Author: Graeme McMillan

Powers, which debuts its first three episodes on PlayStation Network on Tuesday, has had a long journey to the screen, including being developed as a movie and a television series for FX. The missing ingredient required for success might have been Charlie Huston, who goes from being the writer behind the Joe Pitt Casebooks series of novels to showrunning a television series for the first time.

Here, The Hollywood Reporter speaks with Huston about finally seeing the project come to fruition, changes from the long-in-the-works FX drama as well as plans for a potential second season.

You’re well-known as a crime novelist, and you and Powers co-creator Brian Michael Bendis have both worked on Moon Knight stories for Marvel, but how did you end up working on the Powers show?

I was one of the freelancers that got hired [for the aborted FX series] and I wrote one of the scripts. In the end, they passed on that approach but Sony liked my script and asked if I wanted to pitch my own version. My own version was, basically, to say, “I think some of the earlier approaches have veered too far away from the comic book, and I think we should just be doing the comic book as a TV show.” That made sense to them at the time, and that’s what we went after.

You were obviously a fan of the comic book, then.

When I first got a job as a freelancer for Marvel, I was not really up on what was happening in comic books and I hadn’t really been an avid reader as a teenager. I started lurking around the shops again and trying to learn what was going on. Brian was one of the writers that I really got into, and Powers was a title that I really fell in love with. To a large extent, I learned how to write comic books by reading Powers.

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What was it about the comic book that you specifically wanted to keep central to the TV show?

The core concept — the genre concept of cops solving superhero-related crimes — is just gold, and is easily communicated. It excited networks and studios over the years. It’s easy to grasp and it just sounds cool.

When we were figuring out the TV show, what I was really interested in thematically was fame and celebrity and power, and how these can be really caustic, destructive forces in the world, whatever end you are on. Possessing celebrity and fame can really destroy a human being and scrub away all of the need there is to interact and relate to people on a human level, and not having it in a world where it’s overvalued can make a person feel that, not only are they less than they are, but that there is an attainable level of happiness that they don’t have access to because they will never be famous. The way we attack that on the show is through Walker (Sharlto Copley), who had super powers and has clearly been damaged by it and left inadequate and not the man that he was, and through Calista, on the other end, who is so desperate to possess power and possess fame that she’ll do literally anything […] to try and make herself complete.

We tried to be profoundly and consciously faithful to the world and characters that Brian and Michael created, and we revel in and enjoy all of the same things that they do, but we have things that we are interested in and, very much with Brian and Michael’s endorsement, we are pushing those things and those themes to the forefront — at least for the first season. In upcoming seasons, we want to iris the lens open and not be single-mindedly focused on celebrity and fame, but also get into politics and science and religion — all the different areas where the world would be altered if superpowers existed.

The first season, as you said, focuses on the theme of how Walker and Calista deal with their powers, or lack thereof. It plays out like one extended narrative across the entire episode, instead of a weekly procedural cop show.

Part of it had to do with who I am. I do not have a procedural mind, and I never pitched that to anybody. I never walked into a room and said, “Hey, we’re going to crack a case every week!” I am a novelist, I have a novelist’s sensibility and I like longform storytelling. I came through the door with that in mind. I told everybody that I really wanted to tell the story about this guy who is emotionally stunted and crippled by his own fame and loss of fame, and I want to tell a story about what happens over a short period in his life when all of the dust in his past gets kicked up and he’s forced to try to come to terms with all of this stuff he’s been burying and refusing to cope with. Is this an opportunity for him to regress, or to start growing up, which is a process that never began for him? He got powers when he was a teenager, he became so powerful and beloved that he never had any reason to mature.

Is this your first TV show? You’re a novelist and you’ve worked in comics, but is this your first time working in television?

I had a pilot that was produced at HBO but never went forward. This is my first time really doing it.

I can only imagine the culture shock going from writing novels to showrunning a television series.

Everything is different. [Laughs.] Start at the most basic level: being a novelist is you and a monitor, and working on a TV show is profoundly collaborative. By the end of this thing, I will have worked with — me, specifically — hundreds of people. And then there a couple hundred people that I’ve never had the opportunity to meet, who are working on things that are completely invisible to me.

So, it’s deeply social, it’s deeply collaborative, and — if you’re someone like me, who is coming into things with a level of experience that is for all intents zero — you are really dependent on the experience and expertise that these other people are bringing to things. You have to trust your own judgment, but not assume for a second that you know everything, not assume for a second going into any interaction that you have the best answer or know the answer. You have to be able to let people’s ideas change your ideas or trump your own ideas if they’re better, or are more aware of the practicalities of what’s involved.

And then there’s the medium itself — instead of creating voices that are meant to be heard inside the reader’s heard, accompanied by whatever images they have on the inside of their skull, you have to deal in pictures and the tangible and buildable. It’s vastly different, and that’s part of the appeal, to do something so different from what I’m used to.

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You sound very excited about it, so obviously you enjoyed the challenge.

Oh, yeah, I love production. I come out of a theater background, and I’m many years removed from it by this point. I did a lot of theater, and I went to school for theater. My life just went in different directions away from it. Returning to it, on this scale, feels different certainly from anything I ever did as an actor or in the theater, but the nuts and bolts — the human interactions, it’s very similar. They’re all show people, there’s a kind of personality within that community that makes it feel very familiar and comfortable.

So, is showrunning something you’ll stay with? Do you already have plans for Powers season two?

We came into this with a plan for where this story goes, and what the characters do and what goes on for multiple seasons. You want to see it through to the end, you want to see characters grow and change. You want to have the opportunity to be inspired, to do things that aren’t expected. The most exciting thing in any art form, to any creator, is the thing you didn’t plan for. It’s the moment you thought you going to do being altered by someone else’s idea, or by the way the wind is blowing — the fact that you’re getting rained out and you have to move the scene inside, or an actor gets sick and you won’t have them for that day or whatever it is. Those things turn your expectations on their head, and quite often, you discover new ways of doing something. That’s the most exciting thing. That’s the most fun.

Powers is available on Sony PlayStation Network starting Tuesday. Stay tuned to THR for more Powers coverage.

While much of the prelaunch focus of Fox’s Gotham was on Benjamin McKenzie’s Jim Gordon, it quickly became clear to viewers that another character was becoming one of the season’s most entertaining characters: Oswald Cobblepot, as played by Robin Lord Taylor.

Machiavellian, conniving and cowardly, Oswald has spent the series building a power base for himself under the noses of the power players in the city, and in the process, the character has won a fanbase among the audience thanks to Taylor’s performance as the eventual Penguin. The Hollywood Reporter caught up with the actor to discuss auditioning for the role, working on the show and how he’d react if a certain green-haired clown rolled into town.

Were you a Batman fan as a kid?

I wasn’t as big a comic book aficionado as some of my friends, but I definitely had some Batman comics. I was a huge, huge fan of the movies, and also the Adam West series — they used to run re-runs every day after elementary school, so I watched that whole thing. Once the Tim Burton/Michael Keaton/Jack Nicholson movie came out, I was there opening night and it was a huge moment for me. I’ve seen all the Batman movies in the theater, opening weekend. I was a big Batman fan, definitely.

So did you have a set idea of how to play the Penguin when you were auditioning? Did you have the Danny DeVito or Burgess Meredith take on the character in mind?

I didn’t even know what I was auditioning for; it was called “Untitled Warner Bros. Project” on the sides. They had written a fake scene with fake character names, and that was all the information I had going in. I prepared as best I could, I read the scene as I would do any scene without knowing who the character was, and then the night before, my agent told me, “Oh, by the way, this is the origin story of Batman and you’re auditioning for the Penguin.” At that point, I’d already made my choices with the scene, and I didn’t want to let any of that affect me. I was coming from a place of, either it’s going to be a thing that they’re into and they respond to, or it’s not going to be. So I went in with my original plan in mind, and did it once, and they were like “OK, we’ll be in touch.’ Next day, they called and said they wanted to send me to Los Angeles to test for the part. It was a surprisingly simple process, it all fell into place smoothly and perfectly, I still can’t believe it went that easy.

And now you’re the breakout character of the show. It all revolves around Oswald.

I’m aware of the attention and it’s so positive and validating. As an actor, I just want to work, you know? When I’m part of something this big, and on top of that, to get such positive attention, it’s just amazing. I pinch myself, I knock on wood, I can’t believe it’s happening. It’s very, very surreal, but ultimately it’s so gratifying. I give so much credit to our amazing writers and the creator and showrunner of the show, Bruno Heller. His vision of the character is so much fun to execute, and he and I are so much on the same page. It almost seems easy, in a way, to run with such amazing material. It’s an actor’s dream.

You said you’re on the same page with Bruno about the character. So what’s your take on Oswald?

When I was doing research on the character, I was reading all of his origin stories in the comics. In one of those stories, he was a bullied kid — mercilessly bullied, because of the way he looks, and because of his interests. He was from an immigrant family, so he had that going against him; he felt like he was an outsider. Because of that, I see him as one of the most ambitious characters I’ve ever played. He absolutely refuses to go back to that place of powerlessness, and that’s what feeds his ambition and his drive to not just be two steps ahead of everybody, but to be five or six steps ahead of everybody. It’s forced him to analyze people, figure out what their weaknesses and motivations are, and then use that to further his own goals — to be the one in charge, and not be stepped on ever again.

On the show, there’s almost something about him where you want to root for him, despite everything he’s doing. He’s a villain you can almost sympathize with.

I have to see him as sympathetic, because that’s what makes him so three-dimensional, instead of your archetypal villain. “Sympathetic” is too nice of a word; he does terrible things, and his moral compass is definitely off in that way, but I understand why he’s doing these things, and in that understanding there is sympathy in that. Knowing what he’s gone through and where he wants to go, it makes him more a human being. I feel like people have been really responding to that, and that was my goal from the beginning, to see him be more than a cartoon.

He’s a very complex character, which makes sense. Even more than Jim Gordon or Bruce Wayne, he’s the character that the entire season revolves around — and it’s something that he’s made happen himself. Did you have an idea that he’d be quite so central going into the pilot?

Bruno had told me that, early on, as the show progresses, it would highlight certain characters and that Oswald was going to be the first one out of the gate. I had no idea to what extent. When I got the scripts for, I think it was episode seven, when it’s revealed that Oswald had been working for Falcone the whole time, I had no idea! There was this moment of, “Oh my God, he’s so much smarter than I thought he was!” It’s been such a great experience, watching the character evolve and experiencing it as he’s experiencing it. I don’t know what’s coming, I get the scripts before we start shooting.

Because Oswald has placed himself as the center of events, he gets scenes with almost everyone else in the show, which is unusual. Almost every other character is off in their own world, but Oswald is everywhere.

One of my favorite things has been able to work with so many people in the cast. Interacting with all of these different characters brings out different parts of Oswald and illuminates different parts of his psyche and his motivation, and that’s been very fun to play from my end. My relationship with Carol Kane is incredible; I’ve been a fan of hers forever, and we really do have a genuine affection for each other off-screen, and that’s been an amazing thing. To be able to call her my friend is just unreal. And then, to be able to work with someone like Ben — Jim Gordon’s relationship with Oswald is so multifaceted and interesting, it’s as if they’re enemies but they need other, and Jim is the only other person besides his mother than Oswald trusts in Gotham. It’s been incredibly fun to play. And then there’s Jada [Pinkett-Smith], who as Fish is the one who taught Oswald everything he knows about Gotham City, so there’s a motherly thing there, too. It’s so fun to play with everybody. It basically feels like a family.

I have to say, one of my favorite scenes so far is with Cory Michael Smith, who plays Edward Nigma. It was just so fun, I’m just so excited to have more moments like that.

Because he’s almost a different character depending on who he’s talking to, you have this amazing range to play with. He can be very intricate and subtle, but he can also go amazingly broad. That’s got to be fun.

To play someone so smart and so in tune with other people’s motivations, and to work off of their energies? That’s an actor’s dream, I mean, that’s exactly what you want when you’re playing a character. You get to play all colors of the spectrum, and it depends on the interactions with other characters to bring out these different colors. It’s so exciting. When I read the script and see I have a scene with Fish Mooney, I know it’s going to be so charged, and then I see have a scene with Jim and know it’s also going to be charged but in a totally different way.

Are there moments where you’re reading a script and Oswald almost goes too far?

There are certain things when I get the script and see what he’s going to be doing in the next episode, there are times when I’m just, “Oh my God, how do I make this believable and still have people invested in what he’s doing?” My goal is, I want him to be an anti-hero, I want him to people to root for people, no matter what he’s doing. I definitely get creeped out by him.

Are you protective of him? Are there moments where you think, “No, Oswald wouldn’t do that?”

That’s been the amazing thing about working with Bruno is that he’s been so open about us coming to him if something rings false in the script. He said that we, the actors, know more about the characters than the writers. There have been a couple of times, especially with Oswald’s relationship with Jim Gordon. I’m always trying to push back against Oswald making Jim feel uncomfortable in any way. I feel that, to Oswald, Jim is a friend; there is a tendency in some scenes where he comes on too hard to Gordon, and it’s something I’ve wanted to pull back a little bit. Oswald would never want to make Jim feel uncomfortable. They’ve been so amazing about letting us do that, you can’t say that about every show.

Unlike almost everything else on television, the characters on Gotham have endpoints. People know the Penguin, they know the Riddler and Catwoman. Does the “traditional” version of the Penguin come into your mind when you’re playing Oswald?

Yes, it is something I am aware of, but I feel like we have a lot of freedom to create these characters on our own terms. We’re illuminating parts of these characters that no-one’s really seen before, and with that, there’s a certain amount of freedom to reinterpret parts of things, and bring out different shades of their personality that haven’t been seen. Also, we’re so far in the past that there’s so much time before Oswald becomes the Penguin that everybody knows. I feel that I have space to create the character I want to play.

Do you ever have moments of “Wait, I’m playing the Penguin. The one who fights Batman”?

Every day! (Laughs.) And sometimes multiple times a day. Nothing can ever prepare you for scoring a job like this, and it’s been an insane roller coaster, but I’m so glad I’m on it. It’s crazy.

And now it looks like the Joker’s going to show up to ramp up the crazy. Can you imagine how Oswald would react to having to deal with the Joker showing up in the city and throwing everything into chaos?

Oh, man. I think Oswald will fully accept the challenge. I think having someone else on the scene trying to take over, it’ll be another thing he’ll have to navigate and figure out. If and when the Joker arrives, that’s a personality that’ll be so difficult for him to manipulate in the way he’s been doing with everyone else. That’d be so amazing to play, for Oswald to find himself on such shaking ground. I think it’ll be incredible fun.

Gotham airs Mondays on Fox.