Beth Riesgraf: I just had thought before we did that take, I was like "Oh I should- she would think [kissing him] is the right thing to to do, but wait, I don't do that" and then she leaves him hanging.
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A summary of everything talked about in the Weekend in Paris watch-along, video here, with Dean Devlin, John Rogers, Aldis Hodge, Christian Kane, and interviewer Brittany Catallo.
Under the cut because it is long.
First question: how do you feel the latest season of Leverage: Redemption is relevant to audiences?
John: [sarcastic outrage] How is a show about evil oligarchs relevant!? I can’t-!
Everyone laughed, and Dean said Leverage was always a show that predicts the future, like The Simpsons, and he specifically mentioned The Mile High Job when Hardison hacks the plane remotely, and The Jailhouse Job which was about the prison industrial complex. At the time of writing those episodes, neither of those things had been done/talked about yet, but soon after the episodes aired both of those things became major news stories.
Dean said the difference this season was that Leverage was actually meeting the current moment, but in the show the good guys win.
John interjected that the good guys can still win! The only time anything is guaranteed is if you give up and accept it will just happen, otherwise the future is always unwritten.
Aldis: So basically Leverage is laying out the blueprint? We just need someone out there to follow it?
John: No! Do not send John Rogers to a foreign prison because you were inspired by something on Leverage!
Q: What can viewers expect this season coming off of last season?
Dean talked about how this season they got to see a whole new side of some of the characters, and get to explore some interesting arcs. He noted that we will be going deep into Parker’s character this season.
John said it’s an advantage of having a show that’s gone on this long, we’ve gone on a journey with them, and the actors give some really nice character work.
John then explained that they chose Paris because they were shooting most of their exterior shots in Belgrade, which is where The Librarians: The Next Chapter is shot.
The intro shot of the team moving throughout the hallway was all one shot that didn't cut, and the cast managed to get it in two takes because they practiced a lot. Everyone had a great time filming it, even if it was stressful knowing one small mess-up would make everybody start over.
When they wrote the scene they didn't have the set yet, and after John turned in the script to director Marc Roskin, Marc called John and said "this is impossible", to which John responded "yes! And that’s what makes it cool!”
It was a lot of exposition dump, but John knows Aldis is the best at it and could do it, which allowed them to use Hardison as the anchor character for that scene.
They talked about how everyone had to race around the set, specifically mentioning Beth scrambling to the top to hang through the vent.
The set itself wasn't as big as it looks, it was a big T that they digitally extended and shot well.
John: The room was like “so it’s Scooby Doo” and I was very hurt, I was like “No, it’s a challenging heist sequence built around an impossible bit of geometry!” And the writer’s room was like “No, it's the Scooby Doo door bit, we all know what you’re doing.”
John pointed out how these characters are now all peers, in comparison to the original show, which means Hardison can give Sophie crap about her relationships in a loving way.
He also pointed out how everyone else is distracted by personal stuff, but Eliot is the only one who stays on mission.
The shot of the team running out of the auction house and into the van was a reference to The Long Goodbye Job.
John: You know, I don’t think many fans will catch it, but we’re basically giving them a horrible flashback to the most traumatic moment of their life.
Aldis: You got the wrong audience for that on this show, because they watch everything.
Dean loved that they went from this long, beautiful one-er to the best action scene they've ever shot.
They were able to film the whole car chase downtown in the center of Belgrade.
The idea of the episode opening in the middle of a busted con was something John wanted to do since the original run of the show but never got to do.
Christian came up with the bit of Eliot recognizing and lamenting the waste of expensive flour.
Christian and John talked for a bit about shooting the fight scenes, and Christian said fight scenes are like a dance, it's less about the violence as it is about working with your scene partners.
John learned from Jackie Chan to shoot fights along a fight line, which helps avoid having the fights all be close up shots of punches. He also makes sure to write Eliot fight scenes with fluidity in mind, because Eliot fights to control the space, not to win.
Aldis shot his line in the van ("how was your first day at school?") in New Orleans six months after Christian shot his reaction outside the van in Belgrade.
When coming up with the bad guys for the episode, one of the Amazon execs said "you may have made them too evil," to which John replied "there's no such thing."
Q: What is the significance of Eliot getting seriously injured in this? What was the motivation behind that?
John wanted to make sure there was adequate build to Hardison's speech later, and talked about how Eliot can take a beating and keep working, and has taken a beating for ten years, but sometimes it's taken for granted. Eliot can handle business while injured, but it's a reminder that he's not bulletproof, and it gives the audience a visual and physical reminder of it for the end of the episode.
Hardison and Parker's waiter uniforms reminded Dean of the Season 1 finale of getting the Davids.
Aldis mentioned he gets nostalgia when thinking about where they started, how far they've all come since then, they had a good time and he misses that time.
John said that the bad guy of the week (Arizona Mike) was an example of the banality of evil. He's a generally likeable, smiley guy who has no idea he's a monster.
Sophie's alias Violet Cesario is a character from 12th Night, which is a clue that Sophie made the alias because she takes names from Shakespeare.
They needed the team to make fun of Harry's beard to explain why it was shaved by the end of the episode. John enjoyed writing Sophie giving him crap for it without even seeing it.
Q: Where did the evil water stealing hot sauce salesman come from?
John said that people always focus on Big Crime when writing, but there's a million mid-level evil dudes out there. The bad guy was based on a certain type of farming in California (which John won't name so he doesn't get sued), but no one ever goes directly into water, they get into it through other means. People have an idea in their head of secret office buildings in Vienna and backroom deals, but there's a lot of mid-level millionaires making people miserable for their own money.
Q: How much of yourself is in these characters, and how much have the characters influenced you?
Aldis said that he's part of Hardison more than Hardison is part of him. Since they've been filming Leverage for so long it allowed them to influence their characters more, especially when Redemption started they got to help plan the maturation of their characters and where they would be ten years later. His performance of his characters is made more natural when he puts some of himself in it, and being able to help build the characters helps with that as well.
Dean pointed out that Aldis filmed several TV shows and movies at the same time as Redemption, and mentioned how he would fly out on his days off just to be in a few scenes. Aldis' other commitments were much darker and more tense. Dean asked Aldis what it was like to come and be this happy character for a week?
Aldis: It was like a vacation.
Aldis continued and said that he enjoys his other work, but being able to come back and work on Leverage is a gift. Leverage is just fun, and gives him nostalgia for where they started, and it gives a strange sense of "we're really doing this?" Because he rarely gets to play a character with so much history, and it's a very different experience at this point in his career, but it's a joy to do.
In response to the earlier question, Christian said that a lot of himself has bled into Eliot, and a lot of Eliot has bled into him. Christian helped create Eliot, and Eliot lives inside Christian's body in a way no other character does. Christian didn't know it when he started, but Eliot is the character he came to Hollywood to play. He wanted a role that had action and heart, and said that the bad guy is usually more fun to play, which makes Eliot great because he is both the good and the bad guy. He doesn't feel like he goes to work, it feels like he's showing up to have fun.
John talked about how on a lot of shows, actors just show up to read the lines given to them and that's it, but on Leverage it's more like a jazz band, and the actors know how to play an instrument that the writers don't know. They give the actors the score but encourage them to make it their own. Over the years the writers have learned how to write to the actor's rhythms as well, and all of that helps sell the characters. This has also kept the characters from getting stagnant after 15 years because they're not just characters that live in the writer's heads, they come from the actors as well which lets them grow and breathe.
Christian can’t imagine what it was like to read the Leverage pilot for the first time, because when he thinks about it now he pictures the actors as their characters. They've worked together so long that at this point he knows how Aldis will improv a line.
The line "the law just sucks, now get in the hole" might be one of the darkest lines on the show, according to John.
Q: What was it like to work in New Orleans? How does that setting affect how the show is now?
Dean said they went to New Orleans because he'd had a great experience filming one of the Librarian movies there, and it made sense for them. The only original art form ever made in the US is jazz music, and it came from New Orleans. It was important to put the show in a place that is culturally so important to America, but is also such a huge place for art and corruption and bad guys and people who fight for good guys.
John knew Aldis and Beth would be able to sell the Eyes Wide Shut bit, and could make it creepy and weird, so he just wrote the bare bones script and let them have fun with it. Beth specifically did it as "this is Parker's idea of sexy", and he loved that because he never could've come up with it.
Dean asked Aldis what it was like to film the conversation between Parker and Hardison about wanting to do something different.
Aldis said it was a really important scene, because they've had so many years together and understand each other so well, they're very aware of the weight of what they'll miss together. It juxtaposes well with the previous scene where they worked together really well. They know they make each other better, but what does it mean for Hardison if his heart isn't in it anymore?
John mentioned that the technique of backtracking money laundering accounts is real.
John then talked about how they wanted to write Parker and Hardison, because they didn't want to do the typical shocked significant other plot line. When you love characters and love people you don't want anything to change, but life is change and the world changes all the time. Change is natural and it isn't bad, but it's okay to recognize that some people need to get off the train at different stops, but you still love them and are still with them. It was the same conversation they were having with the fans through the show. You don't have to abandon each other or stop loving each other just because people are doing different things.
Dean interjected to mention how much he likes how Christian played Eliot not wanting to be in this house, with these people, doing this con, all while injured.
John's favorite version of Eliot is when he's annoyed. They missed it earlier but the exchange between Sophie and Eliot ("Oh, sorry, I was focused on the terrorists!") was one of his favorites.
John: Eliot tough and scary is fine, but my favorite thing is when Eliot is annoyed with everybody.
Aldis: Everybody tunes in to watch him get annoyed.
Christian added that he loves acting annoyed, and Aldis is his favorite scene partner for that.
For Harry's scene at the fence with the tanker, everything past the fence was CGI, it was really just an abandoned golf course behind the building.
Q: How do you see comedy and its role in Leverage?
John said a big part of it was because he and Chris Downey started in sitcoms, and they didn't know any rules about "don't mix comedy with drama", so they decided why not have the corny flashbacks and the cool drama. Back when the show started it was hard to get the execs on board, they didn't really understand the tone, but they got it eventually. All the actors can hit jokes, and if you have actors that can hit jokes, give your actors jokes!
Dean said when they filmed the pilot he didn't know how funny Christian could be until the IT guy, and didn't know how good at improv Aldis was until they filmed.
John loved Harry's side-con here. It's not important, it's just a B-plot, he's having fun, we don't have time or that, it’s whatever you want it to be!
Christian's favorite scenario on set was when Eliot and Hardison were dressed up as cops (The Morning After Job), everything in the car and with the call they responded to was so much fun.
John said that episode was a Chris Downey episode, he wanted the comedy of them working together and told John to make the plot work.
John gave credit to Gina, how she masterminded the hell out of the episode, we get to see how terrifying Sophie can be.
The fight with Eliot, Hardison, and the giant security guard was John's vision. He wanted the Cap/Bucky/Iron Man fight from Civil War, and finally got to write that sequence. Two guys fighting in sync, as a pair, who have known each other for 15 years, and know their rhythms.
Christian said it's hard to coordinate a fight like that, but he and Aldis have worked together so long that they figured it out.
Dean loved that Hardison really went all in on the Vulcan neck pinch thing.
John: Hardison believes the Vulcan neck thing is gonna work, and Parker believes it's gonna work, and that’s what love is.
The interviewer asked a question about how Christian does his stunts, and he confirmed he does all his own fights, and as many stunts as John and Dean allow him to.
Brittany: Legally?
John: No! No, no, past that!
Dean hates that Christian does his own stunt. He'll tell Christian not to do something, and then get dailies of Christian doing that thing.
John: And then I get footage of Aldis and Beth running on top of trains! (The Big Bang Job)
Christian told a story of when they worked on The Office Job and were filming the scene on the roof. They had crash pads down, and after they were done filming Christian just jumped onto it without telling anybody. A few seconds later, Aldis followed.
John facepalmed at that story.
Q: Did you work with a lot of the same crew for this season as past Leverage Redemption season?
Dean said they have a lot of the same crew and appreciate it because it’s a great crew.
John said the key to making a good show is hiring smart people who are good at their job, and then getting the hell out of their way. Dean very rarely harshes anyone's insane idea and lets everyone work collaboratively.
John also noted that Breanna and Becky (Harry's daughter) are now best friends. If they had more episodes the two would've had a whole adventure together.
It was also fun to write Hardison giving Breanna the big brother talk, while Parker's in the background like "tell her about the bomb!" and Hardison shushes her because he knows if Nana finds out he told Breanna about a bomb he'd be in trouble.
They shot the end of episode 1, the end of episode 3, and the last scene of the season finale all within a day and a half of each other because they wanted Aldis to be there.
Dean said he loves the pretzels bit, and John talked about how it started as a one-off thing that was just there, but then it became a thing in the show and in the fandom and now it's a whole callback and shorthand for their relationship.
John talked about the ending scene, and how he didn't want Hardison to just bail, he needed to have an honest conversation with Parker.
It was Gina's idea for Sophie to be dating again, and it comes up several times throughout the season.
John liked the way Christian and Aldis played their conversation, of two guys who care about each other and aren't very good at emotions but still have to talk about emotional things.
John repeated that Eliot isn't looking for redemption, he knows he's damned and he's accepted it. It's hard for Eliot to accept or process that other people see him differently.
Christian chimed in that Eliot's redemption is getting other people to a place where they can be redeemed. They can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and even if he's stuck in the tunnel forever as long as everyone else gets out then he doesn't need to.
Q: Is that something we’re going to see more of this season? Exploring everyone finding their own version of redemption?
Christian said his role is more in the background, he's talking people off the ledge, he's giving Hardison advice, he's talking to Sophie, making sure Harry doesn't screw up. Eliot is especially protective of Harry because he's not as far along as the others, and is really trying to give him a leg up out of the darkness.
Dean talked about how it was very important to them that they never betrayed the truth of Parker and Hardison's relationship.
John mentioned that the actors found that relationship. He hates writing backstory and tends to slow-play relationships, because once you get into a relationship it becomes a soap opera and you start screwing with the relationship in order to get stories, so that's why they waited until season 5 of the first run to get Parker and Hardison together. They don't want to mess with their relationship now to get stories, and it was interesting to write about a mature relationship because everyone knows they're not going to break up. He knows you can't screw with such a central relationship for cheap drama.
John: They're in this complicated, emotional relationship, with them and Eliot—however you want to define it—and they are going to die together.
That was the end of the episode! Dean reminded everyone that a new episode will drop every Thursday for the next 7 weeks, and thanked the fandom for supporting it, as the fans are the only reason they got to come back.
Q: Any hint for what we can expect this season?
Christian said there are some great character arcs coming up. He especially loved the second episode.
Dean pointed out how they've made over 100 episodes of Leverage now, and the thing that most surprised him this season is that they're still doing things they've never done before, he's shocked they can still find new places to go, and says that some episodes this season are completely wild.
John said all the writers loved being back with these characters, and we're going to see some unexpected but not unbelievable turns from the characters as they expose their vulnerable side. We'll explore a bit more for the newer characters, and Breanna especially is going to be great.
Hey, Leverage friends. I know I've been absent lately, but it's for a good reason! In addition to working on my original fiction, I've also been picking away at a few new fanfics, and working on a new project that I'm super excited to share:
The Podcast Job: Life Lessons from Leverage
My friend and I (the one I convinced to watch Leverage for the first time last year) have been discussing the show in our daily phone calls since she started the pilot. A few weeks ago, we thought "hey... why not record it?" Each week, we'll go through the lessons we've learned about writing and about life in general, and we'd love to share it with other fans. Questions, observations, favorite lines—we want to discuss it all!
We've recorded to first few episodes, and I'll start posting them on Podbean, Spotify, and Apple podcasts when I have them edited. We can't wait to share them with you!
Hey Leverage friends, for those of you who have (or have listened to) the DVD commentary, can you tell me off the top of your head when John and Dean talk about Parker being autistic?
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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First off, I know I've been a little MIA lately. I've been working through some pretty intense anxiety (for me) this year, and work has been chaotically busy the last few months, so I haven't had the spoons to focus much time on this blog. I'm sorry!
With that, I'm putting out the call to see if anyone would like to join the admin squad to help queue up posts and/or if anyone would like to be a transcriber.
If either (or both) of those things are something you’d like to do, send us your email address in an ask or a fanmail (I think you have to have spaces between the @ and the .com or Tumblr eats the message). Once we have that, we’ll invite you to our Google Drive folder and our Slack group. If you want to transcribe, we have set up Google Docs for all episodes, so once you join we’ll assign you an episode and you can jump right in and start transcribing.
Before you join, please keep in mind that transcribing is a pretty big time commitment. It takes hours to transcribe one 45 minute episode because you have to keep pausing, rewinding, re-listening over and over again to make sure you got it right. If you don’t have the time to commit to that, that’s totally fine! I just want everyone to be aware of what they’re signing up for.
We have the first four episodes of season four transcribed, they just need to be edited/have the links to references/shows/movies mentioned added. So we have 14 more episodes to be transcribed in season four, and then all 15 episodes of season five.
Wow, I cannot believe I let this slip past me. Happy belated one year anniversary to the episode commentary I drafted for The Real Fake Car Job and RIP to all the other season five commentary that's been sitting in my drafts for over a year as well.
John Rogers, Jonathan Frakes and Chris Downey giving off “it’s 3 am at this sleepover” vibes giggling over their French (???) assassin in the commentary for Morning After Job.
