Drama Panel Discussion | Variety Virtual FYC TV Fest: The Nominees 2024
Drama - Moderated by Jazz Tangcay
Rachel Kondo - Co-Creator, Executive Producer, Writer, "Shōgun"
Justin Marks - Co-Creator, Showrunner, Executive Producer, Writer, "Shōgun"
Will Smith - Writer and Executive Producer, "Slow Horses"
Graham Wagner - Showrunner, Writer, Executive Producer, "Fallout"
Alexander Woo - Showrunner, Writer, Executive Producer, "3 Body Problem"
Rachel Kondo - Co-Creator, Executive Producer, Writer, "Shōgun"
Justin Marks - Co-Creator, Showrunner, Executive Producer, Writer, "Shōgun"
Will Smith - Writer and Executive Producer, "Slow Horses"
Graham Wagner - Showrunner, Writer, Executive Producer, "Fallout"
Alexander Woo - Showrunner, Writer, Executive Producer, "3 Body Problem"
Transcript
00:00Hi, I'm Jazz Tankay, Senior Artisans Editor at Variety.
00:09Welcome to TV Fest for Nominees.
00:11I will be diving into the drama contenders today.
00:14I am so excited to be here today.
00:16I love all these shows, and I'm excited to hear all the stories.
00:20So without further ado, let me introduce our panelists.
00:23With us from Shogun, we have co-creator, executive producer,
00:27and writer, Rachel Kondo.
00:29And from Shogun, we also have co-creator, showrunner,
00:32executive producer, writer, Justin Marks.
00:35From Slow Horses, we have writer and executive producer, Will Smith.
00:39From Fallout, we have showrunner, writer, executive producer,
00:43Graham Wagner.
00:44And from Three-Body Problem, we have showrunner, writer,
00:47executive producer, Alexander Wu.
00:50Hello.
00:51Congratulations to you all, and welcome.
00:58Thank you so much.
01:02Thank you all.
01:08Exactly.
01:09Congratulations to you all.
01:10You know, what I'd really like to dive into is really like,
01:13what did you all, you know, all of your shows are existing IPs
01:18in one way or another.
01:20What did you enjoy about taking that IP and making it your own?
01:25Alexander, I'm going to start with you with Three-Body Problem.
01:30Someone or something is targeting scientists.
01:37They're going after our best and brightest.
01:42There's someone behind everything.
01:46Just have to dig.
01:49The challenge of it was the most enjoyable thing.
01:52And, you know, when you approach something,
01:54and we've all been with our respective projects for a very,
01:57very long time, a large chunk of our lives, and, you know,
02:02some of us are closer to the end than we are to the beginning.
02:06So, you know, if you're going to take on something,
02:09it has to be something you really want to devote a long,
02:12long time to and a lot of work and a lot of sweat and tears to.
02:17So something that presents itself as a challenge and presents itself
02:23as something that potentially, you know,
02:26you've never faced before is really appealing.
02:29And I made that answer a little vague because I think it applies
02:34to all of our shows and not just Three-Body.
02:38Yeah. Graham, what about Fallout?
02:41The mission of the vaults should be important to everyone.
02:53To come up to the surface one day and restart civilization.
03:00Can you tell me what's happened in the last 200 years?
03:03For me, anyway, because I do have a limited attention span.
03:08I've worked for a long time.
03:09I used to say like two seasons and I'm out, you know, like,
03:12and I the length of time to make this single season was longer than two.
03:18For a half hour comedy where I come from, you know,
03:22it took I could have done four seasons of comedy in that time.
03:26So for me, the bar is really like, I hope it's fun.
03:30And for Fallout specifically, I think that was the drop for me.
03:34It's like, oh, it has to be because that is sort of the thing
03:37that we're adapting is that it's a bit madcap, a bit crazy,
03:40but also has all these other flavors.
03:44But yeah, yeah, for me, it's just that.
03:46Like if it's not fun for me, it might not be fun for anybody else.
03:51And Rachel and Justin, what about in Shogun?
03:54What did you enjoy about bringing this IP and adapting it?
03:59There's a saying out here, every man has three hearts.
04:06One in his mouth for the world to know.
04:09Another in his chest just for his friends.
04:15And the secret heart buried deep.
04:21Yeah, I mean, I guess I will just kind of, you know,
04:25agree to the quantity of time that went into this.
04:29I mean, you know, for us,
04:31we had two kids during the course of making this show.
04:37Well, I mean, I had just to be clear.
04:41Yeah, it's not yet possible for me to.
04:45But we, you know, our kids, our kids didn't exist when this started.
04:51And now, you know, they're like almost old enough to watch this show.
04:55Not quite.
04:58You know, and it's sort of I think it is at a certain point.
05:01It's like the way television is made these days.
05:05You look, you look at it in hindsight and you realize, like, yeah,
05:09these are not just like, oh, I'll try this out for a season and we'll see how it goes.
05:13I mean, like our writers room assistant on this show is now producer on this show.
05:17And in one season, because it's just like, yeah, it's five years.
05:21I mean, what do you expect? That used to be five seasons television.
05:25And now just with ten episodes to show for it.
05:29Yeah. And well, you are deep in Slow Horses.
05:33What are you on now? Books?
05:36Five. Five. Bit of a blur.
05:39But yeah, five. So you're like you're like the expert, right?
05:44Because everybody's just done their first season. You're like season five.
05:47I mean, what do you enjoy about taking the books of Slow Horses and adapting it?
05:52Slow Horses. Not typical at my five.
06:00What's going on? Ex-service agent found dead.
06:03Course of death. Heart failure.
06:05He was in a 60s smoke, drank.
06:08Look at me. I'm in my prime.
06:12Well, what I fell in love with was was the characters.
06:16Really, that was the most exciting thing.
06:18I mean, I love the kind of spy genre espionage action.
06:21And so that was a sort of given.
06:22And then finding these kind of multidimensional characters within that
06:26and just hearing their voices so clearly in the novel and just just saying,
06:30oh, my God, these are fantastic.
06:32And, you know, the chapters are all kind of point of view chapters.
06:35But you're never thinking, oh, not them. I want to get back to that one.
06:38It's just it was just a kind of cavalcade of these these brilliant characters
06:42that you just thought, well, we can have just so much fun with this.
06:45If we get the right cast, which I mean, we've got an amazing cast.
06:48So so it was that really it was just wow.
06:53Yeah. How do you keep going?
06:55Because I know, you know, to your point, Alex,
06:57something you said earlier was like, you know,
06:59it's a long time in bringing these shows to the screen.
07:04Like what is that thing that just keeps you going?
07:10Deadline.
07:14There's always something there's always something you have to take care of
07:17immediately. It's not like this thing has to be finished in four and a half years
07:21and and start now.
07:24There's always something that needs to be addressed right away.
07:27And luckily, you don't have to, you know, swallow it whole all in one.
07:33It's, you know, for for a long period of time, it's just getting the right cast.
07:38You know, that was that was a priority for for a couple of months.
07:42And now for a few months, it was, you know, getting that the outline out
07:47so that the network could see it.
07:49And so there's always something some part of the process.
07:53It's it's one of the few benefits of of this job
08:00is that there isn't the tedium of doing the same thing over and over and over again.
08:05There's always something different breathing down your neck.
08:08And and, you know, you attack that until until that gets done.
08:14And then the next thing comes comes rolling down the mountain that you.
08:18And the other benefit of this job, and I'm so new to it that that I mean,
08:23this is not even my field.
08:25So I the thing that was so great is not knowing what I was getting into,
08:29because if I did, I think it might be a little problematic
08:34because you don't even know how to anticipate how chaotic
08:38or and how how how long the chaos will last and and how intense it can get.
08:45So I think not even not knowing what we don't even know
08:50was actually a benefit for at least for me.
08:55Well, what I would do is to not know what we were getting into.
08:59Yeah, yeah, yeah.
09:01But you're you're continuing to season two, though, you are, aren't you?
09:04So so now we know you're back more.
09:09Yeah. Justin didn't warn you.
09:13No, he trapped me. He trapped me on multiple occasions.
09:17He just kind of said, you know, whispered in my ear, come follow me
09:21and I will, you know, just just aimlessly follow him into over the hill.
09:28Yeah. Nothing wrong with a good aimless follow.
09:31I'll tell you. Right. You never know where you're going to land in new rooms.
09:35Yeah. The casting process is is is something I'd love to chat about,
09:44because I think every single one of your shows work because you've such an incredible cast.
09:48I mean, well, how did you. Yeah, I mean, Gary Oldman is is, you know, an incredible actor.
09:54How did you know he was right to play Jackson Lamb and just get him to fart on cue and be this,
10:03you know, Jackson is a slob. Right. But he's incredible.
10:06But how did you know he was right for the job?
10:09Well, I mean, I always thought he was right. I just never thought we'd get him.
10:12So so when his name came up, I was the idiot who was going, this is a waste of time.
10:16He's never going to do it. He's an Oscar winning movie star.
10:18But let's just let's be realistic here. And then word came back that, yeah, no, he's he's interesting because he he he loved playing Smiley.
10:27And he loved being a spy, loved being in that world. He was looking for something, you know, in that area.
10:32And so just the timing was it was just there for it.
10:35And then, you know, once you once you know it's him, you just you see it in your head.
10:40You just you just know it's just going to be amazing.
10:42And and he is he still finds sort of details and levels in it that, you know, you don't expect.
10:48There's always new stuff. And, you know, and he's just so, you know,
10:52he's happy to immerse himself in the kind of the grunge of it and to, you know,
10:56stand around with his shirt off and wobble around breaking wind and having food dribbled down his face.
11:02And it's just, you know, it's just wonderful to watch him do it.
11:06Yeah. Graham, what about Walton and casting him?
11:09Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, we wrote the he's the only I think he's the only character we were writing for from the jump.
11:18And it was ambitious. But I think it's really what he represented as an actor,
11:24because Geneva and I come from very different backgrounds.
11:27She wrote Captain Marvel and, you know, the Tomb Raider movie.
11:31I wrote like the celery sketch on Portlandia. So like we're very different skill sets.
11:37But Walton kind of is sort of lives in that Venn diagram.
11:42You know, like he had done a lot of very serious genre stuff.
11:46He'd actually been in one of Geneva's movies, but he also does Righteous Gemstones and like hangs out with Danny McBride
11:55and does some of the most bizarre stuff that I like adore.
11:59Like his turn on Vice Principals was nuts.
12:04So, yeah, we kind of wrote it with him in mind.
12:07And then I was very shocked that he just signed on before reading a script.
12:12He just took a we had a Zoom call and he's just like, I don't know, I feel in here.
12:17I mean, you can read it. He's like, no, I mean, it was great.
12:23So we kind of like just got very lucky.
12:25He was he was our Gary Oldman and that it just it just happened to us, you know.
12:32But yeah. What about casting Anna?
12:36Because she is she's so phenomenal in episode nine of Shogun.
12:40But how did you find your Lady Mariko? Talk about that casting person.
12:46With great panic and difficulty. I don't I don't think I don't think we realized,
12:52you know, what a unicorn that that part was until until finding finding Anna.
13:00You know, I think that we were searching for a very long time for someone who didn't
13:08just manifest qualities of like Japanese culture, but who had something almost a cultural to her
13:15because her character was lost between these two worlds in a certain respect.
13:21And there was just something about and she auditioned many times for this.
13:27You know, she she read, I think, three times and met with with ourselves and also with Jay,
13:35the director of the first episode on several occasions.
13:38We really we kind of dialed in on her.
13:41And in a lot of ways, I think in the audition process, once we kind of felt like probably going to be her,
13:49we started to really use these conversations to also crystallize what it was we were looking for in the character.
13:56And, you know, so it was kind of both of us like the creative and the performance coming,
14:03finding each other in the middle and then saying, there, we've got it.
14:06This is this is who she is. But I remember I was just the last self tape.
14:12You know, it was all in the middle of the pandemic, of course.
14:15You know, the last self tape she sent in, it was like this is either going to be Mariko or I don't know what to do.
14:22You know, we're just not going to. And no pressure.
14:26Yeah. And she just because it was really like I didn't know we were going to finance this.
14:31This tape came in. I was like, oh, my gosh, like this is that we were like in tears watching it because because it was like not just we had Mariko, but we had a show.
14:41It all felt like it was coming together.
14:44Yeah. Amazing. Alex, what about for you and casting?
14:48You know, John is great as Jack Rooney and of course, Jess Hong, who I talked to you earlier about.
14:54But talk about finding your Jack and Jim.
14:58Well, those are two almost entirely opposite experiences, because, you know,
15:03my partners in this, David Benioff and Dan Weiss had spent years with John Bradley on Game of Thrones and had known him as a person.
15:13And how different he was from Samuel Tarly.
15:16And they thought, wouldn't it be fun to write a character that's much more like John Bradley, who's acerbic and funny and and and delightful?
15:25And, you know, all those things that that is not the sort of sincere bookish character that that Samuel is.
15:33So he was the only character that that everyone knew who to write for.
15:40And that, you know, one of the luxuries going into a season two is now, you know who your cast is, unless it's a totally new character, of course.
15:47And you know exactly how those lines are going to sound in an actor's mouth.
15:53So that's that that's a huge luxury for the first season.
15:56When we hadn't had, you know, we really we had John now playing Jack and that that that was set.
16:03And we really had no other choice other than Benny Wong or Dasha.
16:07So, you know, those were the two actors that we kind of knew to write for everyone else.
16:12We kind of had to try to take a guess at.
16:16And in I think all of our cases, we had to in all of our shows.
16:22You know, it was during the pandemic. A lot of the casting happened during the pandemic.
16:25Tons of self tapes. So you had stuff coming from all over the world.
16:30You get a sort of fatigue after a while because you just see so many of them over and over and over again saying, you know, saying the same words again and again and again.
16:41And Jess, who ended up being, you know, number one on the call sheet and shooting more days than than everyone else, had never been on screen before.
16:50We two of our two of our main cast had never been on screen before.
16:53Zin Sang, who Graham and I were just talking about, had also never been on screen before, but they were the best ones.
16:59And it it took, you know, multiple zooms where we're like, OK, are we sure we want to, you know, entrust the vast part of a huge part of our of our show to someone who's never been on screen before.
17:17But, you know, it just every single time she was the best one and she proved it.
17:22So that that was a bit of a leap of faith.
17:26We didn't meet her until she was in New Zealand the whole time she read.
17:31Her final chemistry read was in the cafeteria of a primary school because her her day job was going from doing doing little plays for schoolchildren.
17:44And it was seven thirty in the morning and in Auckland and she was just before she was going to go do this little educational play that she did her chemistry read that that that got her the part.
17:55But there was some hesitance. We had no idea.
17:58We had never met her until the first day.
18:02And we thought, what if it turns out she's nine feet tall?
18:05We don't know, you know, or two feet tall.
18:08We have no idea.
18:10It was of the height of an average human being.
18:12So Ella Purnell had size forty five shoes.
18:15They go on. She can't even turn.
18:18We didn't know that. We find out on set.
18:21We got to digitally reduce the shoe size.
18:25Gary Oldman has uncontrollable flatulence that we had to write around.
18:32It works. You know, it makes the show so much more enjoyable.
18:35But I want to pick up on something Graham said earlier about like, you know, during two seasons, then you're out.
18:39Well, you are like in season six of the five of the show.
18:43Like, yeah. How how much longer are you going to go with slow horses?
18:48I mean, that's up to Apple and Gary.
18:51I mean, Gary has said that he, you know, he'll play the character to the end of his career, which I can't quite process.
18:57But so, you know, I think it's as long as we find new things to do with it.
19:02And there's an audience for it. And, you know, it can keep keep building without repeating.
19:07I think that's the challenge we all grapple with with returning series, isn't it?
19:10It's got to be the same, but different.
19:12And, you know, you want to the audience will be satisfied with what they're familiar with.
19:15But also you want to bring in new stuff, but you don't want to, you know, don't want to jump that shark.
19:20So it's you know, it's just keeping that balance, really.
19:23Yeah. Well, to that, Rachel, you know, going into season two, like what are you hoping?
19:28What did you learn from season from the first season that you're like, OK, these are all the things I did learn that I'm going to take into my next world building?
19:40I'm going to skip all the funny stuff because I learned.
19:47No, I'm sorry.
19:50I just had everything to learn because I'd never done anything like this before.
19:55I think I think going into it second time around, I feel a little bit more at peace with the chaos.
20:06I'm also excited by it. I mean, just not to be overly sincere, but I really genuinely was surprised at how exciting it is to work with just other people who are so incredibly talented.
20:20And and and I mean, I come from the fiction world where, you know, I write a short story and it takes me eight years by myself toiling away.
20:31And by toiling, I mean like snacking, napping. And then and then I get paid my my forty dollars and then I move on to the next story all by myself.
20:41And so getting to work with people was was like I was almost buzzing.
20:47I was so exciting to to make something that I could never make on my own ever.
20:53I mean, thank God, you know, thank God it doesn't reflect my brain.
20:58It reflects this collective effort. And so going into it second time around, I I yeah, I'm inviting the chaos and excited for it because it's going to I mean, who knows?
21:12Who knows what? It's exciting.
21:14But, you know, TV does this wonderful thing, which is that the show teaches you how to make it.
21:21And and it tells you how to do it after you've figured out the first season.
21:26You're sort of like and, you know, we're sitting here in the writers room again for season two now.
21:32And and it's just like, no, we can't shoot that kind of scene like we can't do.
21:35We know that we've done that. We've made that mistake. We've we've bled for that already.
21:39And it's like, no, we don't write to those things. Whereas like, you know, in the first season in the writers room, it was just like, I don't know, how does this work?
21:45Let's go. When it came to this world and these characters and, you know, knowing how long it takes certain makeup to show up on set and, you know, everything else like and costumes and whatnot, you really have to be wise about it.
22:01And that it's actually quite freeing when you come back to it again, because you sort of like you've made all the mistakes and now you can make new mistakes.
22:12And but you don't have to make those old mistakes again. So, you know, we're finding that it's there's something quite, I don't know, liberating to about like getting into the same characters again and the same, you know, worlds and sets and knowing how these sets shoot and how they don't shoot and what doors people don't walk in through and all that.
22:35It's really just I'm going blindly through show these screens to figure it out last one.
22:41Graham, what about for you? What are you taking into season two?
22:46Well, I mean, you know, we talked about not knowing our cast is so often the case in a first season, but we also don't know our department heads, you know, and we start, you know, a writer's room is often like a band, but the whole production is an orchestra.
23:02And we're actually finding ourselves like writing, you know, for moments to feature, you know, Ramin, our amazing composer, like creating space for those department heads to shine, which is very exciting because last season, a lot of the time it was like, well, we had our plan and it, you know, when it breaks, the department had to step in and save our asses.
23:26And now we're kind of like, oh, let's build to that. Let's actually find moments to, you know, like, hey, this might not have to be a twisty turny scene because we've got Howard Cummings, you know, who is going to build an amazing set.
23:40Like just seeing it, it could very well be the button of a scene and trusting that because, and same with Jay Wirth, our Vizifex supervisor who assembled, you know, a thousand, you know, the work from thousands of vendors around the world, a shot where Lucy climbs a hill and we see the Vista before is often as exciting as a, you know, a moment of violence or whatever have you.
24:09So, yeah, sort of creating space for all the talent that were working on the show. It was very fun.
24:16Alex, what about you? What are you, what did you learn from the first season? What are you going to do differently?
24:23Well, I mean, going, we're having to eat two dinners and doing seasons two and three, you know, kind of all in one big bite, you know, where it's so we're kind of having to envision the entire rest of the series, you know, all at once.
24:42So that is a significant challenge. We have, you know, now the luxury of knowing who our core cast is and knowing what their strengths are and how we can play to those strengths. That is a huge luxury.
24:56So in terms of, you know, the dialogue and the story, that stuff, you know, I think we feel pretty comfortable about what is uncomfortable is where the story is going and which is, you know, hundreds of years into the future and then thousands of years into the future and then billions of years into the future.
25:14And what that is going to look like in a way that's not going to be silly and extra dimensional spaces and how, you know, these are things that we're still iterating with our VFX team and our production design team. What's that going to be?
25:36You know, and one of the bookcase as it turns out, it's just a plain bookcase. Yeah, that would be a surprise. I mean, but one of the things we want to be able to surprise people, you know, that it is not what anything you know, we kind of set a bit of a of an expectation of you're going to be seeing stuff you've never seen before.
26:03And there have been many, many versions of hundreds of years in the future shown on screen before. So what is our version of hundreds of years in the future and thousands of years and millions and billions of years in the future that hasn't been seen before? And that is, you know, a not insubstantial challenge.
26:25Love that. Well, what about for you? Like how, you know, you're constantly shooting like the next season. Like, how do you prepare for the next one? And what do you learn from every prior?
26:39Well, I mean, like everyone said, it's I mean, the cast should get to the cast and the actors and then writing to their voices and all of that is brilliant. And I love being on set. And I mean, I love watching the work. And then it always gives me ideas for what's coming up, because the way we do it, it's pretty crazy. There's always one in the edit, one being shot and one being written at the same time.
27:01So your head's slightly split, but it's great watching the one that's being done. And as you can you can feed in from how they're performing and you can see where the characters can go. And, you know, I did that on three.
27:13There's a scene I was so happy with, with Jonathan Pryce and Jack Lowden in Jonathan Pryce's members club, where he realises that he's starting to succumb to dementia and there's a kind of anger and pride and, you know, an embarrassment about it.
27:28It was just such an amazingly emotional scene to watch that immediately gave me an idea for a scene to end the next season with. So it's sort of it becomes this sort of churning process where you're kind of feeding into the next one as you're doing it. So that side of it is fantastic.
27:44I just feel so lucky that Apple has commissioned ahead so that we're not having to wait for one to go out before we find out when it's happening. It's that we already know. So you're kind of, you know, you're off with it. And, yeah, so that, yeah, it's a lot, but it's incredibly rewarding. And, you know, yeah, I just I'm just so I'm just so happy to be doing it and working with such amazing people.
28:08I mean, it's keying off of the last couple of just talking about Cass for a second. The one thing I it also occurs to me as I listen to you both speak is is just we just don't kill so much Cass next time.
28:22Yeah, we keep doing that.
28:24I just avoided that, you know.
28:27So I guess we had to you know, we had to follow the book, but I'm going to negotiate with the book a little more.
28:37Yeah, we were shooting three so much doing the director. He kept saying to me, why are you killing all these great characters?
28:43Yeah.
28:45But, you know, characters.
28:47Yeah. Well, yeah, there's I mean, we're sort of we have to follow the book as well in terms of who dies and, you know, and that and that. But we have done some adjustments.
28:55But I always feel I don't know about you guys, but I always feel if you're killing someone and it upsets the audience, then you've done the right thing.
29:01If you kill someone off in the audience is like, yeah, I felt like they've done that. I'm not really.
29:05Totally, totally.
29:07Yeah, you kind of what do you want people, you know, upset by it.
29:11But I do. There are people that we still miss cast members and characters, but.
29:16That's brutal.
29:19Killing off characters is always painful to watch as an audience member.
29:22OK, last couple of questions for you all.
29:25Well, for people who have not yet seen Slow Horses or people like wait, there are no horse.
29:30There are no horses in Slow Horses.
29:32What would you say to the audience about that?
29:37Oh, what? Pitch the show.
29:39What would you say? Yeah.
29:42Oh, God.
29:44We love pitching, don't we?
29:46No, it's a it's a it's an espionage.
29:49It's an espionage drama with.
29:51I'll start again. This is terrible.
29:54Gary Oldman and Jonathan Price and Chris has got Thomas and Jack and Saskia Reeves.
29:59It's got an amazing cast of spies, but they're human spies.
30:02So it's not like, you know, I mean, they do save the world, but usually by accident.
30:06And they mess up along the way and they've got messy lives.
30:08So it's it's like a spy genre piece, but with kind of multidimensional characters.
30:15Is that that's a very dry pit, isn't it?
30:17Love it.
30:19Why don't we pitch each other's shows?
30:21We were told there would be no exam.
30:25Do you want to pitch one another shows? Go for it.
30:26OK, Alex.
30:28Well, no, I am.
30:29One of the reasons I'm so happy to be here, you know, with with these people is because
30:36all these three other shows hit on something that really just appeals to some some real
30:43deep pleasure center for me.
30:44So the espionage slow horses is exactly everything that that that, you know, is my idea of a
30:50good time.
30:51You know, it is the espionage.
30:53Genre is like that.
30:54The greatest thrill of my life was meeting John McCartney.
30:57So that was like, oh, oh, oh.
30:59And the second was Stephen Fry.
31:00So, you know, something between Anglophilia and the spy and the spy genre.
31:05And yeah, the human part of it is like, like so much like that is like so, so much fun.
31:13Fallout is it is a game that I played when I was a kid.
31:18So much fun.
31:19Fallout is it is a game that I played, you know, back in the 90s, back when it was just
31:26a turn based role playing game.
31:28And and it was so the world was so well defined and so, so funny and so quirky and so different
31:37from any other.
31:38You know, at the time I really wasn't a video game.
31:41So, you know, and I played a lot of them and it was so different.
31:45And here was a world that, you know, that that has now been been brought to life in
31:50all of its darkness and humor at the same time.
31:56And then and then Shogun is, you know, it's kind of very personal because, you know, I
32:03it wasn't that long ago when I, you know, when I had created a show with the almost
32:09entirely Japanese cast.
32:11And and seeing that kind of representation on screen telling this story of the scale
32:19is really meaningful to me.
32:22I dug up an old email 2019.
32:26This is how old it was ago from Justin asking about one of the writers on the Terror Infamy
32:32and and, you know, it seeing that kind of representation on screen also, you know, and
32:39and seeing the kind of storytelling that can be told, you know, really makes me really
32:50gratified.
32:52And our show is OK, too.
32:55You know, if I can just about all you guys and all these shows, I mean, yeah, you know,
33:00I really think, you know, Alex, Three Body Problem was was actually like this book I
33:05was reading in Vancouver.
33:07Like it got me through a very long, cold and, you know, well, dark shoot.
33:16Yeah, there was not a lot of sunlight in the winter in Vancouver.
33:19And I mean, just what a wonderful bit of storytelling it was from a place of just really good, ambitious
33:26science fiction that didn't care that it wasn't, you know, like some I don't know, like model
33:36playing a rocket scientist kind of story.
33:38Like something that could be unabashedly smart in its science fiction is is just as a sci
33:43fi fan, the thing I always go for.
33:47And then, you know, Will, I think when we first met over Zoom, you know, months ago,
33:52I was just begging you to hire me on Slow Horses because it's just, you know, this espionage
33:58that this is what I want to do.
34:00This is, you know, in your show is that it's just the good glass of scotch that, you know,
34:06that saves us from from a bad day.
34:08It's such a brilliant, funny show that is, you know, like, you know, it's not James Bond.
34:14It just does the unsexy version of spice, which is what makes it sexy, you know, in
34:19this in this great way.
34:20And then, you know, Fallout, Graham, like that's, you know, to a point from a place
34:24of mastery of tone, you know, just like this, you know, that we get a bit of, you know,
34:30science fiction.
34:31First of all, the impossible task is someone who's adapted a video game in the past quite
34:36terribly in the feature film zone.
34:39It's like it's always like, how is this ever going to work?
34:42And the answer is that it's tone, you know, tone above all things.
34:47I mean, it's like this great just like, you know, David Lynch thing that you guys are
34:52doing with it, which which I think is really, you know, kind of fearless.
34:57And the fact that you somehow, you know, convinced your studio to also, like, do something that's
35:04just so unlike anything out there.
35:06And yet they also want to spend so much on making it look so great is like that is that
35:12is sorcery.
35:13It's amazing.
35:14Yeah, really.
35:15The production values that all the shows just you just did another world each time you watch
35:21them.
35:22It's, you know, and that, you know, that's.
35:23Yeah, that is.
35:24All our HODs are just amazing.
35:26Yeah.
35:27Yeah.
35:28I will.
35:29I the elevator pitch.
35:31Have you have you used this well for for Slow Horses that it's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
35:36meets Inside Mr.
35:38Enderby.
35:39I don't know.
35:40But like, look, if you need to sell the show to nerds.
35:45Yeah.
35:46Yeah.
35:47Yeah.
35:48To a specific point.
35:49Yeah.
35:50And a Canadian who wants to move to like me to London, but also feels he has nothing to
35:55offer British culture.
35:57That's.
35:58I just also want to say that just go back on to brutal killings.
36:04Alex, what the hell did you do to Jonathan Price?
36:07That was just amazing.
36:10He did it, too.
36:12He fell flat on his face.
36:15Yeah.
36:16But in slices, it was just.
36:18Yeah.
36:19He didn't actually cut himself into slices, but he did.
36:22He did do his own stunt there.
36:24So we're very glad to do it.
36:26One last thing on the espionage thing is that if there were any justice in the world, Justin,
36:31we'd be also here talking about season six of Counterpart.
36:34Yeah.
36:35Yeah.
36:36Justice for me.
36:37I'm happy to be just as a counterpart.
36:42Graham, I'm going to be the last question.
36:45Would you survive post apocalyptic?
36:48Like, like, are you ready to survive the apocalypse?
36:52I am not ready for a strong breeze.
36:55The Santa Ana wind will probably take me out.
36:59I enjoy living.
37:01I do think television is like a safe space for it's like a roller coaster.
37:05We get to watch safe space for bad behavior, for danger and all this stuff.
37:09We get to watch it behind real.
37:12I am not like a guy who fantasizes about the end times because I know just how
37:18Heidi will be like one far side panel.
37:21And that's it for me.
37:23I don't think.
37:25I mean, I do know people who just sort of love to revel in like bad news because
37:31they're like, oh, it's all going to go down.
37:33And I know what I'm going to do.
37:35And it's like, I just I'm not prone to those fantasies.
37:39Well, I want to thank you all for that incredible conversation.
37:42We could carry on for so much longer, but I want to be mindful of your time.
37:47But I really, again, congratulations on the Emmy nominations,
37:50the world building that you've given us.
37:52Thank you for the shows and that incredible conversation.
37:55Thank you for joining us.
37:57Yes.
37:58We're going to have to meet these wonderful people.
38:01Yeah.