looks
17:15out into the horizon.
17:17So we wanted to find those little Easter eggs there, and also honor the family.
17:20Yeah, it's interesting, too.
17:23I would call this epic.
17:24It goes all over the place, as opposed to a story like The Diary of Anne Frank, which
17:29is claustrophobic for most of it.
17:31They're together.
17:32Right, it's about the focus of being inside.
17:33And the focus of that, exactly.
17:35But this is shot on a kind of an epic scale.
17:38There was a lot that went into this.
17:40Absolutely.
17:41You know, and Tim Ives was our DP.
17:42He shot Falsy Verdant, so he and I went back.
17:44He shot the first three episodes and the last episode, and then we had wonderful collaborators,
17:48two other directors, Amit Gupta and Yasir Hardiman.
17:51And we tried to create the world in that first episode, and make it clear to our partners
17:56this is a relay race.
17:59When you're shooting for that long, and you're prepping, and you're cutting along the way,
18:02you need those partners to lock arms with.
18:05And we had a wonderful group.
18:07Everybody that was there wanted to be there.
18:09And I think what's great about it, too, is it's obviously a period, but it's got contemporary
18:14relevance right now.
18:16Now more than ever.
18:17More than when you started shooting this, you know, the rise of anti-Semitism is astonishing
18:22and horrible.
18:24And this is such an important show.
18:27It shows family.
18:28It shows human beings on that level.
18:31And that will to survive, and that will to get over that.
18:34And when you see everything that's going on, it's just like perfect timing.
18:38Well, you know, Margaret Edson was a wonderful writer who wrote the play Wit, which became
18:43an HBO movie directed by Mike Nichols.
18:46And Margaret Edson said that she wrote that play because she hoped it would be a period
18:50piece, a play about cancer, and unfortunately it's not.
18:53I wish that Georgia's book was not relevant, and unfortunately it is.
18:58And I think that there's something at the center of the story which is about really
19:03considering how we treat each other and empathy.
19:06And so if this show can be something that transmits that, that allows the humanity of
19:11this family and how they have to navigate this, you know, this traumatic time, then
19:17hopefully, again, if it's told with integrity and specificity, we can all find our way in.
19:23You're doing, you just go from one thing to another.
19:25So many different things.
19:27Last year it was Sweeney Todd on Broadway, the revival, and then you're doing the live
19:31action version of Moana?
19:33It's true.
19:34It's true.
19:35Wow.
19:36Back with your friend.
19:37Yeah, what's his name?
19:38The guy that wrote Hamilton?
19:39I Zoomed him once, but I can't remember his name.
19:41You know, it's interesting.
19:42Sweeney Todd was Stephen Sondheim's homage to Bernard Herrmann.
19:47He saw a movie called Hangover Square, which is a very obscure movie that you of course
19:50know.
19:51I do know that.
19:52And scored by Herrmann.
19:53And he wanted to write something cinematic for the stage.
19:56What I'm interested in is doing cinematic work in the theater and theatrical work in
20:02cinema.
20:03And so I think Fosse Verdon was something that really, and Grease Live were really the
20:07apotheosis of that.
20:08You could show the making of something, quite literally.
20:11I was really excited to make Lucky Ones to exercise something else that's inside of me,
20:16which again, I think thematically I seem to have some recurring obsessions.
20:23How much time do I have?
20:24What am I leaving when I'm not here?
20:26That seems to be throughout a lot of the work that I'm making.
20:29And I feel like there's something about this story, George's book, that I, yeah, my pal
20:35wrote it, but boy, I just couldn't shake it.
20:37That's so cool.
20:38Do you ever just go and sit in the back of Hamilton or something you've got on Broadway,
20:42Sweeney Todd or something, and just see how it's still playing?
20:45Oh, yeah, yeah.
20:46I was in both shows last week.
20:47Oh, see, there you go.
20:48Oh, yeah, absolutely.
20:49Absolutely.
20:50But what I love about the visceralness of that is you can tell what's still playing,
20:57what's working.
20:58And to stand in the back of a house, no matter what it is that I do, and see, are they still
21:01quiet when we want them to be quiet?
21:03Are they still laughing when we want them to laugh?
21:05Do you hear any rustles?
21:06Who's coughing when?
21:07And look, also, some actors I'll still talk to about performance a year into the run.
21:12And other actors, you talk about how their dog's doing.
21:13It just depends on what the moment needs.
21:15But I love being around it, because it's something that we made.
21:18And it's a reminder of who I was then, because I'm not the person that made those shows.
21:21I started working on Hamilton in 2011.
21:25Every part of my life was different then.
21:26But here it is, and it's ninth year on Broadway.
21:29And I'm standing in the same place I stood in 2015.
21:33You've got to have that audience.
21:34You've got to have that feedback, no matter how you can get it.
21:38It's just part of my equipment.
21:39When you're making theater, you're learning from the audience.
21:42So if I'm in previews, we have rehearsal for four hours a day.
21:45We do the show at night.
21:46You give notes.
21:47And then you go in the next day, and you tweak, and you turn.
21:48You're basically editing in front of people.
21:51It's incredible.
21:52But feature films is exciting, too, to do Moana, as you're going to do.
21:57Yeah.
21:58I feel so proud to be part of this team.
22:03We're getting closer to shooting.
22:06We'll be shooting later this year.
22:07And we've been working on it for a while, for a year now.
22:09We started prepping before the strike.
22:12And it's a movie that had great resonance, beyond the fact that my pal worked on it all
22:17those years ago.
22:18But it's a movie that has a connection to the earth.
22:23It's a movie that has a soul.
22:24And being around that has been invigorating.
22:28And being around this music, again, in this way, as someone who now gets to try to build
22:32it and not just admire it, has been a wonderful opportunity.
22:35Is it going to have some new songs?
22:37I can't speak to anything other than I promise I'll try to make it good.
22:41I can try.
22:42I promise.
22:43Here's what I promise.
22:44I'll come back and talk to you.
22:45OK.
22:46I look forward to that.
22:47But we're in the process of finishing up casting, and we're building the world.
22:52That's so cool.
22:53I can't wait for that.
22:55Everything you do, it's just like you got the golden touch right now, man.
23:01You're in the thick of it.
23:02Well, I certainly have learned that if you have the right people around you, everything's
23:05possible.
23:06You know, I think one of the reasons I made Fosse is I was really interested in dismantling
23:10this idea that there's one person who does all of it, and there's one person responsible.
23:15We're all contributing.
23:16And I like to be clear about what my job is so I can communicate, because my job is quite
23:20simple.
23:21Make sure that we're all telling the same story with the same language, and everybody
23:23knows where they're marching.
23:24Like, that's the gig.
23:25And if I can do that, whether it's Moana or a play with three actors on stage for 100
23:30people downtown, it all feels like the same work.
23:33Or a limited series that has won great acclaim for you, and everyone needs to see it.
23:39It's on Hulu.
23:40We were the lucky ones.
23:42This is Tommy Kail.
23:43Thanks for joining us on Behind the Lens.
23:45It's my pleasure.
23:46Thank you.
23:47Thank you for having me.