Rebels, Rule Breakers & Political Animals: A Day of Great Conversation
Our Janice Min and Katey Rich dug in with creators and stars, from 'The Diplomat' to 'Zero Day' and more, at Netflix's FYSEE LA
From a C-SPAN video with 137 views to a Netflix series that amassed over six million views in its opening week: Paul William Davies figured out the thrust of Shondaland’s The Residence late one night a couple years ago while watching a not-so-intriguing Senate Banking Committee hearing from the mid-’90s.
“I don't [even] know how 137 people watched this,” Davies joked from the stage during a Netflix FYSEE LA panel on Saturday.
But as viewer #138 watching the then-Chief Usher of the White House testify about billing records, Davies, who was trying to learn all he could about the staff of the building, had his interest piqued when they put up a floor plan of the third floor of the White House. “I just thought to myself, ‘Oh my God, it's a Clue board!’” he said. “‘That's what I can do with this.’” Inspired by the non-fiction book of the same name written by a former White House correspondent, The Residence — or “Clue in the White House,” as Davies puts it — is a murder mystery centered on the staff of the people’s house, and all the political intrigue surrounding them.
Davies, together with Zero Day co-creator Eric Newman and The Diplomat creator Debora Cahn, shared his show’s origin story in a lively conversation with Ankler CEO and editor-in-chief Janice Min during the aptly titled panel: “Behind the Curtain: The Politics of Storytelling.” The discussion, which took place at Netflix’s Tudum Theater, was part of the streamer’s first-ever FYSEE LA, a two-week For Your Consideration showcase that kicked off in Los Angeles that same day. The Ankler has teamed with Netflix as a media partner for the showcase, hosting three panels on Saturday, including the closer that night featuring Janice and the showrunners’ big conversation about statecraft on screen.
Cahn, Newman and Williams took the packed Tudum audience inside the inspiration for and intrigue behind their hit shows: Newman’s Zero Day stemmed from society’s increasing disconnect with the truth, he said, and the daunting notion that what he called “divergent truths” had taken hold. “There’s that great Daniel Patrick Moynihan quote: ‘You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.’ I don't know that that's really true anymore in this country,” Newman said. Cahn, who cut her teeth on The West Wing, said that after it ended, she thought, “Someday I want to do this but about foreign policy.” After stints on Grey’s Anatomy and Homeland, with The Diplomat, centered on Keri Russell’s U.S. Ambassador to the U.K., Cahn made it happen.
Each creator was also fortunate to lure a huge lead star who resonated with the material. Newman recalled pitching just the kernel of Zero Day to Robert De Niro, and “from that moment forward, Bob said, ‘I'm doing this, and we’re doing this.’” For The Diplomat, Cahn was looking for someone “itchy, sweaty, twitchy and neurotic,” she said — not Russell, whom Cahn viewed as “graceful and balletic.” But at Netflix VP of drama series Jinny Howe’s behest, Cahn took a Zoom meeting with the star. “She had her hair in a pile on top of her head, and she was like, ‘My in-laws and my other in-laws are here, and I have to cook for all of them,’” Cahn said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, my God, you are her.’”
The Residence’s brilliant detective was played by Uzo Aduba, whom Davies saw as being “so indelibly the character,” a theme the actress herself had explored during another FYSEE conversation earlier that day, “Rebels & Rule Breakers.” The two-part panel — one part creators, one part stars — led by Katey Rich, kicked off with the creators, who included showrunners Mara Brock Akil (Forever), Tracey Wigfield (The Four Seasons) and Cahn, plus Zero Day director Lesli Linka Glatter and Katie Walsh, director and EP of the doc Simone Biles Rising.
Akil knows that audiences are taking in “so many stories,” be they shows like hers, films, documentaries or TikToks. So how do you stand out? “It's the surprises, the zigs and the zags, and also the honesty and the authenticity,” said Akil, whose Judy Blume adaptation charted at No. 1 in the U.S. and was renewed for a second season during Netflix’s NYC upfront presentation on May 14. “That’s what makes storytelling so great,” she added.
Wigfield talked about the sparky collaboration behind the star-studded marriage dramedy Four Seasons, a project she created with her best friend, Lang Fisher, and her onetime 30 Rock colleague Tina Fey. “It was almost like how it is in a marriage,” Wigfield said. “One person’s like, ‘Everything sucks,’ and the other one’s like, ‘No, it’s not so bad.’ And then you flip those positions.”
Unlike Wigfield, Walsh was the chief creative on her Simone Biles documentary. She leaned on her director of photography, Jessica Young, to help craft a narrative that always kept Biles’ inner life as the North Star. “One of the very first things she said to me was, ‘I wish people knew me as Simone, not just Simone Biles’,” Walsh recalled. “I kept that as my thesis, because we all know her as the GOAT . . . But when you peel that back, she’s a human being first.”
Glatter, who’s known for dramatic thrillers like Zero Day, said she never wants to limit herself in terms of vibe or genre. She directed the pilot of Gilmore Girls, too, after all. “I love telling all kinds of stories,” she said. “Yes, I love politics and thrillers and blowing shit up — only if it moves the story forward. It’s all about story. It’s all about exploration.”
Part 2 of “Rebels & Rule Breakers” highlighted the stars of some of those same shows — Aduba and her Residence co-star Susan Kelechi Watson, Forever’s Karen Pittman — plus Nobody Wants This breakout Justine Lupe. Pittman, in particular, took to the idea of actors as rule breakers by virtue of the passion that drives them through all the barriers to success in a creative career. “In your heart, how you come into this, there has to be a bit of a rebellion — a place that says, ‘I don’t even know if I see the space for me, but I’m making one’,” Pittman said.
“In a room waiting for people to catch up to her” — that’s how Aduba instantly imagined her character Cordelia Cupp, the brilliant detective of The Residence, just from the pace of Cupp’s written dialogue on the page. But Watson said she didn’t fully come to understand her usher character until she stepped foot on the show’s set, an extremely faithful recreation of the White House. “I didn't immediately get her rhythm. I wasn't quite sure,” Watson said. “I had to really understand who she was and what her place was in all of this.”
Lupe, meanwhile, had a real-life example of who her Nobody Wants This character was supposed to be: Sara Foster, the sister and podcast co-host of the show’s creator, Erin Foster. For her screen test, the actor even assembled an outfit similar to one she’d seen on Sara’s Instagram. “I was like, ‘Oh, I get her’ before I got [the part of] her,” Lupe recalled.
You can see videos of all three revealing conversations at AnklerEnjoy, and keep an eye out for two special Prestige Junkie podcast episodes to come, recorded on Saturday during FYSEE. Visit FYC.Netflix.com for the full FYSEE LA schedule, with events rolling out through June 2, and stay tuned for an invitation to one more Ankler-FYSEE collab: The Ankler & Letterboxd’s “Audience First” screening of Adolescence, featuring an exclusive conversation with co-creators Stephen Graham (who also stars) and Jack Thorne, on May 30.
