Author: Daniel Fienberg

November 19, 2015 4:45pm PT by Daniel Fienberg

Krysten Ritter in ‘Marvel’s Jessica Jones’  Courtesy of Myles Aronowitz/Netflix

The former ‘Dexter’ EP discusses how her Netflix Marvel drama evolved from its ABC incarnation.

Premiering Friday on Netflix, Marvel’s Jessica Jones represents the comic behemoth’s biggest risk to date.

ABC dramas Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter have both featured characters and plotlines pulled from wildly successful movie franchises. Netflix’s Daredevil at least had brand recognition courtesy of a poorly received Ben Affleck movie.

With Jessica Jones, showrunner Melissa Rosenberg is building a series around a character who only debuted in 2001, a former superhero turned private investigator. The character, sarcastic, self-lacerating and powerful, is played by Krysten Ritter, an actress who, while familiar from many beloved TV shows including Breaking Bad and Veronica Mars, has never carried a show this big before.

This is Rosenberg’s second shot at Jessica Jones after the ABC pilot incarnation failed to make it to series.

The Hollywood Reporter spoke with Rosenberg (Dexter, Twilight) about the evolution of Jessica Jones and the challenges of casting its leading lady, as well as David Tennant as the season’s chief antagonist.

How does the Netflix series differ from the version that you were eyeing at ABC a few years back?

When I was doing the network version of it I was able to stay closer to the original comic book plot. The universe, the mythology of the universe in the book, is that people with powers are fairly integrated into society and there’s a lot of prejudice against them. There’s the metaphor of The Other, which was a fun story to tell, but by the time we got up to Netflix, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was a slightly different mythology so I really had to move away from that storytelling. There wasn’t a lot of plot I could take with me from the book, but I certainly used as much as humanly possible because I was just such a huge fan of the book.

Was it going to be a slightly lighter show on ABC?

That was probably one of the reasons that it didn’t end up on ABC. (Laughs.) Because the book itself, the source material is dark, that’s what attracted me to her. From the very start with it, I was like, “I want to do this tone. I want to stay true to this tone and then go even further with it if I can.” There was a lot of support for that but I think ultimately it just wasn’t a great match for the network, but it was for Netflix. Jeph Loeb, who’s the head of Marvel Television, secretly ran around and put together this incredible deal for the Netflix Marvel Universe.

From your point of view, how do you feel about the different levels of control that you get to have over the storytelling under those two circumstances?

It may surprise you but I had free rein. Part of it’s because Jessica Jones is a lesser-known character, so there wasn’t the same kind of expectations that came with it, like Daredevil, which has a very, very long history.There was a lot of freedom to really explore her storytelling and they understood as much as anyone else what the original material was. It was Marvel’s first adult comic book that they’d ever put out. They went into it eyes wide open and completely embraced it, as did Netflix. … That surprised me just that Marvel honestly really just supported my vision and contributed to it, really.

What were the conversations that you had to have regarding how this fits into this whole four-series deal and then The Defenders package deal that this was always developed as?

It feels like they’re following the storytelling as opposed to imposing the storytelling on the storytellers. There’s been no conversations about The Defenders. I think I’d read one script of Daredevil before I started the writing room up. There’s just no crossover at all. 

Jeph Loeb kept us honest because he was the keeper of the universe, in a way, and said, “Well, you’re treading on territory that Daredevil‘s going down,” or, “That’s kind of breaking some of the rules of the universe.” Cheo [Hodari Coker], who’s the showrunner of Luke Cage, I don’t think he saw anything of my series before he started. It’s been really purposeful on their part to let the showrunners and show creators create.

Is there a chessboard aspect to what you could or couldn’t do, as you say, with Luke Cage? Because you’re introducing him but then he has to go off and do his own thing. Was there a place where you had to start him, and then a place where you had to end him and then you had free play between those two points?

Nothing had been predetermined. We were determining it as we went along. Jeph Loeb said, “Well, you know, he does kind of have his own series so the origin story is the stuff of his series.” There’s so much that you can’t know. At first I freaked out. I thought, “I can’t tell anything with him,” but it ended up being quite perfect because it just leaves more of a mystery for that relationship. The series is called Jessica Jones. It’s not called Luke Cage. Actually, it ended up bringing us back much closer to focus. Luke’s story is important in how it branches off Jessica’s and how that connection is made. Then he goes off into his own storytelling.

There were a lot of high-profile names that were associated with the casting on Jessica, but there’s this dark, sarcastic bite to the character that seems so specific to Krysten. Did the character shift once she began reading the dialogue?

No, because we were looking for exactly that, and Krysten Ritter, if you’ve seen her comedic work before, she’s exactly that. That’s why she was always very high on our list and of course when she came in very early in the process set the bar incredibly high and no one else came close. Particularly on that one count of delivering incredibly dry.

When you were auditioning people, was that the part that was most difficult to find and match up with Jessica?

That was. That was always going to be the toughest thing. As they say, death is easy, comedy is hard.

When it comes to Jessica, how much ambiguity do you want there to be about her exact powers? After seven episodes do I know everything she can do or not even close?

We’re really treating them as very matter of fact, you know? She’s very unapologetically who she is. Her power, her sexuality, her damage, she just goes through life who she is. The powers are a part of her personality but they’re not what the story is about. The goal was to land them in a very realistic way. There will always be a little bit of, for her, “Can I do this? I don’t even know, but f— I’m going to try.” Always pushing those boundaries.

How do those specific skills steer the action of the show? Because Daredevil obviously had this very intimate hand-to-hand, visceral kind of action and Jessica can’t do that because if she starts doing that to people she punches them across the street. How did you shape the action around who Jessica is?

Daredevil, first of all, the actor has a mask so you can put a stunt double in pretty easily. His character back story is that he’s trained for decades to hone his skills and Jessica has never trained. She’s a brawler and if she punches, you go down. She never embraced being a hero. Whereas Daredevil wants to protect the city, she just wants to protect her apartment, and save her business and be able to buy whiskey that night.

One of the things I enjoyed most here was the noir-y-ness of it and how Jessica is inhabiting what has very traditionally been a very male space. How conscious were you of twisting the gender expectations at every turn?

I’m a pretty out and proud feminist, so that’s always very forefront in my consciousness, but really the focus in writing her and breaking story with the other writers, the focus was just on doing a fascinating character. She’s not defined by her gender, she is simply a character. When you’re writing a white male, you don’t approach it as, “Well, what would this white male do?” You just approach it as a character, and I find so many times when people are writing either a female character or a person of color, the character gets limited to that one aspect of who they are and I think that’s part of why we see so few of them on our screens.

I was just wondering because there were different points where I was thinking, “Okay, she’s kind of being the Humphrey Bogart character here,” or something to that effect, and that wasn’t an approach you were taking. The “we know what this kind of genre hero looks like, here’s how it looks and how it feels if it’s a woman” thing. Writing it as a character, but saying “Here’s an archetype, here’s how it’s different.”

Jake Gittes is sort of the archetype and Kilgrave is her Chinatown. That’s how we all referenced that film and certainly we referenced it visually. That was one of our original models for the pacing and framing of it. There weren’t a lot of female characters to model her on, so you just sort of look at the noir and stay true to that genre but build off her character, you know?

What was your approach to the specific kind of threat that that character, who’s a very specific kind of power, the threat you wanted him to convey?

She’s super strong. She’s got superpowers. She’s fairly invulnerable, but his powers are terrifying to her. He defeated her. She’s afraid, he makes her afraid, which is not something that she has felt a great deal of in her life. It undoes her and she’s been carrying that around ever since.

David Tennant has this great voice, of course, and that’s mostly what his performance is, at least for the first few episodes. How conscious of his voice were you from the very beginning and wanting to work with that?

I’d just seen his range and I knew that he would bring that to every moment, whether it would be just his voice or otherwise. The reeling out of his story, it was very important for us to really experience him from Jessica’s point of view. It’s the fallout, the impact of what he’s done that introduces him before the character himself is introduced. You know who he is, at least from her perspective, right from the start.

How did you want to handle weaving him through the individual episodes? Because there’s a semi-procedural aspect to it but then you’ve got Kilgrave in the background at all times pulling the strings as well.

Kilgrave’s definitely the through line of the entire season. There is procedural element somewhat, but again the series is really about her character. It’s not about the case of the week. Kilgrave is so wrapped up in who she is and one of the events that has shaped who she is so much has to do with Kilgrave, so the procedural is really the backdrop for the storytelling.

The entire first season of Jessica Jones premieres on Friday on Netflix.

Netflix Netflix

November 09, 2015 8:21pm PT by Daniel Fienberg

Bruce Campbell of ‘Fargo’  Chris Large/FX

The actor also talks with THR about why he wanted to avoid Johnny Carson’s “over-the-top” version of Reagan and ‘Ash vs. Evil Dead’s’ early renewal.

[Warning: This story contains spoilers from Monday’s episode of Fargo, “The Gift of the Magi.”]

Ronald Reagan has been all over FX’s Fargo this season. 

With the 1980 election on the horizon, posters of the actor-turned-politician have been in the background of many shots, while a couple fictionalized Reagan films have served as the backdrop for both the season’s black-and-white cold open and for the movie theater shootout that brought Michael Hogan’s Otto Gerhardt to power.

The former California governor and upstart presidential candidate made his first in-person appearance on Fargo in Monday’s episode, as a campaign jaunt took him through Minnesota and earned him an escort courtesy of State Trooper Lou Solverson (Patrick Wilson). The episode captured Reagan’s almost hypnotic power over the disenchanted electorate, but a men’s room conversation with Lou also proved Reagan’s limitations.

Fans have been eagerly anticipating Reagan’s presence since it was announced that Evil Dead and Burn Notice star Bruce Campbell would be playing the role, reuniting him with Fargo executive producer John Cameron, a friend dating back to their high school days in Michigan.

The Hollywood Reporter spoke with Campbell, a busy man after Starz’s early renewal of Ash vs. Evil Dead, about tapping into his inner Reagan and the challenges of making this a performance rather than an impersonation.

I know that you and producer John Cameron go way, way, way back. Was that how this opportunity made its way to you?

My buddy John and I go back to high school and had always imitated Reagan shamelessly, like a lot of my contemporaries. My kids grew up in a Reagan Era, they were young during that decade, so we mocked him good! So that must’ve been how that came in, that John was like, “OK. I’ve seen Bruce do Reagan for years” and I’m sure Noah Hawley was at least intrigued.

But then this opportunity comes to you. What is your reaction to being asked to actually play Reagan on-screen?

Terror. And fear. Mostly because this is a show that has won some Emmys. I don’t usually do the Emmy. That’s not really my bag. I do B-television and B-movies. I got nervous. I shot it in advance and sent it to them to see what they thought. Like, “If you want to fire me, do it now, because this what I’m going to do.”

From your point-of-view, what is the key to playing Ronald Reagan as a character, rather than just doing a Ronald Reagan impression?

For sure! You have to think about what he was up to at that particular time, which was campaigning. He changed his philosophy. He was much more liberal. He solidified some of his opinions and beliefs when he worked for GE for five years as a spokesman. That got him really good at speaking and he became good at extemporaneous speaking and that got him into the whole corporate thing. I think mostly with Reagan, you’ve got to believe what you say. He believed what he said. He was a true believer in himself. I don’t think he was a bullshit artist.

How important is it for you to remember that this was 1979 Reagan and not the 1980s Reagan who comes to mind first for many of us now?

Yeah, he wasn’t the jelly bean Reagan. This guy was on the move. He hadn’t been shot yet and he was still a very vital guy. … We wanted to make sure that the hair was right. I’ve got enough hair left so we just beefed up what I had. But Reagan, boy that guy had hair. And the other thing is that he told jokes a lot before his speech. It was really crazy. There’s a lot of footage. He’s a modern president, so a lot of his stuff is available to watch and he’d start with a Russian joke. He was always taking cheap shots at the Russians. He wanted to impress upon the American people that Russians were really just a bunch of backwater schmos run by an idiot and that we shouldn’t worry about them like, “This is what these people are up against over there. They need to revolt.”

I don’t know how he did it, but boy he sure made life simple. “Things can be good again. Things can be great again.” And it was amazing how the ’80s became the ’50s again in a weird way. But the one thing I noticed about his cabinet, even at that time, is they were all old men, they were all doddering old men. That’s fine. They had a lot of experience. But I just felt, even then, that they were completely out of touch.

You were a young man at this point. What are your memories of the 1979 that Reagan was rising in?

I’ll tell you what, 1979 sucked, aside from us making Evil Dead. The investment climate was gnarly. Interest rates were bad. I remember the lines at the gas pumps very specifically. … It wasn’t a very happy time. People weren’t happy with Carter. They thought he was weak. And Reagan, it’s pretty telling that literally like the day after he was inaugurated they freed the hostages and that was something Carter had really been working on and I think basically he was sending a message of, “You’d better f—ing release those hostages now that I’m running the show or it’s over.” It was reminiscent of the George W. [Bush] approach: “We are still the superpower. You will listen to us. And if you f— with us, you’re really going to regret it.” It’s just different approaches. 

Carter, aside from the fact that he’s a very caring man who obviously cares about humans, but I don’t think the impression of him was that good at that time. So ’79 was kind of crappy. I can see why a guy could come in and rally everybody out of their stupor and who better than an actor? And I have to say this: I also have stuff in common with him. I’ve done plenty of B-movies, so I kind of get that. We’re both from the Midwest. He’s from Illinois. I’m from Michigan. So it wasn’t a big stretch like coming up with a “Hahvahd accent.” I didn’t have to do anything silly like that.

Reagan does, however, have that very distinctive voice and cadence and you’re doing the quieter version, as opposed to like the Phil Hartman SNL version. How did you decide when you had enough Reagan that people would recognize it, but not too much Reagan?

I just think he has a cadence whether it’s loud or small. He was a good speaker! Some people don’t remember, but he did radio forever. All these old-timers did radio. So I think that was mostly just how he spoke. And I also wanted to avoid the Johnny Carson version of Ronald Reagan, too. (Shifts to Carson-Reagan) “Mmm-hmm.” That was just completely over-the-top. But you still pick out mannerisms in each of those. Whether it’s Phil Hartman or me or Johnny Carson, there’s still aspects that are always going to be there about him. The way he shook his head, a little bit. Everybody, when they speak, they have a certain thing they do with their body language, so it was really that. It wasn’t anything over-the-top. And my suits had to fit. I had to make sure they fit, because that’s important.

I love the scene with Reagan and Lou at the urinal, because that scene seems to capture both Reagan’s believable empathy, but also how superficial and empty he could come across. How did you approach that scene?

(Laughs.) He doesn’t have an answer! He doesn’t have all the answers. We can say that we have all the answers. We can get up there and give speeches and tell people, “You know if you want a great country again, here’s what we have to do,” but it doesn’t stop people from getting cancer. It doesn’t stop their lives from being discarded. Speeches aren’t going to stop anything. So yes, the theory is great. “Let’s pick ourselves up by our bootstraps” and he honestly believes that as an American you can overcome anything, even your wife who’s dying. He couldn’t abandon his approach, but it does show a little bit of the fallibility of it, that it is a pie in the sky theory. Instead of being the president goes, “I feel your pain, all you poor people, we’re going to help you right now,” that was not the approach. If you were poor, that was your fault. Americans can do anything. Why are you poor? “You just have to work a little harder.” He’s still stuck with the attitude at the time, “Well, if you just roll up your sleeves and sweat a bit…”

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What was it like rolling into a show like this as the special guest star of the week? And not just the special guest star, but playing freaking Ronald Reagan?

It’s all about the material when you get on shows like that. It’s not about blowing up cars. It’s about acting and directing and storytelling. It was great. Look, I’ve done the TV shuffle for years, so I get it. When you’re on somebody else’s conveyor belt, just be ready. It’s the same thing with television, you’ve just got to be ready. If they’re moving quick, you’ve got to be moving quick, too. If they’re moving a little slower, “Fine, I’ll slow down.” But that’s TV. That’s the beauty of TV. No one dicks around in television.

And before you go, congrats on the early renewal for Ash vs. Evil Dead. 

Yeah!

I assume y’all had to see that renewal coming, that it wasn’t a surprise?

Honestly, as you prep for season two of anything, we had to get a writers’ room going again right away, we had warehouse spaces locked down, the same crap you have to do for any TV show. I think they saw the enthusiasm for the show. Every show will have to prove itself over time if they can sustain it, but I think they saw how big the fan base was. They saw it at San Diego Comic-Con and they got a taste of it when they showed the first episode at New York Comic-Con. These are people who light their hair on fire when they like something. These are great fans and I think they got it. 

What didn’t hurt is the fact that Evil Dead started overseas. It couldn’t get released in the States until we made money overseas in England, with Palace Pictures. I think they went, “Oh, we can sell this foreign, too.” Not every show can translate across The Big Ditch. So we had a couple distinct advantages. Starz wants to do shows that people don’t like a little bit. They want to do shows that people like a lot. That’s their current current mantra and I think we fit into that. 

Fargo airs Mondays at 10 p.m. on FX. Ash vs. Evil Dead airs Saturdays at 9 p.m. on Starz.

Fargo Ash vs. Evil Dead

November 07, 2015 11:23pm PT by Daniel Fienberg

Donald Trump on ‘Saturday Night Live’  Dana Edelson/NBC

Trump was rarely funny, but the writers didn’t give him much to work with.

After 40 seasons, you can’t blame Saturday Night Live and Lorne Michaels for thinking it might be fun to give itself new challenges.

Perhaps that’s why on Saturday (Nov. 7) night, the venerable sketch series attempted to fill 90 minutes with an inanimate object as host, one guaranteed to exhibit range comparable to a potato, only with the inevitability of much higher ratings.

Perhaps this will open the door for an eventual hosting appearance by American Pharoah, who would also guarantee a big audience, but probably wouldn’t have veto power over scripts.

Having a politician in the midst of an active presidential campaign was always a dismal idea for Saturday Night Live, particularly a candidate with as much negative baggage as Donald Trump, but even with expectations lowered to bargain-basement level, this week’s show was a dumpster fire. And make no mistake: As lifeless as Trump was for the majority of the show, the writers deserve every bit as much of the onus for entirely failing to work around Trump’s limitations or finding amusing things to do with the lump in the middle. Yes, there have been reports that Trump vetoed skits for being too “risqué,” but the problem with this episode wasn’t a failure to push boundaries, but rather a failure to craft skits with punchlines. Of course, why waste your A-material in an episode destined for season high ratings completely by default?

The problems were inherent, and the solutions were lackluster.

What do you do about that whole “equal time” problem and not wanting to make it seem like you’re turning your periodically respected comedy show into a non-stop commercial for a man who can already afford to buy as much ad time as he could ever want?

Toothlessly!

The first in-show skit flashed forward to 2018 and featured a string of officials and cabinet members celebrating what a glorious thing Trump’s presidency had been so far. ISIS? Gone. Putin? Out of Ukraine. Mexico? Graciously paying Trump back for that wall he built. Omarosa? Secretary of State, or something. The skit was three minutes of Trump sitting in a chair and nodding about his fictional goodness and nodding approvingly at the cameo by daughter Ivanka. Sketchy, right? Unsettling if you’re not a Trump supporter, right? Not funny under any circumstances, right? The kicker? The skit was “paid for” by the Melania For First Lady Foundation. See? No need for concern. It’s not pro-Trump at all, if you keep repeating that to yourself.

Then the show ended with a faux advocacy ad featuring the former porn stars played by Vanessa Bayer and Cecily Strong. As recurring end-of-show wheel spinning characters go, it happens that I’m extremely partial to the former porn stars, and this skit produced more laughs than I got out of anything else in the show, though it also made me wonder if Trump had decided he might as well surrender on one “risqué” skit or however you’d describe a skit in which a politically excited character slurs, “One time I thought I banged Teddy Roosevelt, but it was just Teddy Ruxpin. Sorry, kid’s birthday.” But the skit, making frequently references to “Donald Tramp,” ended with Trump lurching on-stage and announcing he didn’t endorse this message. There was still a “Trump 2016” banner at the beginning of the skit, so it’s probably a win.

The Trump 2016 banner also appeared during the closest thing to a stink-eye the show gave its host. Capping a joke about Republicans claiming Obama was never properly vetted, Weekend Update co-host Michael Che said that the vetting was so complete people demanded Obama show ID to even enter the White House. “And I’m talking about the guy hosting the show,” Che whispered as “Trump 2016” appeared on the screen behind him.

That was as close as Weekend Update came to joking about the show’s host in a prolonged segment that didn’t quite advocate in Trump’s favor, but definitely began with two belittling Jeb Bush jokes followed by four derisive Ben Carson jokes. Bobby Moynihan’s Drunk Uncle showed up calling himself Donald Trump’s No.1 fan, and you briefly expected a little satire explaining why Donald Trump is the favorite hopeful for drunk uncles everywhere, but that appearance was mostly Drunk Uncle singing and shattering a glass out of hatred for Hillary Clinton.

With Dump Trump protestors out in the street and a group offering $5,000 to anybody who called Trump a racist on-air, Saturday Night Live diffused the tension by having Larry David, making his second appearance as Bernie Sanders, doing the cat-calling at the end of Trump’s nearly nonexistent monologue. Maybe having the second or third richest white guy in the room belittling concerns that many consider legitimate wasn’t the most graceful way of handling things? Or maybe the angered Hispanic activists need look no further than the necessity of having Beck Bennett playing The President of Mexico to realize how little Saturday Night Live was likely to care.

Remember that time Nora Dunn protested against Andrew Dice Clay hosting and refused to appear? Not only does that seem mighty quaint these days, but that’s a level of rebellion nobody in this cast had any interest in. The rebellion, I guess, was just in the writers room, because no matter how temping it is to place all of the blame for this debacle on Trump, what exactly was he given to work with?

Appearing at either the very beginning or very end of at least three or four skits, plus a monologue that has to have been rushed through at a record pace, Trump hardly had any time to flail or succeed. Trump’s funniest moment, and the only moment in which he attempted to move, came as he danced for 10 seconds in a parody of Drake’s “Hotline Bling” video. It wasn’t bad! Other non-political skits found Trump pretending to tweet mean things about the cast members participating in a not-funny skit, stumbling in as an opportunistic record producer in an already-dead family dinner dud and complaining that he didn’t have enough time for his laser harp solos in a sketch in which he stumbled over his few lines, which wouldn’t have worked anyway. 

Oh, and then there was the introduction to musical guest Sia’s second song, in which Kenan Thompson barged in as the frontman of Toots and the May-Tones, the musical act the last time Trump hosted. Toots begged to be Trump’s running mate, but before he got too persistent, Trump threatened to shoot him. End skit.

Ouch.

The real lesson of this Trump fiasco wasn’t really about Donald Trump, of course. I’m not a bitter liberal demanding the real Bernie Sanders show up next week with a topless Martin O’Malley as musical guest. That would be a bad idea as well, though I’m not saying it would be a worse idea. Any candidate should be welcome for whatever one-off cameos they want to make, but it seemed coming in that there was no way to walk this Trump tightrope cleverly, and the creative result bore that out as well.

And as for the ratings? They’re sure to be hu… Massive.