The Watch - Behind the Scenes of ‘Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan’ and ‘American Vandal’ | The Watch (Ep. 289)

Episode Date: September 14, 2018

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan is joined by ‘Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan’ showrunner Graham Rolland to talk about having a moralistic action hero (7:53) and how his military background influenced the show (15:05). Later Chris sits down with the creators of ‘American Vandal’ to discuss the hilarious second season of their breakthrough Netflix mockumentary (27:48). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly. I want to tell you about our great football coverage on the Ringer podcast network. Every Monday, Bill Simmons and Cousin Salle recap the weekend and guest next week's NFL lines on the BS podcast. On Wednesday mornings, Ryan Rusillo hits the hardest angles in college and pro football on our new podcast, dual threat. And on Wednesday nights, Cousin Sall and the degenerate trifecta figure out the best gambling angles on against all odds. And five times per week, the Ringer NFL show reacts to the latest news with Kevin Clark, Robert Mays, Tate Fraser, Mike Lombardi and the Dannesey football crew. Subscribe to the BS podcast, dual threat against all odds, and the Ringer NFL show on Apple, Spotify,

or wherever you get your podcasts. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at Theringer.com, and I am flying solo today. Well, I have a lot of help, but no Andy. Andy is still in New Mexico.

He's still making Briar Patch. and we'll hopefully have more updates from him maybe early next week. But today I was joined by a bunch of different showrunners. Showrunners not named Danny Greenwald. First, I talked to Graham Rowland, who co-show runs the show Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan on Amazon Prime

with Carlton Cuse. Graham worked on Fringe. He wrote for Lost. He wrote for Prison Break. He did some work on Mile 22, the Mark Wahlberg movie that came out recently. But he's one of the co-showrunners of Jack Ryan. And Jack Ryan's an eight-episode show

that obviously is an update, a reimagining of the famous Tom Clancy protagonist, Jack Ryan, this analyst who gets drawn into a world of action. This is essentially the easiest way to say it. Now, this has been a part that's played by a bunch of different people over the years, Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, and then most recently Chris Pine, and now John Crosinski takes over the role. There's something kind of refreshingly old-fashioned about this show, though, and Graham talked about this, in that a world that is necessarily,

and quite obviously very morally ambiguous, this world of military analysts, spies, black ops, stuff like that, that you have all this moral ambiguity, but Jack Ryan is essentially posited as this morally good man in this world of gray. And it's an interesting gambit by these guys to make a show about a very traditional hero.

And Graham talked about that as sort of a response, maybe even an antidote to the age of the anti-hero that I think we've probably been watching shows about since 2004, since whenever The Sopranos. So it was a fascinating conversation with Graham. He also served in the Marines from 2000 to 2006, so talked a little bit about his experiences and how they informed the writing of Jack Ryan for season one

and talked a little bit about season two, which sounds very exciting. I also had on Dan Peralt, Tony Ysenda, and Dan Laganah, the showrunners from American Vano. American Van der is a show that Andy and I, really had a lot of time for last year. It was kind of one of the surprises of the last year. I think probably Vandal and Dark were the two most surprising 2017 shows. Shows that you didn't really see coming, you didn't really maybe have high expectations for, but really, really surpassed any

expectations you had. For people who are unfamiliar, it's basically a satire, but it's not quite a satire. It's kind of like a variation on the true crime documentary genre. It has mockumentary elements. It has satirical elements, but strangely as this season goes on in the first season, and I think the same goes for the second season, you start to develop this sincere attachment to the characters in this show and also the story. Season one was set in California, and it was about this guy named Dylan, who was accused of graffeying, profanely graffeting the faculty cards and the faculty parking lot at his high school, and there's this whole mystery that involves it, and I highly recommend season one. Season two, obviously some expectations, and I talked

to the guys about the idea of making a show now that doesn't have the element of surprise. But season two starts with, frankly, kind of like tough ask, which is that there's, it's pretty scatological. If you want to watch the trailer, you can get a pretty quick idea about what it's about. It goes without saying that the villain of this season

is named the turd burglar. So you probably can imagine what it's about. But out of this, these guys managed to fashion a really compelling, heartfelt, very funny high school show, which is also a documentary about a crime and actually a felony we find out. It's also got elements of amateur athletics and code switching and all this other stuff that impacts our daily lives now,

especially as we interface more and more through technology. So it's just like a fascinating show. It's a really good time talking to this group of showrunners from American Vandal and Jack Ryan. Just some programming notes. On Tuesday, I'll be back. We'll be doing a post-emies wrap-up. So no show on Monday because we wanted to wait for the Emmys results.

We'll be talking about the Emmys. And I'll also be talking with a couple of ringer staffers about The Predator. I don't want to call it homework to tell you guys to go watch The Predator. But if you're curious about things like movies that get recut or movies that have reshoots or movies that have are pulling itself in a thousand different directions. This movie is absolute utter chaos. Like from the second it starts to the second it ends, it is non-stop, gory action. It's pretty obnoxious. It's pretty profane. It's super bloody. It's very funny. It's obviously had a troubled rollout with Olivia Munn, and we can get into

that on Tuesday. But Olivia Munn basically being made to feel very uncomfortable. when she found that she had been sharing the screen with someone with some pretty serious allegations leveled against them and feeling like maybe she didn't have the support of her male co-stars and then later feeling like the studio was not behind her in her voicing her concerns. And the person at the center of the allegations was a friend of the director of the writer, Shame Black.

And it's become quite a controversy. It's not something that really jibes with the movie itself, which is essentially a popcorn action comedy that is a real throwback to the 80s, but in a way that's not a throwback to the original Predator. It's kind of a throwback to these like VHS movies that you would watch in the basement, like Red Dawn or Tango and Cash,

but it's like that but on speed. I mean, it's really, really like a juggernaut of a movie. I'm not really, I don't even know if I'm recommending it, man. It's just a crazy movie, and I wanted to talk to a couple of the staffers who have seen it so we can kind of unpack it more on Tuesday. So if you want to go see it, I guess I recommend it, but it's definitely like, it's got some problems, but it's a really fascinating problem. So we're going to be talking about

the Emmys and the Predator on Tuesday, and we'll have a regular show for you next Thursday. Hopefully, Greenwald will call in. Tell us how things are going down in the land of Chili's. So without further ado, here's Graham Rowland from Amazon's Jack Ryan. Graham, and thank you so much for joining me today. One of the things we talk about a lot on this show, is this idea of intellectual property, of reboots and reimagininges of different franchises. And obviously, Jack Ryan's kind of the Batman of the military intelligence genre. I was curious for you, whether you and Carlton, when you were setting out to make this show, gave yourself any rules that you wanted to adhere by with Jack.

And also, if there were any rules that you maybe thought came along with the property that you wanted to break, Oh, that's interesting. To adhere by, I think, you know, we obviously spun our own narrative. It's not based on any of the actual crancy books. But we talked a lot about, you know, what makes Jack Ryan so iconic, what makes him different than, you know, James Bond, Jason Bourne. The two things that really stood out to us were, one is Jack is, his superpowers his brain, and he tends to get himself out of difficult situations.

using his intelligence rather than fighting. He certainly has that background and he can do that and he does that in our show and he does that in some of the movies. But we very much like the idea of Jack as being a little bit more of an every man than, say, a Jason Bourne who, you know, can turn and rolled up newspaper into a lethal weapon. Sure. the other thing that we really were interested in trying to do and it was twofold. It was part of adhering to something that I think

Clancy fans expected from Jack Ryan interested in doing as TV writers and we've you know just in terms of television as you guys know we're coming out of an age or very much maybe still be in an age of the anti-hero especially in you know the spy genre you know populated by

as long as he gets the mission accomplished. And we felt like having Jack Ryan as this moral guy who won't do that, whose morals are often an impediment to the mission or an obstacle or something that he has to deal with in an amoral world and sometimes immoral world of the intelligence business was very interesting to us. And it was sort of a return of kind of the classic hero, model that's pervasive now because it's been so long since we've seen a classic hero on TV. Yeah, there's something also inherently, I think, just very good about Krasinski,

whether that's received knowledge of what we have over the course of his career from watching the office or watching, you know, even something like leatherheads. But we are introduced to Jack on this show and he's riding a bicycle, which feels like a very wholesome thing to do. I don't think Jack Bauer ever rode a bicycle to work. Or if he did, it was probably in an effort to be like a motorcycle. Yeah, exactly, right. Was there something about John that you felt

like matched that vision for the character? Absolutely. I mean, I think the first thing is that John is obviously a very intelligent guy and I think his intelligence comes across in all of his performances. You said that sort of intangible every man

quality that he has, that you immediately kind of root for him, you know, a parallel that I always equate him to is like Tom Hanks. He kind of just plays and you want to report and you can relate to very well. And it's just something that he brings to the role. And also the other thing that was interesting was that we were looking to tell a story about a guy who essentially started out in an office and was an action setting.

And John at the same time was an actor who everybody associated. as a guy in an office, but he was trying to remake himself as an actor, and we had just seen 13 hours, and he had convincingly remolded himself and reshaped his body and was a very good and a very dramatic and action-packed role,

and we thought, you know, this guy can do both things so well, and wouldn't it be great to start him off and something so... that fans are so familiar with seeing him in, and then let them go on the ride with him as he's pushed into this more extreme situation. Yeah, of course.

And then you get to almost have fun with that, with that image of him. I really, really, one of the things I responded to the most in this show is the relationship between Jack Ryan and Greer, played by Wendell Pierce, who's one of my favorite actors, probably on TV the last 10, 15 years. That seemed like a real coup for you guys to get somebody who brought that much complexity

and history with him to that role. role. Did you, were you a fan of Wendell's beforehand from Tremay and the Wire? Was that something where you guys had been kind of thinking about how to iterate that role of Greer who's kind of always been there in the background of the Jack Ryan stories, but plays a pretty fundamental role in this show? Yeah, I, you know, in the show, we wanted to, we wanted very much to have Greer and Jack be the center of the show and why we kind of demoted Greer.

and had him busted down and made him Jack's immediate superior rather than the deputy director of the CIA or DCI, I think that he is in Patriot games. And so we wanted them to have

the two characters to be working together in the first season. And then when we got Wendell, something different that James Earl Jones didn't bring to it, which is he had more of an edge. And Wendell kind of, we were huge fans of his from the wire and from Tremay.

And we were curious to see if he would be interested in it. And he just came in. He was in L.A. for a meeting. And he came in and veteran, and he had just helped him get all of his medals. He told this really, you know, amazing story about all these, his father and his uncles and his brother who had been in the military. And it was just very clear that not only was he right, was he a great actor, and he could do amazing things with the part, but he was very, it was something that felt very,

I please, hopefully we can figure out of it. And for yourself too. I mean, this is obviously material that has some resonance for you personally. You served in the Marines from 2000 to 2006, I believe. And I was wondering if you had, I know that you've talked a little bit in the past about sprinkling here and there,

some details from your experiences into the show. I was curious, though, what's it like, because you worked on friends, you worked on prison break and stuff like that, but like what's it like to draw from that kind of personal experience? I think for outsiders, we always assume, oh, that must be like a real, like, you're probably

pretty guarded about that. Was it comfortable for you to mind that stuff for the show? Was it stuff that, was there some things that you were like, you know, these are memories that I want to keep to myself. Is there trepidation at all? Yeah, I think that there was a little trepidation with certain, you know, how will

fellow veterans, how will people that I serve with received this show. Will they, would I find a believable amount of years that transpired between me leaving the Marines, um, in 2006 and really starting to write the show in earnest in about 2016. That 10 year period,

um, allowed me to, and maybe be a little bit more, um, my experiences, you know, five or six years ago. Yeah.

Um, so it was, it was good to be able to look back on it, almost like you're looking at someone else's, life a little bit and the difference between, you know, it's also trapped there. If you get too much into your own personal stuff, then it becomes more about you than it is about servicing the story. So I feel like that 10 years kind of gave me a better perspective on it. One thing that I was thinking about when I was watching, you talk about this changing, you know, about time providing a little

bit of perspective. But one thing that I was thinking about with this show is when I saw Red October for whenever it was when I was on VHS when I was a kid, and as I watched Patriot games and clear and present danger as I was growing up and stuff, I can't believe how much more familiar I am with the world of military intelligence just over the last three or four years now than I must have been in like the late 80s and in the 90s.

Did you find that viewers are saying that to you too? Because, you know, not only do we have lots of intelligence thrillers over the last 10, 15 years, but clearly because of current events, I think people are more plugged into the shadowy underworld of military intelligence. If you found that there's a higher level of literacy with these subjects? It's been kind of, you know, the 21st century. And I think, you know, following the 2011 raid to kill Osama bin Laden,

I think a lot of people became very interested in it. A lot of books were written about it. Obviously, a very popular movie was made about. The audience is very, like you said, They're a lot more literate. They're a lot more versed in the vernacular. They're a lot more savvy about what is real and what is term. Sure.

And I feel like you've got to come a little bit more correct these days. Your story has to be a little bit more grounded. And you're not going to get his way. It actually been called. I, you know, being a veteran and having so many great consultants on set, you know, we have all the details down, but we've gotten, you know, Reddit, like, why is this guy's sleeves rolled up so sloppy? You know, just like, or why is his hair's too,

Jack's hair's too long when he's in the Marine? And it's like, yeah, you know, I get it. Something flipped through the cracks. But yeah, people are very much on top of that. Man, Reddit's undefeated. Never try to get something by those guys. In the same way that people are obviously probably more familiar. I mean, I don't think that that average movie goer knew

maybe what SEAL Team 6 was 8 years ago, but now probably pretty familiar with it. The stories that you guys are pulling from and the terrain of the sort of military intelligence world seems like it changes every week. So I was wondering how that affects you as a showrunner, as a writer, as you guys are, I think, probably pretty deep into season two now,

and there's been some casting announcements about it. How do you guys keep up with current events? I mean, I can't keep up with current events, and I have Twitter open all day. I mean, that's something that is one of his hallmarks that he was riding geopolitical thrill of their moment. And that's, you know, the big reason why we never adapt to one event. We had to come up with something that was a little bit more contemporary.

And it was daunting in the first season in particular because it took about three and a half years. And so at that time, you know, the world was a very different place. For sure. And we had a different president. And the time Middle East extremism was still the preeminent. threat that's going on first season by a little.

And it's a major threat. And I think that our take on it was distinct enough to make it feel fresh. But yeah, it is a challenge. And I think we've closed the gaps a little bit. So, for instance, three and a half years to get season one on, it'll be about half film season two. So

you know, we're definitely are up against, you know, the things that are happening in the world. But I don't want to be so on top of it. Like, I wouldn't want to be doing the story about Russia. I also feel like people can get oversaturated with things like that. Challenges to do stuff, but people aren't stick up. Yeah, and I guess because there's like, you can go both ways with it, right?

You can either try to be like Super Paul Greengrass, this is ripped from the news that night, or you could kind of create a shadow, like, parallel world where you have your own president, there's their own geopolitical conflicts, but maybe it doesn't resonate as much of people. So I appreciate you guys probably have like a big challenge on your hands with that. I was curious, you know, you've worked in network television, you've done some writing for movies, what did you find when you first approach this essentially, as you guys have described it, an eight-hour movie format that you did with Amazon here? What was like the biggest thing that you learned in the writer's room or in retrospect that

maybe you'll be taking into season two that you're like, oh, wow, okay, so that's what it feels like to write an eight-hour movie? I think the we made the first season, meaning that like a movie, all the scripts had to be done. All of the writing has to be done before you start filming because we, we, so we filmed the first season in Washington, D.C., Paris, France, Chamon, France, several places in Morocco. and we, you know, very few shows, if any, have the budget to go to all those places multiple times. So we would film by location. So on any given day, you could be filming a scene from episode two in the morning and then filming a scene from episode eight in the evening. And so that process, maintaining continuity planning from season one to season two,

to have as much lead time as you can. That's interesting. So for season two, what would you say for you is, I know you can't probably get too in the weeds with plot stuff, but as a show, for lack of a better term, show creator or show runner, what's the most exciting thing about season two? What's the thing you want to do differently?

Do you think that you're going to introduce some different looks to the show? What kind of thing are you most excited for people to see? Well, we're about two and a half months into filming, and I've seen a lot of footage, so I can tell you that it does look different. And we're filming primarily down in South America and Columbia for the second season. We have some more work in Europe.

We have some more work in D.C. And then in New York. So we're a roadmap this year. Season two is a little bit more of a thriller and a sexier, a little bit more romantic, almost like Casablanca or Year of Living Dangerously. story kind of rhythm to it. That's cool. Then last year fell very much

shot out of a gun and like, we've got to find this guy. This season two is more of a kind of a mystery. Something happens and putting together the pieces of how it happened, why it happened, and who did it. So, and I think it's great. You know, you'll see

Jack and Greer and Matisse again, but we've brought in some great new characters. Aumpley, Ruppays. Jordi Mola. That's really exciting, man. I'm really, I'm really going forward to it because I really like what I was reading what you guys were talking about, like the idea that you're not going to be beholden to the books themselves so that the show can kind of be its own thing every season while not being strictly an anthology series, obviously. It's kind of capturing him in these different ways.

So it's really exciting that you get to kind of take it in different directions. Yeah, that's one of the fun parts of the show is being able to sit down at the beginning of every season. And obviously you have ideas for the characters to go through where you want them to end up. at the end of the season, but to be able to sit down literally with the writers and say, okay, where are we in the world? What's going on? You know, where are we going to spend this narrative this year? It's not easy, but it is one of the most rewarding parts of the show. Well, that's cool. We're excited to see the second season. You can catch the first season now

on Amazon Prime. Graham, thank you so much for calling in, man. Thank you, guys. Thank you again to Graham Rowland. You can catch Jack Ryan on Amazon Prime. we're going to talk to the showrunners of American Vandal after this break. Today's episode of The Watch is sponsored by ADT. ADT can design and install a smart home just for you backed by 24-7 protection. Explore the vast number of things you can do with your secure smart home, like doormand service, which is an ADT automation that unlocks the door for packages, friends, or your kids, or turn-down service.

An ADT automation that arms your system, locks your doors, and turns down your lights, and thermostat. Or even worry-free getaway service, which sounds great. This lets you arm your system lock up and set lighting schedules for when you go on vacation. It's all controlled by the ADT app or the sound of your voice and backed by 24-7 protection. And don't worry about installing, configuring your system. You may not be a genius, but the ADT people are, they will DIY do it for you. Just visit ADT.com slash smart to learn more about how ADT can design and install a secure smart home just for you.

All right, now we're going to talk to Dan Peralt, Dan Lagana, and Tony Asenda, the showrunners of American Vandal. Season 2 is out on Friday, and it's well worth your time. Let's check out this conversation with those guys. If you guys could just for the sake of the listeners, because we've got four people here, to say your names and what you do on the show, and we'll take it from there. I'm Tony Asenda. I'm a co-creator, and I direct all the episodes. I'm Dan Peralta, another co-creator.

And I'm Dan Lagan, I'm the showrunner. I finished season two last night, and it's, again, completely delightful. And it is a testament to how much I like this show that I'm not a big shit joke guy. It's acceptable, but you guys definitely start out without a safety net in the first episode. And I even mean my wife were sitting there watching it. I'm just like, man, this is like what the season is going to be about? I wonder how many times we're going to have to see this exact moment. in the room or whatever you guys decided

what the inciting incident of season two was going to be was there any heat check moment where you were like or we could do this what was the thing was it about pushing it beyond dick drawings or was it about what was the idea behind the actual event that incites this whole season well that that visceral reaction you have

when you're watching it with your wife is probably not too dissimilar to a visceral reaction you have watching certain true crime documentaries where you see these brutal murders and blood all over the place and these like completely destroyed bodies. I think I'm almost more used to the destroyed bodies.

Well, it gives you like that. And like to us, the funniest version of that fascinating, horrific scene is high school hallways covered in poop. Yeah. So it made us laugh. But that wasn't lost on us that people might like want to, look away from the screen, and there's something deeply hilarious about that to me.

And we didn't hold back in production. Like, if anything, we had to pull back in post because we had shit, like, almost like it, there was like a waterfall against the wall of shit coming down, and there were so many shit gags that would take up minutes of time in a deleted scene sort of thing on the DVD, which will probably never happen. There was, there was, we pulled back a bit, and even so, it's still getting this reaction from people, which is great. And also all the people that asked if we were going to go vaginas in season two.

Oh, because of dicks. We threw them a curveball. Yeah, that's right. That's right. But that's the thing that's so funny about what you guys pull off with this show is that it's this incredibly heartfelt, incredibly humanistic show that's essentially about this disastrous prank that evolves into actually like a felony. You know what I mean? By the end of it, you know, you can tell it's that. We don't have to get too specific into spoilers.

and I don't want to do who did what on it, but I want to talk a little bit about how do you guys balance scatological humor, usual high school bullshit humor, and then also like having this incredibly warm center of the show, this like heart to it. I think it's fun in the writer's room talking about our high school experiences

and different people we know and, oh, you had that person in your high school? I had that same exact person in my high school. And that being a lot of the conversations, in the room, that always helps bring levity and make it, I think, personal to high schools. And then the second part of the equation is just being a student of all of these documentaries. And that's a medium that's, I think, really evolving. Like, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, documentaries were a really niche thing, where it was

kind of pretentious. Now it's like everybody in the country is like, oh, I'm going home. home with the wife and we're just going to watch a documentary on Netflix. It's such a common broad things. And because of that, documentaries are evolving and getting really, really good. So we want to, like, study those and use those tools because I think documentaries are such a good format for telling human stories and getting you to empathize with real people. So I guess the show is really like taking these documentaries and getting an audience to empathize with people that we all knew in high school.

A while back, we had the showrunners of Billions came on one of Bill's Pod, and they were talking a little bit about how they love working on billions because they can put anything they're interested in in billions. And this season, on Vandal, I felt like I felt that from you guys,

whereas almost anything that you were interested in could find its way into the show. Were there issues or things that you guys were kicking around, even before maybe you had characters that were like, I really want to have something like this, whether it's high school amateur athletics. I mean, we are story first. I mean, we built the season leading with the mystery.

I mean, really, the characters kind of developed out of what the mystery needed to be. You know, I mean, we were halfway through the season sometimes asking, what does Kevin sound like? What would DeMarcus say here? But we knew the pieces we needed to mold the story we wanted to tell. I think that's funny when you talk about billions, and we have that, too, like, what would we want to watch? Yeah. I think a lot of, I would want to watch, like, LeBron, the next LeBron James. That's a really fascinating character to me and making that the world, like St. Vincent's St. Mary, where he went to school, where it was a predominantly white school, where they recruit athletes.

That seemed like just a fun thing for us to watch because we're all sports fans. Yeah, yeah. And more specifically, like, little things that we talk about, like, the glitch. I remember coming back from a writer's retreat with Tony after writing the pilot. And we were annoyed at just barely being able to communicate with people over the weekend. And we're like, oh, great. That's perfect for the episode we're currently on. Yeah, right.

So you guys are, I'm not sure how old you guys all are, but I would imagine not recently out of high school. No. How hard is it to both stay contemporary and current with like how people talk, what people are doing to communicate? like how they're using different applications to communicate while also not trying to try hard about it. Yeah, there's nothing lamer than the guys in their 30s trying to write people that are 16 and failing. Yeah. Right. I don't know.

I feel like good writing is good listening. You know, and like we just have our eye on so many different formats constantly. And the things that make us laugh kind of make it through our filter. We also have access to some youthful people, you know, and we're constantly stealing there for vernacular and stealing their stories and injecting them into the show. But these guys are also, Tony and Dan are also young guys as well. I mean, they date really young women. That's not entirely accurate.

But I will say this. We did have, I think we were a little younger in the room this year in that we got Mark Descensko was a new writer who's a young guy and Djibuki Young White, who's fantastic. He's like a Twitter star is 24. And so there would be moments where we'd be like, Uh, Japuki, how's that? Are still, are kids still saying like, you know, for real or like, what's, what's your version of that? And he would give us a few of those.

Sometimes he'd give a pass or so. I have a stepson who's 18 years old that I would text constantly. Do I say it like this or do I say it like that? Does he try to get WGA, like, credential? Now I'm not yet. I hope he doesn't listen to this. It also helps casting young people, too. So in the room, like, that's a check on the set and we improvise a lot.

So a lot of the stuff is like actual kids talking like actual kids because they are. And all their flaws become virtues. That's the absolute truth is we take if they stumble, if they. I notice that. Yeah. Whatever they like that, that's what makes it feel real to us. We embrace those things. And if that's how they talk, that's how they talk.

And we just love it. So that brings me to where I want to kind of take this, which is a sort of dual track conversation about both the writing and the direction of the show, which fascinates me. because in some ways it's like this pastiche of docs and reality and also using all these second screen experiences from all the different social media stuff that people are doing. And then I'm also just like, how do you write this? How do you have, obviously there are some basic outlines of like this is the plot, these are the episodes,

this is what has to happen, and there's twists and cliffhangers. But how do you write a scene when the scene is going to be chopped up into some of its talking head, some of it's a cutaway to an Instagram DM, then there might be some in the room stuff with Peter and Sam and Chloe in front of a cork board. Like, what's like a generic garden variety scene? How does that get broken down in the writer's room?

I mean, if I showed you what our stories looked like on a whiteboard, it looks like nothing else you've ever seen in another writer's room. You know, whereas where they break it into three acts and maybe there's a couple of beats here and there, our boards are so full. If you're further than two feet away, you can barely read what's on it. So when we hand it to the writer, they understand the flow of how it's supposed to work. But we write in, insert drone shot, insert DM, insert. Like, our scripts don't look like anything else on television, knowing that it's going to evolve every step of the way,

knowing that when it gets to Tony on set, he's going to play with it and grab it and manipulate it in the way to make it feel more real. But if the scripts aren't right, if the storytelling isn't right, we don't make it past Netflix. Right. You know, there's a process. Sure, sure. You know, so we do have scripts. They are very detailed and approved on multiple levels. No, I would imagine they're like biblical, like, like, I just imagine like pages and pages.

It's funny because it's really a two-part, a two-part process where you need to make sure it's a cogent story that works and flows and works on the page. But then in production and execution, what we'll do is we'll kind of do an improvised take of a scene first. where the camera guys don't know the blocking, so they'll miss, they're not zooming in on a punchline or like you've seen a lot of documentaries. Yeah, like modern family, and it goes right in when they make the face. Right, exactly.

Which is, you know, it's fun, but it doesn't feel like the documentaries you're watching because the imperfections are what make it feel like a documentary. And then also in a documentary, what you're typically watching would be if it's a two-minute conversation on the screen, it was probably 40 minutes in real life or an hour in real life. And you're just like, they're chopping it up to make it feel like it was part of a conversation. So we, in the script, have just the two minutes that will be on the screen scripted. But what I'll do is do like a long, really fat run-through that's completely improvised the first few times.

So that if it's ever feeling too scripted, we can inject some of those moments. It's essentially B-roll. Yeah. Right. Yeah, but just like a snippet, and it feels like kind of jump-cutty, and like we're stealing moments in the edit, so it feels a little bit more like what you're accustomed to seeing with even reality TV or documentary.

But are your shot lists like that, too? Like, are you guys like, okay, on the set, like, this is going to be a mixture of these three or four different kinds of media, basically. Or are you like, yeah, I'm going to shoot a 40-minute interview with this person, and then we're going to use this, this, this, and this here. here and here. No, the shot list is broken down by media. Oh, cool.

Yeah, that's the question, correct? Yeah, I'm just kind of curious about it. There's so much, we have so much cell phone stuff. Yeah, we have so much. But for long scenes, it'll just be like, we call it pivot point cover, because there's two cameras that are kind of playing as one camera, and we'll just like, okay, we're going to go down, and one camera's a little more left brain that's shooting coverage,

and one's a little bit more right brain that's like picking up hands. and little cutaways and reaction shots and stuff. So it could feel like it is a 40-minute conversation that was cut down to two minutes. That's really cool. And we try to give ourselves as much content to work with as possible. You ask, how do we determine how we deliver certain information, whether it be through social media or voiceover or talking head.

And we try to give ourselves an option for all three. You know, there might be a piece of information that's funniest or most clear from a talking head, but then again we can write voiceover from Peter if that's not working. And then social media is a huge element, too, that can deliver that for us. So most of our main characters and even our supporting talking heads speak on most major subjects so that we have, we can kind of press a button whenever we want to and plug in a talking head when need be.

And I would imagine, speaking of those performances, I would imagine that casting is like kind of like the secret sauce of this whole thing, right? Because like the first season obviously had these indelible characters. You bring Peter and Sam back into season two, but almost within like two and a half episodes, like Kevin becomes this like equal to Dylan. in terms of like how enigmatic and like you're like there's definitely multiple layers to this kid and you haven't really seen somebody like that who's like arrogant but also secure. I thought it was really like can you tell me a little bit about finding these kids because it must be very hard. It is really, really hard. Well Kevin is a hard hard, maybe the hardest character we've ever cast. Okay.

Because this has to be a kid who needs to feel like he's adapted this personality. He can't just sheerly be a weirdo from the bat. Yeah. Like, you know, people. And you'll see in the first episode, people were like, oh, he's always doing an impression of a smart guy. Yeah, he's kind of like trying to be Mike Myers 10 years ago or something like that. But he's playing someone who is playing a different person in a way. And so that's layered and difficult for a young actor.

And Travis Tobe killed it, in our opinion. I think we did great. And is that one of the performances that you felt like maybe evolved over the course of shooting? Because you were saying, like, oh, like sometimes the kids are, like, finding the voice of the characterized that's going on. I'm always blown away with what Tony can get out of people. Yeah. That's the absolute truth. His patience with these actors as they find out who they are is incredible. I'm in the back being like, uh-oh, I don't think this is going to work. And then Tony's like, I got this. And he just does. You know, so. But yeah, I mean, we, the layers of finding out who Kevin McLean was, it honestly took us a long time in the writer's room to find it too. We were constantly writing dialogue to be like, is this right? Does this make us laugh? What are his quirks? And Netflix pushed us to evolve those quirks as well. well like the tea the tea was was uh yeah it was a pocket watch collection it was yeah which

wasn't really something you could really sink your teeth it's funny yeah but it wasn't like yeah something to do it wasn't an activity yep that's right that's right but something's so specific and pretentious about tea yeah it was like it was like weirdly like it was like an unboxing video or something yeah about like the corneous thing yeah um in the beginning of this series there's like a little bit of a prolog where sam and peter talk about they made this. It was on Vimeo. Then it was on Netflix.

They got money for drone shots. So there's this little meta-narrative about season two going on. But then I was kind of curious whether bringing new people into the production, bringing new actors into the production, are they self-conscious about being on American Vandal after the success of the first season? They're like, yeah, man, I'm on American Vandal now. So I have to do, this is like a bit that I do for this show. For sure.

There is a line that's hard to hear, but it's in episode three when we're first meeting to Marcus. And he goes up to Peter. He goes, oh, Netflix, what's up? And so, like, there's an awareness that American vandal has come to their school. And it explains, you know, without giving anything away, explains why, like, some of the characters might be more willing to talk to them than other, you know, like, over the course of the season. And that's why we included that stuff, too.

I always use Sarah Koenig as a reference. Yeah. Because in season two, she talked about the success of season one, not just for the sake of it, not to brag about herself, but because because of the success of season one, she was able to talk to the Taliban. Yeah. So it was related to the mission.

Like kind of freaked out about making season two because I think people expected her to like find a, find a crime that had been like unjustly, like a person who had been unjustly convicted of a crime maybe. And so like she was like, but that's not necessarily the only story I want to tell. So it's kind of like she was dealing with that completely. Yeah. Boy, am I excited for season three of cereal. Yeah.

Yeah. We love her. We love her. Yeah. Have you heard the trailer for it? Of course I have. Yeah. I listened to it twice.

I just, I love when we wrote season one, I would just listen to serial over and over and over again on these walks in the hills of Silver Lake. And I just, I loved her rhythm. Yeah. The rhythm of the way she writes is so beautiful. And what she did too that I think is maybe what is the core of our show was every documentary about an unjust murderer or something, the documentarian is trying to come in and be like, the system's messed up. but I understand the facts better than anybody else. Right. I'm unbiased.

You can trust my word. Right. And Sarah was the first person that's kind of like, you can't trust me more than anybody else. I'm trying to be. I like, I'm not going to lie. Yeah. Yeah.

And then she's like, she pulls you in and she's like, hey, let's figure this out together. And it becomes, instead of like telling you these are the facts, being like, hey, let's figure out the facts together with such an inclusive. of thing and I thought kind of revolutionary. Does that ever happen in the writer's room where you guys start to get affectionate about certain characters that you maybe have plotted out to have different trajectories necessarily or even maybe it's a passionate room?

Yeah, that's the absolute truth. But also then we're like we're also charting what Peter and Sam their opinions of because it's tough for us to know that because we know who did it in the room. So it's more charting what Peter and Sam, the documentarians, their biases because they also cut and edit the whole thing. So it should have all of these documentaries have their bias, making a murderer, or

you know, all the great ones do. And it's just a matter of like, we nod to it a little bit more like Sarah Kahnick by taking a page from her book. Would I be surprised by anything that you guys would call like an influence on this show like about like, is there anything that you guys

are watching? I was wondering if like for this one specifically because of like the setting felt like it could have been, it was very contemporary, but it could have been like an 80s John Hughes movie, too, because of the uniforms. I think that there's like a kind of like classic high school feel to it. But were you guys watching anything leading into season two that you were drawing from that people might be kind of shocked to find out. Like that was a thing. It's almost entirely true crime.

Yeah. As we say, like there are, we try not to come off as a conventional mockumentary. We wanted to feel as true to the actual docs that inspire us. So maybe like the British office is kind of an inspiration. Sure. I think really when we're doing the research for this and brainstorming new content for season two, it was all true crime docs. It was almost entirely actual documentaries. And that extends to the direction and your conversation.

Yeah, in production, like when the cinematographer does his lookbook and we just had a rule, like, I don't want to see still frames from fictional narrative. Right. It should be, everything should be from documentaries. So we try to keep in the writers from that same philosophy where, pulling from dots. The influences, it's funny with a format like this, the influences do come from everywhere. I mean, I'm the kind of guy that goes home late at night and watches fucking Lamello ball chew people up in high school basketball. You know, all those highlights. So like when it came time to shoot all the basketball footage for this, I was like, Tony, can I drop all these plays?

Yeah. You know? So it's like you're constantly like, you're pulling from everywhere. You're throwing the kitchen sink at this thing. I will say this. The old, like, in terms of like just YouTube clips, the other thing is like Kevin's an easy character to research from that. standpoint because like the kids who sort of adapt this outcast personality and pretend like that's their choice like they they prefer this type uh that this personality that they've crafted they tend to end up in viral videos yeah you know bullies modern bullies will just mostly just put a cell phone in someone's face and let them embarrass themselves and so you know unfortunately for some of those kids

they got like 700,000 views right fortunately for us unfortunately for us so that's like is that where like something like fruit injure comes from Like just seeing like people like there's like this bit that somebody has like made into like I'm mocking you. But like okay. Yeah. I don't want to like name some of the sources of it. Sure. Because I feel bad for for these kids. But yeah.

That guy's felt very like true life to see that. So okay, you guys are immersed in true crime when you're making the show when you're writing the show. What do you do to unwind? Like what do you watch to like clear the palate from this? Just more more ball family highlights? Yeah. Yeah, watching a lot of high school basketball. I had a lot of fun watching the Super Bowl.

Yeah, I did too. You came on the right podcast. We did a Super Nintendo on our break. So Super Nintendo and Pingpong are our two like break activities. And I got super into Nintendo this year. Last year I was more into ping pong. But the guy to my left is unfortunately undefeatable. I mean, come down to the office, anyone.

Anyone loves this to this? Are you guys watching anything right now that you're really fired up about? any other shows and stuff like that? What am I watching right now? I'm watching Handmaid's Tale right. Oh, Handmaid's great. Handmaid, it's so good. It's so, ugh.

I know. It's brutal. It is. It is. It's, much out. I couldn't do it after a couple episodes. It's not fun, but it is so good. It's well done.

It's really well done. It's so well directed, so beautifully shot. It's the performances are all great. Yeah. And it is brutal. Yeah, it is. So I'm sure it's premature to talk about season three, but can you talk a little bit about,

where you feel like this could go hypothetically. Like, you know, is there an idea that it could go beyond high school? Is there an idea that this is a replicable idea that could exist in different ways? Or do you feel like it actually works best in the hallways of, like, a high school

with, like, a crime that kind of you can investigate from every angle? There's certainly something funny about what works about who drew the dicks is that it's kind of a medium-stakes crime. You wouldn't make a real dot. but in high school, getting expelled his capital punishment. And this is the biggest crime to ever happen in the history of their high school.

And you can put yourself in those shoes and the stakes are somehow important. Yeah. We talked, I guess we, one non-documentary reference we had was Election, the Alexander Pian movie. There's something so darkly funny about how much you care about this student body. president. Oh, yeah. It's the first time you're experiencing it at stuff. You're not cynical about it.

You're just, like, so passionate about it. Well, guys, I love season two. So, thank you so much for coming by, and it's going to be available on Friday. So everybody should check it out. And thanks again. Thank you. Thank you so much. Fun fact, this room we're in right now is two rooms from our writer's room.

So just like a nice... It's like a homecoming. A little interesting things for the listeners. That's great. It's like a little fun fact to end with slightly interesting. Today's episode of the watch was brought to you by ADT. ADT can design and install a smart home just for you, backed by 24-7 protection like doorman service,

which is an ADT automation that unlocks the door for packages, friends, or your kids. It's also got turndown service, an ADT automation that arms your system, locks your doors, and turns down your lights and thermostat. It's all controlled from the ADT app or the sound of your voice and backed by 24-7 protection. just visit ADT.com to learn more about how ADT can design and install secure smart home just for you.