Leverage - an interview with the creators about season one and beyond

[agt_spooky]

Hey folks!  There's a really nice interview with John Rogers and Chris Downey, the creators of Leverage, at iFMagazine.com. They take a look at each character and how they evolved based on the talented actors and actresses that play them, plus other season one things. Neat stuff!

© (C) 2008 TNT/Electric Entertainment Christian Kane, Gina Bellman, Timothy Hutton, Beth Riesgraf and Aldis Hodge in LEVERAGE - Season 1

 

Exclusive Interview: THE CREATORS OF 'LEVERAGE' OFFER THEIR TAKE ON SEASON ONE AND BEYOND - PART 2

John Rogers and Chris Downey talk shop about their hit TNT series which starts Season 2 in the summer

By CARL CORTEZ, Contributing Editor
Published 4/1/2009

Luckily for John Rogers and Chris Downey, the creators of TNT’s new smash series LEVERAGE, they were able to hit their show out of the ballpark from the pilot on, with thirteen stellar episodes focusing on former insurance agent Nate Ford (Timothy Hutton) who teams up with a gang of thieves in order to take down the criminal rich who hurt the helpless poor.

Here is what the writers had to say about Season 1 and beyond in the second part of iF’s exclusive interview.

iF MAGAZINE: What did you discover about the characters that you weren’t aware of going in, that came to fruition over the course of a few episodes?

JOHN ROGERS: Chris [Kane] is a bit more of a sh*t kicker than Eliot Spencer was envisioned. Eliot was supposed to be more precise, while Chris just comes across as a rougher guy than Eliot was envisioned. It is still an interesting dichotomy with the glasses. It’s really interesting to see. I knew him a little because he had done ANGEL and been a big fan of his. And going with Chris for that role has made it an infinitely more interesting role than if you had gone straight the way you intended it. We found out everyone could do comedy which was cool. Tim’s character was very much meant to be the behind-the-scenes mastermind, but you have Tim Hutton, so you start doing characters and heists. You put him in one, “boy that was fun,” so you start putting him in more and more. So it’s more an expansion of the roles, based on the actor’s talents.

CHRIS DOWNEY: Christian Kane is an excellent example. We discovered we could get a lot of comedy out of him.

ROGERS: Finding out you had five actors, all of who could land a joke, that was just giddy. Things evolve. Tim’s character Nate, was meant to be the conscience of the team, as the role evolved, Tim played the alcoholism, and emotional distance in the alcoholism very well. Interestingly enough, he’s the brain of the team, and the rest of the team becomes the heart and at the end of the season, instead of him redeeming them as thieves, they wind up saving him as a human being. I’m not sure where we thought we were going to wind up at the end of the season.

DOWNEY: The Parker [Beth Riesgraf] character too is another one, we kind of envisioned her having a hard time making eye contact and being within herself. But Beth just this glow about her, that you can’t really contain and she found a way to marry the inappropriate behavior of this character with a mega-watt smile and made it work. That’s another way we went in a different direction.

iF: How did the evolution of Sophie [Gina Bellman] and Hardison [Aldis Hodge] evolve?

ROGERS: Gina is exactly what we expected. Sophie was meant to be this morally screwed up person who was charming -- someone who hypnotized people. She plays this role to perfection. It became a contest for a while in the room to figure out what accent we could give her that she couldn’t do. Alright, “Indian this week, no Egyptian” and she took absolutely everything we threw at her. Gina was Sophie from Day One and it was nice to know we could depend on that, and she really nailed the character. We could write this Sophie scene knowing we’re going to get what we need. A lot of the premises of the show are about someone absolutely believing everything that comes out of her mouth, because you can’t look away from her and she pulls that off really well.

DOWNEY: And the fact she’s really sexy and we’re sending her out there to go after our middle-aged CEO villains, you could see why they would be hooked by her.

ROGERS: What's nice about Aldis is he’s really nice in a duo. You pair him with Tim or Chris, you get slightly different performances. Every time he’s in a scene with another actor, you feel that’s the show. Oh this is "The Aldis and Beth show" or "The Aldis and Chris show." He can land a joke. There’s a scene in “The Stork Job” where they’re talking about their respective foster upbringings that he’s just heartbreaking in. He’s an all-star player and we finally let him have a fight in the rehab episode.

DOWNEY: He wanted to fight and to kiss a girl, so we got him one out of the two.

ROGERS: Hardison was always expected to be a big guy and not a particularly hard guy. It was always envisioned, softer, big shouldered guy. Aldis looks like he’s Batman. Really, shirtless – he’s kind of terrifying, so we finally had to give him a good fight scene near the end of the season to have a little fun.

DOWNEY: There’s a lot of exposition that has to be delivered on this show. “Here’s the crime of the week,” and we have this same scene in every episode, someone has to present the facts and they make a plan, and this is what they do. And you wanted someone to jazz it up, and that’s the role we envisioned for him, and it turned out he had so many other skills, we really expanded that.

ROGERS: He’s another guy we did not anticipate putting as a character in the cons, but once you put him in, he can talk to anybody and anything.

DOWNEY: Typically when you see the computer guy in these type of shows and movies, they’re not at the scene of the crime. They’re back at the office. That’s not him at all.

iF: How much of the show do you allow improv?

ROGERS: They say a single syllable wrong, we tazer them, because our words are precious, precious gold.

iF: That’s why Aldis was drooling and unconscious on the set floor?

ROGERS: Yeah, he had a little “seizure.” [laughs] You know, as long as we get one, where you understand what the scene is about -- let them play. They find little things around the edges. The thing with crime  and heist shows, so much of it is plot oriented, you can’t wander too far off, because the plot won’t make sense.

DOWNEY: The beauty of shooting a show on video, you’re not wasting a tremendous amount of money on film. Film is expensive. When you’re shooting on video, you can take the time to roll the camera and let somebody go and extend the scene a little longer and we got some great stuff from that this season.

iF: Now that you’ve blown up the LEVERAGE offices where will their home base be for a second season?

ROGERS: We had a lot of high-tech stuff in the office, but we shot up in the mansion with the low tech with stuff on cork boards, diagrams and maps and it was really cool looking. So I think next year would be a mix of high tech and low tech.

DOWNEY: We may take them out of their element more, and take away some of their seemingly limitless resources. Definitely. It’s great to change their base of operations, because it gives you a different perspective and a different place to launch stories.

ROGERS: We actually talked about it at one point, that they’re based out of a different city every year, because they’re grifters, they move around, they don’t like being in one location. That made a lot of sense story wise and character wise.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS, NEWS AND CLIPS FROM 'LEVERAGE'

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Comments

[germanjj.livejournal.com]

god, I love the show and the characters and that the show isn't so cliché. And then your read that and as I understand it, if they hadn't found this awesome cast, the show would have been exactly that: a cliché-show. It's awesome that they were that lucky and that they used the potential all the actors have and that they let them play!

[agt-spooky.livejournal.com]

Exactly! It’s good that Downey and Rogers were flexible enough to realize that what they had in the actors was better than what they had on paper. Yay for us!

[celtprincess13.livejournal.com]

Neat interview. I like hearing that they were willing to add elements of the actors themselves to the characters and allow that to have input. Makes the show a lot better, I think.

And yeah, Christian's definitely a shit kicker, ha!

I want dvd, stat. *Grabby hands*

[agt-spooky.livejournal.com]

I thought it was a great interview, too! It’s good that they saw what they had in the actors compared to what was down on paper for the characters. I think their original vision may have been a little flat. I like what we’ve got better! And Chris is totally a shit kicker! LOL! And when the DVDs do come out there had better be a gag reel!

[dairwendan.livejournal.com]

Great interview, thanks for posting it!

I like thses guys! Their flexibility with their characters has really added something to Leverage! I think you gotta let an actor make a character their own.

[agt-spooky.livejournal.com]

You're welcome, sweetie!

I think you gotta let an actor make a character their own.

I totally agree, and it's great that Rogers and Downey saw the potential they had in all their actors/actresses. It's made for a great show! Bring on season two!