The Watch - Aya Cash and Liz Hannah on the Making of ‘The Girl From Plainville,’ and the Season 2 Premiere of ‘Russian Doll’

Episode Date: April 22, 2022

Andy touches on the ‘Severance’ season finale and the news that Netflix is losing subscribers (1:03). He is then joined by ‘The Girl From Plainville’ showrunner Liz Hannah and star Aya Cash to talk about why they were drawn to making this show (17:34), and their love for the second season of ‘Russian Doll’ (54:35). Host: Andy Greenwald Guests: Liz Hannah and Aya Cash Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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to the watch. I have no official title at the ringer.com. Unlike my colleague Chris Ryan, who is swaning about Europe. My name's Andy Greenwald. I'm not even going to yell my name. Maybe I should because loyal listeners, you may have forgotten it. I've been gone for a minute. I've been back since the weekend, but I was very grateful to Chris and Joanna for filling it on Monday because, look, guys, we needed Saul content. And for all the wonderful things about the United Kingdom, including the greatest invention of modern times, the half pint, it is very, very hard to access screener sites over there.

So I was unable to catch up in time. I'm so grateful they were able to cover it in such an amazing way. good news for fans of the Chris and Andy team up. Chris and I will be back talking about Better Call Saul season six, episode three, Monday night. We actually recorded it super early. Well, super early, both in the sense that it wasn't next Monday and super early in the sense that Kai and I were just chilling on Pacific time. And Chris, it was like 5.30 p.m.

And he probably had already been to at least a pub. But he did great, great podcast. So we'll be back with you for that on Monday. evening. But it's not Monday evening, guys. It's Thursday. And I'm very thrilled that in a few moments, I'll be joined by two longtime friends of the pod, writer, showrunner, producer, Liz Hanna, and actor Aya Cash. Liz, you may know from her award-nominated turn writing movie The Post. She then worked on Mind Hunter. She is also responsible for the current Hulu show The Dropout. And her current show, her first show as co-show runner with Patrick McManus, is the girl from Plainville, which is on Hulu now.

And I really recommend it. We're going to talk about the series. We're going to talk about her way into that series. And we're going to talk to Aya about it as well. Look, you guys know Aya. Aya is one of the members of this podcast, Five Timers Club now, I think. She gets a special smoking jacket. She's been on to talk about you're the worst.

She's been on to talk about the boys. We have Aya on whenever we can. And Annaia, of course, is in the cast of the girl from Plainville as Assistant District Attorney Katie Rayburn. She shows up in episode three, I believe, is doing her typical stellar work. I just think it'll be fun to talk to those two about that show, as well as whatever else is on their pop culture minds, including got to keep things relevant. We're going to talk about the season two premiere of Russian doll, which came back to Netflix this week. Kind of amazing, by the way, for a show to be as critically beloved and celebrated as Russian doll was. then be off the air for a while because it takes time to get things right. And then to come back in the

middle of this content shitstorm. I mean, this is the craziest, busiest TV time. I think in history, I don't think there, it's not like there's anything to compare it to because it's not like there were 600 new shows a year in 1955. But this moment is particularly absurd. I guess I should also then say, sorry for choosing to have a family vacation in the middle of it. Sorry. I don't pick the school calendars when spring break happens. We will, when Chris is back next week, be getting into a lot of the stuff that we've missed and a lot of the stuff that I've been behind on. I've been catching up as furiously as possible, I promise.

That said, it has been tough getting back into Moon Night because I just spent two weeks with legitimate English accents and all of a sudden what Oscar Isaac is doing felt less charming, but maybe that was just the jet lag talking when I tried to revisit the show. A couple things to get into before we welcome our guests. Two quick notes on shows that we've been sleeping on because I've been away and Chris has been busy. One is Top Chef Houston continues. Chris and I are going to really get into it next week. I'm recording this earlier on Thursday.

Restaurant Wars is on tonight. Restaurant Wars is traditionally one of the best episodes of any Top Chef season. And I have high hopes that it'll deliver. This season needs it to deliver because this has been a really odd kind of discordant and disappointing season. The level of competition seems relatively high. I can't say there are breakouts like there were last season in terms of just absolute superstars both in the kitchen and on the camera. But there are a lot of really talented, decent people to be rooting for and watching like Evelyn, like my tasteless basic King Jackson, Nick and DeMar. But something has felt really off the season.

I'm not sure if I'm alone in saying that. partly was just one of the most atrocious co-pros ever last week with a Jurassic Park challenge, which was just kind of embarrassing and insulting to everyone involved. But more broadly, having a Jurassic Park challenge that takes up almost an entire episode of a season in which you are supposedly proud to be based in one of the great emerging food cities of not just America of the world, it was particularly jarring. Chris and I'll talk about this more next week, but I'd love to get intel on this. Like, it just feels like this was another season that was deeply affected by COVID.

And I know they shot in Texas, a state that has historically not really bothered too much with COVID, at least on an official or procedural or legal level. But it feels weirdly out of place, literally, and that it does not feel like the show is set in a place this season, which has been kind of frustrating to watch because we were really excited to be out there. on shrimp boats and it bond me stands and barbecue pits. And we're just kind of in this weird Jurassic Park netherworld. It's been disappointing. I really hope it picks it up and turns things around.

Did want to briefly, briefly touch on severance, which ended to great fanfare right when I was, I think, taking off on my very long journey. And what a ride those last two episodes were? I won't spoil it, I guess, because maybe you're listening to this part because you're all Ayakash Supervans who also hates Everance, but I thought the last two episodes were so interesting and so emblematic of what the season was in that the second to last episode had great performances and as it always has a great production design, but just felt so busy in a way that kind of kept me at arm's length.

Like I did not feel particularly connected to the humanity, the characters, the emotion of the characters. I was so impressed with all of the buzzing, but didn't really know what it's signified. And then the finale, look, what can you say about that finale? That was a near perfect episode of television. I think largely for the reasons that I just mentioned in that it is just an expertly and beautifully made show. Ben Stiller, one of the great directorial craftsman of our time, apparently, but also incredible credit needs to go to Dan Erickson, the creator, and the other writers that he had in his room, as well as the people that Ben brought to the production, not just

cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagne, but production designer, the editors need a lot of credit here too because they took an hour of television and in a way, not since I think late season breaking bad, like maximized every ounce of adrenaline so that it was just electric to watch it.

Like it was doing all of the things that you wanted the show to have done for the previous seven episodes and it was doing it all in one hour. And for each character, each character's path was equally maximized for stakes for stress. I thought it was thrilling.

And also, I wouldn't do this in front of Chris because he would, I would rag on me for it. But I would just like to out myself as a member of the I correctly predicted heli club. I was falling asleep a bunch of weeks ago, I guess after I had seen episode three or episode two, whichever episode they visit the hall of, you know, all the relatives of Kier. And it just occurred to me. So I was drifting off to sleep who she was and what I was. her backstory was. And I said so. I told Chris. I called it. And he was like, we'll see. Guess what? We saw. I was right. I felt proud about that. Last thing, before we bring on Liz and Iya,

guys, what's up with Netflix? This is going to be a big topic for us to talk about going forward. It's obviously a major, this may be one of the more decisive battles of the streaming wars, even though it's kind of a self-inflicted own. So I have the data here. This news broke yesterday, Wednesday, that Netflix, after a decade of steady subscriber growth, it didn't just not grow, which is generally a concern for publicly traded companies. It had a net loss of 200,000 subscribers. Now, 200,000 subscribers when you have like 200 million is maybe negligible and survivable, but it was shocking. As we've said many times, the company defines itself by its growth. That is success. They are the same thing. They're synonymous. To suddenly not just be slowing,

which I think everyone kind of expected, how many people are left on earth who have the 1499 or whatever it costs in your country to subscribe to the service. I mean, that number is dwindling. It went backwards. And they seemed as shocked by this news as we were once we found out about it. The executives had from what I gather to be a kind of a not confidence instilling call saying, well, there's a lot of of inflation right now, definitely supply chain issues or what's keeping you from is that cake or whatever. They're saying it has to do with shutting down services in Russia, which, okay, fair. I think that's good. Morally, they're saying that they're struggling with and now going to crack down on password sharing, which, okay, probably that's something. The bigger thing is also churn, right?

Like you guys know this. There are many people, maybe some of you, who subscribe to a service when their shows are on and then cancel it when their shows are off. And that becomes increasingly difficult to maintain a steady base when that's happening over and over. Is this just a one-off? I don't know. This might be a turning point. I'm not saying this with any particular glee. I think that there are many, many, many people in the industry, which is to say literally everyone except the people who work at Netflix who have some degree of glee or schadenfreude here, because Netflix doesn't have very many friends in the industry. Again, this isn't, they don't call it show friends. They call it show business. But particularly Netflix has had a target on its back because it's been not just so early in all of this, but it's been so absolutely rapacious and so far out in front. And so I guess dismissive of a lot of established industry mores. But we've been saying for a while that there are too many shows. And I love having a lot of TV shows to watch. I, you know, obviously did I feel that way when I came home and realized there were something like 36 hours of TV to catch up on before I next podcasted.

That was its own story. But the amount, the volume that's in production now, as we've said many times, really isn't about satisfying a viewer. It's kind of just about staying ahead. It is absolutely an arms race. And it is absolutely unsustainable. And it's particularly unsustainable when Netflix, which is an incredibly wealthy corporation, or at least it was, until its stock tumble.

35% yesterday, 30 to 35%, erasing in an instant more than $50 billion worth of value, that's significant. That's going to leave a mark. I think the bigger issue is that Netflix, for as big as it is, it is only as big as it is because it never stops moving and it never stops growing. It doesn't have the wallet that Apple has. No one does. It doesn't have the wallet that Amazon does.

No one does except for Apple. And those companies are all in. As we've been talking over the last two months, like Apple is here now. Everybody knew it was coming. Everybody saw the signs. Everybody heard about the deals, the budgets they were putting out of their shows. They're here now. We're talking about Apple shows all the time.

I just talked about one. Amazon's current projected bill for the Lord of the Rings show alone is at $450 million. They're pretty tough to compete with. But Netflix is also tough in a tough spot because they're kind of a floating speculative business. I'm not saying their pets.com or cosmo.com or something like that. But I am saying that their Achilles heel has always been pretty evident, right? That they don't really have a deep-seated, long-lasting relationship with consumers the way a Disney does. Or even at a much smaller level, a company like NBC does, where like we recognize the logo,

we have some sort of built-in affection for it. Or in the case specifically of something like Disney, like they have cruise ships. and, well, Universal is NBC. They have a theme park that hurt them during the pandemic, but it helps them long term because you're getting people physically present. They're buying things. They're connecting. They're understanding what it is.

Netflix doesn't have franchises. It has Stranger Things. Stranger Things is about to end. Disney's growth continues unabated because of Star Wars and Marvel. But HBO Max just reported a big raise. Okay, not big. Three million plus subscribers. That's not nothing.

It's more than negative 200 million. sorry, negative 200,000. HBO has, in its own way, franchises too. Not just the DC stuff that it has, but it has the franchise of quality TV that matters to us and still matters more and more as we're trying to decide what to watch of the 15 new shows on every Sunday night. Is the David Simon franchise as valuable as Moon Night? I don't know, but there are a number of people, valuable consumers and viewers who will

always stick with HBO because they want to see the new David Simon show, like we own the city that's coming out in a week or two. So it's definitely bears watching. This idea that growth could go on forever is the kind of thing that you tell your shareholders and that gets you confidence in the boardroom. But the growth can't go on forever. As we learned today when the incoming boss of CNN, Chris Lick, former showrunner for Colbert's late-night program, came in.

And the first thing he did was shut down CNN Plus. Shut down CNN Plus, you say. CNN Plus started a month ago. Those billboards with Alison Roman and Sanjay Gupta and Chris Wallace, they're still up. They're up here in Los Angeles. This is crazy, but also this is one of the single smartest acts of capitalist mercy I've seen in a minute. CNN Plus is a terrible idea. Just because you throw a plus on something and say you have a streaming service, again, shareholders will be pleased briefly because you're trying to grow.

But guys, nobody wants more CNN. We have plenty of CNN. Not only do we have plenty of CNN, your company, the newly-n-earned, the newly-n-n-a-n-n-n-nated. Warner Brothers Discovery, you have a successful streaming service. Just put it on there. Just put it on there. We don't need more. It boggles the mind that someone thought this was a good idea. And in a way, the Jeff Zucker stuff, I'm not touching, but that was his baby. And he was never going to do something this savage. Jeff Zucker is out at CNN, widely reported scandalous story from a few months ago. This is probably the best thing that incoming boss Chris,

and the whole new Warner Brothers Discovery team could do, which is, come on. Sometimes the savage move, like when Jason Collar at HBO at Warner last year or two years ago was like, we're just going to put the movies on streaming and basically lost his job for it, but he was right. Sometimes the moves that are kind of savage are actually the ones that are based in reality. So Netflix isn't done by any stretch, but Netflix had already committed to a life of like, that's not cake or whatever that show is. My kids like it.

I'm sorry. I just can't believe it's really a show. Russian doll is back. We're going to talk about it shortly with Iya and Liz, but Russian doll doesn't fit on that service anymore. They're not making those shows, and they're not getting them back to get the subscribers back. So if their strategy of making all the floor lava all the time isn't working,

and they've run out of people who want to pay for it, that's a tough position to be in. So we'll be watching it. We'll be watching all of it. There's too much to watch. Thus endeth my monologue. Thank you, Kaya, by the way, for giving me support. I, at the last moment, decided that she shouldn't be on camera with me, you know, doing the raise

the roof and woofing things like on a Narcineo Hall show. I think that was probably the right choice, but I appreciate that you were willing to do it. I'm going to pause for a moment. When I come back, I'll be joined by the girl from Plainville's Liz Hannah and Iyakash. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for that's when Prime's same-day delivery as you're back.

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points. Never fly during a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll sue. Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak, got that right. I am now, as promised, incredibly pleased to be joined by two great friends of the pod who have joined together to work on the really strong Hulu series, The Girl from Plainville, Liz Hannah and Iyakash. Welcome back, guys. Welcome back together. Thanks.

I'm the crowd. So I think, Liz, is this your second or your third appearance in the podcast? I think second. This is two. I'm still a nob. I'm still like, not a rookie, but I'm like not on varsity yet. No, but you've also provided, you are in the ombudsman and ombuds women club who give us solicited or unsolicited feedback.

So I feel like in a way you have been heard on the pod. I also sometimes give you unsolicited feedback from my brother-in-law. So I really feel like it's all... Listen, we are huge with brothers-in-law. We are huge with... You are. We have good audience with moms and college roommates as well. I get a lot of feedback about that. Okay, I'm going to have to reach out.

I have this is... I think your fifth time, I think you are now in the five-timers club. So congratulations. I wish we had a smoking jacket for you. Thank you. And I tried to ask you off camera and you were like, no, you have... have to ask me on camera, who else is in the club? I think Jason Manzukas is in the club.

I think Jake Johnson is in the club. Oh. That might be it. Ooh, I like that. Or someone who didn't make much of an impression after five, apparently. Yeah, exactly. Maybe like four and a half. I mean, there were people who, like the showrunners of the Americans came on a bunch,

like at the end of seasons. Well, Esmell's been on a bunch. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. All right. Sam is on. Yeah, Sam is on often. That's true. Sam also invites himself on at times if we're going to be honest. Well, how many times do I have to do that do I have to be on to where I can just invite myself on, which I kind of did with this where I was like, I and I want to come and talk to you. So we did that like months ago.

That was very successful. So I have. It was sort of a Bachelor podcast. So you win. I mean, and by the way, we still might do a Bachelor podcast. But truthfully, the only reason the world has not hurt us. be on a Bachelor podcast is because unfortunately there's no Bachelor going on during the release of Plainville. So we really just, but now we get to talk about it. Are you guys, so here's something. I am not a Bachelor watcher. I'm sorry. I don't know any, thank you.

Your empathy is appreciated. I don't know any casual Bachelor fans. There are only people who don't watch it, like myself, and people who plan their lunar calendar around it. Like, it will be on for these months of the year, and I'll be watching. There's, like, three episodes a week, right? Like, people who watch it don't miss it. Am I misreading that?

I really, I think that's, oh, sorry, the lunar calendar through me, I was like, is he talking about period cycles? Are we like sinking our cycles up to the bachelor? Yes, because I, that's the weird. It's weird that you're bringing all of this to the forefront three minutes into, I hope everyone's still listening, by the way. So sorry. That's the only remedy for a 17.

minute podcast of me mansplaining Netflix subscriber loss is to immediately pivot to lunar cycles. It's the only way to find balance on this podcast. So I apologize for dragging you along with me. It's just where we're at.

Well, I think there's like a 48 hour window of there's, it used to be four hours a week. Now there's two hours a week. But a lot of people, including one person on this pod, does not watch it live. So like I would have to,

we would text about it, but I would have to wait till like got the clear, go ahead. This past season was rough because there was a lot going on. There was a lot to talk about. But yeah, I think you're in. We had a lot of reality fans, actually,

on Plainville. It was the first thing that I and I connected on was our love of reality television. That's what I was going to ask, because I didn't know if you guys were friends before working on the show. No, we'd never met. You'd never met.

You admired her work, came in, and then how does it how does it graduate to actually text you and talking about something to interest you as opposed to work? We had a meeting before I have came down to Savannah where we shot that was myself and Patrick McManus, my co-creator and Kosherunner and Aya. And it was like, oh yeah, so here's the show and da-da-da-da-da. And then I don't even know how it came up. But as your friend and compatriot Bill Simmons would say, the fifth greatest American sport, the challenge came up. and that went down a deep hole.

And then The Bachelor and Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise came up and we went down a deeper hole. And Patrick honestly just looked miserable, like the whole time. He just looked like I subjected him to a torture, like a torture chamber because it was kind of just an echo chamber of talking about how much we loved these things. But you also, when you find a challenge fan, it's very rare. We had three on this show because it was us and then Colton Ryan all. also a huge challenge fan. So it really started there and then blossomed from. Wow. It started with

the challenge. That's amazing. It's wonderful that you found each other in the wild like that, you know, that it wasn't a meet queue with Johnny bananas. It was actually just like, it just came out naturally. Oh, we have a meet you with Johnny bananas. You just like, you just like spoke a fantasy. We're not going to use this video, but you visibly brightened, really for the first time of this podcast. This is really the highlight. Okay, I'm going to, in terms of the more serious part of our conversation, which really won't last that long, Liz, I did want to bring you in. We did want to talk about Girl from Plainville, which has aired five episodes, I believe. Six.

Six are now up. Yeah. And then seven is Tuesday and then the finale is following week. And six and seven are directed by you? That's correct. Congratulations. Thank you. If we could rewind.

I'm so sorry. I said a lot of it. You had something to talk about at least, as we've determined. It's a lot more than. Could you talk a little bit about your way into the story? Because there are people who don't know, this is a series based on a case, a sensational case that probably many listeners are aware of even if they don't know the details of, in which a woman Michelle Carter was convicted of manslaughter for basically encouraging

her boyfriend to end his life over text. messages. I mean, that is a very simplistic version of it, but that was the sensational headline that people are familiar with. And this show obviously digs deep into every aspect of the case for the death after the court stuff, all of it. What was your way into this and what was appealing to you at the start? Because you are a busy person. You have projects you could be working on. Why was this something that you were like, I want to spend a lot of my time on and also then additional time in Savannah, Georgia during COVID on? I didn't know the second part when I signed on.

Fair. But actually, like, the way you described it was my initial entry point. I did not know anything about the case other than the sensationalized headlines and was very turned off, to be quite honest, by being approached to do it. Because I was still in the room for the dropout at the time and had felt like I was really in the world of a sensationalized case and a hateable blonde. for lack of a better phrase and had been like living that life for a while

and L. Fanning who I had worked with on a previous film was thinking about attaching as Michelle Carter, Patrick McNanis who I hadn't worked with but had heard great things about was looking for a co-creator and co-show runner. And when they pitched it to me like that, I was like, I don't really know if I have a way into this because I was very turned off by the idea of

you know, I think something I try to do, which is find empathy with all my characters, be them real or not. And that felt like a hard ask, just off the very surface. And I hadn't seen the documentary and I hadn't read the article, The Girl from Plainville, which is based on by Jesse Barron, which was an Esquire. And so after my initial knee-jerk reaction, I was told that I could not pass on it immediately and that I should read it. And very happy I did. I read the article and then I watched a document. Who said you could not? Well, Elle and Brittany, my producing partner and who's our manager, was like, don't say no immediately, you know, keep going.

And I read the article and I watched a documentary and very quickly realized that I, they were right. And that my dismissal of it was the dismissal that I think everyone in the case, Michelle and Coco and the families all around had kind of whether aware of or not been also. dealt because it became a sensationalized headline that didn't dig deeper into what the story was underneath outside of this was a beautiful manipulative young woman who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and a boy died by suicide for it and I used beautiful in particular because that was a number of the headlines were focused on how she looked and so I found that very intriguing. And once I started to look deeper and once I signed on and Patrick and I kind of did the

first wave of reading of the text messages, realized very much so that there was there was little that I think anyone knew below a surface level of these teenagers. And that there was a lot of judgment in it. And we had no interest in judging anybody. You know, we kind of wanted to present, for lack of a better phrase, the facts of the case, but in a way that could show humanity, that could show the disconnect of technology in a way that I don't think you can in, you don't have the runway to do in an article or in a documentary. And something that I felt had been pushed aside that Patrick and I both had been pushed aside was though it was constantly talked about that he died by suicide and dealt with the press. there was no deeper conversation about what he was dealing with or what Michelle was dealing with or the after effects of his death on his family in the grief process. And digging into mental health and trying to portray a realistic experience with it in a not-judgmental way felt like something very worthy of spending time on.

So all jokes aside, I would do it again because I think, you know, we tend to be very casual in our conversations about it. And I think we tried at least to show that it's not a straight line. It's a roller coaster and that somebody can be extremely happy at 9 a.m. And still be dealing with suicidal radiations at 902. And that's just the way that our brains work sometimes. That it was an extraordinarily long. It was beautifully composed and delivered.

And I appreciate it because I think that what really struck me, even from the first episode, was how absolutely not sensational your show is. Now, obviously, we're in an industry where people want things to be punchy and you want to hook viewers and you want to get them onto the next episode. So you walked a really delicate tightrope in that way that even the moment, and I think Chris and I talked about this on the pod, like the bad news relay that can happen in shows like this is just subverted. It's not what we expect it to be. It doesn't, you know, you don't clear out. so each actor can go ISO with grief. You know, it's not about that. It is really more about the cumulative effect

that we are now going to learn about. And so I have a follow-up for you, Liz, and I'm going to bring Aya into this, and I apologize, but luckily she's still grinning ear-to-ear thinking about Johnny Bananas joining us in the fourth Zoom square. So I have a version of the same question for you, I have, but I did want to put it to you, Liz, first,

which is how do you feel as a writer, particularly as the co-show runner of this show, about your responsibility to the record, to the facts, to the world? You've written quote unquote real people before. I mean, the post was just that. You know, you were finding drama in an actual historical series of events with real people. How did you creatively, how do you creatively approach that?

And it's in our mind anyway because, you know, because of the HBO's winning time, like Jerry West is actively suing the network because he doesn't like how he's being portrayed. I tend to, you know, on the post, I wrote it on spec, which meant that no one, paid me to do it and I really just thought I was going to get an agent. I didn't think, I hoped that if it was slightly well written that I would get an agent because I didn't have one. And I took liberties in writing the first draft because of that because I didn't, I'd never written a true story before. I had no anticipation of it getting made when it was bought and by Amy Pascal. And then later when everybody came on, we went through great pains to make sure

that it is accurate to the record and that the people are accurate. I think the people were always accurate. I think that there was always an intrinsic likeness to how they were written, which for me was the most important thing. And it always is the most important thing when I'm writing true characters

is to make sure that if somebody who knows them walked in and caught five minutes, they'd be like, oh, that's very similar to who they are. If not in physical likeness, in just sort of their, there's a word that I'm not thinking of. but, um,

and just, demeanor or their vibe. Yeah, I don't even think demeanor because it, it's not something, you know, with Plainville in particular, we didn't feel the need to make everybody

attach themselves to the characters, but there's just sort of an inherent similarity of, of ideals or things like that, but things that were important to them, how they spoke, you know, in terms of what was important that we felt was necessary. Um,

but this all goes to say is that what I learned on the post was that truth is always more interesting than fiction. always. There was one scene in that movie that we could not figure out the timeline for and whether or not it happened when we were making the timeline of the movie, which is the scene with Robert McInera. We knew it happened. We knew that conversation was always going to have been something that she would have done and he'd done and people close to them confirmed it. But we were like, we don't know if it happened here. Let's just take a swing. And then soon after we shot it, we found out that it had happened in that timeline. So I think there's things that

feel sort of natural in that. So going to your question, it's sticking to the facts. It's sticking to the things we know. That's what I think is the most dramatic because often we're like, that really happened. And if you're a show that is relying on fictionalizing things,

then you lose the trust of your audience of when really sort of bananas things happen or even very dull things happen that brings somebody to a certain place. Then I think that is a much more expensive. of the human process and human experience, particularly with the true humans that were depicting. Speaking of bananas, I, sorry, okay, I wonder how it affects you as an actor. Not even my faith.

Although, wait, I realize I'm about to ask a question. I don't even know the answer to this question. Is Katie Rayburn a real, is there a real Katie Rayburn, or is she a composite of a person who is kind of like her? She's real. Okay. So then that's my question to you, is approaching a character who is a quote-unquote real person. How does that change your, how does that affect your interest level and how does it change your approach? Yeah, I mean, it depends job to job.

Like, I always sort of enter every job and I just want to sit down and go, okay, what are the rules of this game? Because each job has different set of rules. And I've only played one real person before and there was no tape on them. It was only pictures and some stories. Was that in Fossi Vurdon? Yeah, in Fossi Vurdon. And that was a whole different thing. and what the biggest compliment I could ever get

was for her daughter to say, you captured her spirit, which is essentially, unless you are doing, I mean, honestly, Michelle Carter is so identifiable and we all watched her in a certain way. So there's a real pressure, I think, on that role as an actor to do that service because people are familiar with her.

Katie, we discussed sort of using her as a jumping off point And so there are little things like painting her nails red for the trial, but her hair is a totally different color. It's not necessarily. What are the useful things of what we know about her that are helpful to craft the role? Also, we only ever see her in the documentary performing. So her performance is in the courtroom. So I was much more interested in sort of like how she carried herself in the courtroom versus the scenes outside the courtroom. I wasn't as concerned because it's a performance when you're in a courtroom. And we never go home with her in real life.

So yeah. So I sort of used, this sounds terrible, but I used what worked. I used what I felt like was helpful. And that was sort of what Liz and Patrick encouraged me to do rather than do like a direct mimic of Katie. There's a little moment. And I'm sorry, I'm trying to remember if it's episode three. or four that was so small. Both of you may not remember it, although Liz watched every frame a million times, so she definitely will remember it. But it did so much for me as a viewer and as a fan of this show and this project, which is to say that when we've been covering a lot of these, and I'm sorry to lump your show in with it, but there have been a lot of, you know, ripped from the headlines or based on true story series this year. What do you mean? Have you noticed? The autour of two of them, co-autour.

I don't know what you're talking about. The complaint that I keep making or the thing I keep bumping up against is there's kind of like the Wikipedia barrier of like reality. I appreciate what you were saying list about how reality can be stranger and inspiring on a creative level. But often I feel like because there needs to be a devotion to a certain set of facts in a certain order, there's not much room for organic life. And all of this is prelude to say that there's a moment in episode three or four when IA, your character, Katie, is playing pool after a long night at the office and attempts to

chalk her pool queue and doesn't seem to know how to do it, or that was a choice that she's not particularly good at pool. And I'm not exactly, you know, Mississippi fats here, so I don't know anything either. But the camera lingers on this moment if you just kind of vaguely chalking it. And I was like, she's a real person. In that moment, she is a real person who has made a choice about her relationship to this bar, this game of pool, and her colleague. And it cracked something for me. You know, there was room for that in the show. And I found it really significant. Yeah, I mean, and that's the fun part as an actor is figuring out those little moments. I mean, I often had to say to myself, too, is not a comedy, because I really love finding, like,

those little moments and how do you calibrate that for something that, like, we, I really do have tremendous respect for these families and for this case and not wanting to sort of, but also allowing for some play in there and for some humor. I mean, I think that, like, if you don't find the humor in these dark stories or the moments of joy and the way they use glee in this, I think, is incredible. Literal glee and glee, you know, nobody is going to watch. You have to find all those human little pieces. And as an actor, that's the fun part of a character is sort of going, you know. Yeah, I love that because, I mean, you guys are players.

You are there to play. that's what production can and should be. While being respectful of the facts and the families, as you're saying, it is also not your obligation to, you know, to necessarily to bear witness and, you know, inscribe these facts in a stone tablets, then hold them up for the cameras to air on a streaming service, right? There has to be a balance. I think everything Ia said is true and something we took to heart at every point was finding levity. You know, I think it's, it's such a dark story and it's such a sad story and,

and the end of it is, I think, tragic for everybody involved. But we all laugh at funerals. You know, like, we all laugh at the wrong time. We all, we all aren't grieving in a straight line either, you know, and I think that makes it more human when I've, and this isn't a criticism because I know people have different taste and things like that. But when I, I watch something that lacks humor, but is just overly either dramatic or scary or any of these things, it just doesn't, I don't connect to it in a way that makes it last with me. You know, even if I like it, I'll watch it and then I sort of forget about it. It's when things have heart, things that are sad and funny.

And I think that's something that we really tried to do on this show. And having amazing people like Aya on the show who naturally bring that. And I think, as you were saying, you look for that with something that made our lives a lot easier. And I think gives the story so much more richness because it's not just, you know, we're talking about how we got to go like interview some teenagers now. Let's go do it. I mean, I think that's also one of the really strong aspects of the series is that it's

teenagers, right? And so the role of the text messages is at once, you know, damning and heartbreaking and upsetting, but it's also ludicrous at times, right? I mean, there's that moment in episode. I'm sorry, I don't know that I watched them. I watched a lot of them all at once. How dare you, Andy? How dare you?

I know. I know. I'm trying to catch up, man. But there's the lawyer makes Michelle read the quote about like, why don't you drink bleach? And then later her parents are fighting. And Carobono's character is like, maybe we don't understand the context. Since Chris is in here, I'll say shout out to Bono. Thank you.

What about Bono? What about Bono? Always always have to be bono, though. Always. Love Bono. I know. She's the best. what I mean? But like, what is the correct context for that? I mean, they are parsing these

teen-aid, teen-speak like it is, you know, they are transmissions from another planet. And they're trying to apply them to the legal world that has existed for hundreds of years. And it's, it's tricky. Yeah. I mean, I think it's something that really did happen in the case. And something we show a little bit in episode six, but it was something that happened a lot, was bringing Michelle's text into court and basically using her words to send her to prison, which is ultimately how Michelle was sent to prison.

She was convicted off of a text message that she sent to a friend where she said that she said something to Conrad and there's actually no record of her saying that and she's never admitted to it in a court of law or publicly. So that is sort of like ultimately to me a really fascinating thing on a very like legalese level of how does that happen?

And what I was saying about court being a performance, that was how she got convicted. Like, Katie outperformed and was able to convince the judge that that Michelle was evil in some ways. And the reading of her text messages, I'm not going to say that reading those text messages, there's any context to read them that's appropriate. But I think removing the banter and removing the conversations that preceding. did it, do color them in a very specific light. And that was what was interesting to us is like, this is a gray story. It's not black and white. Sure, if you read something where it says, why don't you drink bleach, that feels pretty black and white. It doesn't feel like a way to come back from that. And then when you see the nine days almost consistently leading up to that of conversation,

and then the days that preceded that, I think, are really just give color to it in a way that you don't do in a courtroom intentionally. We talked at the beginning a little bit about what drew lists the project. Whenever you come on, I do love talking to you from the perspective of a working actor who has a very unpredictable schedule and gets offered to join various circuses at various parts of the globe, often the contiguous United States at different times for, you know, different amounts of time. You do have the power to say no, of course, and you have the power to choose.

you know, if you get the offer, where you get to go. Ultimately, what attracted you to join this circus in Savannah at that time? Like, what sold you both on the character and on the production and what was your experience like when you joined it? Because I imagine you don't appear on the show until episode three that production had started before you had arrived. Yeah. Well, theoretically, it was supposed to start before you arrived.

Liz is a little, it was a tough time for everyone. Was something happening in the world outside of Hollywood that might have prevented us from Not on this podcast, ladies. We also, we shot one in three in the first block. I see. Okay. So I actually did show up very early on. And if I'm not wrong, your first scene was the pool scene.

I think that we shot. Yeah. I mean, there's a way to answer this that's like career politic. And then there's a way to answer this that's real, which is, you know, jobs are great. I like to work. We're pro you working. Yeah. And, you know, I'm not Leonardo DiCaprio going like, this, this, this.

But. Is that a direct quote from him on the set of Wolf of Wall Street? Yes. He goes, this, this, this. Genius. And I don't often get offered things that don't look exactly like something that I've done before because obviously most people want bang for their buck. They're like, I just saw you in this.

You can do that. Will you do that again for me? So I do get job offers, but not often something that is like, that feels different for me. And this, I mean, there's a great first Wives Club quote. There's three roles for women.

Babe, district attorney and driving Miss Daisy. And I think I'm, I've entered district attorney. But I did. I thought the performance aspect of the courtroom was really interesting. I've never done that. I'm always the victim in procedurals. I've never been the lawyer. And so to get the opportunity where someone sees something and says,

no, we want your brand of this in this, felt really special. And I have never told Liz this, but my deal was not done before the table read. And it was like that day and I was like waiting for the deal to get done. and the table read was supposed to happen, and it didn't get done. So I couldn't show up for the table read. And I was so relieved because I was like, I'm going to go to the table read and they're going to fire me. I was like, it's going to be much harder to fire me if I'm already in Savannah.

So like, table read, I was grateful that. And then it went on for a lot longer that my deal didn't. I was like, I didn't know that. No. But initially. Like the week that you had offered, it was the same week at the table read. And I was like, oh, God, what do they think they're getting? Which is always a fear when you get offered something.

But I much prefer it to auditioning anyway. I mean, I thought I was getting your performance in the boys. So, you know, just. Katie Rayburn has a secret. There's, I feel like there's an Aya universe where all of these people are actually in the same place, but we just don't know. we had a number of deals not closed when we did the table read this show is almost impossible to cast and like a lot of it was also with COVID and with travel

like nobody really knew their own schedules so even we'd start talking to people about doing it and then it wasn't like crystallized we couldn't crystallize our own schedule we were one of the fortunate shows that got hit by Delta and Omicron oh that's fun it was great um but so it was really hard. It was really hard to get people. And I won't say people.

I'll say the right people for this show. And we are our casting directors, Lauren Jody, are so incredible. And we're really patient also because we were very slow in deciding like who we would want. Chloe didn't join the show until five days before we start production. And she wasn't supposed to shoot the first week and ended up being called in.

I think similarly with Ia and Chinas. I think you guys weren't supposed to shoot as early of your stuff, but you came in earlier. So, yeah, it was kind of like a, the whole production was bonkers, was, or was it Johnny Bananas? We'll never know. The casting thing is so crucial and often overlooked, not just that casting like you got Ayah, so it's going to be better than it might otherwise be, which is, I think, an opinion, Liz and I share. But that in making something like this, like Chloe, for example, isn't who I think probably, many casting directors would say, oh, there's the grieving mom part. Let's give it to Chloe 70. Like, that's not an A to B line necessarily, which is what makes it so thoughtful and interesting. It's a performance from her we've never seen. It's a performance in that type of role that we haven't seen. And it immediately sparks your interest. This is a sign to the viewer, more so than maybe like a little scripty curly cue at the end of the first episode, that there's more thought behind this and that there's something that might be surprising here. And I wish that I could take credit for it for not only what I seem really smart, but I feel like Chloe would really like me if I said that.

But it was totally Laura and Jody are cast directors. Chloe was unavailable for like most of the time. She'd done, I think she had done Russian doll and she had just had a kid and she was like, which, yeah, you see what I'm doing? I'm a good podcast. Look at this segue. Do what I do here? Whose podcast is this? Oh, my God.

I'm just chilling. Chris, you can stay in London. It's fine. But so I, she was unavailable. She was, you know, it was a big ass to come to Georgia with a new baby and in the middle of COVID and all those things. And then she sparked interests. And so we sent her to scripts. And I think she read, I think she got one through eight. I don't remember if the finale was written at that point.

But she definitely got one through seven. And then we had one meeting and she dyed her hair and like flew down and was shooting. She shot the first day production. But I think this goes to what I was talking about. What you're talking about, and he's like, you need people who are going to see things that you don't initially, like, it's not that I didn't see Chloe playing Lynn

and being able to do that incredibly. I didn't see how incredibly she could do it. Like I always thought Chloe was going to be great in this show. She's breathtaking in this show. I always thought that Iya could be great in this show. I didn't see the humanity in that, and there's a scene coming up in episode seven that is really, I think,

um, there's very little on the page for Iya to do. And I think we did like three takes of it. And it's really a quite of a fundamental scene. I think of her character in the show. I didn't, I always thought Elle fanning could be amazing. And then we shot the end of the pilot.

And I was like, oh, this is a different thing than anybody could have imagined. All of this goes to say is that, like, casting directors don't get any credit ever. And they should get all of the credit for making you see things you didn't know you could see. And give them a fucking Academy Award. What, we need more credit. Like, everybody else needs more credit around here. Guys, great news. I just heard that I as deal closed.

Great. So congratulations. It would be shocking if it just happened. Not going to lie. On that note, casting by, let's plug casting by the documentary from 10 years about casting directors. Anyway, great, great film. It's true. There's a great interview or Richard Donner, I think, is presenting a Lifetime of Cheapen Award to a casting director, who she's the only woman who won, I think, an Academy Award and was honorary for casting. but Richard Donner was saying that they were casting lethal weapon and she said

what do you think about Danny Glover and he was like I never thought of that character being black and that was such a and he was very, he's very, you're watching the documentary he's very emotional talking about it but that's just somebody seeing something

you've never seen in this character regardless of race, gender, age, anything like that this is somebody whose job is to find the spirit of this character and bring them to life in an incredible person. So, yeah, I could preach about casting all day. Casting directors are the fucking best.

But also, and this is, we do need, you did such an artful segue into our desire to talk about Russian doll season two. But I just think that, Liz, this is something that you and I share that, like, writing stuff is perfectly, I mean, it's awful, but it's, it can be fun sometimes a little bit after you've finished and someone else tells you what's good. But other than that, it's always awful. But the reason to do this other part of it and the show running experience you just had and the other ones that are ahead of you is like you just get to bring in all these geniuses

who have the perspective you don't have. And then you get to share in that. And then it gets better. Right. Like that's that's what all of it is about. That's that's the best part of the experience. Well, I mean, like, look, I'm a co-create of a show. I'm a co-show runner. I wrote three episodes on it. I'm not like a, I'm not want for credit on this show. There's like an embarrassing thing that's going to happen in the end of episode seven with the credits where like my name stays and it just rolls. And it's like really silly. I don't see. My. husband says this all the time of like there is nobody ever lost anything by giving credit to the right people like and I just I don't think any but I'm not shooting my own horn for this I'm just saying like

when we're talking about things like this like when we're talking about writing we had a writer's room of nine people and a support staff who wrote this show I think like that's the thing that I am I love about this job is the collaboration and the directors we worked with the DPs we we worked with the cast the crew like that's the thing that makes it work it. Otherwise, I would be, like, sitting either in a cabin writing by myself or not writing, because it's quite miserable unless you're doing it with other people. So, yeah, I know, I think we get paid for sitting and not writing, and then the writing we would do for free because it happened so rarely. And as a showrunner, you get paid for, like, talking to other writers for a lot of the

time, and then they write the majority of the show, and then you go off and make it and have to rewrite it in production. But like, it's swan around with TV's Iya Cash on podcasts. and stuff. You know, at the time you're life. I'm not saying write for free, though, because people, somebody just said to me, you act for free, you do press for money. And I was like, no, I act for money. Yeah, I write for money.

I thought that was sort of cute, but no. Yeah. So as what, by way of segue, so when we were talking about having you guys on, I was like, are you guys watching anything, anything going on, and you both are leading, you know, your busy lives, you're doing your own thing. And then I said maybe, you know, Russian dolls premiering this week. week. Both of you sparked interest in that. And then today, I had texted that you had not only watched two episodes of Russian doll, but you had also started the flight attendant, and maybe you should start a new career as a TV critic, which I was really happy to lead you down this path. What can be better? This seems great. Like, let's get on. I don't think anyone wants to listen to me for very long, but I really enjoy the watching part.

Let's talk Russian doll, just because it's back, and it's kind of interesting. For people who don't remember and have made it this long into the podcast about other times, topics. It's just my brother-in-law. Everybody else has talked out. What's his name? Greg. Shout out to Greg. Greg, thanks for sticking with us. We really, you are the salt of the earth, Greg. This is just for you. A couple years ago, Russian doll literally came out of nowhere. I don't think people were checking you for it. It was not any, like, you know, most anticipated shows list. Absolutely brilliantly executed bizarre little jewel box of a show created by Natasha Leone, who also stars and Amy Poehler and Leslie Headland, great writer and director, about a character played by Natasha Leon, who is caught in a time loop on her 36th birthday, where she keeps

dying and starting over again at a party where she leaves a bathroom and Greta Lise says talks to her. And that just happens over and over and over and over. The show is just like wildly wonderful and surprising and ended in a really kind of ecstatic and beautiful and almost artistic and vague place. And everyone was like, Bravo! You did it. It's really hard to do something complete and thoughtful and that draws attention and eyeballs. And then they were like, like many masochists. They're like, let's run it back. Let's do it again. And then perhaps like Massagos, Netflix threw it out in the middle of April,

in the middle of every other show of all time. So I'm happy to throw some shine on it because I watched the season two premiere like you guys did. And I was delighted. I was delighted to be back in this world. And I was especially delighted that they took the time to crack away to do the same type of show, but differently. I don't know why I felt that they would be conservative about this. But I really thought that they would just get stuck again in a different way.

And spoiler, the reveal here is that by getting on certain downtown Express 6 trains, Natasha Leon's character basically travels back to the early 80s the year for birth and becomes her mother, played by America's leading portrayer of interesting moms, Chloe 70. So that's set up. Very different moms. Very different moms. Where are you guys with it? What did you think?

What were you expecting? In what ways did it surprise you? It's funny. I, you know, like, just like there's sort of like a quote unquote true crime moment happening. Like you see like the things that happen from the collective unconscious like bubble up sometimes. And weirdly just in my own tiny bubble. I saw Petit Maman last night. And it's also a time travel movie about a mother and a daughter. This is the new French movie by Celine Shiamma. I'm probably pronouncing that wrong, who made portrait of a lady on fire.

Of a lady on fire. Brilliant movie. Yeah. And it's a, it's a gift of a film. It's like a joyous, like, gift, um, is how I would describe it. I'm not auditioning to take over your podcast. So I won't try to draw that out. But I, yeah, so it was fun to watch Russian doll today feeling like, oh, it's the,

it's sort of in the zeitgeist, right? hour. It's in the moment. And I, too, I feel like both of that movie and Russian doll make me think I'm not allowing myself possibility enough. Like, seeing as a, like just as an artist, as a person, as a, you know, it's like a little bit of mind expansion in a way of like, just how you were saying they did season one so beautifully. It was so great and how they're going to do But again, they found a way to shift because they just were like, anything's possible. We can, you know, and trusting themselves to sort of go down this new path. And I think it's fantastic.

I mean, also, Natasha Leon is just a beast with the one-liners. I mean, she can tell a joke like nobody else. And she wrote and directed the pilot, at least. I mean, she's, this is a... There's a line in it that's such a deep New York dig that's like, it's really easy. It's just off the G-train. And I lost it. I was like, I just started laughing.

And my husband who has not lived in New York was like, oh, what's the G-trade? And I was like, oh, it's just like not even worth having this. But it's so under, it's, I don't think Natasha says it. I think somebody else says it. But like she reacts. Greta-ly says it to her. That's what it is. And that actually is like something that I found so interesting.

I agree with everything that you both said. And something that I found so interesting about the first season was it. so specific to New York to me. Like everything about it feels like New York. And now in season two, going to 80s, New York, it's so specific, like the subway, the people on the subway, kicking people out of the library, like, things like this just feel sort of like you can smell it. And I think it's interesting that it's like not, doesn't repel audiences in that way,

that it doesn't feel so niche, you know, that it's like New York. But then it made me sort of collectively think about. how we as an audience have consumed New York. And I think we all, because New York is such a central piece of pop culture, in some ways, everybody's like, oh, I recognize that because I've seen it everywhere. So it's not, you know, it's not as specific, but it really, I mean, a G train joke is like a real deep dick. But it's also masterful in it to New York in the sense that it's not, so she's in 1982 after this first train ride. And I don't know where else the show is going to go from there.

It could, as you guys said, it could go anywhere, which is part of the excitement. but she goes into a bar and it's not like inside the bar everyone was like, hey, Pac-Man, Ronald Reagan is president and he was an actor. Like it's not indicating people are still in a bar talking shit, right? It's just that maybe there aren't

craft beers on tap. It's just very relaxed and it's like, well, this was a place then and it's a place now. And I think that's part of the larger appeal of the show that makes me not just want to like watch it and enjoy it, but almost celebrate it because I started this podcast

with a monologue that probably drove off everyone except Greg. I really have to stress that. But part of it was talking about Netflix's like hemorrhaging subscribers and what does this mean for the industry and blah, blah, blah, and a show like this, which is just, as you said, so specific. So one person, I mean, collaborative, like everything, but this is Natasha Leon's vision at this point, unquestionably. Being on Netflix and being allowed to just be itself and find its way feels fleeting. It feels fragile, honestly. You know, there are, I don't know how many opportunities there are for things like that to get made. Certainly not just on Netflix, where, you know, the floor is generally lava, but like broadly in the industry.

I don't know if you guys are seeing that in the scripts that you're either being, you know, they're either writing, being asked to write or the roles you're being offered. Yeah, I was just so enamored of what you were saying. I sort of didn't pay attention to the question at the end because I was just thinking how like Natasha and Chloe are the New York that everyone wants to be in, you know, for forever. They have always embodied a certain spirit in New York that everyone wants to be a part of. And I think that's part of the appeal of the show is being brought into like the Natasha Leone, Chloe 7, New York. And it's grittiness and it's griminess and it's like absolute like playground. And then I forgot your question.

I'm glad you said that. I totally agree. I think it's connected in the sense that they're going to be who they are and they're going to be amazing in everything they do. And they don't exist to serve the whims of the streaming wars, you know. But a moment when Netflix is like, yeah, give us that. Give us what you're doing. And we'll just let you do it.

Feels temporary. It doesn't necessarily feel like we're in that moment. And I guess I was wondering from both of your experiences as professionals in the industry, if that's borne out at all. Like when you're offered scripts, the percentage, I mean, there are only ever so many good scripts, of course. But do you, even over the few years when you've been getting, you know, offered good parts or seen good scripts?

have you seen a lessening of that kind of like specific non-IP magic? Like this is just a unique little flower that's finally landed on your desk? Yeah, I don't think people are interested in that in the moment. And I think particularly because of COVID and because of our sort of collective pain of technology and constant barrage of news and all the anxiety that everyone, is feeling these days. There is like this sense of like we just want feel good and we just want things that or we want titillating, you know, spectacle, right?

So you have like those two options. And I see a lot of that. And there is people don't seem interested. You know, I, maybe this is just a bitter. That's the end of the sentence. Maybe this is just bitter. But, you know, I went out with a couple of specs. scripts last year. And it was so, you know, it was just so interesting because I was like, I see a lot of

what comes through. And I know these two scripts were, we're just really special and interesting and unique. And I was like, oh, it's not really the moment for that. Like, I feel like high concept is what's happening now, which I'm also, I think there's a place for. But there's, there's not a lot of interest in little character stories. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think something that's interesting to me is that we're in this, this quote unquote, true crime era right now, or like ripped from the headlines.

And like the dropout, for instance, was written in 2019 and supposed to shoot in 2020. So the fact that it's coming out, that it was shot and then came out now when other things, you know, we crashed or plane or even Plainville or, or, um, super pumped. Those were made, I think, during the pandemic or had similar, you know, issues. So it was not actually supposed to be this, like, windfall that happened. So the fact that there is a windfall is sort of fascinating to me in kind of like a sociological culture conversation of maybe we're just excited to see, like, rich, bad people go down because we couldn't take down like the epic monster completely. So we're excited to do that on our TV screens. But it's all IP in a way.

I mean, it is. And I think that sort of gets to the source of this, which is, I don't know that people are very willing to take shots or risks at original stuff, which is what Russian doll is. I mean, Russian doll is, you know, as much as you want to connect it to Groundhog Day or anything. I think it's very inherently original. And so I really, and I would imagine how difficult it was to make it and to preserve it, not for any other reason than that. it's hard to make something and it's hard to make something feel like it's a singular voice, which with Natasha being the writer-director, showrunner, star, it very much, I think is. And so I don't know.

It's weird. Like when we did Mind Hunter on Netflix, like I was so cocooned in that. I was so protected. And we got to do like stuff on that that I've never been able to do before or after. and there was a riskiness and like a real welcomeness to risk. I mean, we did a 17-page scene where Charles Manson is basically monologing the entire time. And they were like, go make it. Kind of like what I did today on the podcast.

Exactly. We were both underrated songwriters for what it's worth. It's bizarre. I compare you to Manson all the time. So like it's weird that that came up now. So yeah, I don't know. I think I also really do think that there is just so much out there. and there's a real fear of if you're different,

that means definitely people won't watch you because if you're similar, but you have different people in it, then maybe that will be attractive. I'm definitely firing myself from like nine jobs as I'm talking, so I'll stop. Well, if you look at like the Netflix top 10, I think that shows you usually where things are going, right?

And that's not to say there aren't great things in the top 10, but what tends to hit and stay are big, soapy dramas are bingy reality shows. Let's not forget love is blind. Love is blind. Oh God, what's the new one? The ultimatum.

The ultimatum. I mean, like, these are the things that, like, are these big hits, and then they become the water cooler pieces. And so Netflix, I think, started out in a totally different market. You know, Netflix was like what I thought of as HBO. It was like niche and... It was competing with them, yeah. Yeah, it was the... I hate the word autour because it's nonsense.

But, you know, it allowed creators to have vision. And now I think it's so big and they need to... Everybody needs to feed the beast. And, yeah, I will never end up working for Netflix is what I'm realizing. Yeah, this was a fun... If the stock keeps creatoring, none of us will. I think that's okay. I love you, Netflix, please, give you a job.

Well, but no, but I think that just speaks to kind of where we're all at too, though, which is that, like, if given the opportunity, we all want to work as creative people, and we also like challenges, right? And so there's a part of the brain, I think the writer brain and the actor brain both, and probably the director brain as well, Liz, you could speak to that. I definitely can't. But, like, you're offered something, and you're like, well, that on the surface seems silly, but you could Trojan horse, the thing I care about, because you're never going to work

on something you don't feel passion. You can't find your connection to. You're like, well, I can, if I squint, I like. that. I could make that work and it's, I like the challenge and we'll take a swing. And then, so there's, there's not like one bad actor here, not actor, but like one bad force, malicious force being like, no. There is. There's just one bad actor in the whole world who's making all of this wrong for us. And he'll be on the podcast on Monday. So get ready for that, Greg. No, but like that's saying that all TV now needs to be one thing and needs to be based on,

you know, a Star Wars video game from 1983. It's just that it everybody kind of tries to bend to it. And it's funny that we're talking about two of the least bendable artists out there in Natasha Leone and Chloe Seveny and that like, they don't bend and they keep doing the good work. It's interesting. I don't have like a holistic

integrity word, right? It's integrity. You recognize integrity. Who's the good podcaster now? What? I took UCB 101. That's a callback. The guest has become the host. I love it. I think that's right. I mean, I also, I have to say, like, I was involved in the making of the dropout,

and I was involved in the making of Girl from Plainville, two of these things that are in this quote-unquote true crime, like breadth that we're living in. I think with both, you know, Liz Merrweather, who ran and created the dropout, I think very much had a POV, have had that show was going to be different, and I think really succeeded.

And I think with Plainville, like I really have to shout out our partners when we, with straight faces, pitched three musical members for a, television show about this case. I mean, we really did push people, I think, in terms of, push our partners in terms of what would be acceptable for something or typical for something like this. And similarly with the dropout, I know Liz really was pushing tone in particular.

It was like, this is what you're going to expect and this is what you're going to get. And so I think that that's maybe where a lot of. lot of creators, at least where I found myself going, is like, okay, it's kind of, it's going to the Trojan horse story, right? Which is like, okay, this is what's out there. This is what's available. But how can we do something totally different and interesting with it? And it's, you know, like, look at this laser pointer over here. Like, look at this. But while you're doing that, I'm going to do something really cool on the side or try to do something really cool on the side. Because they, everybody wants the unique. Like everybody wants the Russian doll,

right? And once it works, people are like, oh, that's special. And now these people who created that can probably keep doing special things because they've proven that they can do what they want and make something great. And I think it's about like, yeah, there's a, there's an aspect to it of, let me show you what you didn't think you wanted and win you over in that way. And I think I need to learn how to pitch that way. But I think it's everybody, it's that and it's everybody I know, Andy, I know that you've gone through this. Every career I know, I'm sure this is, I've seen this with every actor on set, which is like, no, just trust me, this is a good idea.

Like, let me just try it. Is you're doing that until like the very end. It's not over until it has aired internationally, like that you are constantly trying to just say, like, let me just try it. And sometimes when you try it, it doesn't work. Sometimes when you try it, it does work. Like, I'm not saying it's always that you're right. but the risk-taking is something that feels what we're losing.

And the whole inherent point of taking risks is failure, because you're not going to succeed if you don't find, like, if you don't do something risky enough to fail, I guess. I mean, there are always in any production, and this is probably true in any enterprise, not just necessarily making a TV show, but there are people whose job it is professionally, their job is to worry.

Like, that is their job. And they have other aspects of it and they're good at it and they come from a good intention. and I don't begrudge them and it can be helpful. I mean, I'm Catholic, so also that, you know. But there are moments when... I do that for free, Andy. Yeah, exactly.

That's the thing. I'm like, you are not as concerned about this as I am. Like, you'd like Bain and Batman. Like, you think you know neuroses? I was born in the dark. You know what I mean? Like, this is... I speak this language.

But the most successful, I think, over a period of time, both creators, but also even executives, are the ones who are like, I say my piece. and then I trust the people I hired, you know, because you will miss sometimes. You will be wrong or you will be right and they didn't listen to you or whatever. But if you're trying to do this over a long period of time, you will have a successful batting average, I think. And you'll have better relationships with the people who you trust it, who will learn, hopefully, some of them.

And, you know, and approach things differently the next time. I think we fixed it. Our show hasn't aired internationally yet. So I'm just going to say that it's great and all the risks paid off. 100%. also hasn't finished airing here. So I think that the last two episodes are going to seal the deal. Listen, I love talking to you both in any context.

Thank you for coming on and doing this with me today. I agree, Chris should stay. Chris should enjoy his trip. Yeah, for sure. One of you should enjoy your trip to London. Yeah, exactly. Thanks, guys. Thanks for coming on.

And watch The Girl from Plainville on Hulu. Yeah, Tuesdays on Hulu for the next two weeks and then you can binge it, which I think is also, at least I hope, something that you talked about in your 17-minute preamble as part of this problem. That it's bingeable or that it's a problem? That binging is potentially part of the problem. Kaya, can we go back to my monologue? Can I add to it?