The Watch - How ‘Joker’ Might Fit Into Superhero Movie Canon and a Conversation With Fiona Shaw | The Watch

Episode Date: April 5, 2019

Several trailers were shown at CinemaCon this week, giving us a peek at what the movie industry will look like in the months to come (1:53). The trailer for ‘Joker’ dropped this week and it looks like a superhero movie pivoting towards prestige (10:20), and an over/under on how many episodes of Jordan Peele’s ‘Twilight Zone’ we’ll actually end up watching (17:09). Then, a conversation with Fiona Shaw ahead of the Season 2 premiere of ‘Killing Eve’ (39:11). Host: Chris Ryan Guest: Sean Fennessey and Fiona Shaw Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, guys, it's Liz Kelly, and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. April is a huge month for TV, and starting this weekend, the Recapables feed returns to give you in-depth analysis on your favorite TV shows, including Killing Eve, billions, and many more. There will also be a special pre-capable series on the Recapables feed on the final season of Game of Thrones, where our staff forecasts what will happen every Sunday on the show. So make sure to subscribe now before the premiere of Killing Eve and Game of Thrones on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, thanks for listening to today's episode of The Watch.

Today, I was joined by Sean Fennacy to talk a little bit about the Joker trailer and some of the other footage he saw in Vegas at CinemaCon because Sean spent a couple of days there checking out the big movie theater exhibitors convention where they partner with the NPA and they have studios come and show their wares. So Sean talked to us a little bit about that

and we talked for a while about Joker. And then Sean and I also talked about Twilight Zone, which is a show, the original version, the Rod Serling version that he loved, and the new version that's executive produced by Jordan Peel. After that, I was joined by Fiona Shaw, who plays Carolyn on Killing Eve, because Killing Eve back. She was lovely. She called in to talk to me for about 15 minutes about the second season of Killing Eve.

Just a quick note on Killing Eve. We are doing a recapables on Killing Eve throughout the season, Kaya? Yes. Throughout the season. So you can check that out. Allison Herman and Kate Hollowell are going to be on the recap. Capables for you talking about killing Eve every week. Greenwald and I will probably talk about it on Monday,

but I would imagine this is going to become largely a Game of Thrones podcast after the 14th. And so yeah, we got all your killing Eve stuff right here. So let's get into the pod with Sean. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan.

I am editor at the ringer.com. And joining me in the studio, my own Cincinnati kid. It's Sean Fennacy, back from the desert. Yes, no one to hold him, no one to fold them, no one to leave Vegas. Sean is here to talk about a couple things. So we wanted to talk a little bit about, Sean just spent a couple days in Vegas at Cinemacon. That's right. Yes.

And essentially went to the desert to watch a ton of trailers and a ton of footage for movies that are upcoming. But I wanted to ask him about a couple specifically. And then Sean is also a huge Twilight Zone guy. True. True story, yeah. And so I wanted to talk to him a little bit about Jordan Peel's reboot of the Twilight Zone. zone. So let's start let's start with Vegas. How did it go? How was it?

You were there alone, which I always think is like a tough beat for Vegas. Not for me. Yeah, because you like to play. My two favorite things to do literally are to be alone and watch a movie and to be alone and play poker. But you're never actually ever really alone in Vegas, which is part of like the permeating

problem there. That's true. I do have an extraordinary power to ignore everyone around me though. And that is my superpower. I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about superhero and what I saw in Vegas. I had a great time. CinemaCon is a fascinating sociological experiment. For people who don't know, what is Cinemacon?

It's essentially an industry convention. The theater owners and exhibitors of America come to this convention. This is thousands of people, and it all happens at Caesar's Palace, and the National Association of Theater Owners and the Motion Picture Association of America essentially put this event on annually.

And what happens is the studios come and they present their wares to all of the theater owners, because something that is a little bit misunderstood about Hollywood is that it's not just that movies happen and then they make money and then all that money goes to the studios. In fact, the people who show those movies to Americans are taking a big profit and they're a big participant, they're a partner in the business of movies. So, you know, when you've got a new Marvel movie, Disney has to come and show the theater owners. Here's all the Marvel stuff we're going to do this year. Here are all the live action

Disney remakes we're going to make. You know, Paramount shows its next horror movie. Warner Brothers shows its prestige fair for Oscar season. And so it's kind of one long, convention where people are kind of rubbing elbows and meeting and greeting, followed by these presentations, these sort of bookmarked presentations where they say, these are the 10 or 12 most important movies coming out. It seems like there was a lot of, I mean, we associate those kind of, at least I associate those kind of long-term calendar presentations with Kevin Feigy and MCU where they're like, here's the next 10 Marvel movies with a bunch of TKs in there to keep you guys guessing as to who or what we're working on. But now I think that that's become, since

so many different studios are working in IP and working in these long extended franchises, even if they're not as tightly sort of managed as MCU is, but even DC, I'm sure the Warner Brothers is like, we have all these different, here's the Harley Quinn movie, here's the Joker movie, etc. Yeah, the thing is, is that certain studios approach these things differently. I thought that Disney's approach this year was surprising and in part because of what you're describing, which is like the MCU is so dominant and so self-contained, that Disney's, doesn't really need to go out of its way at this exhibitor's show and really show its whole hand. You know, the Disney presentation was fairly muted as these go. It was the shortest one by far.

It had the fewest amount of original footage with the exception of the first 20 minutes or so of Toy Story 4 they showed. But aside from that, you know, they've just recently purchased an absorbed Fox. So they will be releasing 22 films this year, which is a lot for a major studio because they've absorbed all these great Fox properties. But they just didn't show us a lot. You know, they showed us a clip from Avengers 4 and they showed us a clip from X-Men and, you know, there were a handful of things that they did, but the... So they're quote-unquote releasing X-Men? Yes. So, in fact, I thought one of the relatively interesting nuggets that came out of this is that Emma Watts, who is one of the presidents of production at Fox, identified Dark Phoenix as the

final chapter in this X-Men story. Yeah. Which led a lot of people to believe that, you know, Disney is essentially absorbing the X-Men property, and they're going to restart. Maybe they'll recast. It's unclear. Yeah. You know, presumably Simon Kinberg will continue to be involved. But, you know, that's the sort of thing that, like, gets communicated at these conventions that is somewhat inside baseball, but also really material affects the kind of movies that you see. It's an interesting event, you know, like I noted to you when we were talking about earlier this week that Warner Brothers just kind of put on a bang up show.

Yeah. Like everything that they rolled out just seemed exciting and seemed like an event. They showed it chapter two footage. And then they brought up the entire cast from the film. They showed Edward Norton's motherless Brooklyn, which is this long, gestating Jonathan Leitham adaptation that looks like an Oscar movie. They showed a clip from the Goldfinch, which is another literary adaptation that's an Oscar movie. In addition to showing that DC Birds of Prey footage that you talked about, you know, there was a lot of Jason Momoa chest beating about Aquaman's incredible success, which is like, that movie made over a billion dollars. It's the biggest DC movie.

Yeah. So, you know, every studio is different in how they present things like I missed Paramounts, for example, today because I came back. But it is a truly unique convergence of media fanboy hype and genuine industry. sort of like boredom. There's a lot of mechanical aspects to this. And all the things that happened at the convention itself are companies showing digital projection and the new technology that there's like, you know, innovations in seat technology. There was a lot of talk about reclining chairs and how that's changed the game. Yeah. And then the subtext of all of this is everybody is very proud of how much they've accomplished and the record-breaking numbers. But then

also the complex ideas around, well, just because a ticket price went up doesn't mean you necessarily made more money. And if ticket sales are declining, Netflix is kind of the boogeyman in the room throughout this conversation. Did they get mentioned at all? Like do people, like in, whether it's in cocktail hour or on stage, do they, I know Helen Mirren had like some, a weird jag that she was like, fuck Netflix. Yeah, she was there to present a movie with Bill Condon called The Good Liar that's coming out later this year. And she said Netflix, I think she said, we all love Netflix, but fuck Netflix. And I think that that also was sort of the, the sub-theme of this entire presentation. Netflix, of course,

joined the MPA this year. And so Charles Rivkin, who is the chairman and CEO of the MPAA, noted that the MPAA is stronger and the industry is better when everybody is working together, which was sort of a, you know, he's a politician. And it was a very political act to say we have to welcome Netflix in in an effort to encourage them to put their movies into theaters. Because if they put their movies into theaters, they can win and so can we. But if they don't, then that tension sits there very oddly. And it's awkward. I mean, nobody really gets up there and says the word Netflix. Right. What was the best trailer you saw while you were there?

Hmm. Definitely the only Fox movie that they showed us, which was Ford versus Ferrari. Huh. Which is James Mangold's tale of essentially the Ford Motor Company's effort to win Lamonds and Carol Shelby and Carol Shelby and Ken Miles's efforts. Ken Miles is the driver and Carol Shelby, the car designer. It stars Matt Damon and Christian Bale. And it felt... What extreme thing did Bail? do to himself. You know what? He's speaking in his voice. Really? And he looks very slick and handsome, and he's a race car driver. And that was actually part of what was appealing to me. Yeah.

Is it was not this Kabuki theater thing that he likes to do. But Matt Damon has his haircut from American Hustle and his action. Matt Damon, that Damon looks good. He's just playing a Southerner. Okay. Which is a little bit of a stretch. He's wearing a cowboy hat, you know, he's essentially a, I don't even, he's essentially like a rogue Western push the limit kind of guy. He was like, we can build this car faster and we can do it in 90 days and we can beat the Italians. And it's a tale of like American ingenuity that looks very exciting. It just looks like a very up close. Like, I'm not even a big race car movie guy, but this, I really like James Mangold's movies and this looks like a good use of his skills.

And the truth is that I hadn't seen a single photo about the production of this movie. I didn't really know it was even happening to it. And there's also like a competing Ferrari movie that Michael Mann has or hasn't been working on on and off for the last couple of years. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think that's happening anymore. I'm not really sure it's in that Michael Man vortex. But that was probably the single one that I had the least expectation for, didn't really know what was happening. And then when it happened, I was like, wow, I want to see that right now. I'd be fascinated to see if, like, a movie like that still gets any traction anymore.

Because one of the things that kind of jumped out at me, and we could talk a little bit about the Joker trailer now. Yeah. Is how much superhero films and comic book movies permeate popular culture and dominate movie making at this point, where they are now starting to more regularly fill buckets that we used to save. So, like, you see the Joker trailer and you're like, well, he's probably going to get nominated for an Oscar for this. You know, not obviously Heath Ledger did too. But the same way that Black Panther wound up being a Best Picture candidate, the same way that I think people see some of these superhero films.

And we've talked even about Infinity War or Endgame rather being a candidate for Best Picture as on a kind of return of the king level. Like it is kind of fascinating to see these stories that we relegated to popcorn movies for the summer. Now we're like, I think, generally taking it more seriously or at least in different ways. I think that that's true. I, I, the Joker is very self-consciously prestigious. You know, the callbacks to King of Comedy and taxi driver and Joaquin Phoenix's presence in general, I think indicate an effort towards a seriousness, you know, pardon the pun. but I'm not sure if that's the goal of most of these movies.

I think DC in particular, like Shazam is out on Friday. I've seen Shazam. It's a very fun movie. It is not even modestly aspiring to even the like heavy intentionality of endgame. Like it has none of it. It's pure pop. It's a pop movie. Aquaman is a pop movie.

I think it's just because the Joker character is just larded with all of this complexity and all these moral hangups about chaos and good versus evil. evil. And there are all these, like, big themes inside that character that every time somebody does something with that character, because it was the same thing when Jack Nicholson portrayed him, too. You know, it was not dissimilar. I don't know if anything else I saw in that respect really resembles what Joker's

trying to do. Like, they showed us a little bit of Birds of Prey and the casting crew of that film talking about the production of Birds of Prey. This is Kathy Yan's expansion, I guess, of the Harley Quinn story. It's her, like, gang movie. It's like the team-up movie. It's a team-up movie. And Mary Elizabeth Winsett is in it, and Rosie Perez and Journey Smilil.

at Bell and it looks like a very fun movie. It looks like a different sort of movie for DC, but it also does not look prestigious at all. It looks popcorn. You know, I just think Joaquin Phoenix plays a tortured guy who turns evil is something that we've seen work before. Like, he's just done that like nine or ten times

and he fell very at home. I thought that the Joker trailer was good. I don't know if I had the like, my eyes are falling out of my head excitement for it. It's a movie I will definitely see. You and I have talked about Todd Phillips's movies in the past. I actually like Todd Phillips's movies. He seemed like he was in great.

spirits and very proud of the movie when he presented the trailer in Vegas. It was interesting to, I don't know if Zee B. said this on stage in Vegas or if this is in like a separate interview that she did, but she was talking about how they were basically constantly rewriting the script on the set. I believe that. I mean, she wasn't there for the presentation of the trailer, so I'm not sure. But I mean, who knows? My one fatigue about it is just like another origin story, which you and I've talked about so many times. Like this is now the origin story of the villain and that is now, we're kind of like reaching, we're going down the rung of the latter every time to say

now we have to do the origin story of Captain Marvel and now we have to do the origin story of this person and it's funny in talking to Amanda Dobbins a little bit about this stuff she was relieved and excited to be getting origin stories because she doesn't know anything about the arcana of these characters but for me like I don't know I've seen a lot of Joker there's a lot of Joker there's a lot of Joker there's a lot of Joker

did you really need to know he had a fucked up relationship with his mom to know that that's why he's like that now I will watch Joaquin Phoenix in any movie and it does look very good and I'm sure it will be artful I think that the thing is is my point was more that they took all the money that they would spend on. And I think this is a more modestly budgeted film, which is sort of what DC is playing at now, which is like we're going to try a bunch of different things at different price points. And we think if you put DC at the top and do enough different stuff in the movie,

we're still going to like make our nut plus more. That's definitely the thinking with Shazam. Yeah. And so they put all the money that went into, you know, Patrick Wilson underwater Kendahl, stuff in Aquaman is making an authentic 70s, early 80s subway experience in New York City for Joker. Yeah. Which I am, that's fine.

That's fine. I'm good with it. I like your fatigue at Joker at like high-end superhero movies. It's not that. I think it's just if the intention is to pivot superhero movies into prestige movies full stop, I don't think that makes any sense. Just make prestige movies and make superhero movies. Yeah.

But I also think that. Even in comic books over the years, there was always a prestigious crossover event or a painterly like Alex Ross edition where they would tell a separate story. There's always a place for those kinds of things. But if we're driving towards superhero movies are for awards, that is exasperating to me. You know, it's funny, I sent you a link to an interview between J.C. Shandor, the director of Triple Frontier and Tony Gilroy. And when Tony Gilroy introduced the movie to the director's guild on this podcast, he said, you know what I like about the? this movie is it's not trying to pick your pocket for an award. You know, it's just a movie. It's an action movie that is about these guys on this mission.

And there's something cool about that. And I never heard that phrase, pick your pocket for an award. And so if there's a great Joker movie directed by Todd Phillips, who is a very successful filmmaker starring Joaquin Phoenix, arguably the most talented actor of his generation, awesome. Yeah. But if the weight that comes with that is, will he win best actor? Like, I host an Oscar show, and I'm still just kind of like, ah, whatever. Like, who cares? I get what you're saying. I mean, I think that I obviously don't know the numbers. It feels like there's more and more stuff on screens than ever before. We know that's the case with TV. The movies of consequence seem to be shrinking.

So I think movies like Triple Frontier get interrogated in a way that they wouldn't if they were just a Robert Aldrich movie from the 70s. That was one of four movies that hit the theaters that week, right? Yeah, I think that's a good point. And I think because in the Warner's presentation you had sitting alongside Joe, you had the Goldfinch and Motherless Brooklyn and Chapter 2, all of which, and also Dr. Sleep, which is Mike Flanagan's sequel to The Shining. Yeah. All of which I thought looked good.

And all of which I was like, wow, I really want to see that now, which is obviously the point of what a trailer is supposed to do. It was exciting, but it was also sort of like, those are all adult movies. And they are movies that were like, oh, they don't make movies like this anymore. But they do make the Goldfinch. You know, they do make Doctor Sleep. and it's okay to have Joker and also have all these other movies together. The Disney presentation was sort of the opposite of that.

You know, it was just, it was all IP. Yeah, it was just Aladdin and Lion King and stuff like that. Exactly. Okay, speaking of IP, I want to talk to you a little bit about Twilight Zone. So... Can you tell me what your relationship to this show is? One of those things where somehow I think I know the plot to more episodes than I've actually seen.

So it speaks to... how Twilight Zone narrative mechanics are actually their own genre and have probably permeated, you know, my brain in ways, which when I actually watch a Twilight Zone episode, I'll be like, oh, this is a Twilight Zone? Right.

It's like how every novel is like a riff on Gatsby or something. Yeah, or it's like the same way, it's like an O. Henry thing where most people haven't read a lot of O. Henry, but like he basically, it sets up a lot of the mechanics for stories. So, I think my relationship to it is basically one that's like one step removed from being an obsessive about the actual show. And when I have watched it and what I will say about Jordan Peel's reboot of it, and we're going to get into his level of authorship about it, is I forgot how goofy it was.

And I think that there is like an inherent kind of like silliness. In my mind, when we were going into this as we've been kind of ramping up towards Twilight Zone coming back, I was like, oh, it's interesting to see what Twilight's Dunes like in the face of Black Mirror and the relationship between digital technology. And they're not exactly like that. It's not exactly, they're not exactly like prescriptive about society as much as they're just like really weird and sometimes a little bit silly. I really think it depends episode to episode. And also it is a complete cultural context thing where in the 1960s when Rod Serling was writing a huge number of these episodes, he had a. very, he had a poison pen for his time.

There was an ability to contextualize disagreements over race or class status or just the pure experience of people in American life that at the time was very provocative. And now if you go back and look, it seems a little bit campy or schlocky or sticky or to your point, just sort of like done before. You know, my favorite episode of that show is to serve man, which is about aliens arriving on Earth. and consistently saying to the American people that they have come to this nation, this world, to serve man.

And ultimately at the end, we realize that to serve man is the name of a cookbook that they have in which they are taking people to their home planet to cook them to serve man for a dinner party. And that's like pretty joking. It's pun, yeah. But it's also just a very clever and involving episode. And a lot of episodes are like that.

And that doesn't mean that they're not about anything. It just means they've aged kind of oddly. Black Mirror, and Jordan Peel has talked about this, it has kind of fucked with the ability to do this allegorical 30 or hour-long minute show. Yeah. Because that show has taken things to extremes. You know, that is truly a dark show. Yeah, and it seems so much rooted in our dependency and the way in which we live our lives

through these screens and through digital, all the things that digital life has done to our dopamine levels and our pleasure centers and our anxieties and our fears. Black Mirror seems to be like an outgrowth of that. Yeah, I think the best way for me to describe it is the end of a Twilight Zone episode often makes you say, huh, or wow. And the end of a Black Mirror episode often leaves you saying, shit. I feel terrible about myself. God damn.

Yeah. And that's obviously, I think that that resonance is clear in society now. Like we're in a time right now where people in some ways kind of feast on feeling bad about things. Yeah. And Black Mirror's success, I think, is kind of driven by some of that feeling, that kind of like, oh, the darkness and despair is so true to life. And there's something meaningful in that. Twilight Zone to me is pretty pop. You know, its ideas are pretty pop.

And its success is in being able to cast old actors who had been shunted aside by the movie industry and putting them on TV. Or young actors who had not yet cracked the big screen, people like Robert Redford, and spotting them. And, you know, like going back and watching the show, I think the show still holds up incredibly well, less so the 80s reboot. Yeah. And maybe we can use that as a way to talk about what's going on with the show now. But it's just a different sort of products.

Like if you're going for a soul-crushing reality about life in America, I don't think the Twilight Zone does that anymore. So what was the thing about the original Serling version that you count as one of your favorite things that you've ever seen? Like what episodes? Or even just like what's the quality about it that you think you respond? on it to too much. Is it the tidiness of the writing or is it? That's a great question. Yeah, I mean, for one, every episode's 23 minutes. So it's a very compact piece of storytelling. You know, it has to be, the logline has to be very clear. The idea

has to be very clear. I mean, there's over 150 episodes of this show. So there are plenty of clunkers. But the ones that stand out are really kind of mind-blowing, especially, it's when you see them too. I'm sure if people, I'm sure if a 13-year-old is watching Jordan Peel's Twilight Zone, he or she will have a different reaction to when I watch it. And I'm like, oh, boy, like, I know exactly where this is going. It's super predictable. It's not as exciting as I want it to be. It's way too drawn out.

I think also Serling had a kind of cleverness that was unique only to him. And he was an innovator and a real otore before that was a known idea in American movie making. It was truly from his brain and his mind. And he got his start writing for live television for Playhouse 90. And a lot of his work, even his, you know, he wrote Requiem for Heavyweight. He wrote very tough, difficult, thoughtful drama. And he could also write great sci-fi and he could write mystery and he could write noir. He really had an ability to do a lot of different kinds of storytelling.

And if you look at every episode, some episodes are Westerns. Some take place in outer space. That's just an amazing skill. It's such an interesting way of translating an obvious obsession with genre, magazine, and short stories of your childhood from like the 30s and 40s and 50s of reading, you know, what 10-cent Western novels. and, you know, like space stories and then elevating it to a level and tying it into a collective kind of feeling at the time.

Yeah. He honestly is my platonic ideal for a creator because he's hyperliterate, but he's a capital E entertainer. You know, those two things are really important to him. And so that's just the kind of stuff that I love. If you look at the filmmakers that I love, the writers that I love, there are people who do both things who are like deeply involved in their thing and obsessive about their thing, but also never want to lose your attention.

Well, that's exactly how I described Jordan Peel. 100%. He is in that lineage. But I don't think people should go into this show thinking it's Jordan Peel's The Twilight Zone, which I think it's largely been advertised as. And that's, it's a fascinating conversation on a couple of different levels. It's interesting to see someone like Peel parlay what is well, well, well deserved success into Jordan Peel industries.

but have to use his name and vice and his personality as a kind of sales point for it. Because, you know, for most filmmakers, they're either they'll produce stuff or whatever, but like they are not, with the exception of like Spielberg, Hitchcock, trying to think of a couple of other people, like James Cameron maybe. Yeah, and I mean, Spielberg, of course, was involved in the Twilight Zone movie, and he was a producer, I believe, of the rebooted Twilight Zone. the 80s. So, yeah, you're right. Affixing a kind of name brand entertainer to this property feels essential in a lot of ways.

It's hard to get it off the ground without saying that, you know, what this person's name implies. From the mind of. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. But this doesn't totally feel like a Jordan Peel product to me. Right. So Sean and I are mostly going to be talking about the first episode of the show this season, which is available on YouTube. So, you know, it's on CBS All Access. you know, but everybody can see the comedian which is on, it's also available on YouTube. Yes. And that's the episode that stars Camille Nanjani as a comedian who is kind of floundering

and he one night bumps into a much more famous but now since sort of like reclusive comedian played by Tracy Morgan who basically is like, if you want to succeed, you have to talk about yourself, but be careful because the more you talk about yourself, quote unquote, the more the audience takes from you. You know, and that base, it's about the sort of, what are you kind of willing to give up for your personal ambitions,

and it literalizes the kind of figurative loss that you feel when you use yourself for creativity, creative purposes. And Peel does an intro and an outro, and he does, it's like a real, like, Rod Serling kind of homage, and he's got a suit on, he's got a cocktail in his hand,

and he does the kind of wordplay. But the stuff in between is definitely not what I would describe as Jordan Peel stuff. No, not even. Well, on the one hand, you could say there's something interesting about Jordan Peel putting his name on something that is fairly dramatic and arch, but is about comedy. You know, because he obviously has a massive comedy background, and up until Get Out, we thought of him primarily as a sketch performer and writer. and on the other hand, I just didn't think that this episode at any of the cleverness of what Jordan Peel does, like, at all.

And I was surprised that this was the first episode. I thought particularly in a time when we already know so much about the interiority of the comedian. I feel like this is the thing. There's like 25 shows about, like, how I, it's like the meta version of the 80s sitcom. Yes.

Where it's like it's all the not funny stuff. Right. Yeah. And that's part of the, the problem with the show is that nothing that Kumail's character says while on stage and performing is actually funny. It's a little bit of a studio on the sunsets, Studio 60 on the Sunset's a problem where it's like... I couldn't tell if that was intentional or not or whether it was actually supposed to be existing in this absurd world where it's an unfunny comedian who then unlocks like this magical realm where just by like listing the names of people who have wronged him,

people crack up at it uncontrollably and then that person then disappears. I think it obviously descends into a kind of madness as the episode goes on and by the time you get to the final act of the episode, you're meant to believe that, that he's, we're just in this kind of cracked society and his ability to say names just triggers people to laugh uncontrollably. But in the beginning of the episode when he sort of quote unquote discovered something, his jokes are just not funny. And it's very hard to keep people invested in the story of a comedian who's not funny, who we're told is really funny.

And it's tricky because certainly there are episodes of the original Twilight Zone where a similar thing happens or someone says, this is the most beautiful actress in the world. And you see the actress on screen and it's like, she's pretty. Yeah. And that's, there's always something with the sort of over promise of the plot of a show that happens all the time.

It's one of the reasons I struggle with that with a lot of TV shows. I struggle with that with like the lethal weapon remake where they're like, this guy's the best cop in the world. And I'm like, is he the best cop in the world? He's just another cop. I just was surprised that it wasn't more clever because I think, where's your piece on like the lies that lethal weapon told us? Well, I find myself quitting new TV shows all the time because the premise just doesn't feel strong enough to me.

And the premise is everything in the Twilight Zone. If the premise doesn't work, then the episode is not going to work. Yes. And that has very little to do with whether Jordan Peel is charming enough, whether he resembles. Rod Serling was a very cool character. You know, those images of him in the intro and the intro of those shows smoking a cigarette wearing the black suit. He had a kind of an elusive emotional quality. And Jordan Peel is not bad.

Jordan Peel is phenomenal talking about his art and his ideas. And he's been a great advocate for his work. And I think that's been part of why his work has been so successful because people are just like, he's like great at Twitter, for example. I'm not sure if Rod Serling would have used Twitter. But the thing that's weird is that the characters in this episode, the comedian, seem to be using Twitter like aliens would use Twitter. They're like, I'm going to follow you.

I have 40,000 followers. And it is kind of weirdly existing in this, like, old, people learning social media way, like that doesn't feel like it would be very hard, like in the same way that it would be pretty easy to get someone to write Kumel Nanjani's jokes. How about Kumel? Who's a great comedian? Yeah.

You could also get somebody to be like, well, let's just make it feel a little bit more organic when somebody's like, can I have a picture or something like that, you know? Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, what did you think? Because, you know, you're not a Twilight Zone watcher and you don't come with as much legacy into this. Well, I mean, for this one specifically, And speaking back to our Black Mirror conversation,

I just didn't feel like it had much to do with the world. It was more just like kind of a play on a greedy or an ambitious person who pays for their ambition, which is a timeless enough story. And I thought was well applied. And I thought Camel did a really nice job just doing the kind of like, I'm a nice guy who lets this get away from him. He's become a good actor.

He's really good. Yeah. But I did think that like it just felt like there was a lot of meat. left on the bone, especially if you're going to have Kumail and tracing Morgan in an episode and then just kind of be like, but we're kind of, it almost felt like they were playing

dress up versions of themselves, and that it never really got vetted. And that brings us back to my whole thing, which is like, if Jordan Peel's names on it, it's going to come with a higher expectation of quality, I think. Did he write any of the episodes? Do you know?

No, I think he's just the executive producer, and I think he probably helped me. I would imagine he helps select the stories that they were going to do, but it's, you know, Anna Lili Alamapur directed one. The guy directed the comedian also directed... San Juan Niroiro? Yeah, he directed San Juan Harris, I think. Okay. Yeah, Owen Harris. That's right. He directed

Sanjuredeparo. I think the show is well directed. I just, I agree with you that the tone is odd and it's incredibly strange. Setting aside Kumail, who has asked to do a lot dramatically, like, why is Tracy Morgan in this if he's not going to say anything funny? Yeah. I don't mean to be as simplistic a dick about it.

No, but he's going to vape, and then he's going to be like, I'll give you everything you want, but be careful. Yeah. It might be too much, you know? It's strange. That character did feel truly

like a Twilight Zone character. You know, that's a character that, like, Robert Ryan would have played in an episode of the Twilight Zone. But in general, the other thing, too, is, like I said,

the original Twilight Zone episodes were 24 minutes. And this episode is 56 minutes. Yeah. And I have no idea why. Like, the final 30 minutes of the show is essentially just utterly redundant.

It's him doing the same set and just, looking for different people to zero out. You know, when us came out, I think we did a lot of interrogating. There was a lot of like group interrogation about like, but then how did they get the scissors? And like,

where did they get the jumpsuits from and stuff like that? And then I thought that... That's how you know something is good. If people are like engaged with that kind of stuff, right? There's going to be no questions about the logical exercises of the episode, The Comedian from the Twilight Zone because it's just not important enough. Well, that's what I was sort of wondering is that like maybe the Twilight

zone as a conceit if you're sticking to the original idea of it is not there to be like thoroughly I think our brains are a little fucked up by like all the stuff we've watched over the last 20 years where we're just like well did the aliens do they have a preparation process for the people that they were going to serve and what's the backstory there and is there a shared universe and like was there an Easter eggs and all this stuff where it's like

I think maybe these are just like cool fables it's a great point and that's not a kind of storytelling that I think people are generally like like into any more. We've definitely been ruined to some extent to enjoy something that was pure at a time when there were three channels. And there was, the, the reason the Twilight Zone continues on, the reason this show has been remade again is because it truly was innovative and unique. There had never been anything like this. And there were so few options. Most of the shows that you saw on network television at that time, certainly I Love Lucy and the honeymooners

and Jack Parr hosting the Tonight Show. And, you know, it was this lineage of, things that we have seemed to have evolved past, but set a benchmark. The Twilight Zone, if you watch it today, is still a very standalone product. It's still like, there's only one thing that was ever like this. And we kind of know too much about how stuff is made now to let something like that thrive. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. I think that's a really good point that you're making because like the expanded universe of the Twilight Zone makes me want to kill myself. Yeah, but like if you watch it, you're just like, so like if Kumail tells this joke is, Is that how what is it offset about human history?

Like, did Clinton get elected then? No, it's true. I mean, they do sort of beg us to ask questions like that, which is unfortunate. I usually love asking questions like that about culture. I have enjoyed the last 10 to 20 years of popular culture and being able to say, well, you know, everything is a thread that's connecting another thing. And the idea of like DC and Marvel and, you know, Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones and all these things. The exact thing that people got upset about with last season of Game of Thrones

is because all the seasons leading up to it, if one character was going from one side of the map to the other, they showed the process, it made sense, they actually dispersed the time rate. In the seventh season, you could just like pop up on the other side of the world, and people would be like, I guess, I guess they just took a flying boat, you know? Yes. I mean, I think part of the problem there is that, like you said,

they did it right for the first six seasons, so people felt justified in saying, how could you betray us? with something like the Twilight Zone, there's really no relationship. Like, I'm fascinated. Like, will you watch other episodes? I'll check out the Adam Scott one. Okay.

The death at 20,000 feet or whatever it is. I believe it's a nightmare at 30,000 feet. The thing about that is... I'm going to watch death at 20,000 feet. Good luck. I believe that's about a helicopter crash. That story's been told a lot. I mean, I'm kind of curious to see if they try to reinvent it at all,

but of course that's one of the most famous episodes of the show. And then that episode was also recreated in the film, starring John Lithgow. Right. And, you know, John Lithgow was just the guest on Mark Maren's WTF, I believe, this week. And he talked about that experience. That segment is directed by George Miller of Mad Max fame. So George Miller directed one of our greatest actors in a sequence about a guy losing his mind while on a plane.

Like, we got it. They got it. That was a remake then in 1987. And now we're getting it again with Adam Scott on a streaming service that no one subscribes to. Right. So it's a, that's a little bit of the. the snake eating its own tale thing. At least the comedian, I believe, was an original story.

Yes. Which I feel like is really the purpose of the Twilight Zone. But it, that's, the comedian felt like a remake. It did. The comedian felt like this was a story about like a Jack Benny type one-liner guy who keeps bombing. And they're like, well, if you want to, here's, I can give you the best jokes,

but every time you tell a joke about like your family, somebody from your family disappears and the guy just can't stop himself. It's true. It almost felt more like that than it did, like, this dude who's like Pete Holmes is like, but he he basically can catapult himself to fame despite the fact that like, you know, yeah, despite that. Does Kumail's character exist in the crashing extended universe?

So yeah, that's the really crucial. Would Kumail's character from the comedian show up on WTF? Over under on how many episodes of this you'll watch? Three. Okay. Yeah, three. I think three or four. Because I'll check it out if there's a person in it or like...

So that's six... That's three hours of programming. So the Adam Scott one's like 37 minutes. Oh, okay. So they vary in length. They vary a little bit. Okay. But yeah, I will check.

I will continue to check it out. What about this? What about you just slack me and say, yo, what are the five best episodes of the Twilight Zone ever? And I send you that list and you watch those episodes instead. Okay. And this becomes a 1960s TV podcast?

Well, I mean, will you be potting about the Twilight Zone again? Maybe not. Maybe not. Isn't that crazy? That's what's weird. If you told me that the director of Get Out and us had a limited anthology show about the Twilight Zone, I think that the problem is, is it's released into a stream where you've got Killing Eve, Game of Thrones, Fossi Verdon, all this other stuff going on. A very busy time otherwise in American, like, casual life. Yeah.

You got to follow all of Mayor Pete's appearances on rap radio shows. I'm trying to get Texas Tech's, like, help defense broken down before Final Four weekend. And, yeah, it's a tough beat. I feel like you and Andy on this show are always subtly lamenting that there's too much. And it is 100% true. I think I'm subtly lamenting that, like, it's just not on Wednesdays, and we watch it and then come in on Thursdays and talk about it. And that's been, like, the kind of, like, weird existential crisis of watching television for the last three years is,

like, I actually, Kai and I were just talking about Vanderpump earlier, and I was actually like, this is more like the way I used to talk about Breaking Bad than it is the way I talk about better calls off. It's amazing that that's what finally brought you to your knees to reality television. Vanderpump. It's just scheduling. You know, it's just a question of scheduling. Yes.

Thank you so much for doing the pod, Sean. Thanks for having me, Chris. I love the watch. Big picture. You guys are doing an MCU kind of mini series right now. You guys meeting me and you this week. And I am on this week talking Avengers. I loved that podcast.

I love doing that. It was very fun. I think we're, essentially what we're doing is the movies are getting better as we're going along. That's good. Which is something I'm excited about.

That's good. The early days were more challenging than I thought. Yeah, well, they were finding their way. All right. Thanks to Sean. We got Fiona Shaw coming up next. Thanks for listening to watch.

Well, here we are. We're on the Eve of the Killing Eve second season premiere on Sunday. And I kind of wanted to ask, you know, this is something that's obviously sort of caught on like wildfire among its fans. And this is all that,

it's such a beloved show. You're someone who's obviously got this story history of acting on stage and in film and television. Do you get a different kind of stage fright as something is about to go back out into the world like this? Well, that's a very good question. At the beginning, we had no idea how we received,

but given it huge success, yes, I mean, I hope, you know, I hope we don't all combust with expectations. Yeah. I mean, you know, in the end, it will only not an hour, whatever the ride will be, it will only be an hour. But I think it's very true to the previous season. So I think you'll get a good start on Sunday. Yeah.

I don't want to give away too much about what happens in the first episode, obviously. But one of the things that I thought was really interesting about this episode, and I wonder whether it continues to be a theme this season, is the way in which Carolyn manipulates Eve's level. of obsession. And I thought that that was a fascinating thing to watch you play because, you know, Carolyn's so still,

but you can see her kind of pushing the levers here and there. Yes, in that way, Carolyn is very, you know, about what Carolyn wants from people, isn't she?

Yeah. Yeah. And she's also not so surprised, you know, by the end of their first season, there's a bit of neutral betrayal, isn't there? Everybody betrays everyone.

Yes. But I don't think Carolyn's surprised by that because she lives in a world where betrayal is part of the dialogue, even with your best friend. I mean, that's kind of scary. Yeah. But, you know,

if you need to betray somebody in order to get the thing you want, then the betrayal is nearly part of the language. And with Eve, I suppose Carolyn has to bring her into land a bit and needs her to continue or wants her to continue. But, you know,

Karen to find someone else too. I've always found this. Karen is always in two minds. She could find somebody else, but they're not easy to come by these clever eaves. Right. And the people who are willing to sort of make themselves emotionally available in these spymaster chess games

that Carolyn is playing. Yes, and they probably always come at a price. You always have to have their personalities. Come with them. Yeah, that's right. Speaking of spy masters, you know, Carolyn is another in a long and rich tradition. of these sort of British spymaster characters

like George Smiley and, you know, on this podcast, we've talked a lot about the fiction of John LaCarray. Were you a fan of Alec Guinness's George Smiley or LeCarray's fiction? Oh, yeah. Think of how Dewar and dark it was. Yeah.

But we never thought that the thing of color is kidding either, but I was a big fan. And it is also very refreshing that it's a woman who's allowed to do that. But, of course, you know, in England we had and one of our MI5 heads was a woman. So it may have been that women were just hidden beyond hidden, you know. Of course, yeah.

I mean, what do you think it is about intelligence work or espionage that brings about such great drama, specifically from England, but at this point, it's almost like that country's version of the Western is the spy story. You're absolutely right. You could write a book about that, couldn't you? I think since the Second World War,

I mean, probably forever, but the British have always been full of subterfuge. They have always, they built an empire on, you know, making rules, and then people, other people break their rules, and then the British punish them, when in fact the British invented the rules. It's how they took over South Africa, and it's how they, you know, it's how they subjugated the India.

I mean, they are an amazing, I think what's now being coming to see, a rather bewilderingly self-deluded race in many ways. Yeah. And there's something, I mean, maybe all countries are self-plu'd. There's always a mythology about the race. But since the Second World War, because of the Second World War having Bletchley Park and the gathering of very intelligent people to try and crack the code to win the war against Germany, it produced a group of people who were on mixed class,

well-educated and intelligent, who began to get involved emotionally with each other. And so a lot of second families were born from that, you know, secret families. And after the war, this agreement that secrecy was saving the country became part, I think, of the British tradition. So they're still for the secret. I mean, nobody tells anyone anything in England. Really? Yeah.

And it is like your Western. You know, in the same way, you all want to know how you got from Boston to L.A. The British are always having to work out how anybody gets to know or love each other because next door neighbors don't know each other. People don't make, in the same. I mean, I'm exaggeration. They do, of course, all my best friends are from England. But there is a privacy, a sort of hiddenness, a secrecy, I would say, yeah.

Absolutely, yeah. But it comes along with this sort of, at least on the surface, this charm and this erudition and this sort of facility with language that I think makes it all the more beguiling to watch as drama. Carolyn seems to be suggesting in the first part, at least in the first episode, that her family comes from sort of a tradition of that kind of work, right? Yeah. Yeah. And that's probably true, too. That is true. There may be some other connections. Sure, right. You know, speaking of just in general with the show, we tend to ascribe a ton of authorship. I mean, obviously, it's an adaptation, but so much of what the first season we tie up with our appreciation of Phoebe Waller Bridge. But can you talk to me a little bit about what it was like to work with Emerald Fennell and some of the new people working on the show this year?

Well, Emerald was brilliant, wasn't you? Because Phoebe really had, you know, pulled five aces out of a pack, I think. But Emerald was delightful. I went to see Emerald before we started. at the second series and, you know, after what she was looking at, she was interested in what I was interested in in, and whenever during the season I needed to speak to her,

I would just call up and we discuss it and something she'd write me an extra that helped me get to the next beat. So, you know, we took it all very seriously and what she pursued absolutely what she was interested in pursuing and that's what the season's about. You can see from the first two episodes,

I mean, that it's just, she's very interested in the villa now and you can see that. That's her interest and in even Villanelle. I'm not going to say she's not interested in Carolyn, but definitely that the emphasis is on those two. Right. But it gives Carolyn kind of this interesting part

of being the puppet master of those two, I suppose. Yeah, exactly. But there's a kind of, by Carolyn, yeah, while it's puppet mastering, yeah, from behind. Yeah. You know, I was curious about something where you're working on a show, where I don't know that there's like a central,

there are some central mysteries, I suppose, with the sort of larger conspiracies behind the show. But as an actor, like how important is it that you know where things are going and know the answers to all the questions that the audience has, or is it very particular for you?

No, I'm not asking for spoilers or, of course, but what your process is like where you're like, I only want to know what my character would know in the moment or I want to know everything that my character would know in the moment. Always wonder how that works, especially with TV. Well, nobody can tell you.

I have a course in my mind, but nobody can tell you. So, I mean, there's some things I have to know, and some things I insist on knowing that they don't want to tell me, that they don't even want to connect to. But I do have to know ten times as much as anybody else. I have to act very little of it. I mean, for all you know, you know, Karen may be running five Eve. Certainly Eve isn't the only one she's running, you know.

Right, right. Even the big preoccupation of Carolyn. That's a very interesting about it. Do you think, you know, Karen dropped in from running lots of other... She must have some other jobs going on, of course, yeah. I mean, that is actually quite great, right? Yeah. And then that kind of applies even to the relationship between even our husband,

where her husband is like, you know, you're not treating me like the main character of this story. Yeah. So Karen's point of view is so far higher than the point of view that you, audience are enjoying with Eve. You know, Karen's up a mountain looking down at all of this. She may also know everything that's going on on the ground, as all good leaders do, but she also has other preoccupation. And that's where she's a very interesting character to play,

because no matter what Carolyn says, she certainly hasn't got the time to be ruffled by the little squabbles or fights or near murders that go on at Eve level, you know. Right. She also knows, I think, not the outcome, but she anticipates unlikely outcomes because she has to, because she's very experienced. So she's slightly different to the others who are trying to make something happen. And are working so primarily from their emotions. Yeah. Yeah. Well, before I let you go, I wanted to ask you one question that's not necessarily killing Eve related. Because I know you're from Cork.

Okay. I actually spent six months there back in the late 90s. I lived right on Pope's key. Is you? Yeah, and I loved it very much. It reminded me a lot of where I grew up here in the States in Philadelphia, but I was wondering if you get a chance to go back and spend much time there. I do. My mom is 93 this month, and she's very much living there alive and kicking and driving a car.

You may have probably been nearly rolled over by my mother on occasion and folks ski, because she often will be driving down to say Mary's and usually students or something. So she's still there, and my family are very, very connected. to that whole area. So for generations, I mean, generations beyond generations. Like, it's how we've been years. So I do go back.

I was back there a couple of weeks ago, and I'll go again when I go back to doing them. So I do, yep. Oh, that's great. I know it very well. I'm glad you enjoyed it. It was very dull when I was there. I found it so dull. I was going mad. Were you really?

Yeah, I couldn't tell. I mean, I felt like I enjoyed it, obviously. I thought it was beautiful, and it was great to spend so much time. like that extended period of time in Ireland. But I did find that even kids who were studying to be dentists had a pretty cool connection to the arts and a really appreciated theater and literature and film and it was a pretty stimulating time.

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe maybe. The other thing they appreciate, the only thing they love is best cork. They all go in their holidays to West Cork, so nobody ever leaves the county. Yeah, that's right. Or West Cork, West Cork.

That's pretty much. much what people from Philadelphia do too. Well, I'll let you go. Fiona Shaw. Thank you so much for calling into the watch. I can't wait to watch the rest of the season. Take care.