The Watch - Ep. 40: 'The Andy Greenwald Podcast' With Jonathan Tropper

Episode Date: May 20, 2016

Jonathan Tropper, cocreator and showrunner of Cinemax's 'Banshee,' talks to Andy Greenwald about his decision to end the series and what to expect before the finale. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to the Andy Greenwald podcast. Hello, my name is Andy Greenwald. This is my podcast. My podcast is now part of the Watch podcast feed. And you can find it on iTunes, on SoundCloud. You can find it on Google Play. And I recommend it that you do. I don't know if you guys have noticed,

but the Ringer Podcast Network is expanding in all sorts of directions. The Watch, the show I do with my pal Chris Ryan, is available in its own feed. But you can also find Keep It at 1600 with John Favreau and Dan Fyfer. You can find the Ringer NBA show, the Ringer NFL show. And don't forget about our old pals of Channel 33 where you can find all sorts of shows like Jam Session with my good friends, Juliet Littman and Amanda Dobbins.

Big show today. I'm very excited about it. A friend of the podcast, someone who's been on multiple times, and the co-creator and executive producer of one of my favorite shows, Cinemax's Banchi, is here. That's the novelist, Jonathan Trapper. And Banshee, I've written about it before. It's been on my top 10 list at Grandland. It is an incredibly violent, incredibly fun, incredibly smart, and full of heart and pulp. Drama. It ends after four seasons this Friday, May 20th, 10 p.m. Eastern. I'm very upset about it.

Had Jonathan come in and we talked about his decision to end the show, how we went about ending the show, and some other things, including how to find people who look like Amish gangsters when you're in Pittsburgh. Actually, that sounds like it wouldn't be that hard. Anyway, it was a very good conversation, and I definitely recommend people check out Banchi if they haven't already. We're going to get right into it. Remember, you can subscribe to the YW. at iTunes, Google Play, and SoundCloud. I want to thank the Scottish Band Churches. That's Churches with a V for my theme music. And let's get right into it. Let's get into my conversation with Jonathan Dropper.

What are you talking to Colin Farrell about? I was talking to Colin Farrell about the lobster. Oh, I want to see that. It's really good. Are you keeping headphones? I'll do headphones if you want headphones. Let's do headphones. Let's get the whole experience.

Okay, some people don't like him. You know, Colin Farrell was our initial model for Lucas Hood. Wait, really? Yeah. God, he would have been amazing. I know. And it was at a moment just before his career kind of re-igging, like,

maybe we could get him because he's been in a real tailspin, but then he did a few, like, low-budget movies that did well, like Fright Night and something else, and he just came back as a movie star, and that was it. But there was a moment when,

when your dream list had a Venn diagram intersection with who was potentially available for... Well, he's also, he's just the model we used when we were pitching it. See, we're going, by the way, this is officially the podcast now.

Oh, no. No, but this is important, but you didn't do the thing. No, I'll do it after, and I'll say, what a great conversation you had. This is, I marron it now. We go right into it. That's the only difference from the last time we did this.

I love Colin Farrell, and I told him that to his face, and he was very generous about it. But as a person on your side of the ball, a writer or creator, why is he appealing? Because I feel like that's an important, it could give insight into your mindset in general. No, it's just because, you know, in a lot of the roles he's done, he's always got this sort of, you know, this kind of seething anger beneath the surface. like, you know, he could explode at any moment. Yeah. He's got a real irreverence, a real rebellious streak, and he's, you know, he's very good-looking without being a pretty boy at all.

And he just, you know, he was just the model from day one. That was what I was picturing when we were pitching Lucas Hood. You know, we've talked before about Banshee and on podcasts. And the thing that I always bring up is, I think the thing that got me completely to buy in early on was that the character of Lucas Hood and Anthony Starr's performance was really, based on this idea of someone who's going to keep getting punched, but we'll smile and shake it off and punch back, basically. There's an irreverence at the heart of it that was essential to buying into this very violent world. And so I've always found it fascinating that that was part of it

from the beginning, that you knew that was necessary to make it work. Yeah, and it was him, first of all, like having that person who is not quite winking at the audience, but his very demeanor suggests that he understands the universe he lives in. Right. And then the other half of that, you know, was the audience surrogate in Brock, who would occasionally ask the questions the audience was thinking or roll his eyes the way the audience would roll his eyes like, you know, just sort of put voice to some of the absurdity.

Well, we're going to talk about how, you know, the length and breadth of Banshee, one of my favorite shows the last few years. We're going to talk about how and why it's ending after the series finale. The season finale of the fourth season is also the series finale. It airs this Friday night on Cinemax.

And we're going to talk about all that. But you mentioned something that led me, that I actually had in my notes, which was at what point did you realize Banshee was actually a story about Brock Lotus frustrated lawman because that was been my main takeaway from season four I realized, oh wait, this guy is secretly the star and he's just been having the worst four years ever.

He's certainly in season four he becomes the center of the show. But secretly he was there all along just getting shit on and now... Well, you know, our initial plan was to kill him in the finale of the first season. Oh my God, he's the Jesse from Breaking Bad of Banshee. He, uh, yeah, when we... initially cast him. It was a one-year contract, and the plan was that he was going to die in the finale after going to Oregon and finding out that, you know, something really was fishing, and this Lucas Hood isn't the real Lucas Hood.

And then he was going to come back and get swept up into the rabbit shootout and get killed before he could arrest him. Wow. And so Matt Servido, who played the part all four years, knew that. He signed on for a one year. Yeah, he knew he was there for one year. And then around episode, when we were in production already on episode six or something, we sat him down and asked him if he wouldn't mind staying. And it was a combination of factors. It was, first of all, I, you know, I began to have a sneaking suspicion that Lucas needed a Brock. To keep him in checker to keep him. Yeah, Jordan needs Pippen. Kurt needs Spock. Lucas needs Brock. And also, we just loved Matt Sarita. We didn't want to, we didn't want to fire him. We

no and I'll lose him. So we got him to stay, and then we just had to come up with a good arc over the next bunch of seasons for Bra. I think it's very, he's terrific. And I think it's harder than people realize to play a character who is essentially incredulous the entire time, a character who doesn't know the truth and not come off as a fool to come off tough and strong as the character does. It's a very fine line to play.

And he gets his some hero moments in season four. Yeah, and I think Servito's always kind of played it with this eye role as like, Some hidden force, parentheses, the writers, are not letting me pull back the curtain. Right. But I could pull it back at any minute and show what I know in my heart, which is this is all bullshit. Well, one of the important things for all residents of Banshee is they all seem to know what universe they exist in. Right. You reference that in the creation of the character, but any passers-by on the street, if they go by a massive fist fight on Main Street in the middle of the day, that's just Banshee, right?

Like they all understand a certain level of crookedness. If you live in the cartoon world, you don't wonder how the mallet got behind your back, you know, when you pull it out. It's just there are certain laws of the universe that govern it. I have to say it was this season that I started to think of Banshee as like the Manhattan, as Manhattan is in the Marvel universe where like why would anyone live there when space gods keep crashing through wormholes and Norse, you know, thunder gods are fighting them in the middle of Times Square. It's on the Hellmouth. It's on the Pennsylvania Hellmouth. It is on a Pennsylvania Hellmouth. which I thought was traffic on the Schuyl Expressway growing up,

but no, it's located farther west. Did you ever, were you ever tempted to tell a side story of just, like, the town optometrist, like what their life is like? We, you know, we've had so many ideas. You know, we have so little real estate with 10 episodes a season. And 8 this year. And then 8 in the final season. Like, we've had whole Brock episodes.

We've had whole Burton episodes. We've had whole, you know, we had this vision ones that, you know, you see Burton leave Proctor's house and get in the car and drive off somewhere and stop at a store and pick up some milk and go home to a beautiful wife and two kids. We played all these games. We had a million scenarios. And in the end, when you're telling 10 concentrated episodes, everything falls away, including stuff that really would have been germane to the story. We just can't get it done in 10 episodes. What's interesting about that is, and I find this in talking to many people who create TV for a living, is that you know so much more.

about these characters in the world than the audience ever can or will know because, as you said, there's no real estate for it. But those conversations in the room are just among yourself. I mean, you and the people that you're creating the show with, they inform what you do, right? So you know, you have a sense of what Burton does after hours, for example.

Yeah, well, Burton, we've always kept a real mystery. We've had a lot of scenarios, but we've never landed on anything. And I remember, you know, even early on, Matt Rauch, who plays Burton, used to ask me in the first season, well, you know, what's Burton's sex life like? And what's this, what's that? And I just look at him and say, you know, I don't know. You know, he's just, you know, just all you have to know is that like in a town full of really screwed up dangerous people, Burton is the most screwed up and dangerous of them all.

That's a good note. And, you know, but, yeah, but, you know, I think Roush really worked to find the heart of Burton. And somewhere in there, you do see this really hurt little boy who's trying to please his father figure at some. He's a puppy dog, an attack dog, but a puppy dog. Yeah. He did get, there was a, the way that he took off the glasses in season four before his big 360 fight scene, he, there's a sadness to his face. Or a resignation. There's a resignation, like, here we go again, that I thought was quite.

And that all comes from him. I don't know that we've ever given him much of a note in terms of how to play Burton. I remember when he, when we watched his taped video, when we were first casting the role and, And, you know, we had, you know, he was reading this scene that everybody reads when he first, probably the first scene where he takes off his glasses. And I think it's, it's the scene that ended up in episode three where he confronts the manager of the kickboxer. He wants Proctor's money back because the fight's not going to happen. Right. And then he sort of takes off his glasses and walks into the trailer. And even in his audition, he sort of took off these

glasses and his eyes just went dead. And we just looked at that like, that's the guy. Like, you know, we had not even, like, envisioned it the way he did it, and then that became sort of the guy. Your casting process through these four seasons of Banshee had to have been relatively unique because you needed to cast people who were physically plausible or physically charismatic in addition to being able to deliver lines of dialogue, which is not something that's relevant necessarily on, you know, a network procedural. You mean athletic? You mean, like, able to do stunts and fights? Well, definitely partly that, but I also mean, like, like, Matt Rauch, like, I've met him.

He seems, I wouldn't pick him out of the crowd. as a kickboxing psychopath necessarily, necessarily, maybe after a few drinks. But when he's on screen, there is a physical charisma to his presence and to his performance that is not dependent on the dialogue. You believe that there's something coiled. Well, for him, yeah, the irony there is, of course, he's a Shakespearean actor. That guy can rattle off dialogue better than anyone. And I think over four seasons, he's had like 15 lines.

But, yeah, I mean, casting in general for us was always arduous and it's always difficult. And I think it takes us a long time because we're doing the opposite of central casting. We're always trying to find somebody really different and really unexpected. And in our earlier season, it was really hard, like before the show was on the air and even after our first season, because I think actors were wary of Cinemax. And by the end of season two, once Banschie had really made a name for himself, suddenly we could get, you know, major New York actors. We can get Broadway actors. You know, we even had a one-hour conversation. with Wesley Snipes at one point to come in and play Colonel Stowe.

Should we do a one-hour conversation about that one-hour conversation right now? No, no, it was just, it was very professional. He was incredibly gracious, and it's just, you know, he was very busy. He's very in demand. But, you know, we got to that point where we could talk to actors with names, and we really didn't want very many actors with names because I think it would take you out of Banshee if you knew the name of, you know, if it was a movie star or a TV star, so we were careful about that.

But casting became, we got a much bigger pool after the second season of people who would audition for the show. And then it's just about finding that person who seems to look right in Banshee. Well, then the double challenge also is that because of the nature of the show, you constantly have to restock the larder because some characters don't make it very far

or they fall after a while. And I was doing, when I'm preparing to talk to you, I realized I had never considered who the actor who played Bunker. I think he's terrific on the show. And it's such a unique part, but Tom Pelfrey. So I Google Tom Pelfrey, and I realized he's had this career as a leading man on soap operas and things. And he's a Broadway star as well.

And been on Broadway. And, you know, if you had told me that he had, that he, his life actually was American History X, I would have believed you. Because I had not seen that type of character and that type of performance before. Yeah. Well, now you're talking about Chris Coy. No, I'm talking about, well. Or you're talking about Tom Pelfare. Oh, Tom Pelfrey.

Chris Coy, when I googled him, I see that he was in like a, he played a cannibal on Walking Dead and he was in a hostile movie. So I feel like he's used to a certain level of... Chris is super intense. But Tom comes from like a really strong acting back. Right. I don't think I'm allowed to say what Tom's doing next, but it's big. And, you know, everyone's going to be seeing him pretty soon. I don't think it's...

I'm supposed to talk about it. But, yeah, no, it's... You know, we've gotten luckier more often than not. Like, you never know when you cast someone. We've had one or two where, you know, after casting them, we realized it wasn't one we had hoped for. And so the story arc had to get greatly truncated so that we could get them off the screen.

But for the most part, we've been lucky. Tom Pelfrey and Iron Fist. Is that what we can't talk about? Oh, is it online already? Yeah, it was not. There is. The Marvel's Iron Fist on Netflix. Yeah.

Not as Art Fist, but in a major role, it seems. Yeah. Although I think he would have been good in the lead. So we ended up going right into casting because you're sitting by Colin Farrell's signature. But, um... Oh, John Hodgeman. I know, John.

A lot of good people signed here. We're here at the New York Studios, at Earwolf Studios. A lot of people right on the board here. The thing we have to talk about, which I know you've covered it at length, but I feel like for fans, they still want to hear it again, just about the decision to end the show. Because unlike many shows that end prematurely,

this was a creative decision. And you knew going in, or at least you knew by the close to the conclusion. It was a creative decision. In fairness, it's not the creative decision that I wanted to make. I would have loved to keep the show going. It was a creative decision based on where I felt, you know, what I felt we could accomplish. I would have loved to have felt differently.

I would have loved to have felt that there are two or three more seasons of story to tell here and we're going to have the money to tell them well and the budget. And there was a combination of the pressures of making the same show every year as it got more and more expensive to make the show and the fact that, you know, the Lucas Hood story was never built to last. I mean, that ruse of the fake sheriff, even in a town like Banshee at some point, doesn't work anymore. And at the end of season three, we very organically removed him from the office of sheriff. And I felt doing one more season with him not as the sheriff, but involved, is plausible.

We could tell that story because it's kind of his way out. Yeah. But if suddenly he opens up shop as a private detective in Banshee or becomes a Little League coach or anything else, now it's not the same show anymore. Now it's Archie Bunker's place. You know, it's just a different show. I'd love to see the Little League team and just how many fights there are. among the eight-year-old of Banshee. But it's interesting because you're talking

about the balance between the plausibility of the setup of the show. But as I was watching this fourth season, I realized that there was another balancing act that you pulled off really remarkably, which is between sort of

pulp and genuine heart. And I would imagine that that was a constant challenge to stay on that line. We've talked before about how, no matter how many times Hood was punched in the hands,

head. As far as we know, he never passed or failed a concussion test. He kept coming. But the emotional bruises became almost overwhelming leading up to this last season. I mean, the Chavon murder plays a enormous role, a cast enormous shadow over the season. So to keep that balance going, I wondered if that was also something that was threatening to tip at a certain point. Yeah, I think there are moments where we err on one side or the other. I think there are definitely moments over the seasons where I would have loved to have pulled something back a little bit or pushed something forward a little bit more. I don't think we did it perfectly all the time. I just think we did it well enough that the overall tableau is there. There was an expression that John Romano, one of the writers

from our second season, introduced me to, and I don't remember the original source, but the concept is, you know, real frogs in an imaginary pond. Right. And the idea is we can make the pond as imaginary as we want as long as the frogs are real. And so, yeah, you know, he may not get killed when Chaiton, you know, beats the crap out of him. And, you know, we may defy the laws of physics here and there. We may defy, you know, the laws of healing here and there. And all then, and we may also defy the laws, the statistical laws about how many people are going to walk into this town who want to kill somebody. But as long as the journey of the characters is true and real and human and the pain and the consequences are real, then people will invest in the characters. And once people invest in the characters,

and also we have to kill characters, there have to be consequences, because otherwise there are no mistakes. So if you know at any point that nobody's safe, like really other than Lucas Hood, anyone could die, then the mistakes are real and the emotional stakes are real, and then there are people that you're invested in and that you really care about. And you also have to keep track of the motivation throughout, too, because, you know, it almost seems absurd to remember it now. But the reason that this character, this formerly nameless protagonist is there is because he was, after being released from prison, he wanted to be near the only thing that he knew he had on the world. He wanted to be near his girlfriend and then the daughter he did eventually the daughter

he didn't realize he had. That has to power why he stays or why he goes. And that's the first question in the writer's room every season is why isn't he just getting the hell out of Dodge? Right. And that's always the first question we have to answer. And it gradually, it's sort of it drove the narrative. It's like, okay, he didn't get carry at the end of season one. So why is he staying in season two? And then it's about Deva. And then gradually what it came to be is the understanding, even among, even among the writers and even with me who had, you know, basically been with him from inception, that he's got nowhere else to go, that actually he's never been anyone. Yeah.

And that's the revelation that he comes to and that we all came to, which is that he's been living a fake life for pretty much his entire adult life because, I mean, he was in prison where he had no life and then he was a fake. And his mutant power such as it is, is to get into any place. He can go in, but who is he once he gets there? And so the point is, you know, he didn't leave Banshee because where was he He had nowhere to go. Right.

And so I think his journey, you know, ultimately is to find himself and figure out whether or not he has a life to live beyond Banshee. I won't allude to anything that happens in the Friday's finale. But it was interesting to me that what was set up or at least appeared to be set up as a, you know, more traditional plot arc where he goes to this town and reclaims what was his. And, you know, that basically the idea that Hood and Kerry would have a romantic happy ending, which, you know, again, heading into the finale, that's very possible still, but four seasons in, that relationship has been much more complicated and layered and nuanced than I would have expected. And I wondered how much of that was intent and how much of that was just watching the story play out. The intent was always that there would be consequences. And at some point, we never really believed that Lucas and Carrie get to ride off into the sunset.

She's done too much damage to her family. He's done too much damage to everyone around him. and to her, for them to ride off into the sunset together is basically to do that on the ashes of Chavon and Gordon and, you know, a handful of other people. People who they legitimately loved also. Yeah, who only through their death could they be together. And that doesn't work. I mean, that just doesn't work cosmically, carmically. It doesn't feel good.

It doesn't feel right to the tone of our story. So the idea was always that there were going to be consequences. But then, you know, what it gradually became is we're not going to do this Rachel and Ross thing, Will they or won't they? You know, we got into it pretty quickly in season one. We came out of it in season two, and we never went back. And the reason was, like, who wants to see that? Who wants to see the back and forth and back and forth?

What I wanted to see is they're still the two people, the only two people in town who know each other, truly. So where's the friendship underneath that? And when does that become basically the only thing that's keeping you sane without a love affair? It's very important, I think, that the show is about grown-ups, about adults. I mean, obviously, I wouldn't want children punch you.

each other like this, but also because time is this really inescapable weapon that you use in the show. And it comes up a lot in the fourth season where, you know, Lucas has basically been up on a mountain in having re-imprisoned himself essentially. And then Job is, you know, most, he's screwed up in any number of ways, but the time that was taken from him. You know, that there's the sense of, it's a very, I realize I'm making, I mean, we can go back to the, the, the, the, the, the, uh, the unix and stuff later. But there's this emotional aspect of the show that I have always been quite drawn to where they couldn't escape time. And time has really punished them in a way that they have to reckon with and they can't dance around. And it's also,

you know, that starts from the minute Lugas walks out of those gates because, you know, he lost 15 years of his life in prison and he feels this tremendous urgency to start, like, get it back as fast as possible because he's already halfway through his life and he's lost so much. And that urgency, it kind of propels him into really rash impulsive decisions. He's just like, he's almost like a child lashing out saying, I need this now, I need this now. And that kind of propels him is that need to get it back and get it right as fast as you can because time's running out. Yeah. And you mentioned how you dealt with it in the second season. There's the episode that I've written about it. Many other people have written about that was just so visually

beautiful that I'm blanking on the name. The truth about unicorns. The episode where you give them a taste, you give Lucas and Gary a taste of their happy ending that they had planned and then quite literally burn it all down. And that event had that has consequences in as much as anything else in the show has had consequences going forward. Yeah, I mean, that was our moment to sort of take them out of Banshee for a minute and just really, like, tell the love story and also kind of really underscore what they've lost and that they're not getting it back. Right. In this season, in addition to the changes that we're talking about in terms of plot, there was also the change in setting because you move production from North Carolina to actually to Pennsylvania. Yeah. Nothing, you know, nothing passes for Pennsylvania like Pennsylvania.

Like Pennsylvania, although it was really striking because Pennsylvania looks different in a way that I think actually suited the tenor of the season. So I was wondering how much did that drive some of the decision making to radically change the show as much as you did tonally. This is a, you know, it's a slower season. It's a darker, more emotional season. And the color palette of Pennsylvania suited it in an interesting way. You know, the move to Pennsylvania was an incredible. challenging and it's not what you want to do three seasons into a show we had a lot of standing sets we had a lot of built sets um and we had to cheat quite a bit um you know we had a we had to rebuild the forge from scratch because the forge had not been a set that was built to travel yeah so that was

literally rebuilt from blueprints from scratch um the only set we really moved was um proctor's strip club and office that's the only set that actually that we tried traveled. We couldn't, the caddy was an actual building. We couldn't move that. You know, there was a lot we couldn't move. And that really fed the idea, which I'd initially had. I'd always had this notion for season five that we would jump ahead in time. So once we knew we had to move to Pittsburgh, we decided that's how we, that's how we smooth it over as we'll jump ahead in time. There's a new police station. It would excuse a lot of the new geography. And at the same time moving to, you know, we could never do big shots of the town in Charlotte because it doesn't

look like Pennsylvania. Yeah. The easiest thing about shooting in Pittsburgh was that anywhere you pointed the camera looked like Pennsylvania. We did a lot of shooting in, in North Carolina where you could only shoot in one direction. If you shot the other way, it's not Pennsylvania. And, you know, that freed us up a lot and it freed us up to use helicopters. We have helicopter shots in season four that didn't exist in our first three seasons. We've got helicopter shots of Lucas's car going over hills and these beautiful shots of the town, of the rivers, of, you know, all the stuff that it gives its scope we couldn't do in the first three seasons. Well, you shot the season in summer.

Did you shoot every season essentially in summer? Yeah, we always shot in summer. It never snows and banshee. But the thing that I like about that is summer in Pennsylvania is different than summer in North Carolina because summer in Pennsylvania, and I say this as someone who grew up in Pennsylvania, yet, it's very lush, like the foliage where you were is very lush, but it also, it feels like intensely fake. It's like a monochromatic lushness, like it's about to be taken away.

Maybe this is my own East Coast psychology. It might be. But there was a grimness to it, like underneath all that lushness, I thought really suited the darker tone. Maybe, but we also pick our locations pretty, you know, pretty carefully based on that. But, you know, what was tough about it was we were scouting in March. I mean, we were looking at house and looking at places we were going to shoot, but we always had somebody there to advise us.

just know that you're not going to be able to shoot from there in two months because there's going to be leaves everywhere and you're not going to see through the trees. And, you know, we have those issues. But I think, I would imagine that one of the advantages of moving locations three years into the run is suddenly you have a whole new pool of muscular bearded extras to call on. Because I don't know how you crowdsource this, this number of, sheer number of goons. Yeah. But you have a lot of goons and crowd scenes. There's a shocking amount of people across America who just want to fall down on television. It just, you can find him everywhere.

Yeah, you could just go out on 8th Avenue right now. You know, the stunt guys one day did a, I forgot it, they just did an open casting call for stunt guys in our production offices one Sunday in Pittsburgh. And it went all day. We had people there jumping, flipping, doing flying, just that many stunned people in Pittsburgh, you know, who wanted to get onto TV. Who knew? How many of them drove all night from New York and how many of them were just deep, deep Pittsburgh, summer stock actors? We're going to pause quickly for a word from our sponsors and get back into the interview with Jonathan Trapper.

Jonathan, I'm sure you know, the problem with wearing a rental tuxedo to the award shows that you might get nominated for, you know, when you're ready to accept your Emmy or Cable Ace Award for Banshee, the problem is that it looks like a rental tuxedo and everybody around you knows it. And that's all they're thinking.

That's all the thinking. I mean, they're all big Banshee fans and they're like they couldn't even afford to get this guy in a nice tuxedo. So what if, I'm just going to throw this out there, what if there was a way to get quality crafted Italian wool suits and tuxedos, rented to you online. Not by some guy at the strip mall, online.

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Theblacktucks.com will do whatever it takes to have it fit on time. Whatever it takes. And when your event's over, you just ship your tucks back in the box it came from for free. It's that easy. So what you have to do is this. Visit the blacktucks.com slash BSPN and experience a new way to rest. That's the Blacktalks.com, BSPN. So I guess the challenge of creating a last season of a television show is twofold.

One is you want to make a season of television that stands on its own and bring in new plot points and new excitement and changes. But you also need to resolve a lot of things or you don't need to, but people expect that you're going to resolve some things in a satisfying way or in a way that feels consistent with a show that came before. How did you approach that two-track, that two-track, mission. I don't think we really thought about it like that. We wanted, we knew there was going to be an emotional core to the season that hadn't been there in previous seasons because we knew

going in it was going to be our last season. So we had a very clear path. It wasn't like after episode five we had to decide, oh, now we're going to end the show. We had a very clear path for the characters through all eight, but we set out to really do what we do every season, which is to just you know, take them on an adventure and tell a really compelling story and create a series of subplots that interconnect and intertwine and, you know, which is, I think, a specialty of our show in every season. It's like there isn't the Proctor plot and the Nazi plot and the Native American plot. Like, they're all interconnected and, you know, that's what we really enjoyed doing. And so we just did it again, except, you know, we knew as we got to the end, though, there would be

a finality to things. And, well, you've stacked up terrible things like Jenga tiles on this hellmouth of a town. I mean, you, you reference some of them from, you know, from Proctor's drug running to the, um, the neo-Nazis to the, to Chathen's, um, separatist, uh, gang. Um, this season we had a serial killer. I'm wondering, was there a whiteboard where you threw around other potential terrible things to have in Banshee, like a toxic waste dump or poor cell phone reception? Like what,

why did serial killer win versus all the other potential things you could throw? Yeah, you know, and we've taken some flack for the serial killer plot line. And, you know, in retrospect, I didn't really, I didn't really, I, wasn't thinking of a serial killer as something that's been done so much that you have to sort of, you know, follow rules or do it a certain way or or not do it a certain way. And, you know, if I thought about that, excuse me, maybe I'd have thought of it differently. What I set out to do was just like, I wanted to find another piece of the Bantry subculture we hadn't seen before. Right. And, you know, the road we went down, I had seen this, this clip on CNN of this guy who was being sentenced to life

in prison for murder, and he had these bumps implanted into his head, like these devil horns implanted into his head. And it took me down this whole, you know, body mod rabbit hole. And I thought, you know, oh, the body mods and the Satanists, which are not the same, but there is often overlap. Yeah. You know, that would be interesting if there was a piece of that going on on the outskirts of Banshee. And, you know, we could get into that. And if one of those guys was killing girls, because I needed, you know, what we did need is we needed Brock to have his hands full. Brock finally got the gig and he's like, wow, I'm finally the sheriff. And now they're killing girls right and left, and I can't seem to stop them.

So we wanted that and we wanted Brock to really be stressed to the limit. We wanted, you know, we knew we were going to kill Rebecca at the beginning and we needed that to unfold and take us into a whole new investigation and a new subculture. We wanted something really dark. We really wanted, you know, to make the season dark and more brooding and more dreary and more suspenseful. So it just seemed like a great way to go. And, you know, the fact that it's a serial killer, you know, because that's such a, I guess serial killer itself is such a trope and a buzzword, you know, if I had thought about that, I might have made it something slightly like that we didn't define as a serial killer. That's just, you know, some pissed off body mod guy who got into some stuff. And, you know, and then, you know, in truth, the execution of it wasn't exactly how I had envisioned it.

But, you know, the idea was just to just, you know, get into another layer of Banshee. There's always more underneath the surface of this town. Yeah, and I think the concept that just a regular Joe and his wife living in the outskirts of Banshee, you know, in his John Deere hat and his T-shirt, actually are body mods who are killing girls for Satan. Well, we were joking at the beginning that, you know, what is the town? optometrists look like, but actually the town plastic surgeon. I mean, you're actually suggesting that there's a reason why these quote-unquote ordinary people live here because with so much other stuff going on. Yeah. They're fine. They're welcomed there. It's a totally a reasonable way to exist.

But I've never felt that this season was about a serial killer. If you actually look at the amount of screen time, you know, that Declimbaudi's on the screen, it's not very much. It's really just about all of our characters being sort of having their deck, having the deck of characters reshuffled because someone's killed these girls. But it was not to make the season about let's catch a serial killer. And I think as you watch the whole season, that's really not what the season's about. Did you feel compressed in any way? I mean, I know you were saying how tough it is to do a lot in 10.

This was 8. Yeah, I think we would have, there was more stuff we wanted to do for sure. But not with our central characters. Like we knew pretty early on what everyone's arc was, how we wanted to see it, and who was going to live, who was going to die, where we were going to leave everybody when the show ended. And it was just about not being able to necessarily take all the detours we would have liked to take before we ended.

Again, we will do nothing to spoil the finale, but I will say, and I'm curious if you'd comment on it again without spoiling anything, that when we've spoken about the show in the past, you have suggested that there really was only one way for a show like this to end because you were playing with a sort of archetype character, the man with no name comes into a town. Do you feel, well, two questions then. Do you feel like you finished the arc of this character

in the way that was satisfying to you? Is it what you would imagine from the beginning? Yeah, it's not exactly. I had a different vision when we first started the show, but once the character had really taken hold, the real character, not the character that had existed in my mind, but the character that it became through Anne's performance and through the writing of season one,

I kind of understood by the end of season one, you know, where his ultimate journey had to take him and what, what, where he, where he ended up. Do you feel satisfied and done with this world? Or do you feel that this, this town, you know, which is, as you said, a hellmouth, has more stories in it that might be interesting to you to return to someday? I think, I think the town has an infinite amount of stories. Whenever you create a show, you need that engine. You need the thing that can generate story. And this town has that. I think it would be a great engine. I just don't think it would be for me anymore. I think you reach a point where you want to kind of write in another world and you want to write different things. And at some point, you know, 38 episodes of a show that I really, you know, I had my hand on every script.

At some point, it's exhausting. And you kind of want to, you know, write in a different tone and write different kinds of characters. and not be beholden to all the rules you built. Right. So, you know, I'm sad to have the show off the air. I'm sad to say goodbye to a great group of people and, you know, to a great adventure. And, you know, and honestly, you know, who the hell knows when I'll get another one on. But at the same time, I think, you know, part of that, part of that creative decision to end,

it was also a personal one that I felt that I was, I had kind of given it my best in this world. I love the idea, though, of a show existing in one. form and running its course, but then almost as if a show that wasn't designed to be an anthology show could become one, where someone else could step in and tell their version of a crime story in Banshee. I mean, I don't think the world is set up to allow that sort of thing, but, you know, I still dream of a world where you could do like a Chinese fire drill with medical shows and procedurals and cable prestige shows and, you know, and see how it would shake out. Yeah, I wouldn't be a bad thing if somebody came in and Cinemax, you know, got Matt Servito and

Tom Pelfrey back, so you have the police station, and then you brought in some additional characters and started the whole thing again. But, you know, you're right, people move on, actors move on, and networks move on. Well, so we've touched on this a little bit in the past interviews, but, you know, one of the things that really drew me to Banshee in the beginning was I was so struck by the fact that this was a show that was very, very pulpy and drew on genre fiction that I really, really love, but it was coming from to more, quote-to-quote literary fiction writers who created it you and David Schickler that I loved the kind of writing that you did. And I was very excited to see you playing in this

sandbox. And so at the time I asked you if it was, if there was any sort of learning curve in terms of convincing the industry that, oh, no, you really love diehard. You really love dime store novels. You could do this. And then the question for today, now that the show is ending is, have you had to do the opposite now? Have you said, well, no, I'd like to do something that is less dependent on rocket launchers? I haven't had that problem yet. I'm hoping I won't. In the four years I was doing the show,

I also, you know, I did the movie of This Is Where I Leave You, and I've written a number of other screenplays and, you know, some of which are creeping towards production now. And I did some work on vinyl, and I did some work on, you know, some new shows for Cynamax. And so I think I've kept my finger enough in different, that no one's going to sit there if I, you know, come in to, you know, to pitch a love story and say, well, you know, where's the explosion?

Right. Although there was a love story in Banshee. There just was also... Look, I think Banshee is the ultimate dysfunctional family show. I mean, I think that's what it is, really. You have to come in thinking that, right? I mean, you can't. I don't know if there's anyone... Yeah, I mean, if you get a room of writers together to write Banshee, you're not hiring people who are like, well, I have a lot of strong opinions about handguns and brass knuckles. Right, and we're not a procedural. Like, you know, if you, you know, I mean, I I'm always amazed when every once in a while on Twitter, some cop or law enforcement guy will tweet, you know,

when are you guys going to get it right? Hire a consultant. And like, so I want to say, first of all, we do hire consultants when we feel we need to. Yeah. But the fact is we're not interested in being a procedural. We're not interested in showing you how we follow forensic leads. Like, it's only in service of the characters.

And nobody who watches our show wants to see, you know, Lucas get into facial recognition software. No, there's a whole genre of, you know, There's a whole genre of literature that I love that is ostensibly the mystery books or thriller books. But I don't know if you're like a writer like James Crumley. I don't know if you ever read him. But like I could not tell you a single thing that happens in his books. I don't understand the plot.

I don't care because it's a world that you just want to spend time in and it's so weird or unsettling or violent or sexual or whatever. And there's a case to be made for that, especially on TV when, you know, if you want to see things done by the book, there are reality shows or procedural shows. And if you want to see the procedurals, you can watch CBS every night of the week. Yeah. You know, but, you know, I don't think you're going to see anybody tear someone's throat out on CBS. So, you know. Are there FBI agents like Eliza's character this season? Maybe.

We don't know. But it's much more interesting to have a character like hers with a crack pipe and her in her. We're only interested on this show in seeing the world through our prism. And, you know, if you're going to apply, you know, the prism of procedurals or, honestly, if you're going to apply the prism of reality to our show, you're not going to have a very good time. So the TV world is changing so quickly that I think it's fair to say that it's changed even during the years that you've been in production on Banshee. Oh, yeah, it's a tremendous amount. And you've alluded to the fact that you're working on some other projects.

If it's okay to name something, I'd love for you to do that. But I'm just curious also how you how are you reentering the landscape of pitching and development and what opportunities do you see in the changes that have come since you got this one through? I haven't had to reenter it too hard because I'm in an overall deal at HBO. so I kind of have my home base. I can't go sell to Netflix and Amazon and FX, as much as sometimes it would be really exciting to do that. And they've all, assume, they've all had projects come up that I've kind of been, oh, I wish I was free to go pursue that.

But, you know, I'm actually being pretty well compensated to develop at HBO and Cinemax. So, you know, right now I have a show. I've written a pilot for Cinemax that I believe is going to go to series that's called Warrior, which I'm doing with Justin Lynn and with the Bruce Lee Estate. and it's a show that takes place in 1870s, Chinatown, San Francisco. So it's both a period piece and, you know, a bit of our history. And at the same time, it's got at its center a very serious martial artist. I know the best way to describe the show is it's kind of gangs of New York in Chinatown, San Francisco, 1870s.

I'm in. And, yeah, I think it's a lot of fun. The pilot was a lot of fun to write. It's the first thing I had to write that required really a significant amount of research. Because Banshee was mostly called from your own life. Yeah, the Banshee, we just made it. Well, no, but you could make it up. Right, of course.

You know, and this, you know, I mean, 1870s China Town was not a great time. 1870s was a terrible time to be Chinese in America. And there's really not a great amount of historical resources on our side for that time because I guess, you know, it's not something that people were very proud of in retrospect. But, you know, there was a lot going on there. It was the end of the building of the railroad. The railroad was basically like the building of the transcontinental railroad, sorry, was essentially the same as the internet. It changed the economy all over America.

And the Chinese who actually were brought in to build that railroad, to be the labor behind that, ended up becoming the scapegoats for the disastrous economy that followed. And they were just treated horribly and there were pogroms and there were riots. And then within China town, you had these gangs that rose up the tongs. And so the show Warrior is really about the Tong Wars between all these Chinese factions fighting for control of Chinatown. That sounds really exciting. It also speaks to what TV series can do. I mean, the best ones are load-bearing mechanisms that you can put all of history, culture, class, today's issues, yesterday's issues, all into it. Plus, if you can put jump kicks into, you're off-or-been-start.

You get somebody who can move like Bruce Lee while you're at it. Yeah, so you've set the bar low for yourself on that one. That's very exciting. We should also, I did want to just go back a couple things on Banshee now that it is over. Do you have a favorite fight scene from the series or a favorite sequence? It doesn't have to be specifically a fist fight, but just one thing that you look back and you're like, oh, we nailed that one. I'm incredibly critical of what we do. That's my job.

I know most people's favorite fight scene is Nola and Burton. And I think that was a thing of beauty. completely not what I was going for when I envisioned the fight. But what were you going for? I thought it would be, I just didn't want to do a real kung fuy fight between them. And an overly choreographed fight, I wanted it to be a really savage, brutal, you know, balls to the wall, naturalist fight. Right. And, you know, the stunt team got inspired and took it in a direction.

And in the end, I was just really honestly shouted down by everyone else who loved it. And so I sat back. And then when it was done, like I thought it was a thing of beauty. It was not what I would have done. That's why TV is a collaborative medium. Yeah, but those two characters, like,

they deserved that medium to do it in. So I think I was wrong. You know, and so I think that that ended up being, I think, probably one of our most famous, probably our most famous fight. The sequence I really loved, just because it came off so close to how it was written and it really works.

And it's sort of both, you know, violent and gritty and absurd all at the same time. I hope we're going to say the same one. Well, I don't know, because it's not a fight really, but it's when Chaiton and his guys take down the military convoy. Oh, that's, yeah. And then Lucas and Brock show up, just Chaiton taking on the Marines with a bow and arrow. I just thought that whole thing was so iconic and mythical and really defined Chaiton. And then, of course, you know, connected to that, which is probably what you're thinking is, is the siege episode and the caddy, which I thought was just brilliant from beginning to end. I think the siege episode might be the most incredible.

sustained thing that the show accomplished. But I think my favorite is when Lucas ends up tied up on the flatbed truck of the fat gangster. Because that was the moment where I was like, this show is so beautifully committed to the absurdity of this at times. And then, again, the heart's there and the blood is certainly there too, but the balance is necessary. And I love that it was just insane.

It was an insane moment. I'll tell you, I spent, you know, Adam Targum wrote episode five, the siege on the caddy and OC directed it. And I spent a lot of time on the script with Adam. You know, I really, we worked it and re-we worked it. But at some point, I checked out and Adam had to do all the, you know, he had to carry the lion's share of that into production and O.C. had to shoot it. And it was an impossible shooting schedule.

And for whatever reason, I don't remember what I was doing, but I was not there for the entire production of that episode. And, you know, those two guys kind of worked, I think pretty much around the clock for 10 days to make that episode happen. And it just turned out to be like pretty much, I think, a perfect episode. Yeah. It was just very impressive. Everything that one liked about Banshee was in that hour.

Yeah, no, it was really a great hour. So I've had some experience over the last few years. I moderated two panels for you guys at various Comic-Con. You're very good moderator. I recommend anyone who's listening who needs a moderator at Comic-Con. Thank you. That's my spot. Well, the thing about Comic-Con panels is that it's the friendliest room you could ever be in front of.

I was nervous about the first one that I realized everyone here loves everything that's happening on the stage, and it's just I just have to conduct it. I have to do nothing. But the one thing that I got from that experience more than anything else was the level of obsession and devotion that this show is engendered among a surprisingly diverse. And I don't even mean just like in terms of appearance or race. I mean in terms of background and profession and age of this fan base. So the question is for you, person who created it and who ended it, do you think the fans are going to let this go?

Are they okay? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, fans are intense while it's going on, and then they move on. There's way too much TV being made right now, and they'll find something else if they haven't already. But yeah, the diversity is huge. I mean, because, you know, I'll sometimes go do book readings and book talks, and my book talk audience is like the opposite of a Comic-Con audience. It's generally, you know, middle-aged and older, and it's a lot of women. And, you know, at every book talk I've done since Banshee hit the air, there'll be some kind of, you know, 60-year-old woman towards the back who raises her hand and asks me, you know, when's Banshee coming back? Yeah.

And it's just, that's been really gratifying that it sort of crossed all those lines. Look, you know, one should probably, it's probably a bad idea for a person ever to bring up their boss's mother. But one of the first things that Bill Simmons' mother ever said to me was... Let's talk about Bill Simmons' mother. She loves Banshee. That's what I was going to say. She said, I love the show. A woman of breeding and taste.

That's what I'm saying. She loves Banshee and wanted to talk to me about it when I was writing about it. So that's a surprising demo outreach that you were able to accomplish. I think anytime you do something that you're fully committed to, like you can't, you can't, I remember when I learned to water ski, the biggest lesson when you're water skiing is you can't sneak into the wake. You have to point boat skis and charge into the wake. And I think anytime you do any kind of, you know, show like this, and any, any, anything that's going to kind of push the envelope, you can't kind of tentatively push the envelope.

You have to push it as hard as you can. And, you know, I think Greg used an expression. Greg Ytane is who really, you know, helped build the show with us. Greg said he would rather fail spectacularly than not try. And so, you know, we just aimed at failing spectacularly, and luckily we didn't. I think that's a good motto for most creative enterprises. So we're going to put this up, a conversation up, before the finale ends on before the finale airs on Friday, May 20th.

Any words that you would give to people who are going to be listening to this podcast and then being very excited for the finale to prepare them, to preview them on what it is? No, I think the finale is another episode that we worked really hard to give everything a Banshee episode should give. And at the same time, I think there's a really strong,

you know, emotional resolution in it. And, you know, there's some surprises along the world. away. And I know I got very emotional writing it. Like even when I finished writing the last page, I got emotional. I got emotional shooting it. I got emotional cutting it. And, you know, it's really, it's a farewell. The episode is a strong farewell. And I think, you know, fans of the show should sort of sit back. And, you know, and everyone likes to live tweet the show. I can't do it. I just need to watch it and sort of revel in it and let the feelings come because there's a lot of emotion in this episode. What's Lucas Hood's real name? Gary. Do you like the way I did that?

I knew you would tell me at the end of it. It's beautiful. Gary. What's his last name? Schwartz. I knew he was one of us. That was why I always liked the show. Good to know. It's going to happen. That's going to actually get out there as like his real name. That's okay. 20 minutes ago, I said that he had a mutant power. So people are probably thinking they're somehow tied into the X-Men universe. So this is good. You want to leave with a little bit of misinformation to keep people talking. You don't need to give it. I find it gets there whether you give it or not. That's just use me. I'm just a dissembler. That's what this podcast for. Jonathan, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. Congratulations. On the end of the show. I'm going to miss. I'm going to miss the show a lot.

I'm going to miss it too. We've got to get another one on quick so we can keep doing this. Keep doing talking to me about it. Yeah. Perfect. Absolutely. Thanks, Jonathan. Hey guys, remember the problem with wearing a rental tuxedo is that it looks like a rental tuxedo. Everybody knows it. They're watching you. They're judging you. The Black Tux is changing that by offering quality crafted Italian wool suits and tuxed for rent online. Select for complete. looks, build your own starting at just 95 bucks. To get started, visit the blacktucks.com slash BSPN and experience a new way to rent. That's the blacktucks.com slash BSPN.