#industry asks

Do you think Rolin being EP means he'll still have creative input? I know EPs are sometimes just ceremonial, or like Mark where he's very involved in some ways, it seems, but not creatively. Rolin has talked like he wants to be involved in the story through at least season 5, so a role that lets him be more involved with the overarching creative vision without doing any day to day stuff or actually having to write seems like it would be good

That doesn't really surprise me. These sorts of decisions should ideally have long lead times, and I do think the writing was kind of on the wall in hindsight? I was speculating a few weeks ago that Hannah was maybe going to co-showrun given she seemed to have stepped up as a headwriter on s3 (her writing the finale felt like particularly an indicator of that), but I guess that was only half of what was actually happening!

The EP role honestly really varies? Like you have cases like The Housemaid where Amanda Seyfried owns it as a vanity title, and didn't even know she was one until part-way through filming whereas you have cases like Mark Johnson who's actually deeply involved in the financing and overseeing the logistics and creative coherency across the multiple shows set in this universe. Generally speaking though, you'd usually say EPs are big picture, and Producers are the ones who do the day-to-day, which includes creative contribution. Adam's a good example of that - he's one of the producer's on this show and he seems to be in the writer's room a lot of the time, and is really on the ground there with them (imo, he should be the one doing press over Mark, but I appreciate that Mark is there to speak to the broader Immortals Universe).

Producers, in my experience, are more likely to be creatively involved - giving script notes and feedback and creatively supporting the writers [and actually all HODs i.e. designers, etc], while EPs, if they come through a room, are usually more focused on how they can finance the production and on things like casting.

Hey! Yeah, it is a pretty taboo topic and they haven't really talked about it, but...the standard rates of pay are public info, and that includes emergency covers. Keep in mind that these specifics just apply to the West End. Every other production has a different union with different pay rates. There are a lot of factors that go into pay, and you can read about that at that link (or if people are curious I can write up a post?). The short version is that typical understudies get their base/standard pay and then they get additional pay each week depending on how many roles they cover, how many times they’re on, etc. Those additional payments are all laid out in that doc I linked to. There’s also a pay for emergency covers; in this case it would be 8.43 pounds per performance.* Per my understanding, that’s on top of the normal understudy-per-performance pay but I may be misunderstanding that! 

The normal understudy-per-performance pay is 28 pounds per principal tracks or 18.25 for featured.** I actually can’t tell if the queens count as principal or featured under SOLT guidelines, but Oliviers had them as featured so I’m guessing that’s the SOLT classification as well.

There are a few things I’m really not sure on: - Harriet Watson just effectively did a full week of shows last week as an emergency cover. When that’s the case, I’m not sure if she would get paid the normal base weekly pay in addition to the understudy/emergency cover pay or not. - When someone like Harriet Watson or Jennifer Caldwell who knows all six roles is a temp emergency cover, I’m not sure if they’d be counted as a swing or an understudy. -  If someone is just on standby as an emergency cover but doesn’t actually perform (like Natalie Pilkington in March 2020), I’m not sure what they get paid. The emergency cover rate is listed as “emergency cover or understudy,” so I’d guess that would apply to an emergency offstage understudy who doesn’t perform? But again, I’m not sure on that.

This is interesting. If Sam is actually bi (and I think he most likely is), I hate to think of him (or any actor) still feeling like he can't come out without hurting his career. But I also get people just not wanting to deal with that intrusiveness into their personal life.

Very interesting, anon. He's not wrong - there are so many gay and queer actors out there, and how and when people choose to come out, if they do at all, is such a personal thing, but I can understand having thoughts and feelings on it as an openly gay actor. Perhaps oddly, it kind of reminds me of Ian McKellan accidentally outing Richard Armitage during The Hobbit's press run, where Richard was seemingly out with the other actors (hell, he started dating Lee Pace on that set), but he clearly didn't want to be publicly out (and didn't talk about it at all until 2023).

There's a complicated dynamic to that, particularly as it's a bit of a snake-eat-tail situation where the industry won't ever feel like it's changing without visibility and representation, yet actors should be allowed their privacy and shouldn't be made to publicise what's personal to them in the name of that representation, particularly when there's still so much homophobia entrenched in both industry and society.

It's tricky! It's interesting too that he brings up being one of the very few gay actors in Interview too, and I think an important point to acknowledge, even though I don't think actors have to be openly queer or even queer at all to play queer roles. This is kind of an aside, but I've been a little worried for a while about an out gay actor playing Magnus, given this fandom does sometimes struggle to separate the performer from the performance (and is prone to perpetuating homophobic rhetoric), but also a little because I think there are some - - mm, let's say murky connotations of casting a gay man as a violent rapist when most of the other queer roles are played by actors either straight or at the very least, not out. I'm hoping the supporting cast is rounded out with more out actors as a result this season, and it does at least seem like Ben's more or less confirmed to be back for s3, which hopefully eases some of that, but yes.

Hi! Oh, I can actually tell you the specific reasons for this, anon, because there are specific reasons. It's the rise of streaming and the cinema-ification of television.

Television used to be considered a second-tier form of entertainment that sat beneath cinema, and the result of that was, across the board, cheaper. You had lower production values, cheaper writers, cheaper actors (there's a reason there used to be a firm deviation between movie stars and tv stars), and on top of that, it was ad-supported, which helped to pay for everything. Add to that that the traditional television model ran on a year-long schedule that had to be filled as opposed to a stop-drop-and-binge model, and the fact that longer seasons were also cheaper (everyone gets a pay bump each season, so having one 22-episode season instead of two 12-episode seeasons again were a way of keeping costs down) meant that they just made sense.

The two things that broke TV was the rise in this concept of television not as a medium in an of itself, but as an "eight-hour movie" i.e. bingeable content that Netflix started in order to compete and move viewers away from traditional television and towards streamers. The effect of treating TV as a film meant that production values soared. TV needed to look and feel better so it meant hiring A-list talent, from directors like David Fincher, to casts like Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon, to crews, which meant that schedules changed (A-list talent won't be available to shoot a 22-episode season of anything) and costs went up because suddenly you have movie stars who work for movie fees.

Shortening seasons as a result became a matter of scheduling talent and being in any way shape or form affordable. This was contributed to by the fact that streamers relying on subscriptions instead of advertising has meant they've been beholden to grow subscriber bases by offering bigger, more bombastic shows as a means to entice new subscribers. It's also what made shows disposable, because whatever wasn't luring in viewers was not a 'viable product'. This model has just kept become entrenched as audiences have demanded that across the board, and network television / traditional TV has struggled to compete.

So yeah. We've been in a bit of a snake-eat-tail situation, but on a positive note, we are starting to see some swingback there. Obviously streamers are having to become ad supported because the theory of infinite subscriber growth was never going to last, which may actually revert the way streamers function, but network TV is also starting to feel its way back to the traditional model, with both sitcoms like Abbott Elementary on ABC and procedurals like Found on NBC both getting 22-episode season orders.

I wouldnt want US producers making decisions on international productions tbh because those would probably loose part of their not US identity

Mm, I mean, Netflix wouldn't actually be the US production company for a co-production, anon, because their local offices aren't really producing shows or films (we have one here too), rather they're the equivalent of a network/channel. They commission content - or greenlight stuff, like you said - but they're commissioning that content off an actual production company. Take the Heartbreak High reboot for instance - that's 'a Netflix show', but it's actually being produced by Fremantle Media Australia.

Similarly, Interview with the Vampire is an AMC show (and AMC does have a production stake in it through it's AMC Studios), but it's actually being produced by Gran Via Productions (Mark's company) and Dwight Street Bookclub Productions (Rolin's company - which has a very cool website by the way). They're producing it for AMC, and as a result, a co-production wouldn't be done through the network, it would be done through their companies, via way of an official treatise (of which the US currently doesn't have any, so it's kind of a moot point).

(I actually know a bit about this because my mum is a documentary producer who specialises in co-pros, and the theatre company I work at also does a lot of co-pros, albeit in performance, not screen).

Co-productions can be official or unofficial, and sure, unofficial ones can get very sticky, very fast, but official co-productions - which, from what I read, it sounds like these US producers were interested in - are formalised through government, meaning they're official national treaties with rules that both nations negotiate. This can take years - the Australian-Indian one that recently got ratified certainly has! - but the rules would be real, and those rules are usually highly informed by the production and creative unions in both countries.

That doesn't mean there's a one-size-fits-all approach to them either. Some do function effectively as production service (i.e. it's a Chinese film for instance, but utilises Australian crews, actors, and books a local producer to organise all of that), or it's a full creative collaboration like one of my favourite films, Bright Star, which was an official Australian-UK co-production with Australian filmmakers collaborating with British ones to tell a story.

The point though is an official co-production treaty would protect both parties from being overpowered, because the boundaries of it would literally be government mandated (and government agencies can and do step in), y'know? Also, again, the co-production would be between production companies as opposed to a streamer/network, which does shift the relationship and the power dynamic to one generally (although not always) more collaborative. Most boots-on-the-ground producers are very different from studio executives/producers, and if they were to do an official co-production, producers from both sides (or more! My mum's done three-way-country official co-productions before) would have to want to work together, otherwise they'd go the route of the production service, as opposed to a collaborative co-production, if that makes sense? And sure, it could mean theoretically a government would strongarm another, but then it would literally be a diplomatic incident, which nobody wants.

They're definitely complicated, but honestly, the American industry is big enough that if an American production wanted to be American, it would just be American, or engage a local company on a production-service level. Again, co-production treaties were originally intended to help smaller industries competitive with the US by having them collaborate, the whole point is that the US hasn't needed them.

Can you talk more about this? I'm so curious because yeah, I don't think of how long-term a project is having an impact on what intimacy coordinators do, I'm just thinking of it scene by scene, but that makes sense. But I'd love to know more about what they said about what making it work both professionally and personally means.

And yes it feels like it would be surreal to really adore someone as a close friend and then also passionately make out with them before pretending to murder them and then going to dinner and hanging out. I can also see having that kind of physical intimacy on set creating more closeness more rapidly among people who maybe naturally like each other? Jacob and Sam seem to have such physical comfort with each other, with looking at each other and being in each other's personal space and touching, and HAVING to do all that on set must sometimes speed up that comfort level in real life

(x)

Yeah! She talked quite a bit about her job as being about helping the actors to build a physical language of intimacy between characters, and how with established or long-running relationships, that becomes about creating a foundation that you build off. What that means varies depending on the cast, really, because she says there's not a one-size-fits-all approach to that, and sometimes you dig really deeply, and other times it's more just about making the mechanics of a scene work.

This particular intimacy coordinator had a process where she'd meet with everyone one-on-one first (the relevant actors, director, writer), to work out what people were and weren't comfortable with, and what everyone wanted, and then they'd jump into a space together and workshop in ways that were both broad and specific. Yes, they'd workshop the scene, but she said they also sometimes do a lot of character work to understand how the character is going to respond to intimacy.

She'd been the coordinator on Love Me (a very good Australian show!) and the example she came back to a bit was with working with Hugo Weaving and Heather Mitchell and (hilariously) Emma Freeman as director (Australia is a small industry, haha). In that, Hugo's character had been caring for his very sick wife for many years who passes away right at the start of the series. He's worn down and he's grief struck, but he also hasn't been intimate with anyone in years and years, so when he finds this connection to Heather's character, he's not really sure how to navigate it.

In that, she said a lot of the intimacy coordination became about working out the history of his relationship with his wife, just how touchstarved he was, that vulnerability with having been in a caregiver role for so long that you're no longer sure how to be cared for, and what that means with physical intimacy from gentle touches to kisses to sex.

So she said that was a lot of going back to both Hugo's and Heather's characters' previous relationships and sexual history to build up this understanding of how they might be with each other. This was particularly important with them as Hugo and Heather have worked with each other a lot and are really close in real life, and it was very easy for them to slip out of character in a way that left them feeling pretty vulnerable and exposed as performers. In that sense too, she said that building up these characters histories with one another and apart also becomes about helping the actors to separate themselves from the characters and actually is a means to protect their privacy so that they can watch themselves back and see their characters having sex and not them having sex. She said it's a pretty hard line to manage sometimes, particularly when actors know each other, are friends, or have slept together before (the latter she said can be particularly hard for actors to break out from sometimes), but it's a really important one.

But yeah, she said sometimes it also is just about mechanics too, it really depends on how much intimacy there is in a show, what the creative team wants to do and also how experienced the actors are (interestingly, she said with less experienced actors, her role is usually a lot more about the actor's comfort and helping them work with other departments such as costume with things like cock socks and modesty patches, which more experienced actors are used to, than character work).

Interestingly, a lot of intimacy coordinators in my experience have a history in sex work too (two out of the three on that panel did) and this particular one had actually been a dom / dominatrix, so she talked a lot about how she uses stuff she learnt from scene preparation in supporting actors too.

She's been in workshops for it, but at least as of right now doesn't seem like she'll be leaving to do it in the immediate future.

Workshops are a common part of the development process for new musicals. It helps the production team get a cast to sing/read through the material and figure out anything that needs to be changed. There are also industry presentations (either as part of the same workshop or a separate one), which is basically a workshop that you invite producers/investors/etc to and sometimes incorporate more staging or costuming concepts into. However, just because a show has developmental or presentation workshops does not mean that that show will even get a proper staging. It might not get the funding, producer, theater, whatever it needs to actually happen, or it may be decided that it's not ready to actually be staged. In that case it might go back to development hell for more edits and hopefully another future workshop, sometimes several years in the future.

A lot of actors will do some developmental workshops, even if they're currently in a Broadway show. While some do join those eventual shows, it really depends on - whether or not the show even gets staged - whether the actor wants to continue with the show - whether the production team wants to continue with the actor - and allll the other normal considerations about whether or not to take a contract, like whether the actor has the availability to join the show and whether they agree on the pay. Erin Palmer Ramirez is one good example. In fall 2021 she did workshops for two shows: Romy & Michele and ¡Americano!. I haven't seen anything from Romy & Michele in a while, but ¡Americano! currently has an off-Broadway production running. While she might have been offered a contract for the off-Broadway production, she joined the Aragon Tour and is obviously not in the off-Broadway production.

So obviously it's complicated and it's hard to know for sure! Sam Pauly could very possibly be leaving soon; she's been with the show for three years, her post-lockdown contract is going to be coming to an end, and just like actors in any other show the Broadway cast is getting ready to move on to other shows. She's been in a few workshops recently that could be getting ready for an off-Broadway tryout, and there have been some rumors about her joining another Broadway production as well; she could totally leave Six for any of those things in the near future. As far as Ollie goes, I will say that Fat Kid Rules the World has put out an audition notice for further workshops in August/September and is still looking for an actor for Ollie, so it seems unlikely that Sam is planning to be part of those future workshops. But again, these things can totally change and we really won't know until we get a final announcement.