The Watch - Damon Lindelof and Tara Hernandez on the Making of ‘Mrs. Davis’

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

Chris and Andy are joined by ‘Mrs. Davis’ creators Damon Lindelof and Tara Hernandez to talk about how they came up with the idea for the show in the beginning of the pandemic (5:14), why they decided to play with the ideas of artificial intelligence and religion (34:41), and how Betty Gilpin brought the character of Simone to life (46:32). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guests: Damon Lindeloff and Tara Hernandez Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Sean Fennessey, one of the hosts of the Prestige TV podcast. HBO's Barry is back for a fourth and final season. And that means I'll be back recapping the show with co-creator and star Bill Hater to dive deep on the themes, scenes, and major moments in the series. Bill will provide insight into how every episode was made and why it's ending. New Prestige TV Barry recaps will go live every Sunday night when the episode ends. So make sure you're subscribed to the Prestige TV podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know about one?

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Trimphaya. Tap this ad to learn more about Trimphia, including important safety information. This episode is brought to you by Brooks. Running connects us to a rush of energy that flows through our world. The cheers of friends that unlock a new gear within us, the intersection of interest that inspires a run crew, the support that gets you over the finish line. Connection is why we move forward and what inspires us to keep going. Let's run there. Learn more at brooksrunning.com. I need supports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to the watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me in the studio. Fresh from the convent, it's Andy Greenwald.

It's not a costume, it's a habit. What's up, man? We have a very special show for people today. A very long, inquisitive, wandering, profound interview with Tara Hernandez and Damon Lendeloff. It's a little funny, too. It was a crack-up. It was a great talk. We chatted with them about their new show, Mrs. Davis.

Andy and I alluded to this being the topic of today's watch podcast, just for everybody's admin purposes. We will be with you on Sunday evening following. six sessions. So you can listen to our recap pod then. And then I think we've got like a little bit of a backlog. So we're going to do the following Thursday, probably do a spin, the speed brown through the end of Perry Mason, the beginning of dead ringers and the beginning of White House plumbers, maybe. They could be. Yeah. And also some Barry talk. And some Barry talk. Maybe we'll do some diplomat by then. There's just a ton going on. You know, I'm hearing really good things about silo on Apple. The streets are running with gold. I want to do a whole podcast.

about... It's almost like they're trying to get a bunch of good stuff out before an award show. It's weird

the way that happens between what's his name Melamid and Henry Winkler driving a car in episode 3 of Barry. Can we just do a podcast just about that same

when they crash? That's the hardest I've laughed for a long time. That's really a fucking funny scene, man. It's so funny

that show. But okay. Sean should let me do the Bill interviews where I just like, you know what, Bill?

That's a fucking funny scene you made there, man. Do it like Chris Farley but a little bit Bernthal? A little bit It was really great to have Tara and Damon come in to talk about Mrs. Davis because I just think this is, it's obviously anytime Damon is involved with something, it's a significant show on TV. But the energy, the spirit, the what the fuckness of the show, a lot of which came from Tara and her perspective on the world and her background writing comedy for broadcast networks for a long time. She worked at a lot of years on Young Sheldon and on Old Sheldon, which I believe is with Big Bang Theory. Yeah, but I call it. And it's not like anything else on TV.

in, I think, a really important way, both in the show that it is, and also for what it says about what we're interested in making and watching and consuming at this particular moment. So four episodes drops last week on Peacock. We tried to give you guys

a little bit of a runway for that. Our conversation is generally about those four episodes. The fifth episode premieres tonight. No spoilers to five. But I think kind of, we talked a lot about where a show like this comes from. Yeah, we talked about how does this get made?

Shout out to Jason Midsurkis and Paul Schier. It was like, how did you guys come up with this idea? Because when you watch the show, I didn't even get a chance to ask this, but I was going to say, if you had to say what the show is about, it would almost be impossible

because you can do the one-sentence version. None versus AI. And then there's the 400-page version because every episode is so dense with not only plot, but ideas. It's one of the most kind of intellectually robust shows I've seen in a while. And it was really, really cool to talk to them

and get their, get some insight on how it got. Yeah, so I think this is one of those ones where if you are a total stickler, I would get that you should watch the first four episodes, but I also think that if you haven't or if you're curious. There's not too many plot reveals. And also, I have to say,

I know people say this when they don't feel like doing spoiler warnings, but it's hard to spoil Mrs. Davis because they spoil themselves constantly and also every two minutes, something absolutely jaw dropping happens to the point where your jaw is just on the floor. And it undercuts something that happened before, but also pre-cut something that hasn't happened yet.

It's an experience. It's a trip. We need more shows like this, not less. And frankly, Chris, we need more podcasts like this, not less. Just you and I get out of the way and we let Dame Melendoloff and Tara Hernandez talk? Yeah, I mean, I just feel like it's time for some straight talk. Straight Talk Express. So those first four episodes are up on Peacock. Andy and I will be back on Sunday night talking about Succession.

The following Thursday, we're going to do a speed round through a bunch of the TV that we've been either meeting to catch up on that's coming out, whatever. and we'll probably talk a little bit about the fact that the, you know, what Aquaman is up to. Just right now? Yeah. Or like in the DCU? No, Aquam. Also, Chris had a question for you.

Who produced this podcast? Kaya McMullen. Yeah, she did. Yeah. But without her bottle of water. So she's parched. We got to get out of here. That's why she hasn't spoken.

But we really appreciate your service. Thank you, Kaya. And let's get into our interview with Tara Hernandez and Damon Lindelof about Mrs. Davis. Chris and I are beyond thrilled to be joined by the co-creators of the new Peacock series, Mrs. Davis, Tara Hernandez, and Damon Lindeloff. Welcome to the pod. First time, long time. Glad to have both of you here.

It's been a while, and it's very exciting to be here with Terry. It's been a minute. Yeah. So we're going to talk to you guys. We're excited to talk to you guys about the first four episodes of Mrs. Davis that went up last week. The fifth episode will be premiering tonight. This is going to podcast will air Thursday. We will, no spoilers for that.

So we're just talking about the first four and a lot of stuff before. So I guess the first thing is I want to thank you both. for one of the most original shows in recent memory, except I feel like it's also like 11 of the most original shows in recent memory, which is one of the things I love about it. I think we kind of want to just go back to the beginnings and ask how the two of you got set up, because Tara, this idea came from you originally. Is that correct? Pieces of it did, yes. And, you know, as I mentioned prior to a recording, I'd never heard of Damon Lindeloff or his writing before. That's an absolute lie. But I was a writer on the Big Bang Theory.

So I come from comedy, half-hour multicam. And sort of towards the end of our run on Big Bang, just sort of looking for the next thing. I had written a script just sort of, you know, on spec, kind of unpacking my feelings about endings. But it also featured nuns. And was this dystopic, dark, you know, if I read it now, I'd probably feel. like it was like my inxie teenage script because I was just so like wounded that this experience was coming to an end. But, you know, it was, it featured these nuns taking care of these, these children who had expiration dates. So very, very dark. And it made its way to Damon because I think

Susan Rogen. They're like, who loves dead kids? The Prince of Darkness? Is that what they call you? And so it made its way to Damon. And we were sort of linked up just. on a creative sort of general meeting, and he was very kind and, you know, sort of supportive of the script. But I think you also said, like, I can't do the dark stuff. Like, I just did Watchman.

This is great. It just might be, you know, a little bit too intense for the moment. Which he ended up being right because we then immediately, you know, fell into the pandemic. So this first meeting happened before. Correct.

And then suddenly here you are. So it's this meeting, and then it's Rudy Gobert and then we us. Give us the timeline. It was like I left that meeting with Damon. You were the last meeting that I, in person meeting that I had.

Yeah, we kind of did that cute. You left the meeting coughing and sneezing. We fist bombed and we were kind of like, let's be across the room. Oh, when it was funny. I was like, I'll be Tom, you be Rita. It had an entirely different context in that moment. And then 12 hours later.

12 hours later. I went and bought, I went straight to the store and bought like just giant bags of grain. Oh, so that's where they went. Yeah. So I just have all the pasta and lentils that Ralph Studio City could offer. And yeah, so it's funny or now. But at the time, it was sort of that like panic.

So you didn't do the follow-up. The like, great meeting yesterday. Let's keep talking because the world was crumbling as we knew it. So it sort of happened two weeks later. We then, you know, sort of what have you been up to? Joke, joke, joke. And then it was like, well, got some time, you know, maybe we could just bat some ideas around. I still think that none thing was kind of cool.

So really, that's my recollection of it. And I think that as is Tara's way, she's diminishing her own incandescent talent in the telling of the story because we weren't just match made. I, after Watchman was like, I love writing and I'm interested in being the part. of a creation of another show, but I don't want to, I don't want to run it and I want to be at a higher altitude. And more importantly, I kind of, you know, I'm, I'm entering the stage of my career where I'm, you know, not that Tarantino is the end all be all, but I think that there's some, first off, I worship him on an artistic level, but he kind of said this thing where it's like, you get to a certain point in your career and maybe you should stop making stuff, which,

which I think is quite a radical idea, but at the very least, it's, you should start, you know, elevating the Youngs. And that was kind of what I put out to the agencies and Warner Brothers. And so I got this huge stack of scripts. And of all the scripts that I read, there were two that kind of like jumped out of me. One was Terrace and the other was this guy Justin Britt Gibson, who I know Andy knows well. And I was like, I need to meet with these people. And when we met about Mercy House, which is the name of the nuns and dead kids script,

you just sort of called it Nuns and Dead Kids. That was really the problem. Did they buy that in the room? You just walk in. You could see the one sheet. I was sort of like, I am looking to escape, especially after having done the leftovers and watchmen, it was like, it would just be nice to be in a writer's room where we're just talking about lighter affair. And again, I think one of the reasons that I was so drawn to Tara's writing was I had ripped the cover pages off of the script. So I just didn't know anything about the writer.

And I couldn't put, I didn't know what their gender was or I couldn't. it was just sort of like who wrote this and then you kind of mixed and matched. And it was Tara Hernandez. I googled her and it was like, she's a writer on the Big Bang Theory and young Sheldon. And as you guys are well aware,

I cut my teeth on Nash Bridges, crossing Jordan, procedural. And this is one of the things that I've been saying a lot, but I really believe it, which is a lot of people come into the television space, content space, whatever the fuck it is,

we're calling it now. And they say, I want to break the formula. And it's a very different thing to watch a lot of television than it is to make a lot of television. And if you really want to break the formula, you have to make the formula first.

And so I was like, this spec script does not equate with what my version of someone who's basically like, you know, working on bang as they call it internally. So I'm going to call it Big Bang theory. She'd be like, back on Bang. That's breaking news right there. That's, we can aggregate that.

Exclusive. But, you know, so I was like, oh, she is ready to break out the formula. To bang out. to keep bang it. Yeah, to keep, just keep on bang, to bang it. Tara, was that specifically a reaction to the last, what, nine, ten years that you had spent in that one kind of, like, creative area to, like, just try to, like, shake off a lot of,

of, like, the learnings you had from Big Bang? I think, you know, it's never really conscious. I didn't approach a script from, like, a formula or even structural standpoint. as, you know, as Chuck Lorry would say in the bang room, you know, he's like, we're writing jazz. Like, we don't even outline. We just go. So as formula. Is he sitting on the front of money when he says that?

Yeah, and it's just like strumming a baby. Yeah, he's like, whatever. This belonged to Louis Armstrong. He's got a little salt patch. Got 10 of them. Yeah, exactly. You can say that. I need a job.

And so, you know, we, yes, I've written, you know, like 174 episodes of a moment. multi-cam series, of course, you're just going to, through experience and osmosis, write a certain way. But I think more than that, it was a, it was an opportunity to write closer to the things that I watch. And, you know, I love genre and drama and, you know, the supernatural. So it was more about getting to, and I love multi-cam and I love comedy, but I just thought I want to, I want to inch closer towards things that I'm seeing other creators do that I think I would consume myself. I'm really interested in that idea of it being a moment when you were curious about breaking out of a certain way of writing in a certain creative box that you had been in for a long time

at a moment when it felt like the entire world, if not industry, was breaking and was broken. And if that gave, to your mind, a different tenor to the early conversations and the spirit of what was possible because there is an undeniable creative spirit of the show. that we'll talk about more when we get into the specifics, but I wondered how early that that began to make its presence felt. I mean, I think, you know, you're talking to two people who really sort of did their things for a long time, you know, made, as you will say, Damon, like, made the food that we made in that flavor profile. And then it was sort of like we just needed to bust out, you know,

I'm suddenly still a writer on Young Shire. Sheldon, but I'm at my home, you know, on audio Zoom, you know, during the day. And so you kind of come into this creative space where you feel so, you know, scared and stifled about the way that the world is shaping up and what our role as creatives are in that is to like give people some amount of, you know, escape, out of body experience. And I think we were both just hungry for that at the time. So we really just knew that this show was going to be something that was going to give people lift, as we like to say. It was the simultaneous feeling of, to Tara's point, this idea of lift. And I think that we've all heard this word, and we're all drawn to it actually, which is like, I think like the number one sort of like buzzword that I've heard over the course of the last two decades in my adventures in writing is the word grounded.

You know, and I think like it's a very, for someone who semantics matter to, and you basically go like, here's this word that for the first part of my life meant I was in trouble. You know, I'm not allowed to leave the house. I've done something bad. You're grounded is now the thing that I'm aspiring to, that I must achieve in order for people to like my show. And what I think that is being communicated by groundedness is like some degree of like relatability. So it's like you watch something like succession and it's like, it's like how do I relate to the Roy's. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, no one ever stopped to think like, but do we need to? You know, like, is, is the thing that makes that show interesting, the fact that they are on Olympus? That you can see yourself in them? That they are the Olympians. You know, like, there's a legacy of storytelling there, too, where it's like, I want to hear stories about people that I don't, that I don't necessarily see myself in, but I can still understand their emotional pathos. And so we were really looking to just feel like a sense of, like, how could, how do we not talk about what we're talking about? Because every conversation that we have, I'm walking my dog on the west side.

Tara is walking her dog in Studio City. We're having these conversations until our earbuds, you know, battery power gives out. And all we're talking about is, are you washing your groceries? You know, like, and what methodology are using to wash your groceries? And then having the beginnings of sort of like some sense of self-awareness of like, this is stupid, isn't it? This is, are we being stupid? And then Tara said, I wish that there was just an app on our phone that would tell us what to do.

And like every once in a while people are like, where do you get your ideas from? You can very rarely isolate the moment, but I just remember like kind of like stopping and going like that, that versus none is show. And you're like, why are you not using prepositions anymore? Are you having a stroke? Yeah. But it felt like that was kind of the beginning of it all. It was. And then, yeah, and I'd run home sort of after these incredible sort of creative sessions that like any writer's room is, you know,

15% work and the rest is talking about groceries or Damon's like ATM glove that you have You can never be too safe for jeweled? Absolutely.

Is this like a Thanos kind of thing or It's somewhere It's kind of It's not open doors. Yeah it's like a latex Infinity Stone glove You know Like because you know

You have to worry about foamite Sure and look you know you are inevitable That's so inevitable. Yes, so it's that, of course. Do you have the hygienic stone? Do you have that? Yes, it's right here. It's right here next to the time stone.

Oh, my gosh. So this is kind of a convoluted way of kind of piggybacking. What you're saying is I think I read in another interview you did Tara, where you were talking about exactly what he's mentioned, this craving of information, like this idea that you want to know. And we all remember that, like, two weeks in, like, when will this be over? What should I be doing? Do I have to wear the mask inside?

like what am I allowed to be doing? The scream mask. Exactly. Is that cool anymore? Everyone's laughing, right? And for as prescient as this show feels for 2023, it's also obviously like echoes back to 2020, but then you bring in all of this history and mythology that shows that these are questions that we've been asking since we could ask questions.

I almost want to know like how the internal kind of, what's the syllabus for the show? Like what was the curriculum for the show as you sort of started to end. ask these questions and build out this world? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, you always want to come from the point of view of your lead character. So when we had AI and we were still batting around the nuns and, you know, we developed Sister Simone from, you know, she's going to be anti. It's going to be, you know, her versus it construct.

And so you're really coming at like what is her worldview? What does she think about technology based on her current. experience, her lived experience, which I would say isn't unlike my own. You know, I like to think that I have like a healthy distance from it all, yet like it has all of my, you know, credit card card information, like most hypocrites that I am. But I think that you really sort of look at like what their character worldviews are. And so it's like, well, what are we saying through her? She's over here. The rest of the world is over here that she's going to completely, you know, ignore and turn away from. And so you're infusing that with your own sort of opinions.

So that's sort of the foundation of a good, you know, Heroes' Journey, David and Goliath's structure. And then when we attached, you know, what the actual engine of the show is going to be, which was our Grail quest. And that came out of just, it all, you know, these things always make it sound so easy. But it's a lot of discussions. It's a lot of like what does the algorithm want her to do. We always know there's going to be propositions. she's going to have the opportunity to turn it off. We get to the Grail quest because it's absurd and funny and very familiar.

And so I think sort of when you introduce that element to it, you're like, this is a quest for the Holy Grail in this modern technology show. What are the expectations of that part of the journey? You know, what are the Grail expectations, as we called them, in the room? And that's kind of holding the DNA of the whole thing. And I think that in terms of the syllabus, there are, I think, sort of like quite obvious, you know, filmic and television influences in the weird sort of overlapping then diagram between tears and mind sensibility. Obviously, Black Mirror, I think, is something that we talked about a lot, just because in terms of like, how do you do storytelling about tech where the tech is actually kind of off camera. Right. And Black Mirror was also kind of like doing something tonally, whereas, like, can we be a little bit weird?

Can we be a little bit funny? Can we be a little bit more horrific and sort of like saying all of the above? But there was this book that we read called You Look Like a Thing and I Love You, that was about how stupid artificial intelligence and machine learning is. And that book was kind of a revelation for us

because the story of AI and how smart it is and how sophisticated it is and how it can do, you know, how you can think so much more faster and effectively than humans can. And then the minute that it becomes, quote unquote, self-aware, it always has the same idea, which is like, fire the nukes and slave humanity. Yeah. But we're just basically like, but what if it was really stupid?

And then you get that thing that I've kind of been chasing quite a bit, certainly through the leftovers and Watchman was like the high, low. The sort of idea of like, can we switch, like, what is the grinding of gears as you're shifting out of like, this is totally pretentious to? It's so stupid. and can the show kind of reflect that sound? That was always kind of the thing that we were super delighted by. And Tara started pitching ideas that, like, you know, that I felt like kind of both,

there was opportunity for both things kind of simultaneously. But more importantly, you kind of have Betty at the center of it all. And before there was Betty, there was Simone. And Simone was a character who was sort of like a nun who kind of like embodies this idea of, godliness and is a real believer right like i think one of the things that tera said very early on that i just completely locked in on is i don't want to make fun of her faith um i want and this is not the story of priest who lost his faith none who lost her faith and then like regains it no spoilers but by the end of this the faith is even stronger and i was like yeah that you know that that that

that felt like it was going to be harder and more interesting to do when you say um within the room was the idea of like what is the grail quest going to look like was there a moment when it was metaphorical catch-all for the quest you came up with and then someone was like let's just do that because there's that spirit in the show and I wondered if that was as literal as a moment like that happened or was it always the grail I mean we knew I think sometimes you come into these creative situations where you know what it isn't you know and you're sort of like and for us just because we're such fans and because we just love to consume media or content and or whatever we're calling it these days, you know, it's, you see what's been done. And you're sort of like, okay, we know this definitely isn't like, the Holy Grail's been inside of her the whole time. You know, we kind of had these sort of like we're just not interested in those things either because they've been done very successfully or been done multiple times. So we were very clear that the Grail was going to be an object in our world that Simone was going to chase. It just felt like we don't want to pull that rug out. And we hope by, you know, episode four, we've absolutely communicated that idea that this is the engine of the series and how that all is going to sort of dovetail into the Mrs. Davis, you will all see.

But I think, you know, our sort of marching orders in addition to Simone is, you know, not just wearing a costume. She is a woman of faith. She is a bride of Christ. We're going to play this real to her experience. experience, you know, we're also like going to go get this thing. We're going to go get the Grail. And at the same time, sort of like very interested in the question of like, why would an algorithm want the Holy Grail? And that's certainly a question that we feel that the show has to answer before the season is over. But I think that there are television shows that are not,

that try to say we're not television shows. And that is to say they function in a space where no other television shows exist. And so it's like on The Walking Dead, they never say the word zombie. And that's a choice, right? Or last of us, they don't say it either. Right, exactly.

And so that's a choice. And in our show, immediately we were like, okay, Dan Brown novels exist. Indiana Jones books exist. And like, so how do we let the audience know that we know these things exist without turning to the camera and sort of like monologing. Because there is like a level of meta now where like I think that meta has kind of turned a corner.

You know, where it was like it was like cool. Like it was like cool when Sam was doing it. Hey Sam. I know you're listening. I hope you're listening. And now it's sort of like meta for meta's sake. And it's like it's kind of look at me. You know, it's kind of like, hey, look I'm on the diving board.

Like look at me. Look up here. Look. I'm about to, you know, I'm about to do something. versus like just, you know, fucking belly flop and peace. But that spirit that you're talking about, I wondered how deep the awareness of the meta goes because this might be a little inside baseball,

writer's room baseball. But there's a phrase that you guys know that can come up in a writer's room, which is, this is Tiny Town, when there's like, you know, only three people who are doing the same thing. And when I'm watching your show and the two main characters are reunited

and they used to be lovers and they also share part of the same liver, I was like, this is a creative team being like, fuck that, the town's tiny. We're telling a story on TV. How tiny can tiny town be? And owning it and steering towards it. And I wonder if that is...

But how big can that liver be is the question? That's the second question. Great question. He's a drinker. But so within that question, I guess there's two questions. One is just like how deep did that meta-conversation go? And then the specifics of like the spirit of like, let's just, instead of breaking or grounding it, let's pump the get, let's just push the gas pedal and like tell the story we want to tell.

Yeah, I think the one, you know, that maybe got brought. up the most writerism that got brought up the most often is like hat on a hat. Right. And we're kind of like Mrs. Davis's hat on a hat on a hat. Yeah. You know? And so, hey, one decapitation, bleh, gory, two, do they know what they're doing? You know, and three events with the head, which we won't spoil, is like, that's Mrs. Davis.

But then later, it's like maybe they weren't really decapitations anyway. Maybe it was all filmed. Like, this is, that's misstievous to me. Two fake ones. So I think, you know, we talked about it a lot. And, you know, to Damon's point about formulas and awareness of just like, yes, this is a Grail quest. We're going to acknowledge that the Holy Grail is a McGuffin most times in, you know, literature and cinema. What are we going to do about that?

And sort of being willing to kind of play ball, you know, like Damon did with his own work, with a hatch, with an island. You know, there had to be a ton of self-awareness. I think it's called like gone or plane crash or something. Yeah. Phenomenal. It's, I've heard it, it's all right. But I think that.

Too soon, guys. Too soon. I just want to dig up the old wounds. It's been fucking 13 years since it ended. And it's still too soon. Still raw. But I think that, you know, and I will say it is interesting because you had sort of a room who are such fans of, of Damon's work. and they're Big Bang and sort of, so you kind of have to say, like, yes, intensely proud, but, like, willing to, like, poke fun at ourselves as well and just, you know, these tropes. And so, like I said, we had, you know, we had a list on the board in the writer's room that we said, what does one expect out of a Greo Quest? What does one expect from the narrative here?

And what I would say is, you know, we can't say enough amazing things about our collaborators. And obviously, that writer's room birthed a lot of the show. Tara and I, we wrote the pilot together and then had to pitch like this, you know, this kind of like quarantine deck to all the sort of like executive structures around town, the streamers and the networks who wanted to hear it. And in that pitch, the deck pitch, we did reveal a lot of things that don't happen until the finale in terms of sort of like, this is what Mrs. Davis is. This is what this is what Mrs. Davis was created to do. this is why Mrs. Davis is seeking out the grail. This is whether or not the quest that Mrs. Davis is offering is legitimate or illegitimate. We had all of that, and so the writers in many ways, inherited that. But then the next thing that happens is that the writers want to feel a sense of authorship.

And so, like, there was almost an intervention immediately where the writer started to say, that's all great, and we accept that. And we, yes, and that in the sort of improv. But there are some things that are kind of really important to us. in some cases as individuals and in some cases as a collective that we need to kind of like talk about in order for us to invest in this vision.

In terms of like the physics of the reality of the world. All of the above, you know. We had to find like a tonal language, you know, around like how we were going to present the resistance and what the overall sort of like, you know, are we defining this? What's too funny?

What's too far out there? Particularly as it relates to what I feel was like the revelatory moment of the show for me which when Tara pitched me, oh, we're not doing the flight attendant where, you know, Kaylee Cuoco closes her eyes and she imagines herself in a liminal space

with this guy who was murdered so that she can sort of like solve a crime. But Simone is actually married to the actual Jesus Christ. And I was like, I need to get off the phone right now. Like when she pitched that, you know, I was like, I'll call you right back. And like, because I just kind of short-circuited a bit.

And I, she just presented it, you know, I don't know what was happening for you internally, but it was like, it was very casual and very confident. It wasn't like, here's an idea. It was like, you were like, I just kind of figured out the show. I figured out Simone. Like, and she pitched that to me. And then I was like, okay, so that's a lot for, I think one of the hardest things to find in Hollywood. We talk a lot about diversity, inclusion, and equity and inequality in writer's rooms. But like, it's very hard to find believers, you know?

And we found a couple of incredible ones. But like, and I think some of the most gonzo ideas, interestingly enough, came from our believers. People who are like not just like, oh, I'm a spiritual person and I don't like agnostic. People who go to services and who alter their diets and observe holidays. Like some of the, I think most inventive ideas that are in the show came from them. And that's where I kind of go like, oh, that's cool. because I would be reluctant to pitch these things as an agnostic. But that's one of, I think, my favorite things about the show,

and I imagine people listening as well, is that in a weird way, the most grounded place on the program is Jesus Christ's falafel restaurant. You know, like that is what grounds are elite character. There's one in Silver Lake. Come on, man. That's just for, right, in Echo Park. Oh, now eater's going to write about it.

Only agents can get reservations now. But that, like, that, grounds our main character. That's what she believes. That's all true. And it's, you know, I love that that's not, you're not winking at that, you know, that that, you were talking about how everything is up, everything's up for grabs. There's things that are funny that can be funnier and you push and push. That place is safe, you know, and I think that that grounds a lot of it. And I think that that is also a really, you know, radical is a strong word. But like, to Damon's point, a lot of shows, a lot of culture, either mocks or doesn't understand a relationship to religion. And when you strip down,

one of the things that's most compelling about the show is that the lead character is a nun who is married to Jesus Christ. These are not just words. These are not just, she's not just someone who likes to play badminton or is whatever. Like, that is her life. She's not removed from life. She has chosen a life. Yes.

And I think that that is, I think that's great. I love how the show also kind of, it's confrontational about the absurdity of what is actually like the human intellectual heritage. Like, we're actually forced to be like, there's a lot of people who think that there was this cup that caught Jesus's blood and that it provides eternal life and that it has been guarded. And then there's like history that goes up to a certain point that's like, yeah, they do do that to some extent, you know?

Did it catch his blood or did you just use it at the Seder? I think what's the story of the grail? It's the, it's one thing. We just look at the Jew over here. No, we went deep on this. I mean, you will probably, you know, kind of to Chris's point, you will probably not be surprised to learn that the Holy Grail is not a thing that appears in any text in the, you know, New Testament. It's completely, and it's like...

Just be clear, I'm entirely basing this on Deanna Jones the last Christmas. So like, but it's like, it's like the rapture where it's sort of like, people read between the lines and there, there's dogma attached to the idea of the Holy Grail, but it's not actually, you know, you can't, there's

no scripture that I can point you to that basically mentions even the cup of Christ or that cup being used in any sort of religious construct. And so, it's all, like, we found ourselves talking as much about, you know, know, oral traditions from a thousand years after Christ is gone. And then there's this sort of like, where's the space where the mythology begins?

And the actual historical character of Jesus Christ lived that is always going to be completely and totally fascinating, if not absolutely and totally terrifying, because as I disclosed to terror, I am a Jew. And we have a complicated history with Jesus. Sure. You know, the last thing I need is like... Let's chop it up. Let's talk about it.

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Save at Whole Foods Market. I do want to talk about some of the specifics and certainly like your amazing cast and especially about Betty's performance. But I did want to just turn back a little bit to what you guys were talking about in the origins of the show because it's fascinating to me that so much of the early conversations

and the spirit was informed by the pandemic. And yet you release the show into a moment when everybody is talking about AI. And that has suddenly become what we talk about. And as someone who is completely to his bones uninterested in AI, I'm not interested in chat GPT, I don't care. Like, I can't believe people are feeding

into this obsession. I'm so thrilled that your show fights the right enemy. Like for me, this is like, talk about grounded. Like, however many grounded family dramas there are in the world, none of them are being like, maybe the internet broke us? Maybe there's something wrong here. Can I just tell you my one experience with Chad GPT, aside from imitating one in a video for The Ringer?

Yeah. Is I, before the Sixers Nets first round NBA playoff series started, I was just out of curiosity, I was like assess the Sixers versus the Nets of the playoffs. Yeah. And it gave this whole long thing. that was all about having Kyrie, Durant, and Hardin, and it was like, by the way, I only go up to 2021.

And I was like, brother, you have missed some real news in the world of the Brooklyn Nets. Wow. See? Okay. This just validates my priors. Yeah. But anyway, all of this is to say that both the weird prescience of picking something.

But then also, I was really compelled by something you said a moment ago, Tara, about how the original spark for the Mrs. Davis idea was that you wish there was something that was omniscient that could help. So that fuels such an interesting dynamic, I think, in the finished product. But anyway, somewhere in that monologue and also in Chris's points about what happened to the Brooklyn Next Dream Team is a question. And we're just going to leave it on the table for you guys. You picket it. Can we explain how our menu works?

Yeah, I mean, to your point, you know, what we get to do, what we're so, like, privileged to get to do is writers and creators is, like, it is wish fulfillment, you know, or it's exercising demons or it's wish fulfillment. so we get to sort of like create, create the AI that we wish we had or we create the Jesus Christ that we wish existed for people like Simone or others to have. And, you know, it is fiction, but you do so with some responsibility, which is, you know, to Damon's point earlier, to sort of look at the capabilities of these things and sort of what they're designed to do or not do. and sort of we wanted to be authentic to that, but we thought, why not have something that we ourselves are lacking?

And, you know, what we spent a lot of time exercising with our writers sort of what would you use it for? Let's bring in some personal statements. Let's spend a day sort of how would you trust Mrs. Davis? And I will say in the course of the three years developing this show, because we didn't have even, you know, open AI in the conversation, people were really like arms folded. more like we are like no way there there's absolutely nothing then it was well there's a situation with my neighbors and I could just use some help navigating you know the dialogue with that and to like yes just tell me exactly how I need to get my neighbor's tree off of my property sort of thing so it it evolved much more quickly than I imagined but I think you know hopefully the show says

yes this would be amazing and great but we're not there yet we're We're on the bridge right now because, you know, Chris's story is like for fun. You're asking chat GPT question, but let's say that chat GPT gave an incredibly confident answer that was basically like Sixers in five. Yeah. Right? It just says, and it breaks it down. It's like, here's what I see happening.

And then you say, this thing is so confident that it's going to affect my behavior as I move through the world. I now believe what it said. Once you believe what it says, then it affects your behavior. And your behavior is now, maybe you take out a mortgage on your house and you bet it on the sixers. And you bet it on the sixers in five. So it jumps to the real world. Right. Yeah, exactly. But this is kind of what God is basically done for millennia. And it's basically God has, it's a confidence game. God says, this is what you're supposed to do. You have confidence in it because it's God. And you're like, if I live my life this way, I follow these rules, I eat this stuff. I, you know, these are sins, these are not sins. I get a reward. And now, we're starting to put legitimate faith, faith in chat GPT, based on this idea that it's read everything on the internet.

And it's like, it gets some things wrong. I've read everything on the internet too. That's true. And I have to say, I'm a little nervous on chat GPT. I put a mental health. I would say, though, that I put an almost distressing amount of faith in the two of you in terms of like, if you have a hot take on a show and you're like, this is garbage, then I might not even try it.

And if you say this... But sometimes I change my mind, Damon. as you may remember. I also haven't watched the leftovers. But if you're like, here is a show that you need to be aware of that I normally wouldn't have been interested in, you've now changed my behavior based on confidence. And, you know, as you guys know, I'm very interested in confidence and particularly those who would exploit it, the con men and women who are.

And so this sort of idea of like, from a cynical sort of like atheist point of view, religion is the biggest con of all. But I think that the more radical idea is, but can, are you sure? You know, and that idea of the thing that religion will always have over artificial intelligence is mystery. AI is now going to destroy mystery. And so, you know, Mrs. Davis, this is why Simone, the Batman story of, you killed my parents and now I'm a superhero, is that AI killed my parents' marriage and literally my father because it ruined magic. Because once you can literally turn to your phone and say, how did David Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear?

Tara knows. Rotating platform. Rotating platform. Spoiler alert. Wow. You know. It was so much more innocent, right, 40 minutes ago. But once someone is there to basically say like, no Santa, you know, another supposed to say.

Yeah, Tara told me that too. Deny. It takes all the magic and mystery out of life and sort of like, is that? is that is interesting and fun and enjoyable of an experience. So here's my follow-up, and you may not be able to answer it because I've watched through five, but... Do you want me to leave? No, but the thing is, is... I knew that you did.

In the first four episodes, everybody who is a proxy for Mrs. Davis, most people not Wiley and Simone and Jesus, who are in the show, seem pretty happy. And so the flip side of this is that, like, I love the twist where it's like, at this point in 2023, I would say most people either consciously or unconsciously or being slightly driven insane by their phones. This is like, well, what if it brought about this beatific state of bliss and empathy and all these things that Mrs. Davis claims to bring to humanity? Was that this like, it's not doom scrolling? What if it's joy scrolling? Exactly. And it's not just scrolling. It's activation to, you know, we were sort of looking at, you know,

again, to go back to the pandemic. Like, do you have toilet paper? Does my neighbor have toilet paper? You know, he's older. What if I just, like, leave some on his, you know, front porch sort of thing? And we thought, you know, yes, we were all in the midst of this unprecedented event. But sort of if that had never happened and we were just sort of inspired to do these acts and sort of get out of ourselves. And yes, that is beautific and amazing, but also would probably require some of the

amount of motivation. So we developed the wings construct with that. But it was really like, okay, that seems like something most people could get behind this sort of activation where you're not like looking for Pokemon, but like returning lost puppies very successfully. And, you know, one of the constructs for Simone that was, you know, so interesting to us at the time, I think you introduced me to Dead Eyes, the podcast about, you know, this actor who had at one point auditioned for Band of Brothers, and he didn't get it because Tom Hanks said that he had Dead Eyes. And so we were like, imagine being the one person in the world who hates Tom Hanks. And like with decent reason, you know, he cost him a job.

It's not unfounded. Dead Eyes would be a great Band of Brothers character, too. That's a good nickname for Easy Company. And so that was sort of this idea and the frustration of having to move throughout the world. It's like, that's Woody. Like, he's, it's Forrest Gump. He's the best, but being like, you know, grinding on. And so that was definitely the place we wanted to start Simone in.

And then, you know, Wiley's own and the resistance movement, as we'll continue to unpack, have these really personal reasons for, you know, that they feel slighted and it's unfair. And it's, you know, she did me wrong. And so building out sort of this group that. was against that when the whole world is saying, isn't she, isn't she lovely and amazing? And I would say that it's interesting, you know, we're just only, the show is a week old and obviously the four episode drop. We're only beginning to have conversations with people who have seen the first foreign in some cases because we are doing press for the show, people who have seen all eight and not doing like the deep dive on reviews like quite yet because you kind of have to titrate

that. But I think that the idea that, that people are having a beautific, sort of wonderful relationship with Mrs. Davis's tightly curated. So there's a scene at the end of the second episode where there's a guy who's looking for his piano. And Mrs. Davis finds it by getting hundreds of pianos all kind of dropped out into the desert. And we originally in the script had this idea of like,

the last beat in the episode was like this little girl walking out on a stage to have a recital. And the piano's gone. I thought you were to say the piano fell on the little. I mean, come on. Jesus, no dead kids, Chris. That was in Tara's first draft. But it's sort of like the idea of like those pianos all came from somewhere and like we don't think about about the hours of manpower in terms of what it took to transport them all there.

And that might have ruined some other people's days. But Mrs. Davis is curating an experience for Simone and the audience of how great she is. Let's see where we are at the end of the season. Because I do think that that idea of like there's that great episode of Swarm and I don't know if you've seen it. It's the Billy Eilish one. Where it's like when you first arrive at the cold, everything's great. You know, everybody looks great. Awesome first impression.

Everybody looks happy. And then like, but you're sort of like, okay, what's happening behind that closed door? Right. And I think that the idea of like Simone being given the power, you know, again, this doesn't spoil anything that happens. But the pilot basically says, I'm giving you the power to be judged jury and executioner. You get to decide whether or not I get turned off. Is this a show where. Simone's going on a journey and she realizes Mrs. Davis was actually kind of great all along,

or is she like, nope, I was right about you. That's a binary. And the show owes an answer. We're not going to get to the finale and she's going to say, like, find out in season. She's going to make a call. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, she's going to flip the coin, you know, one way or the other. You're going to get an answer. But I think that that's great, that you're asking that. You know, you talk about confidence men, confidence women, confidence game, making a TV show as an element of that as well, of like, here's what we're going to show you and you're going to trust us and are we going to deliver, et cetera, et cetera. I think that the best thing in many ways, like the most compelling reason for confidence in the

early going of the show is Betty Gilpin and her performance, which is really incredible. And this is, I'm a fan of her always. I think she's amazing. But she's doing something here that is really unique. And I hope people, I mean, I assume people are listening this far into the podcast. I've watched the show. But just in terms of like performing on camera because. I get the sense from her as Simone that she just is incapable of lying as a performer.

She is so fully present in every scene that it's almost, it's not uncomfortable. It just feels weirdly intimate at times. And even moments when what I'm reading on her face is confusion. And I don't know whether the confusion is because why are their British night sneakers or if the confusion is Simone's. It's really incredible. So I was just curious, you know, Damon, you had worked with her before, but in terms of bringing her in and also showcasing her what I think to be a unique talent to the degree that you guys did. Yeah, I had the preexisting relationship, but I, you know, I would say, and I think Betty and Tara would most absolutely agree that the character was born of Tara just was like understood Simone

from the jump. And so to some degree, it was sort of like maybe Betty and Tara was like, yes. And they, they had, for every minute that I spoke to Betty, Tara spoke to her for an hour. And I think they kind of found it together and as we were finding it in the writing. So I'm, you know, again, I had Betty's email and I'm a huge fan of hers. And I feel like I odor something after the hunt, even though I think that from Betty's perspective, she had an amazing experience on that. But it's like, that's a really good movie, too. Oh, thanks.

Yeah. But this was a whole other thing. Tarik and talk. Well, because it came out. It was like, but it was like, that's actually, it's a dope movie. I was telling Damon, like I now cut tomatoes differently. Hillers swankies, the bread knife. So that's forever.

Thank you, Nick. That forever changed tomato game in my household. But, yeah, the show just doesn't work without Betty. I mean, we could do all the things and not to discredit any of the creatives or the rest of the cast. But she has to hold so much. And she has to be able to do so much. And, you know, I had never worked with Betty. I've seen her work.

I know she's a brilliant performer. You kind of don't know until you show up, like, what she's going to do, how she's interpreting. this character and you know it was what I expected and nothing I expected at all because she's she is to your point she's just such an honest performer and she just gets in a moment and and she's there but I know she's layered that on top of all kinds of work and she's you know studied the piece and so it it has this magical quality of like yes is she surprised is she surprised that she's crawling around or crying or yelling or snarling. You know, or shoving the cake in.

And I think the nature of how we made this show was, you know, we shot it entirely out of order. We did our pilot, but then from there, just the nature of the production on it, how we were turning in scripts. You know, Betty, we asked so much of her. We needed her to get to the end of the journey emotionally and do some things at the end of the journey and then backtrack it. So I think there was almost.

almost no choice, but to be in that and to be grounded in the relationships that she had, like you said with, you know, with Jay and Andy McQueen's performance of Jay is like, this is my grounding spot. It's going to let me go places everywhere else. And I'm going to come back and this is my home. This is as close to a home set as we have on this show, really, because it's, you know, it's a road show. And I think she was given an incredible, like, you know, playground by all the creatives, including our director, Owen Harris and Alethea Jones, to just dig into that sandbox. And she digs every day. Like, she's just someone who shows up and goes there. And I'd, you know, either be on set or get Daly's back and be like, what am I

looking at? But it's always the right thing. It's like exactly the right thing. Do you feel like, because I would imagine in a, I don't know, say it more typical version of this, I don't know what that would be. But a performer might be like, can you walk me through why I would do this? Or can you explain to me what's actionable in this? Or what do I want out of the scene? And the thing is that you sort of wrote around that by having Simone constantly ask the question that maybe the performer would ask.

It would either be explaining what she's doing or asking why she's doing. It is actually like 60% of the show is people discussing their motivations for doing things or why they're being sent here when they should be going there and who they're doing it with. Does that make it almost easier for a performer you think to execute what you're asking them to do? I mean, you know, I've never been a performer. I could only assume so,

especially because we gave her falafel restaurant to have those intimate moments of, you know, it's the sopranos, it's using therapy, but it's, you know, in Simone's version prayer to, like, get under the hood on her. And we as audience have that. But, you know, Wiley doesn't know, like, what the hell she's doing, you know, and she can move about the world in such a way with some confidence because she's got her, you know, her direct antenna up to the big guy. And she's saying, like, hey, I'm feeling insane.

Like, can you, you know, can you help me unpack this? And he's calming her down. And then she can move through the world in the way she does. But Betty is so inquisitive and she's so understanding. And I think what I witnessed and can guess about her performance is, you know, because we, A, we gave her a family history. I was so interested in, like, how a modern woman becomes a nun that the first question you ask is, like, who are her parents? Like, who raised this person to, you know, send her off into this life? So she had, you know, Lizzie's childhood upbringing as, you know, a foundation and then would just ask every question in between.

and then sometimes you use that and sometimes you throw it out depending on the day. I think obviously we're talking about the first four. There's four more to gum. At this point, I think I know better than to ask, hey, can you tease what's coming next? Because I think that kind of spoils the fun. I kind of wanted to ask you guys to close on kind of just a bigger picture question because I'm really, from the beginning, it was really fascinated about your partnership and also, Damon, something that you just jumped right in and said,

which was that you had such experiences, different experiences, but experience in the TV minds, making the thing. And we're at a moment when I think even the world that Damon and you have been in more recently, like the prestige world, in many ways, feels as formulaic as a broadcast sitcom. Now, that's not to disparage broadcast sitcoms. It's a great formula, and it makes people really happy. But they are following similar beats, and they're following, and mining similar grounded terrain or the opposite of grounded.

They're just about elves or zombies. We don't call them that. No, we don't call them that in this day or on this podcast. They're formerly alive people. Formerly alive people or pointy-eared folk. I guess in the state of the industry, such as it is in this moment on the precipice of Pamias Strike, just like what I really responded to was the almost joyful what-the-fuckness

and the running towards the bigger, weird, or stranger, crazier idea. And I guess I'm curious what that meant for you both creatively during this weird period in which you made the show, but also looking forward at the TV landscape as a whole. First off, we really appreciate you saying that because that's certainly something that catalyzed us and part of managing a show like this. And again, this is a show that we co-created,

but it is a show that Tara ran. And so I had the very unique experience of watching someone who'd never done that job before do it. And I mentioned this because this is not sort of like look at how humble and gracious I am, I was not neither of those things. It was tough because I'm used to being like, that's the idea that I like and that we're chasing.

And it is a faith-based experience to essentially, you know, it would be great if Tara and I agreed all of the time. But if we're not an agreement on something and she looks at me and says, this makes sense to me, then I just go like, okay, done, we're done talking. In the same way that I got off the phone when she first pitched, I think that the idea, the most important idea of the show. And I was like, I don't, I'm really scared of this, but Tara's got the wheel. And so it's not, we're taking turns driving so one of us can sleep.

Tara's driving. And so I think that I'm going on and on about this is like, that's why the show maybe feels original is because you're watching someone who's never done it before, do it. And again, this earlier idea of like, but she had enough institutional experience to know how to make television. And so a lot of the time, if you just go in the room, particularly if you've been doing it, you know, I've co-created three shows before Mrs. Davis and worked on, you know, five or six different shows for me to go in and say, like, I want to do something original. And for me, the bar of originality is it's not based on preexisting IP. Therefore, like, I certainly wanted Watchman to feel original, but it's called Watchman. It was created by Alan Moore who wants to kill me, you know? Like, And so, like, almost all of the ideas, if not all of the ideas, the genesis of them was based in someone else's creative realm. And so, like, just because Mrs. Davis was born out of non-preexisting IP, we are constantly referencing Tarantino movies and episodes of Black Mirror and, you know, like, and Dan Brown novel, like, we're still finding unoriginal ways to articulate these ideas in hopes that it will feel original. If this show feels original, it's because of Tara.

Full stop. It's just true. End podcast. That's it. Well, thank you so much to both of you for coming, and thank you so much for making such a breathtakingly original and really quite amazing show. I hope we have a chance to talk more about it once we've seen more. I think we're about to have a lot of time on our hands.

You guys think about podcasting? It's pretty cool. You don't have to write anything. Thank you, Tara and Damon. Thanks so much for having us, guys.