Scott Frank on the Making of ‘Dept. Q.’ Plus, the ‘Top Chef: Destination Canada’ Finale.

Chris and Andy talk about the finale of ‘Top Chef: Destination Canada’ and their feelings on the season overall (8:19). Then they are joined by ‘Dept. Q’ cocreator Scott Frank to talk about what drew him to the project (36:42) and the dueling roles he held as Scott the director and Scott the writer while making this show (53:54). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Scott Frank Producer: Kaya McMullen Video Producer: Jon Jones Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by NOS Energy. Every ounce of dirt, sweat and gears, every checkered flag and trophy raised, every lap, every race, every hard fought place. They're all jammed inside every can of NOS Energy. High performance energy for burning the midnight oil in the garage and pedal to the metal human horsepower for the streets. Go ahead, crack open a can of NOS Energy and get after it.

• 0:23Chris Ryan?

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• 0:54Speaker 02

  I need support staff to clear the room. Stand up and walk now.

• 1:00Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at theringer.com and joining me in the studio, his favorite part of Canada is Milan, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 1:13Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, you do Top Chef jokes?

• 1:14Chris Ryan?

  A Top Chef joke because we're going to talk about Top Chef for maybe the second time this season, now that the finale has aired. Greenwald, it's great to see you. It is Monday in the United States of America.

• 1:25Andy Greenwald?

  Still, yeah.

• 1:26Chris Ryan?

  And today on the show, we have Scott Frank, the co-creator, the writer of several of the episodes, or most of the episodes, the director of almost all of the episodes of the Netflix thriller series Department Q, starring Matthew Goode. It was awesome, Andy and I broke that season down over the last couple of weeks and we're so happy to have Scott back to chat with him about making the show.

• 1:46Andy Greenwald?

  That was great. That was big trading for Desmond Bain energy you just brought. You went all in, in a weak field. Facts you told me when I texted you, "What's up with this trade?"

• 1:57Chris Ryan?

  I was just regurgitating Bill and Ryan. Their enthusiasm for Orlando, Orlando magic, not necessarily Orlando the city. Although they don't have anything against that place. It's great to see you. I know that you were traveling this weekend, so I appreciate you coming back.

• 2:11Andy Greenwald?

  I almost didn't. Didn't seem like the time to do it. Yeah, I was out in America, Chris. I am ready to do one of those. I would say one of our favorite recurring bits in the podcast, but maybe the one with the least traction. Maybe our listeners can let us know if that's true.

• 2:26Chris Ryan?

  Andy on the road?

• 2:27Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, that is zero traction. Slightly more than that is just when we reference New York Times opinion columnists, because they really are the drivers of culture, as we've learned over these last few weeks, months and years. But our guy, Tom Friedman.

• 2:39Chris Ryan?

  They abandoned your boy. They abandoned your boy Zoran.

• 2:42Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, they put him in a ba- they really? Did you see that today?

• 2:46Chris Ryan?

  They were like, can't even consider putting him on the ballot.

• 2:48Andy Greenwald?

  This man does not deserve a spot on the ballot. Do you know he's Miraner's son? Director of Mississippi Mousal and things. I didn't know that.

• 2:55Chris Ryan?

  I've watched a lot of his social media clips.

• 2:57Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I've watched a lot of his mom's films.

• 2:59Chris Ryan?

  Ah, so, there you go.

• 3:00Andy Greenwald?

  And neither of us are New York voters anymore. So detours aside, our guy Tom Friedman used to write these columns where he'd be like, "In a taxi ride outside of Mumbai, I learned that..." So that was me this weekend. I took my daughters on a Father's Day weekend trip to the great state of Montana. Home of many of our favorite writers.

• 3:18Chris Ryan?

  Of course.

• 3:18Andy Greenwald?

  Jim Crumley, Thomas McQuain, my new guy Ivan Doiga, obsessed.

• 3:22Chris Ryan?

  How did you find out how to pronounce that?

• 3:24Andy Greenwald?

  Googled it.

• 3:25Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:25Andy Greenwald?

  It looks like it's Doig. And when I say it out loud, I'm like, obviously he said it differently. God damn, that guy can really write.

• 3:32Chris Ryan?

  It'd be a tough beat if he pronounced it Doge.

• 3:35Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, well, he'd be in the news. So I'm just here to tell you, Chris, that for as messy as this country is, it's still a beautiful place where when you're walking on a trail, just you and a bunch of tourists from all over the country clutching desperately to your can of bear spray, something I learned about 48 hours ago, you can always say, "Hi, excuse me, good morning," and we all get along.

• 3:56Chris Ryan?

  Have you ever seen the TikToker reel of like, white people on hikes? And it's all white people walking, going like, "Hey." Hey, hi.

• 4:07Andy Greenwald?

  Literally me. But I like.

• 4:10Chris Ryan?

  It gets flat over there.

• 4:11Andy Greenwald?

  My, or they're like, you're in for a treat when they're coming down. And my daughter's like, why do you talk to everyone? I'm like, because that's what makes this country actually great.

• 4:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, they don't talk to anybody elsewhere.

• 4:21Andy Greenwald?

  No, but then that, you know, I did, you were asking if I was gonna pretend otherwise. No, I was, I was, we were glamping.

• 4:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:27Andy Greenwald?

  Like, I like bathrooms.

• 4:29Chris Ryan?

  Must be nice.

• 4:30Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it was divine.

• 4:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:32Andy Greenwald?

  But.

• 4:33Chris Ryan?

  Open air, like.

• 4:34Andy Greenwald?

  Cause you're in a tent.

• 4:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:35Andy Greenwald?

  But it's just like a little.

• 4:36Chris Ryan?

  But there's a floor.

• 4:37Andy Greenwald?

  There's 100% a floor.

• 4:38Chris Ryan?

  Is there AC?

• 4:39Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 4:39Chris Ryan?

  Is there like a little unit?

• 4:40Andy Greenwald?

  No, no unit. Um, and then as part, like you're sitting around after.

• 4:44Chris Ryan?

  Is there a fridge?

• 4:45Andy Greenwald?

  Nope, there's no electricity.

• 4:46Chris Ryan?

  So what's the glamp part of it?

• 4:48Andy Greenwald?

  The roof and the bathroom. And then the access to delicious, I'm gonna look in the camera, delicious Montana microbrews.

• 4:57Andy Greenwald?

  And, but like, they have a thing where like.

• 4:59Chris Ryan?

  Wait, where are the microbrews?

• 5:00Andy Greenwald?

  In the main, like there's a fridge.

• 5:02Chris Ryan?

  Oh, there's a main area.

• 5:02Andy Greenwald?

  It's a main tent.

• 5:03Chris Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 5:03Andy Greenwald?

  It's all a tent.

• 5:04Chris Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 5:04Andy Greenwald?

  But they have a big tent. It kinda looks like.

• 5:06Chris Ryan?

  Like the Democratic Party.

• 5:08Andy Greenwald?

  It's a big tent with just a wind going through it, cause there's nothing holding it together. It looks like Ann Baru and Uncle Owen's spot, like on Tatooine, like a kind of a crazy tent and the zip full of microbrews instead of blue milk. But they have fires and you can.

• 5:22Chris Ryan?

  I got that joke like 10 seconds too late.

• 5:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, the blue milk one.

• 5:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:25Andy Greenwald?

  You're good, you're smiling though, I appreciate it. You could do smores and then a bunch of people who are staying there around the campfire. And generally, there's a question of like, where are y'all from?

• 5:34Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 5:35Andy Greenwald?

  That's not me talking, that's the, the other American. And, uh, and I say Los Angeles, and that's a real conversation ender.

• 5:41Chris Ryan?

  Or starter.

• 5:42Andy Greenwald?

  Not this weekend.

• 5:43Chris Ryan?

  Really?

• 5:44Andy Greenwald?

  I'll tell you that much. All my new friends from Jacksonville, Atlanta, and other point in South Carolina did not seem as, there wasn't a lot of reciprocity.

• 5:52Chris Ryan?

  Was there an SEC conference discount on coming to Montana?

• 5:55Andy Greenwald?

  No, or these guys just really liked exploring America's national parks.

• 5:59Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 6:00Andy Greenwald?

  As, as did we. But I wanted you to know that I haven't changed too much, cause I did, I, I haven't, I'm not gonna become a folksy populist. Sorry, sorry haters. But, and like when I was there, there were a lot of hats, like my kids were like, you should get something like.

• 6:15Chris Ryan?

  A hat.

• 6:15Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and I was like, I'm not actually gonna be the guy that gets the cowboy hat. But, um, I did find on our last day in lovely town of Bozeman, where I know, I know Kai has been, um, before. Cause Kai and I both love this country.

• 6:29Andy Greenwald?

  Very much. Um, I did get this hat and I'm very proud of it.

• 6:34Chris Ryan?

  Ooh, a trucker hat.

• 6:34Andy Greenwald?

  It's a trucker hat, but it's a trucker hat for Dave's sushi in Bozeman, Montana. So this is my new character with my family. They, they, and they wanted me to talk about it because they, it was Dad's Day, but this was Dave's Day.

• 6:46Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 6:46Andy Greenwald?

  I found out Dave, no free ads, food was pretty good. Dave is a Jew from New Jersey who moved to Montana and was like, how about sushi? 20 years later, he's killing it.

• 6:57Chris Ryan?

  How do you?

• 6:58Andy Greenwald?

  So here's Dave.

• 6:59Chris Ryan?

  Montana, not adjacent to a large, fresh ocean.

• 7:03Andy Greenwald?

  No, nor, nor are they making nigiri out of river fish. That is not on the menu. I would say that we've done great work with refrigeration.

• 7:12Chris Ryan?

  Good.

• 7:12Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, I would say there were a lot of cooked items on the menu. Um, no, it was a really nice place, but I also, I also think.

• 7:18Chris Ryan?

  I just made, his margins must be pretty thin.

• 7:20Andy Greenwald?

  You mean in terms of like spoilage?

• 7:22Chris Ryan?

  You can just like in terms of like the amount he has to pay to ship that up to Bozeman.

• 7:27Andy Greenwald?

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna let you know a little secret.

• 7:30Andy Greenwald?

  I would say we're eating the same fish at LA sushi restaurants at a certain price point that they are in Bozeman. You know what I mean? Yeah.

• 7:36Chris Ryan?

  You don't think my guy is down at the?

• 7:37Andy Greenwald?

  He comes from San Pedro. You're like, oh, this snapper is looking fresh today.

• 7:41Chris Ryan?

  That's a whole subplot of The Accountant 2.

• 7:45Andy Greenwald?

  Sushi in Los Angeles?

• 7:46Chris Ryan?

  Uh, just a guy who's like getting like Toro, you know, in San Pedro, but is also a human trafficker. And then Berthold and Affleck have to kill him.

• 7:53Andy Greenwald?

  Which is more profitable for him? Where are the better margins? Um, but so I don't, so I, I, I wanted sort of workshop that I feel like if things keep going the way they're going in this country, maybe, maybe Dave should become your co-host.

• 8:04Chris Ryan?

  Why?

• 8:05Andy Greenwald?

  Dave, Dave can.

• 8:06Chris Ryan?

  Cause he's also Jewish?

• 8:07Andy Greenwald?

  Dave, shh. My, actually, my first thought was that maybe Dave wasn't, but that they were like, but Montana wouldn't accept sushi from a non-ethnic person.

• 8:15Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:15Andy Greenwald?

  And he's like, well, I can't pretend to be Japanese. So I'm the cosplay.

• 8:21Andy Greenwald?

  No, I'm like, you know, Dave, Dave just calls it as he sees it, straight shooter, but also like would rather be floating down the Yellowstone River.

• 8:27Chris Ryan?

  Who amongst us? Yeah.

• 8:28Andy Greenwald?

  Like my boat captain Angie.

• 8:29Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 8:30Andy Greenwald?

  She, she was from Valley Forge and found a new life out there.

• 8:32Chris Ryan?

  Broadly speaking, we're talking about food here.

• 8:35Andy Greenwald?

  You don't want to talk about Montana anymore?

• 8:36Chris Ryan?

  No, I've talked about Montana for as long as you want. I wanted to get to Top Chef and I wanted to get to Scott Frank. You know, we hadn't really talked about this season and it, I, I think it's safe to say that early on, both of us were a bit soured by the experience. I stuck with it on a week to week basis.

• 8:52Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:52Chris Ryan?

  And then your boy, you crashed in the entire season, uh, over the course of like eight days, pretty much.

• 9:01Andy Greenwald?

  I really, really binged it, which I don't usually do.

• 9:04Chris Ryan?

  Um, and I think that that is an interesting contrast because for me, it was interesting. You were asking me a couple of questions and obviously we're going to do spoilers for the, uh, this season of Top Chef, Top Chef Destination Canada. So I would say stop listening now so we don't have to be overly sensitive about that. If you haven't watched Top Chef's finale, but generally speaking, I think, um, I was having a hard time like retaining things from week to week because, uh, I know statistically this is not true, but anecdotally it felt like they were really studio bound, that there was a lot of stage stuff. There was a lot of quick fires that never left the, the studio.

• 9:43Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, let's be clear, you said statistically it might not be true. We have not done the research on this.

• 9:47Chris Ryan?

  There is an actual website called Top Chef Stats, which I will refer to later when I talk about the winner.

• 9:53Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, good, because anecdotally though, I think it's worth noting because it is, like cooking, it's a lot about feel.

• 9:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:58Andy Greenwald?

  And there was a good interview, uh, mid-season interview that you and I both read, uh, after we finished, after, after at least I was caught up, that Gail, Tom and Kristen did with The Hollywood Reporter, where the, where the reporter asked point blank, it seems like you're pretty studio bound. And they were very quick to say, no, it's exactly the same.

• 10:13Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 10:14Andy Greenwald?

  It's perception.

• 10:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, so it must be, yeah.

• 10:17Andy Greenwald?

  That said, I think it is safe to say that there are, there have to be reasons why, especially the first half of the season felt so insular and claustrophobic even. And it may have been partly that the quick fire and eliminations were studio bound. I think it may also have been the fact that the talent pool, for whatever reason, did not feel as outward looking, you know? And now part of that might be that when you're shooting in Los Angeles, there are many world famous chefs here or passing through here and you can bring them into studio. And when you're there, you, you know, there are chefs that maybe Americans aren't as familiar with. For whatever reason. All I can say is I watched 21 seasons of the show eagerly without interruption and then crashed

• 11:01Andy Greenwald?

  out three or four episodes into the season when it was like Michael Sarah and two Jeopardy Champions. I was like, I don't even know what the show is anymore.

• 11:08Chris Ryan?

  I do have a theory about why this is not maybe Top Chef's fault and they could be exactly right that they left the studio as much as they always have.

• 11:14Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 11:15Chris Ryan?

  It might just be, and this is me getting older, that lots of cities just look alike now.

• 11:19Andy Greenwald?

  Well, especially cities that, no disrespect to our northern neighbors, Toronto famously doubles a lot for other cities.

• 11:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and you do get the feeling sometimes, like I get the feeling sometimes walking around where I'm like, there's a Joybird, there's a Whole Foods, there's a, like, like, what is it, a running shoe that says B.C. or whatever? Or what, what was that running shoe?

• 11:39Andy Greenwald?

  British Knights?

• 11:39Chris Ryan?

  What is the running shoe you have? Allbirds?

• 11:42Andy Greenwald?

  New Balance?

• 11:43Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 11:43Andy Greenwald?

  How dare you?

• 11:46Chris Ryan?

  When you run, what do you run in?

• 11:47Andy Greenwald?

  New Balance.

• 11:48Chris Ryan?

  Oh, okay. I didn't think that was always the case.

• 11:50Andy Greenwald?

  No free ads, but I would love a new, I love a new pair. Are you talking about like Hoka's?

• 11:53Chris Ryan?

  No, it doesn't matter.

• 11:54Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, those On?

• 11:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 11:55Speaker 04

  On clouds, on clouds.

• 11:57Chris Ryan?

  On clouds. You always see those stores and then like, there's that feeling of like, ah, yeah, like the retail space with the condos above it, like, you just start to feel like you're looking at the same thing over and over again, but.

• 12:09Andy Greenwald?

  You know what's not like that? Livingston, Montana.

• 12:11Chris Ryan?

  Um, so maybe it's not Top Chef's fault and everything is just starting to feel a little bit samey out there.

• 12:16Andy Greenwald?

  Maybe, I just feel like, now, I, you know, I think we're gonna get a chance to talk to Gail, so maybe we can ask some more like nitty gritty questions about it.

• 12:26Chris Ryan?

  Like what's up with Canada?

• 12:27Andy Greenwald?

  No, but like, I, I feel.

• 12:30Chris Ryan?

  Do you like on cloud secrets?

• 12:31Andy Greenwald?

  What do you run in, Gail? I think that she will take this personally and I, and I understand, I mean, she is a very proud Canadian and, and was excited to host the show in her home country. I think that if, if the, part of the mission of the show is to communicate the, uh, the foodways, the cultural history, the enthusiasm, um, and, and really the story of a place, I think that the season failed.

• 12:56Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 12:56Andy Greenwald?

  It's, it failed in the first third. I think that when they got to Calgary, because Calgary is more specific and there were more incredible vistas and maybe they were freed up to transport fewer people out of the studio.

• 13:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, they had fewer chefs.

• 13:10Andy Greenwald?

  The show came alive and then that, that energy continued to the end. So I'm, I feel like I've cut you off when you're about to go on a, a more, uh, getting your arms around the whole thing kind of jag, like. The show is still the show. And when I crashed out after two or three episodes, I was like, something is broken. I no longer think that's the case.

• 13:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:29Andy Greenwald?

  But there are some-

• 13:29Chris Ryan?

  I think you wind up being higher on the season than I did. And I wonder whether some of it has to do with the compression of the season in just a week, rather than for me, week to week.

• 13:40Andy Greenwald?

  That definitely, and also, you know what? I gave up the ghost. I was like, I can't do Last Chance Kitchen this year. And that sped up my engagement as well. I think a couple of things are true. One, I think like, as a competition show, as a food show, I think that the fact that Top Chef for this many years has been so, not morally, but just like spiritually consistent in terms of what it values, what its priorities are, keeping things about what's on the plate for the most part. I think that the goodwill and,

• 14:17Andy Greenwald?

  you know, just accumulated goodwill of the hosts, of Tom and of Gail, having been through this, having seen and mentored so many different people. And the spirit that the show always ends up in, with like, people being pushed outside of their comfort zone and then given the opportunity to really fly.

• 14:33Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 14:35Andy Greenwald?

  That's really, really hard to replicate in other competition shows. And it's really, really, at this point, it's hard for Top Chef not to do it, honestly. It is a well-oiled machine in that regard. But there were other aspects that were really struggling this year. And I don't think it was about necessarily the talent, because the top talent of the season was exceptional. And we had a true, true, true superstar winner in a way that we haven't in a while that I love. But I do think it's worth asking some deeper questions about like, what the show needs to be going forward. Because it's hard to take in the season as a whole, whether I binged it or whether I went week to week, and think that we needed 15 weeks of it. This was the first season where I was like, honestly, cut in half. If your budget is smaller and, you know, we're just, I don't know if it is.

• 15:19Chris Ryan?

  So, but do you think that-

• 15:20Andy Greenwald?

  But it felt like it was?

• 15:21Chris Ryan?

  There should be, whether it's a smaller chef pool, or-

• 15:27Chris Ryan?

  You get the smaller chef pool and you're able to do more creative settings. I mean, like, I also find sometimes, to be fair, like, you get these great chefs and then you put them, like, in a 95-degree day, making something that's very susceptible to heat or humidity. And you're kind of like, well, like, how is this a test of their culinary skill? Nobody would do this. I ultimately came away from this season saying, OK, season, but a great chef emerged. And I think we can now start talking about that. So if you haven't watched the finale of Top Chef, you're gonna want to stop listening now. You can skip to our Scott Frank interview. We'll also be back on Thursday, probably talking more about Top Chef, so please catch up.

• 16:07Andy Greenwald?

  What should we ask Kaya to do about the part six minutes ago when you told people, "Stop listening"? I thought that was aggressive. It was very punk rock. You didn't say like-

• 16:14Chris Ryan?

  Nobody listens to me.

• 16:15Andy Greenwald?

  You didn't say, like, "Get back for our Scott Frank interview, we'll be back." You were just like, "Stop."

• 16:19Chris Ryan?

  I mean, skip ahead, and I apologize to our producer, Kaya McMullen, who has not finished the season of Top Chef and is about to have it spoiled.

• 16:26Speaker 04

  No, I'm like four episodes behind.

• 16:29Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, Kaya, no.

• 16:29Speaker 04

  It's OK. Chris already ripped the Band-Aid off of me before we started.

• 16:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, she asked me to just tell him. So, as I told Kaya, Houston-based chef Tristan Epps won decisively with the final meal in Milan. And I thought we could talk about Tristan, but the way I wanted to start this was by reading a selection from Hunter Lewis's Food and Wine article about Tristan and about the finale. Hunter Lewis was one of the judges sitting at the final table, the final dinner serving there in Milan. And this is Hunter talking, writing in Food and Wine. "For the judges at the table, including me, it was clear by the end of the meal that no matter how good Bailey's and Schwa's dishes were, and no matter how evident their talent, Epps was cooking and competing at a different level.

• 17:16Chris Ryan?

  His third course, an exceptional riff on Oxtail Milanese- Likely sealed his whim. To make it, Epps braised the oxtails, picked the tender meat from the bone, sauced it, and formed it into the shape of a traditional circular Milanese cut of osso buco. He served the delicate sticky oxtails over curry spiced Carolina rice grits, conjuring flavors of West Africa, the Caribbean, and the American South while also paying homage to Milan. In my eight years of guest judging on Top Chef, I've tasted many exceptional dishes, including Melissa King's plum sauce lacquered quail and Buddha Lo's blue lobster with squash and curry bisque. However, I cannot remember another dish that combined such skillful mastery

• 18:01Chris Ryan?

  of technique as Epps's, which layered flavor, texture, and storytelling. With the cameras and the lights trained on him, he transformed humble oxtail and rice, symbolic foods of struggle and uplift, into a regal dish. And that is high praise.

• 18:18Andy Greenwald?

  I'll build on that. I mean, I think as a fan of the show.

• 18:21Chris Ryan?

  Layer flavor on top.

• 18:22Andy Greenwald?

  I'm gonna lacquer this particular quail. I think that Tristan has the potential to be the most significant winner of the show, maybe since the history of the show.

• 18:35Andy Greenwald?

  For a number of reasons. One, he was a dead-eye competitor. Like, he was incredible to watch this season. And incredible to watch the way the true greats, who were the great competitors in the history of the show, it's Kristen Brooke, Richard, Melissa on her All-Star season, Buddha certainly, who are just like, able to use a chess master 4D part of their brain to unlock themselves.

• 18:59Chris Ryan?

  Did either Voltaggio ever win?

• 19:00Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, Michael Voltaggio won. I think he won the first All-Star season. I could be wrong about that. Season six, he won.

• 19:11Andy Greenwald?

  So he had that piece, right? But like, he kept saying, "I've never done this before." And then all the other, at a certain point, the other competitors were like, "Oh, boy, we're doomed."

• 19:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:18Andy Greenwald?

  Because that means he's gonna do something. I think, though, that to go, there are many reasons people go on Top Chef, and sometimes people go on for multiple reasons. Like, Chui was very honest about the fact that, like, he felt like he had writer's block as a chef, but also his business was in trouble.

• 19:33Chris Ryan?

  He needed the money, yeah.

• 19:33Andy Greenwald?

  And he was in debt, and that's true of anyone in, honestly, any profession in 2025, but particularly in the food and service hospitality industry.

• 19:42Andy Greenwald?

  But Tristan, one of Tristan's missions, as he said repeatedly, was to advance African-American foodways and culture and tell a larger cultural historical story about migration and appetite and throughout, not just America, but like continents, right? That's the larger, the larger world. We've seen chefs with cultural missions before, and they've done beautiful work expanding what's possible. Like, when Chef Eric Adjipong was on and he started to bring in African ingredients that I think were new to even some of the judging panels in ways that were really exciting. Tristan built on that and built on what, like, Gregory Gourde did, who was a guest judge in the finale, and took it over the top and won with these dishes.

• 20:26Andy Greenwald?

  You know, what Hunter Lewis was saying about the humble oxtail being like the star of the dish at this Michelin-starred spot in Milan, I think, is really significant. And he's also at the age that he is and camera-ready the way that he is, I think, that he could do something with it. Because, honestly, the show is just good, and people have very different ideas about what they want to do when they have an opportunity to do something in food. Like, like when Brooke Williamson won her season, her all, I think she won an All-Star season, she came back, she lost to Kristen and then came back and won.

• 20:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, lost to Kristen and came back and won.

• 20:56Andy Greenwald?

  I don't think, it wasn't an All-Star, but she came back.

• 20:58Chris Ryan?

  Kentucky?

• 20:59Andy Greenwald?

  No, I think Kelsey won Kentucky. But she did come back and win. When she was on both times, she had restaurants, right? She was nominally, she was a success in the field. Now she is much more successful as a television cook. No shame on that. Running restaurants is really hard, but that's how she's chosen to use the rocket boost that it gave her. Melissa, who won, like, one of the most stunning runs we'd ever seen. He's still, you know, think about that lacquered quail. I don't think she's cooking in restaurants. When I follow her on social media and she's just like, paid partnership trip to Australia.

• 21:34Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 21:35Andy Greenwald?

  I don't knock it.

• 21:35Chris Ryan?

  Well, restaurants are hard, man.

• 21:36Andy Greenwald?

  Restaurants are brutal.

• 21:38Chris Ryan?

  Ask Dave of Dave's sushi.

• 21:39Andy Greenwald?

  Listen, Dave's crushing it. 20 years in Bozeman, slinging fish.

• 21:44Chris Ryan?

  Elbow to elbow in there?

• 21:45Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I think he's got two other restaurants too. He's got a lovely line of merch.

• 21:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:50Andy Greenwald?

  I'll be back. But I, I, or even like Buddha, right? Who is a genius at what he does. And then like, has, there's some sort of caviar stand that he does, caviar counter that he does in New York.

• 22:02Chris Ryan?

  He doesn't have a place in New York?

• 22:03Andy Greenwald?

  He doesn't have like his signature restaurant. Like, because that is kind of limiting when you have the potential fame that Top Chef can give you. All this is to say, Tristan is capital H him in a way for the show and for the moment in a way that we haven't seen in a while. And it was awesome. It was also funny to see them try to wring drama out of a finale that was basically fait accompli.

• 22:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, there's a, well, okay. So just another note on Tristan, I'll just throw it through some, these are from topchefstats.com. I did not do this work myself, so I didn't want to take credit here. So Tristan won two quick fires and six eliminations for eight wins total, including two with immunity. So where other chefs might be like, who gives a shit? I have immunity, he's still going out there and crushing. He also was on the winning Restaurant Wars team despite a personal tragedy that he was dealing with where

• 22:52Andy Greenwald?

  That was wild.

• 22:53Chris Ryan?

  His father passed away, literally moments before Restaurant Wars starts.

• 22:58Andy Greenwald?

  So they're doing prep the day before and the producers pull him out saying, there's an emergency. I guess there's, you know, families can do that if necessary. And he's told that his, his, his stepfather has had a stroke and is in a coma. And then when we rejoin the show, day of, he's been told that his father passed away overnight.

• 23:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:19Andy Greenwald?

  And he continued, he chooses to continue.

• 23:20Chris Ryan?

  Yes, and wins. Um remarkable remarkable performance and like he also I mean Hunter Lewis wrote about that final meal and he talked about the oxtail it seemed like the shrimp toast was one that

• 23:33Andy Greenwald?

  and the jarabread

• 23:34Chris Ryan?

  instantaneously like his the guy he brought back

• 23:37Andy Greenwald?

  Zubair

• 23:38Chris Ryan?

  to cook with him was like you're gonna have to mass produce these like this will never leave your menu now um yeah it's just awesome that like a major talent emerged on the show and it I think it's regardless of like your criticisms of like they did this too much or like you know like I'm tired of watching Chipotle challenges like he he went he's he's just a major talent and Top Chef is still a place that can that can be a platform for that

• 24:02Andy Greenwald?

  The last six episodes of the season went to a different level and I think that there was an episode um the I think was it the last episode of the the Calgary episode where

• 24:14Chris Ryan?

  The pancakes one?

• 24:15Andy Greenwald?

  Uh no the the foraging episode?

• 24:19Chris Ryan?

  Oh yeah, oh yeah.

• 24:20Andy Greenwald?

  The foraging episode I think goes in the Top Chef pantheon along with I always reference this like in the first All-Star season there was the episode where like each chef was asked to cook the story of their family's journey to America

• 24:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:33Andy Greenwald?

  And it was like oh my god look what you can do with food as storytelling on television. I thought this was similar in the sense that oh we're finally understanding something that is indigenous and specific to this place and every chef found their way into it and the way that Chui won that was really moving and the other thing that I think needs to be celebrated about the show is that the emotion is really genuine like Tom can be crusty and you know

• 24:54Chris Ryan?

  Kristen's definitely brought that.

• 24:55Andy Greenwald?

  I think Kristen excels as a host I think she's she's been a phenomenal choice for the show she's fully comfortable in her second season and fully comfortable embracing

• 25:04Chris Ryan?

  Being vulnerable.

• 25:05Andy Greenwald?

  Being vulnerable like I went through this and like she was even crying when they had to eliminate Massimo which I did not did not expect so I think that the that the fact that the show is able to just revert to itself even in the face of like corny ass Mission Impossible challenges is wonderful I I think the question that I keep asking and we'll just have to ask Gail directly I think is like

• 25:28Andy Greenwald?

  Regardless of, we're not gonna like, okay, what's your budget? What's it going to be going forward? But can they still execute a show at this level at the size that it is?

• 25:38Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:39Andy Greenwald?

  Because compared to past seasons, even ones that I think were ultimately weaker seasons, I just found the first three, four, five weeks so much less compelling. And I think they were pretty decent chefs this season. I think it was a pretty good group of contestants. But something about them running around that claustrophobic studio, being told they were in Canada, and in Canada, we like these desserts. I'm like, okay. I think most people like desserts.

• 26:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:02Andy Greenwald?

  I didn't think that that was particularly a northern tradition. That was tough. So maybe in a way, like, Wisconsin is a better choice, even, you know, if they're looking to, looking for tax breaks or whatever.

• 26:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:14Andy Greenwald?

  Like, because just keep telling me about these fish fries.

• 26:16Chris Ryan?

  Did they do Wisconsin?

• 26:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, that was last season.

• 26:18Chris Ryan?

  That was last season, right?

• 26:19Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. That was a wild one.

• 26:21Chris Ryan?

  Um.

• 26:21Andy Greenwald?

  Do you have any other thoughts about, so like, a finale in which it's kind of obvious what's gonna happen, as long as no one screws up?

• 26:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I was gonna say that they tried to kind of make it seem like there's a moment in the finale where Tristan is making two fishes.

• 26:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, they made this, this was the huge thing.

• 26:37Chris Ryan?

  And he's like, I'm just gonna kind of like, even, I feel like they cherry, I don't wanna say they cherry picked, I feel like Tristan was leaning into, I'm probably so good that I can make some decisions in the moment that are gonna still be winnable dishes.

• 26:55Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 26:56Chris Ryan?

  And winning dishes. And so there's like a deliberation of whether he's gonna do monkfish or cod, right?

• 27:02Andy Greenwald?

  I believe.

• 27:03Chris Ryan?

  Or bacalao, I can't remember.

• 27:04Andy Greenwald?

  No, it was, it was, it was monkfish or, yeah, I think or cod, it was another white fish.

• 27:09Chris Ryan?

  He goes with the monkfish, but like, for a second, you're just like, oh my god, like, is he gonna, he's, it's still in the, it's still in the roast, it's still steaming, like, is like, was he gonna make it to the plate? And it's like, not only did he make it to the plate, there was one person who was like, the fish was a little under or overdone, I can't remember. But like, you can tell by the reactions of these, there's one guy who, when he had the shrimp toast, I think he was like, I'm speechless. And you're like-

• 27:30Andy Greenwald?

  It was the host of the restaurant, it's like, I take my hat off to him.

• 27:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, if that's happening, you, you're kind of like-

• 27:34Andy Greenwald?

  The worst criticism was Richard Blaze being like, this dessert is interesting, but is it delicious? The answer apparently was yes. But he's good, but Richard is awesome on TV.

• 27:42Chris Ryan?

  He's good on TV, yeah.

• 27:44Andy Greenwald?

  I generally, and I know this goes against like, reality show, you know, general consensus thinking, but like, I think it's better for the show and it's just more engaging when everybody does a good job.

• 27:58Andy Greenwald?

  But-

• 27:58Chris Ryan?

  I think it's a different thing. So you mentioned that Hollywood Reporter mid-season interview, and there is a note in there, I can't remember which one of the hosts says it, that they don't live together anymore.

• 28:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, since pandemic.

• 28:09Chris Ryan?

  The chefs do no longer share like, a giant townhouse, or whatever they would do in the past.

• 28:13Andy Greenwald?

  So you'll see the shots of them like, wearing their like, white tees, doing their yogas, together.

• 28:17Chris Ryan?

  But all together, and cooking together, and probably getting on each other's nerves at the end of the day. And they're, both, all the hosts sort of discuss that this is not like, a reality show-

• 28:27Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, they hate that.

• 28:28Chris Ryan?

  -that wrings drama out of interpersonal issues that the chefs have because somebody didn't flush the toilet, or something like that. And I think that if you embrace Top Chef as something in between,

• 28:41Chris Ryan?

  it's not Beat Bobby Flay, it's not like, a pure competition show, but it's not a traditional Bravo reality show. It's something kind of like, it's just a celebration of food. And yeah, like, some of the tests might be a little bit silly, and some of the tests might be mind-blowing, and some of them might not seem germane at all, like- But if you can kind of just use it as like, a way to find out, I mean, honestly, this show hasn't introduced me to a lot of things that I don't think I would ever have tried, ordered, sought out, if it hadn't been on Top Chef. So in that way, it's really a palate-expanding experience, rather than any easy-to-peg television competition, reality, whatever it is.

• 29:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I think they're right, like, in that Hollywood Reporter thing. I think they're feeling themselves a little bit, like, they've accomplished a lot over a long period of time, and they know how to do this. And I think they're right to be that confident. There are many, I haven't checked out the Jose Andres show, like, Yes Chef, and then there's a Padma show coming on CBS.

• 29:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:42Andy Greenwald?

  I don't think they're competing against Top Chef. I think Top Chef is what it is and is an industry unto itself. And I think that's ultimately a good thing. The final grouping was pretty, I think, correct. It tends to work out that way.

• 29:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:58Andy Greenwald?

  I thought Cesar probably should have been actually in the finale. I must confess, I didn't really understand Bailey's journey because she ended up being someone who didn't do great, excelled at Last Chance Kitchen, and then was fine enough to kind of make it to the very end. I never really, I don't think she won anything after coming back. She just didn't lose.

• 30:18Chris Ryan?

  But it's hard to tell because Tristan's in the competition. So I don't know what's coming in second all the time, you know?

• 30:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I think that's a good point. So the only other thing that I wanted to say that from that THR piece that I thought was really interesting was, you know, Tom's a little unfiltered these days, and he lays out something that I thought was really interesting, which is he says he's been pushing for an early competition where they do their mise en place, meaning the chefs actually, as part of a challenge, prepare all of the essential things that chefs need that they don't have day of, whether that's like chopped mirepoix or more likely things like, you know, stocks and bases of flavor that you can just pull on. Like, if you're in a restaurant kitchen and you need chicken stock, like a prep cook or maybe the chef himself has done that, and you're using your homemade stuff to

• 31:09Andy Greenwald?

  fortify, you're not grabbing the branded content here to pour into it.

• 31:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:13Andy Greenwald?

  You know, or necessarily chopping everything on the day.

• 31:15Chris Ryan?

  My Mission Impossible chicken stock.

• 31:15Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly. And his idea was that they do that, and then they have it, and then when someone gets eliminated, the other chefs can raid the pantry of the eliminated chef. And I'm like, that's fantastic. That is a part of cooking that the show actually hasn't ever really engaged with or felt like it had time for. He's an executive producer. I feel like if you're going to get smaller and more granular, I would rather it be about the work required to cook this food as opposed to the work required to transport 12 chefs to a food hall somewhere outside of Toronto. So they could be like, oh, they have Jamaican patties here, too. You know, like, that felt less tangible to me. So rather than feel diminished, I'd rather them pivot.

• 32:00Chris Ryan?

  My last thing is that, over the years, I have, at times, been like, Last Chance Kitchen is more exciting than the actual show. As you mentioned, it had It felt more elaborate, not bloated, but like you, you, you cut out Last Chance Kitchen from your diet. Is that because you didn't feel like it was essential to understanding the show? Because ultimately, like-

• 32:22Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I think, and this is something I never thought I would say about Top Chef, because in addition to the reasons I liked the show, it was kind of a palate cleanser in my TV watching. Like, it's just a, I don't really watch a lot of reality or competition shows. This time, when I was, when I decided to catch up, it really was about completism. It really wasn't about, oh, I'm interested in this person. I hadn't really found Tristan in the mix yet when I, when I dipped out. So I was just like, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna grind this. I'm gonna get through this. And it just didn't feel essential or interesting, because if, it turns out if you don't watch Last Chance Kitchen-

• 32:57Chris Ryan?

  It's okay.

• 32:58Andy Greenwald?

  And you watch episode nine, and they're like, the door opens slowly, and then someone that just left the week before walks in, and they're all like, oh my god! It's not actually that thrilling or exciting. Um, yeah, and I, and I, and again, I think it's also the kind of, the lack of place. I, I just felt like they were just in the studio.

• 33:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:18Andy Greenwald?

  And it, that studio wasn't that compelling. Do you think I'm, do you think that I, or maybe we are carrying into this conversation, the larger specter of like, no one, nothing shoots anywhere anymore except elsewhere? And that like, you know, Rob Lowe shooting the game show in Ireland in a, in a-

• 33:36Chris Ryan?

  In Dublin, yeah.

• 33:37Andy Greenwald?

  In a hangar for two weeks. Like, are we bringing some of that mentality to Top Chef, even when it doesn't necessarily deserve it?

• 33:43Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I just think it's been a minute, I think the LA season, and then the miracle of pulling off Portland loomed pretty large in my mind, and that the last couple have not popped, you know? Uh, so, when was there, was it a global season?

• 34:02Andy Greenwald?

  The World All Stars was 20. That was Padma's last season, and then last year was Wisconsin.

• 34:05Chris Ryan?

  And that was where? London?

• 34:06Andy Greenwald?

  That was in London, but with the chefs who had been the winners of the region.

• 34:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, so that obviously stood out, but, I don't know, I just, I just feel like- It's hard. I mean, like, I think about this a lot with the way people have been talking about the NBA Finals, where it's like, are we sure, like, mid-market teams should be in here? You know, like, there's a, I think it's hard to leave well enough alone, and it's much easier to be like, how we'd fix it than it is to just sort of like, be like, Top Chef is a constant in my life, I will just keep watching it. Yes, I felt like there, a lot of the early episodes just sort of blended in to me.

• 34:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I think that, I'm really glad I finished the season because the show-

• 34:45Chris Ryan?

  I don't know what we would have talked about today.

• 34:47Andy Greenwald?

  This would have been a really slow day. I would have told you about what I ordered at Dave's Sushi, whether, you know, whether ordering sushi-

• 34:53Chris Ryan?

  Ice cold Sapporo at Dave's?

• 34:55Andy Greenwald?

  No, Chris, great question. They had a local Montana beer made in the style-

• 35:00Chris Ryan?

  Rice Lager?

• 35:01Andy Greenwald?

  Of like a Sapporo, Rice Lager. It was called New Hokkaido. It was great.

• 35:04Chris Ryan?

  Love that.

• 35:04Andy Greenwald?

  It was great.

• 35:05Chris Ryan?

  Love that.

• 35:05Andy Greenwald?

  Walked in, they were like, Happy Father's Day. I was like, thank you. Then they handed me the beer. I was like, that's really, this is great. This is the greatest day of my life.

• 35:12Chris Ryan?

  Did you put in your reservation, it happens to be Father's Day?

• 35:15Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I didn't make reservations.

• 35:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:17Andy Greenwald?

  I-

• 35:17Chris Ryan?

  You're a Big Dad's Day guy. Father's Day guy.

• 35:19Andy Greenwald?

  It's a great day.

• 35:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:20Andy Greenwald?

  It's a great day, especially, especially in the middle of America, heartland, where I, where I belong. No, I'm glad I finished the season because the show, it doesn't need to justify its existence, but I was like, but it made a strong case for why it is still valuable, entertaining.

• 35:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:38Andy Greenwald?

  And, and I mean, it's an overused word, but I do think it is kind of important still for food culture, and I, I really appreciated that it got there, but I do think it's interesting to discuss the shortcomings at the top of the season, and I'm, I'm looking forward to a chance to ask someone involved in it how they feel about it and what they are attempting to do as they pivot forward.

• 36:00Chris Ryan?

  Speaking of pivoting, let's pivot to old Scott Frank. So Scott Frank, obviously, has been on the show a couple of times. We'll just get into our interview with him. We've talked a lot about Department Q in the past, so we don't really need to set that up. It's-

• 36:11Andy Greenwald?

  I would also say, we don't really spoil it. We just talk about a lot of details from the show. So if you were interested in Scott's perspective on adapting-

• 36:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, we certainly don't give away the end. So if you're midway through, it's, it's a perfectly suitable interview, and Scott talks a lot about like, the streaming lands- And just like his process, which I find so fascinating.

• 36:25Andy Greenwald?

  Also, he completely changed the story of the book, which we're ignorant of, but was really interesting to hear because it also sounds like in classic Scott fashion, he took something that he didn't feel was dramatically compelling and then made, created something so much more complicated.

• 36:42Chris Ryan?

  But was it too compelling?

• 36:43Andy Greenwald?

  Well.

• 36:46Chris Ryan?

  Let's get into our interview with Scott Frank. We'll be back on Thursday with some more Top Chef, hopefully, as well as checking in on a couple of other shows.

• 36:52Andy Greenwald?

  Also, Kaya's restaurant reviews from Bozeman. I feel like she was a little silent, so you have a couple of days to.

• 36:57Speaker 04

  Great diner scene there in Bozeman.

• 36:59Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, see, I'm kind of a sushi guy, but that's just Dave.

• 37:04Chris Ryan?

  Thanks for listening.

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• 38:34Chris Ryan?

  Scott Frank is joining us for, I believe, the fourth time on The Watch Podcast. He was here for Godless, for Queen's Gambit, for Monsieur Spade, and now we are here to talk about Department Q. Scott, thank you so much for coming back, man. A four-timer. Thank you for having me.

• 38:49Speaker 02

  Love coming on this show. You guys are a lot of fun.

• 38:52Andy Greenwald?

  Scott, we should just have you on for holidays. I feel like it doesn't need to be tied to major projects you've worked on.

• 38:57Speaker 02

  I think that's right. Every Purum will come on and we'll have a special show.

• 39:01Chris Ryan?

  Every Purum and every military parade.

• 39:03Speaker 02

  We can have every military, which are going to be more often I think now.

• 39:06Chris Ryan?

  Can't wait.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:08Chris Ryan?

  Um, Scott.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  A lot of me.

• 39:09Chris Ryan?

  I have, uh, I, I think I know the answer to this broadly and you've talked about Department Q in the background of some of our previous conversations. As a thing you were developing, working on, getting ready to shoot, shooting. Can you give our listeners just sort of like a broad outline of like how you got involved in this project and, and, uh, and what it was that enticed you about it?

• 39:30Speaker 02

  This is a strange one because about 15 years ago, the author, UC Adler Olson, um, gave me the rights to the books, just kind of a handshake, just said, you can do what you want with them. Um, I don't think he was particularly fond of the adaptations that had happened up to that point.

• 39:49Chris Ryan?

  Some feature films, right?

• 39:50Speaker 02

  I think so. And, you know, I, none of which I've, I've actually seen, so I can't, I can't judge them one way or the other. There may have also been a series at one point. I don't, I don't know. But he gave me the rights to the books and said, do what you want. And I never intended on either writing them or directing them. And I thought, I love these books. I would love to sort of see them through and, and see what happens. And we tried at one point, there was a version we tried, what we were going to do, set it in, I think, Boston or Seattle or somewhere with a ferry. And, um, um, Vancouver, who knows, but it didn't work out.

• 40:26Andy Greenwald?

  I thought you meant Narnia, by the way, when you said somewhere with a ferry. But maybe that's the age of my daughters. Please go on.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  Yes, that's what I meant. Um, and so we, it just didn't work and not for lack of trying or lack of good people trying. It just, it just, I didn't, never really figured it out. And to be honest, I don't think I had the, uh, the proper level of focus. And then a few years ago, I'm in Berlin prepping The Queen's Gambit. And Rob Bullock, who's a producer at Left Bank, gives me this call and says, you know, I hear you have the rights to these books and you haven't done anything with them. Why? And because we love them and we'd love to do something. And I said, I don't know why. He goes, well, how about if I help you? And so, you know, and he flew to Berlin to meet and talk. And I thought, wow, the guy flew

• 41:16Speaker 02

  over for a lunch just to talk about the books. And I'm gonna let him, I'm gonna let him see what he can do. And so, the idea was, I said, let's find somebody I can mentor to write them. And we'll, and you'll shepherd them and we'll see what happens. And two things happened that were significant. One, he sent me a few pictures of Edinburgh, which I loved. And we went over there and, and literally, you just get out of the car and you look around and you go, okay, I want to, I want to be here on film. You point the camera that way, that's beautiful. You point the camera that way, that's beautiful. You really can't go wrong. And so, and then, the other significant thing that happened was the writer's strike.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  Because I'd spent a year working with this lovely writer named Chani Lakani, who was working on the first episode. And then, and she was a newer writer. And so, the goal was to sort of bring her along as we went. And then the strike hit and I couldn't work with anybody. And they kept writing in London because they could write. And we had sold the show to Netflix, the British division, which is, which is, you know, still part of the overall mothership, but it's their own.

• 42:30Chris Ryan?

  Sort of Netflix's Department Q, as it were.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. And very successful, really, really successful. They've had some amazing shows, Adolescents, Black Doves, just one after another, came from over there. I think even Baby Reindeer, I may be mistaken. But, anyway, strike ended, the scripts weren't done, we couldn't cast it. And so, it turns out that I'm a bit of a control freak, according to my wife. And so I ended up just saying, okay, if we're gonna do this, I promised Netflix that I wouldn't waste their forty million pounds, which is a lot for them for a show. And so, once I started pulling at the threads, I just kind of ended up, I was only gonna direct

• 43:15Speaker 02

  two, then I ended up directing most of them, and then I was just gonna rewrite the first two, and then I was rewriting while we were shooting. I was literally, as I keep saying, building the airplane while we were flying, and I would get up at 5:00 a.m., I would write for a couple hours and shoot for ten hours, and then write for another hour at home. And so it was, it was nuts. I didn't finish the whole season until a couple weeks before we wrapped.

• 43:39Andy Greenwald?

  Scott, can you trace that, that aspect of your personality a little bit? Because, you know, we've talked to you before, we've talked about your screenwriting career, which is well-known and celebrated, and then also the lesser-known, although a little bit more exposed than that great New Yorker profile, you're, you know, coming on and doing some reworking, script doctoring stuff. This recent part of your career has been more autourish with you writing and directing. So it's surprising to hear you say that you were surprised that you couldn't half-ass it, so to speak, that you felt the need, sort of, you had to jump in there. Did that surprise you?

• 44:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, it did. I'll tell you what surprised me is how much I, I, I was, when we were making the deal to do this, I kept saying emphatically to the agent and the lawyer, "I am just a non-writing executive producer, non-writing, non-directing. I am just gonna, you know, help this show happen and ends, and that's it. That's all I'm gonna do." And then, I thought I would be kind of miserable and bitter and angry that I had to do it, I had to work on it. And what surprised me more than anything was how much I loved, how much fun I had making the show, how much I enjoyed it, how creatively interesting

• 44:53Speaker 02

  it was for me. Despite some of it was familiar territory for me, I really, I just, I had a ball. So that was the surprise.

• 45:02Andy Greenwald?

  What was the itch that this particular project ended up scratching? Because you've talked so well in the past about, you know, you love westerns. And when you got to do Godless, you poured everything you love about westerns into it. You have, as you mentioned, you've done beautiful work in mystery, crime, noir. Walk Among the Tombstones, one of the great modern noirs, I think, still. So this did touch on some of those things. But, but what was it that made this special, uh, made this special and lovable for you?

• 45:29Speaker 02

  So the procedural, I love procedurals. I love British procedurals in particular. Um, I love all of them from any country, but the British procedurals in particular. I really enjoy Happy Valley, Broadchurch, going back to Prime Suspect. Because they're, what I like is a genre, I realize I like working in a genre that's familiar. And, and embracing what you said about Godless, you know, taking every trope in the western and just leaning into it. And what this was for me was to just not reinvent anything, but just take all of those tropes and try to do them really well, because I like that. I love movies like that.

• 46:10Speaker 02

  And, um, I felt like this would be the perfect vehicle for that, rather than try and do, because there's nothing original about this. The cold case, the grumpy cop, the, you know, take, take your pick. There's, there's any, any number of things you could pick apart in terms of, of originality on this show. But what was really fun for me was getting to do all that. I just wanted to do, I wanted to do those tropes, to play in that sandbox.

• 46:38Chris Ryan?

  You mentioned the difficulties in casting and coming out of the strike. I was curious, does that mean people's availability? Or were you having a hard time finding more? And what was it about Matthew that, that sort of leapt out? Because this is a little bit against type for him.

• 46:53Speaker 02

  It is, although not for me with him because in The Lookout, he played a bank robber.

• 46:58Chris Ryan?

  Oh, that's right.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  A Kansas City thug, you know?

• 47:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  And in Godless, there was a scene in Godless that I cut at the very end. There was a coda that it turned out we didn't need. He was terrific and he played a sheriff. He played Jack O'Connell's brother.

• 47:11Chris Ryan?

  Huh.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  In California.

• 47:12Andy Greenwald?

  So you've always seen the bad in him. That's so beautiful.

• 47:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. And the first time I met him, you know, he showed up. It was right after Matchpoint and I remember Marsha Ross, the casting director on The Lookout, saying, you know, Matthew Goode is in town. I go, that, he's like a posh boy, you know? I just saw a match, that's, he's not right for this. And he showed up hungover, his head shaved and a leather coat and some T-shirt. And, um, and I just, he was the guy. He was, he was just the guy. In fact, I knew he was the guy so much that he, I was, it was down to him and like Jeremy Renner. I'm trying to remember, I think, for the role. And, and we did one more audition. We brought them both back and Matthew tanked his audition.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  And I so knew he could do it that I said, let's bring him back one more time. I just, something was wrong, something, he didn't, there's some, I know this guy can do it. And we brought him back and he nailed it. And so that was, that was how that happened. And, and he was amazing in that role. He was, it's like Michelle Dockery. Everyone thinks she's Lady Mary.

• 48:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  But she's not. She's absolutely not.

• 48:25Andy Greenwald?

  But you did this with Dan Stevens too.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  I did it with Dan Stevens.

• 48:28Andy Greenwald?

  You see the devil in these posh bastards. It's awesome.

• 48:32Chris Ryan?

  We all see footmen and butlers and he sees them as New York stuff.

• 48:36Andy Greenwald?

  It's like they live sunglasses for this.

• 48:39Speaker 02

  But that's, that's the most fun part of casting, you know? Jeff Daniels playing the bad guy or, you know, I think about Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West, you know? Um, you just, that's, that's when it's really interesting, when they can do it. Sometimes they can't do it, but these guys, they're all great actors. They can all do it.

• 48:56Andy Greenwald?

  So Matthew is incredible in this and I also want to know where his sweaters came from. And he, uh, but that, we can do that off air. But he, uh,

• 49:06Andy Greenwald?

  He plays the part so beautifully and I wondered what, because you said you love doing the broken, the broken cop, the genius who was too good at what he, I mean, these are tropes, these are familiar, this is a type.

• 49:16Chris Ryan?

  Island of Misfit Toys Squad, yeah.

• 49:18Speaker 02

  Absolutely, which is how I pitched it.

• 49:20Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  That was literally what I said to him.

• 49:23Andy Greenwald?

  So, other than doing it so expertly, what is it about your version of Mork that, that makes him your version of this type of trope? What, what, what did you want to imbue him with that sets it apart?

• 49:36Speaker 02

  I thought it would be funny, or interesting at least, to, to write about a man trapped. He is stuck in this place. He doesn't want to be in Scotland. He married this woman who was Scottish and then she abandoned him and her, you know, 16-year-old kid. So, he's left with her kid, he can't leave because he can't leave this kid, which I thought would be a clue as to who he really is. I thought that would be really interesting. And so, he's now stuck in Scotland and, um, he's trapped and Merritt's trapped in this other thing. And I just thought this idea of, of not being able to run from who you are, I thought that,

• 50:19Speaker 02

  you know, we'll play it on the surface as, you know, he's, he's cantankerous, he's all those things. But down below, he's, he's, underneath all that, he's stuck. And I thought that would be really, and this case starts to, to, to free him up. How can he kind of, you know, it's not that he's so isolated from people, it's that he's just trapped.

• 50:40Chris Ryan?

  Um, when we had Tony Gilroy come on and talk about Andor over the last couple of years, he could not talk enough about the bench of character actors that you can pull from the British stage scene and the British TV scene and everybody from, like, I mean, Kate Dickey especially jumped out at me in this series, but.

• 51:04Andy Greenwald?

  But Shirley Henderson.

• 51:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, like.

• 51:06Andy Greenwald?

  I'm like, oh, well, she's gonna be a villain. No, she's just gonna be lovely. What?

• 51:09Speaker 02

  She's just gonna be sweet. She's gonna, you know.

• 51:11Chris Ryan?

  Um, but there's just this huge, deep reservoir of talent that you're able to apply to like, the roles, big, small, you can throw red herrings, you can have misdirections with them, but they, can you talk about like the essential quality that these actors seem to have, which is this facility with whatever genre you throw at them, they bring a kind of like believability to it?

• 51:33Speaker 02

  Believability and specificity, even if it's different than what they've done before. They they understand the assignment. And the best actors, you know, I think they they they can't be, they're not playing just anybody. They're they're, you feel like they're the only person who could play that role.

• 51:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:53Speaker 02

  You know, and and the cliche is to say they inhabit the role, but it's it's not that. It's something deeper than that. And and all these actors, um, you know, Mark Bonner, um, um, you know, the new actors too, like Leah Byrne, who plays Rose.

• 52:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:10Speaker 02

  She's tremendous, you know, um, Alexei Maninoff, you know, all of them are really great, but they they you kind of cast because you there's there's the type, you know, they're the right type in a way, you know, down deep that they're going to vibrate to the to the rhythm, they're going to be in the same key, however you want to put it. But they also have this instinctive facility to pay attention to the text in a way that they're they're playing a specific character as opposed to an attitude or a type or a lot of American actors sometimes, um, you know, they they they they're they're being themselves.

• 52:48Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, can I ask you a practical question on top of that? So let's take an actor like, and I think, I hope I'm saying his name right, Jamie Sevis, who plays Hardy.

• 52:54Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 52:55Andy Greenwald?

  Um, so he's phenomenal. And the type of phenomenal that he is in the show is such a slow burn because we don't get very much of him. And then we see him isolated from the rest of the cast so that every time we see him, it's laying a little, you know, one stone on a longer path of the character. As the writer of the scenes and then as the director of the scenes, how much work are you doing to make us fall in love with him and understand him? And how much of that is the performance? And how do those three pieces work in concert to end up where that's basically the last shot of the series?

• 53:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, when he's getting in.

• 53:26Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, my God. And it's a joke, but it's heartwarming and you've earned it. So I'm sorry, I ended by with a compliment when I meant to end with a question, but the writing, the directing and the acting.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  You can always end with a compliment.

• 53:37Chris Ryan?

  We call that the classic Greenwald.

• 53:38Andy Greenwald?

  The classic Greenwald. I'm curious, but I'm just so happy. Um, anyway, the way those three elements work in concert to get that character from, not an afterthought, but someone we're not tracking to where he is at the end.

• 53:51Speaker 02

  Good question. I'm not sure I even know. I'm not sure I'm even thinking about it as I'm doing it because so much, it's all storytelling. The acting, working with the actors, shots, everything for me, I source to the story, telling the story. I mean, there are times I'm on the set and I've been, you know, we've been shooting for an hour with a particular setup and I'll say, "No, I'm telling the wrong story. I've just made a mistake. This is wrong, wrong, wrong. We're not... It's on me. I'm sorry. You know, this isn't the right story." So same with everything is story. And so, you know, in the script, I knew that ending, by the way, before I started writing the second episode. I just had this idea that I thought would be great because I knew I didn't want him...

• 54:36Speaker 02

  In the books, it's a little different. I think he's not walking in the books, certainly not by the end of the book. Rose really isn't in the first book as much, but I realized what would be great is is if he were engaged in the mystery and solving the mystery. I thought that would be really interesting. And but to answer your question, it's gut. It's trial and error. You're just, you're writing and through editing and in the moment when you're with the actor and you're telling the story and you're, what you're really doing as a director, if you have great actors, you're not telling them how to act. You know, occasionally there's a more of this or a less of that or whatever, but really you're reminding them of what, where we are in the story.

• 55:18Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  You know, you're really reminding them of that. And then they, they know how to perform that. And with him, you just, it was, it's just, I can't, I wish I had a better answer. I just kind of feel, I make, I just make mistakes and it's wrong until it's right. That's really my philosophy. I don't outline. I don't do any of that. I don't plan because anytime I plan or outline, it goes off the tracks. So for me, it's just getting comfortable with it being wrong until it's right.

• 55:45Chris Ryan?

  I asked this question to Jesse Armstrong the other night when I was doing an event with him, but I think I want to ask you about the same thing, which is, are you ever on set as Scott, the director, and you learn something about yourself as a writer when you're, when you're shooting something? Like, do you find yourself cutting more on set or cutting as you go into a day of shooting? Or are you ever mad at the writer version of you when you're, when you're setting something up?

• 56:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm always mad at the writer version of me. Um, because I sometimes think, okay, the writer was lazy. Because now, what am I supposed to do with this? You know, it's very general. And so, and I try now to remember that when I'm writing, to be mindful of the director. You know, because on the day I have to shoot this, so I'm gonna be as specific as I possibly can. Not in terms of shots, but just in terms of what's going on. You know, to not be too general and to, to really make sure there's enough, that the, the, this, there are bite-sized pieces that fit together. Because I am always editing on the set. I don't do a lot of coverage. I always know how I'm gonna cut something. I don't do things just to have options, because I find you start, once you start using those

• 56:59Speaker 02

  options, you, you start to leave the road that was this, you know, your intention, this planned intention. And you, once you start, well, you could do this, or do that, then, um, you know, you, you, you give yourself these alternatives that you then take, and there becomes a kind of visual or tonal inconsistency. So, I wanna, I don't wanna give myself so many outs. And sometimes I'm in the cutting room, and I wish I had a, a different option. But I'm usually, I know how I'm gonna cut, I'm telling everyone how I'm gonna do it. I may change this or that, but I, I learned, and I think I've said this to you guys before, I learned that, that the art of making something, or the effort to make something simple, I

• 57:43Speaker 02

  think results in a more elegant, um, um, and, and clear, you know what your, the rules are, when you do that. Whereas when you're kind of, open the door to everything, it makes directing harder, because everything's possible. When you have these rules for yourself, suddenly, it, it makes the decision-making so much easier.

• 58:04Andy Greenwald?

  On the topic of your direction, which is really beautiful in this series, there's a shot in, see, I'm, that's the compliment, the question's coming now. The, in, in the second episode, and you may have heard us talk about this, there's a shot that is almost... Casually low-key brilliant and stunning, which is in the church when he's going to, when Mort goes to visit the cop who had investigated the mayor disappearance initially, and now he's in a different phase of his life. And you have the light coming through the stained glass, and it looks absolutely beatific. But it's not in the way of the story. The story is moving forward, and it's just something casually beautiful to look at. I'm wondering if you could use that shot as a way to describe how you've grown as a director in terms of shooting something, finding beauty where you find it, but always telling the story first.

• 58:50Speaker 02

  I remember on the set of Minority Report, Janusz lined up this shot. It was in the greenhouse with Lois Smith, and she was wearing this mesh hat. And he lined up this gorgeous overhead shot, shooting through the mesh brim to her hands at the table she was working on. And I remember Steven Spielberg saying to him, "It's too arty. It has nothing to do with anything." And that stayed with me forever, because the shots have to be both. They have to be the shot for a shot's sake, like a lot of times with oners. Sometimes I'll see a one, "Why did you do that?" And sometimes it's really amazing.

• 59:35Speaker 02

  It has a real effect on the story. It's really, everything has to be sourced to storytelling. And I think when I started early on, and this is something Steven Soderbergh slapped me for, there was a lot of, "Look, Ma, I'm directing." And now I feel like, you know, again, the simpler is better. And if I'm using fewer shots, it's not that I'm not moving the camera, but if I'm trying to really just cut when I need to cut, make sure that the punctuation is powerful, like, how many times have you seen close-ups overused? And so they lose their power, you know? But if I'm just sort of cutting to the story, punctuating when I need to punctuate, then

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  you focus more on composition. So every shot, you're really focused on, how much story can you tell in the frame? While it's happening. And so you don't want something like light in the window to to to overwhelm the everything else that's happening. It becomes part of everything that's going on in that story. It becomes something that's that you might lean into, but you're not aware of it happening. And I feel that way about wardrobe. I feel that way about the palette overall, you know, texture, pattern, all that stuff. I because of my own OCD and what have you, all all of that stays with me. And when I'm, you know, lining up a shot,

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  you know, where people are in the frame and and the tension of them being more to this side or that side, and then what is happening behind them, or maybe you don't see anything behind. I mean, in Godless, 90% of that was a 25mm lens, because I wanted all this story in the background, you know, and it's different for everything. So what I've learned is to how much story can you tell in one shot if you have a still of that shot? Is there story being told? And then what that does is it activates the production designer and the costume designer. Everybody begins sort of thinking about designing to tell a story instead of look, my I'm designing.

• 1:01:40Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so then on this directing road we're taking, I have a question where, you know, in this series, there are essentially, I mean, there are many detectives, but there are two main detectives. There's Mork and then there's Merritt. Merritt, in and of it's she's sort of investigating her own life and her own possible culpability and her own kidnapping and everything. And that visually is much different. You shoot it in a different aspect ratio, I think. And then also, it's very claustrophobic intentionally, but also has these, you know, her flashbacks, her reveries, like the experiences that she's going through physically. Can you talk to us a little bit about how you approached Chloe

• 1:02:20Chris Ryan?

  in this very enclosed area? What was like, I assume you built a set, but what was what was going into creating the world of this person's isolation and captivity?

• 1:02:32Speaker 02

  Um, most of it has to do with, I think, writing more than directing because we didn't have a lot of options in there. And that the, the hyperbaric chamber, actually, you could open it, but it would take too long to open it and to do that. And so I, I just thought, let's all experience it, um, together. And so the way we shot. How fun. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Chloe Peary, what a lovely trooper. Um, um, we had a long, we had a, you know, a like 50 foot crane that could go in and out of there. And the camera was on, you know, on this arm that she would sometimes have to, she'd be acting with this huge, you know, jib arm that's coming in and out of, of the chamber and

• 1:03:17Speaker 02

  moving with her. And then we would cover it. There would obviously be tighter coverage or things, but with handheld stuff, really, you know, for really tight, different things. But mostly that's how we, we, we covered it. And the, and there aren't a lot of options because we would also reshoot every scene where we needed to with the CCTV cameras that we had that were real and working. And so we would run the scene. We may move them a little bit, you know, to get a better angle on something. Sometimes we'd have a GoPro in there and use that as the CCTV and, and put it in a little place. But mostly we were trying to keep it to have the camera feel like she does. That was what I really thought we would do. And if I had to think the way she had to think, the shots that came out of that were

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  much more interesting than shots we could shoot by blowing out the walls. Yeah, right. Or doing things like that. But the writing part was the harder part, was her, her having to solve the mystery of her life because cold cases are by their very nature past tense stories. And then there's a past tense story to the past tense story, um, which, which bothered Andy, I know. No, this is, I'm ready, I'm ready to go. I had it all teed up. Let's talk about this because you. Backstory.

• 1:04:31Andy Greenwald?

  It doesn't bother me. I'm impressed by it, honestly, because this is a huge, huge challenge for any writer, including one as esteemed as yourself. So you, very kindly, in an email to us, suggested that we read the books before we talk to you, which, you know, I know I did.

• 1:04:45Speaker 02

  Just one book.

• 1:04:46Andy Greenwald?

  I'm assuming Chris did as well. No, we will. We love books. We didn't get to it in time for this conversation. But the mystery that's being solved in season one of Department Q is extremely internal, as you said. It's Merit's own, it's her memories, it's her experience, and it's based in the past. This is unbelievably challenging. So could you talk to us and refute me and my criticisms about it?

• 1:05:11Speaker 02

  I can't refute you. I can't refute you because you're not, and Tony, yesterday, was giving me a hard time.

• 1:05:18Andy Greenwald?

  That sounds like Tony.

• 1:05:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, giving me a hard time saying, you know, dude, next time, less backstory. I said, you and Andy, you can sit down and you can bond over this. He said, yeah, I mean, oh, my God, I got a headache just thinking about all that backstory. And I couldn't argue, you know, I had to laugh, but I would say.

• 1:05:38Andy Greenwald?

  Can you imagine, Scott, how short the Tony Gilroy podcast would be? Dude, do it faster. End of episode.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  End of episode. That's it. Done. Done. But we, what I wanted to do in the book, the reason why she's there is this. In the book, these two people go through all this effort to hold her prisoner for four years because of something that happened when she was 11 years old. She and her brother were in a car with their parents, and they were all very happy in the car. And they were, they passed another family who were miserable and poor. And they looked in this car, and they saw these people, and they were distracted by these happy people, and they got in a horrible car accident, and they wanted this

• 1:06:29Speaker 02

  little girl now grown up to pay for it.

• 1:06:32Andy Greenwald?

  Whoa. That's different.

• 1:06:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:35Speaker 02

  That's different.

• 1:06:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:36Speaker 02

  It's, it's now, I probably oversimplified, but that is basically the gist of this chance encounter is what started everything. And I thought, you know, I've done the women in peril thing and um I, I wanted to do something where she should be in for something that wouldn't even occur to her because she sees it in a totally different way than they see it. When she finds out what it is, she says, wait, that's why I'm here? Well, then fuck you. Kill me. That's it.

• 1:07:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:12Speaker 02

  Because that's not, you know, she completely has a different reaction to it. But to get there, you have to tell another story. To create that, there has to be another story. And one thing that I think um Chaney Lakani did early on was create this family scenario that, that could throw off a lot of story, the fact that, that, you know, on this island and, and the story of her wanting to get off the island. And then it was something that I could then run with as well and create a lot of, there's a lot of moves to that story. Her brother, what happened, telling the guy to come steal the money so they can both get away, all these things.

• 1:07:56Speaker 02

  Now, I think where I may lose people like Andy is when I have a lot of long scenes like the one in the middle of the show with her and her father, you know, where he's telling her to not be so angry at him and we're talking about the mother and when the mother left. Do we need that? Strictly speaking, we do not. But for me, it adds this thing you can't quite understand until later, this emotion at the very end, when you see all these people, I always knew I wanted to have them all show up in the chamber as she's dying. And it adds this whole other thing when you realize that she's unraveling her life and she's seeing she wasn't such a good person. Maybe, you know, and did she deserve?

• 1:08:41Speaker 02

  To be in a hyper bar for four years, no. But she wasn't, the wall was full of names of people she possibly wronged or, or, you know, had been, been horrible to. And so to do that, you had to create now, because I was writing it while I was directing it. I'm sure it's not as efficient as it could be had I, had I really, really got it all, which I normally do. I, I normally have it all done. But that's why I found myself to answer questions as I was writing, I had to have backstory to answer the question. And I gave Tony a big headache.

• 1:09:15Chris Ryan?

  You know, I, I, I'm curious, you mentioned Tony Gilroy, we, we've brought him up. Uh, and you also mentioned generally a number that you were given by Netflix, like broadly, like the 40 million number to work on this show. And I was wondering if you could speak to, I, I think three makes a trend. This phenomenon of you and Tony Gilroy and Steve Zalian and these people who have come up through Hollywood screenwriting. Who have now found themselves as these streaming TV auteurs, for lack of a better, lack of a better term. Is it because this is where you can tell the stories that interest you the most? And this is the way that you've decided you wanted to tell them?

• 1:09:58Chris Ryan?

  Or is this something that you think had this been available to, uh, Minority Report or Lookout era Scott Frank? You would have been like, hell yeah, I want nine hours to tell a novelistic version of these characters. I mean, I'm curious what your, what your take is on like the landscape where you, where you reside.

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  By the way, 40 million doesn't even pay for catering and one episode of Andor.

• 1:10:27Chris Ryan?

  I love the socialist Star Wars show with the, with the fuck you catering budget.

• 1:10:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:10:33Andy Greenwald?

  Look, we're all complicit here.

• 1:10:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yes, we are.

• 1:10:36Andy Greenwald?

  But Tony's a rich palate, you know?

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  Yes, he does. He's a genius. So I think that, um, I don't think there was any design to this. I think I was being told no in the world I wanted to work in. I, I began life, you know? Four decades ago, wanting to write movies, period, the end. That was it. I wanted to write movies, maybe write novels later, but movies were everything for me.

• 1:11:03Speaker 02

  But increasingly, I couldn't tell the stories I wanted to tell. And then, in the case of Godless, I realized, after I made it, it was so much better as a limited series than it would have been as, because it was written as a feature. And the same thing happened with The Queen's Gambit. It was so much better as a limited series, because I wanted to do that as a feature also for many, many years. But you could just, you can explore more. Now, you still have to be disciplined, which I'm not always. But you still have to be disciplined in terms of not abusing the extra time. But there are so many things that were, you know, hitherto considered unadaptable, that are now, you can do it.

• 1:11:46Speaker 02

  And it's more interesting now. Are things stretched out and things to, yes, of course. Mr. Spade, which is obviously a feathered fish. It's not a this and it's not a that. You know, it's about aging. You know, it's about all kinds of things. It's not, the mystery is one thing, but it's really about the man. You know, and I couldn't have done that as a movie. And, and so, I just think I fell into that. I still want to make movies. I'm trying to get Laughter in the Dark made right now. You know, as a film, not as a limited series. Tony's in prep on a movie right now. So, I think that we all still love the movies, but we go where we can get our stories told.

• 1:12:26Speaker 02

  And most of the movies that you talked about, I mean, in particular, Out of Sight wouldn't get made today as a movie. Why? Be a Netflix streamer. Yeah.

• 1:12:36Andy Greenwald?

  But so, just to build on that a little bit. Godless and Queen's Gambit are beautiful expressions of features that were yearning to bust out of their cage, and this was the best venue for them. I think what's a little bit different about Department Q is that you are so expertly playing with things that are purely TV language, in my opinion, like building this misfit toy collection. Akram being a character that is so brilliantly designed, written, performed. Executed, costumed, I want him to be in my life regularly, you know? And everything about the show, while it does stand on its own, you solve this cold case, is teed up for just more and more, and I hope we get more. But you're the movie guy, Scott, and here you've given us this, this, these, this pure expression of TV language.

• 1:13:22Speaker 02

  By accident, because I learned as I went, you know? I, I knew it had to be a series. I knew it was unlike the others. I mean, I would have loved to have done a second season of Mr. Spade, but definitely no one was clamoring for that. We had an idea.

• 1:13:35Andy Greenwald?

  No, that's out of this podcast, by the way. You told us the idea. We were in.

• 1:13:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's dead. But I thought that this had to be a series and I was, part of this was just the responsibility I felt to make it a series and to just sort of lean into. It's funny, you, you, when I, when I wrote a Western, all I did was read Western novels for, for a year or so. I think we talked about that once, but for this, I really focused on watching a lot of television while I was making it. A lot of these kinds of procedurals, and it was helpful. It was really helpful.

• 1:14:11Chris Ryan?

  Scott, that's about all for us, man. It's been great to hang out with you. Great to see you. Did you have one more?

• 1:14:16Andy Greenwald?

  I have one more only because this is a hallmark of our conversations with Scott, because you are nothing if not forthcoming with us. You mentioned Department Q as like on your to-do list, I think, multiple, many years ago, like not your last appearance.

• 1:14:29Chris Ryan?

  The Scott Frank dream, dream.

• 1:14:31Andy Greenwald?

  You mentioned Laughter in the Dark. That's, that's, that's been mentioned before. Are there any other things you'd want to just like the secret out into the universe? Other projects that you're dreaming of?

• 1:14:40Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, sure.

• 1:14:41Andy Greenwald?

  The books you're reading right now. Where, where are you? Where are we going next?

• 1:14:43Speaker 02

  The other thing that is set up and will get made also at Netflix and A24 is Red Harvest. I'm doing that as a limited series. Megan Abbott and I are adapting it.

• 1:14:56Andy Greenwald?

  Megan, that's great.

• 1:14:57Speaker 02

  Well, we did Laughter in the Dark together. And so that will be, that's my, my next, my next big limited series that I really want to do. I would love to do another season of Department Q, but they haven't, they haven't as yet asked me to.

• 1:15:13Andy Greenwald?

  Can we talk to them? Because you heard us say this, like. Get your head in the game Netflix. There should be a second season coming next year and I apologize for what that does to you and your personal life.

• 1:15:22Speaker 02

  It really fucks me up, but it's okay.

• 1:15:26Andy Greenwald?

  But is your ownership, not ownership, creative feelings of ownership over this project such that if Netflix were to call you later today and say, okay, let's go, it has to have your full attention in order for it to happen? Or is it in a place now that you feel you could once again shepherd other people and I see the head check?

• 1:15:43Speaker 02

  I think what we've learned, what we've learned is that I'm not good at, at the latter. I can shepherd other people on their projects. I can, I can, I'm, I'm actually pretty good, I think, at helping other people with their projects. And just being a kind of mentor, producer, advisor, whatever you want to call it. When it comes to things that I'm then going to be making and doing, I need to, you need to,

• 1:16:14Speaker 02

  do you know in Butch Cassidy, when they go to get the job in, in Bolivia? Yeah. Guarding the, the, the pay, the, what is it? The payroll? Payroll, yeah. For the mining, Struthers Martin, they're going to work for Struthers Martin. They go to Struthers Martin to get the job, to, you know, and he's, and, you know, and he's sitting there with a plug of tobacco chewing and he, and he asks, you know, the Sundance kid, he says, you know, can you shoot? And Sundance kid says, yeah, you know, because they're going to be guarding the payroll and he wants to see that they can shoot. And he throws a plug of tobacco on the ground, you know, 10 feet in front of the Sundance kid and he says, hit that. And the Sundance kid starts to draw both his guns and he stops him. And he says, just one.

• 1:16:59Speaker 02

  And he draws one pistol gun and he shoots at the plug and he misses it. It's, I thought you said you could shoot. And the Sundance kid says to him, can I move? And he says, can you move? And then he draws both his guns and he's moving all over the place, doing all this weird shit, hitting the plug of tobacco every single time with each gun. I need to move.

• 1:17:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:21Speaker 02

  You know, I can't do it the way other people do it. It's just like, can I move? It's always the sort of unspoken question that I'm, I'm hoping that people understand the answer to.

• 1:17:32Andy Greenwald?

  Can I, can I ask one last thing, Chris?

• 1:17:33Chris Ryan?

  Of course you can.

• 1:17:34Andy Greenwald?

  Scott, you have been very generous about the criticisms that Tony and sometimes Steven Soderbergh have given you in your journey as a filmmaker. We'd like to just see the little space for you to criticize Tony. Anything that maybe that you had said about Andor in passing, you know, or just like, maybe you've read the script of Behemoth and you're like, oh, the second act's a little draggy. Like, this is your opportunity to even the score a little bit.

• 1:17:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, this is your free hit.

• 1:17:56Speaker 02

  Tony, Tony would say things to me like, you gotta throw out that whole first episode. And Jennifer, if my wife were there, she'd be like, Tony, what? And I would just say, wait, you have to, you have to, there's a language here. You have to parse the tone of it. Oh, my God, he's, no, those two have eaten my lunch more often than, than I can tell you. You know, Tony's just lucky that he married well. That's all, you know?

• 1:18:21Chris Ryan?

  Nice one.

• 1:18:22Andy Greenwald?

  We, we feel the same way. We've been told that Susan is the one who listens to us in that household.

• 1:18:27Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 1:18:27Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:28Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Absolutely.

• 1:18:29Andy Greenwald?

  She's our favorite killjoy, too.

• 1:18:30Speaker 02

  Tony's too busy being Tony to listen to anybody else, you know?

• 1:18:34Andy Greenwald?

  He even took over this interview. I apologize, Scott.

• 1:18:36Speaker 02

  He even took over somehow.

• 1:18:38Chris Ryan?

  But he's actually cutting the first 20 minutes of it.

• 1:18:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, that's right. It's a little draggy. Scott, it's such a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you, and thank you for this show. It's really, really terrific.

• 1:18:47Chris Ryan?

  Great to see you, man.

• 1:18:48Speaker 02

  So much fun to see you guys. Really a pleasure.

• 1:18:59Speaker 06

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