Jenny Curtis: From CurtCo Media.
Speaker 2: There's no place like Hollywood.
Jenny Curtis: Welcome to another special edition of Hollywood Unscripted: Stuck at
Jenny Curtis: Home. I'm Jenny Curtis and today we are talking to
Jenny Curtis: the showrunner of Hulu's dystopian drama, The Handmaid's Tale, Bruce
Jenny Curtis: Miller. Bruce, thank you for joining us.
Bruce Miller: It's my pleasure to be here.
Jenny Curtis: Now, things have started to open up a bit which
Jenny Curtis: is an issue all on its own, but we do
Jenny Curtis: like to check in a bit, how are you doing?
Jenny Curtis: How did quarantine treat you or how is it treating you?
Bruce Miller: It's treating me very well. Thank you. I feel very
Bruce Miller: lucky. All my children are home, some with girlfriends and
Bruce Miller: so it's a very, very, very busy house and I
Bruce Miller: just feel incredibly lucky. And mostly, we've been working pretty
Bruce Miller: much the same as we always do just via Zoom,
Bruce Miller: the writers. We've worked together for a long time, so it was a
Bruce Miller: fairly easy transition, but exactly your question, which is everybody's
Bruce Miller: also dealing with real life and that's probably a bigger issue.
Jenny Curtis: Before we get into what you guys are working on,
Jenny Curtis: let's start at the very beginning. So, when did you start
Jenny Curtis: writing? When did you know you wanted to be in
Jenny Curtis: the industry?
Bruce Miller: Well, my dad is tangentially in the industry. He's on
Bruce Miller: the technical side, and so I always grew up knowing
Bruce Miller: a lot about how movies were made physically, but not
Bruce Miller: really much about the kind of story side of things
Bruce Miller: because he sold lighting equipment to directors of photography and
Bruce Miller: so you don't need many writers when you're in that
Bruce Miller: house, but I always wrote. I think the time I
Bruce Miller: knew when I really was stuck being a writer was
Bruce Miller: I was in college and I took writing classes every
Bruce Miller: semester. And then there was a semester, I didn't take one,
Bruce Miller: and I was like, "Oh, well." It felt like I wasn't
Bruce Miller: in school. I wasn't doing any work, so then I was like, " Okay,
Bruce Miller: I'm screwed." I basically have to either be in a
Bruce Miller: writing class or be a writer forever and this seemed cheaper.
Jenny Curtis: So, did you major in writing at school?
Bruce Miller: I wrote a lot in college. They had a program
Bruce Miller: in fiction. They didn't have any program in television writing
Bruce Miller: or screenwriting at that point, so I wrote a lot
Bruce Miller: of fiction when I was in college and in high
Bruce Miller: school and I didn't really write, although I was much
Bruce Miller: more of a movie fan and a TV fan than
Bruce Miller: I was a book fan, I'm fairly to very dyslexic,
Bruce Miller: so I read incredibly slowly. So I'm very thinly read,
Bruce Miller: not widely read, but movies, they're telling you the story,
Bruce Miller: so that was always easier for me to kind of
Bruce Miller: dissect, but I wrote when I was in college. I
Bruce Miller: wrote a screenplay. I wrote my first screenplay when I
Bruce Miller: was like a senior in college and that actually got
Bruce Miller: me every job I got for like 12 years.
Jenny Curtis: Oh, wow.
Bruce Miller: Was that people had read and I'm shocked as anybody
Bruce Miller: else, but that's-
Jenny Curtis: Did that get made?
Bruce Miller: Oh, no, never. You know the future world.
Jenny Curtis: So, then you've got your foot in the door, you've
Jenny Curtis: worked on some major shows. Many of them though, you
Jenny Curtis: were a producer on, but you would come in either
Jenny Curtis: after the show had started or leave before the show
Jenny Curtis: was finished. So, is that because you were kind of
Jenny Curtis: searching for something or is that kind of the nature of the game
Jenny Curtis: to do a few seasons of a show and then
Jenny Curtis: move on?
Bruce Miller: It was the nature of my game and I think
Bruce Miller: everybody's game is really different. That was just because they didn't
Bruce Miller: succeed anywhere. I mean, people were very nice and I
Bruce Miller: got jobs and I think I contributed, but I didn't really
Bruce Miller: kind of become an integral part of a staff until
Bruce Miller: I found the right fit. It's just a function of
Bruce Miller: the image of kind of a writer sitting at home
Bruce Miller: and they bring them projects and they look at them,
Bruce Miller: and then they decide what they're going to do. People
Bruce Miller: have mortgages and kids in school, and I was a
Bruce Miller: working writer and I took jobs, and when those jobs
Bruce Miller: went away, I got other jobs, but mostly I got
Bruce Miller: fired. I mean, not in a mean way, but like
Bruce Miller: not working out way, and it took me a long
Bruce Miller: time. I think I'm more suited to the job I have now
Bruce Miller: than that job that I had before.
Jenny Curtis: So, having been fired, has there ever been a time
Jenny Curtis: where you were kind of standing on the ledge of
Jenny Curtis: quitting or did you always press forward after that?
Bruce Miller: Quitting what I'm doing?
Jenny Curtis: Yeah.
Bruce Miller: Yeah. I mean, I think that, I went through very long periods
Bruce Miller: of time where after making money for years and years
Bruce Miller: steadily, I would have months and months or a year
Bruce Miller: of where I wasn't working and that's terrifying, especially when
Bruce Miller: you do have a mortgage and children in school. I'm
Bruce Miller: incredibly lucky, like most people who have skin my color,
Bruce Miller: that I'd never had to worry about being on the
Bruce Miller: street because my parents had money and not a ton,
Bruce Miller: but they had enough that I wouldn't be living on
Bruce Miller: the street, so I never really felt scared that way.
Bruce Miller: So I had a way of staying in for longer,
Bruce Miller: kind of keeping my foot in the pool, but it's
Bruce Miller: kind of one of those things that you don't really
Bruce Miller: have a choice at a certain point because it's what
Bruce Miller: you are more than what you do. So, you could
Bruce Miller: go get another job and you're still going to be a writer.
Bruce Miller: But yes, I went through periods where I definitely was like, "
Bruce Miller: Okay, what am I going to do instead of this
Bruce Miller: because this isn't working out." And everybody goes through those
Bruce Miller: things. I've been doing this a long time. I came
Bruce Miller: out to L. A. to be a writer like two
Bruce Miller: weeks after college. It just takes... patience is the rarest
Bruce Miller: of all commodities in Hollywood, so just be patient and
Bruce Miller: you will achieve much more than if you are scattered.
Jenny Curtis: Your early projects from what I can tell, you did a lot of
Jenny Curtis: TV movies and films and a lot of them seem
Jenny Curtis: to be very female focused or dealing with assault or
Jenny Curtis: women who were strong. Is this kind of what you've
Jenny Curtis: been passionate about since the beginning?
Bruce Miller: Yes. I don't know if it's passionate. It just is
Bruce Miller: my... I feel very comfortable and I'm fascinated by strong
Bruce Miller: women. I have three very strong sisters. I grew up
Bruce Miller: in a house without boys. It was me and my three sisters
Bruce Miller: and my mom, so I think that they're really responsible
Bruce Miller: for the fact that I'm much more comfortable kind of
Bruce Miller: talking, thinking, exploring the issues of women and their lives than
Bruce Miller: some people just because I happen to not just know them
Bruce Miller: but grow up with them and they're all very, very
Bruce Miller: different and they're very, very intelligent. But it is funny when you look
Bruce Miller: back on all this stuff, because I really do think that
Bruce Miller: writing strong, realistic grounded female characters is something I've always
Bruce Miller: loved to do. And I don't really notice until like,
Bruce Miller: you just say you look back over your work and you're like, "
Bruce Miller: Ha." But I've also been indulged a lot by women
Bruce Miller: in my life help very kindly explaining what I'm doing
Bruce Miller: wrong when I write about women and so I have learned
Bruce Miller: along the way everybody from Yahlin Chang who worked with
Bruce Miller: me on ER and D. Johnson did Rina Mamoon and then kind
Bruce Miller: of now, just you have to be open to really
Bruce Miller: failing big and have people around you who will gently say, "
Bruce Miller: You failed big," and not be insulted, but say, " Hey,
Bruce Miller: swing again."
Jenny Curtis: Do you have any examples of lessons you had to
Jenny Curtis: learn that way?
Bruce Miller: Well, God, like every single day. I mean, one of the biggest
Bruce Miller: things on this show was in Season One, we had a story about
Bruce Miller: female genital mutilation. A character was a lesbian and she
Bruce Miller: was having relations with someone and they had didn't want that,
Bruce Miller: so they did it to take away her sexual desire
Bruce Miller: and when I came up with the idea, and I
Bruce Miller: brought it up to the room, it was withering in
Bruce Miller: terms of the discussion, not necessarily " Don't do it," but
Bruce Miller: we worked on it for a long time and I think
Bruce Miller: everybody spoke very honestly about what it means and all
Bruce Miller: sorts of stuff, and also a lot about how graphic
Bruce Miller: it was and whether we show it or not or
Bruce Miller: what do we show. We ended up showing nothing. We
Bruce Miller: don't even say it in the episode. But the result of that
Bruce Miller: was really when we sent it to Hulu and MGM,
Bruce Miller: they were like, " Okay." No one bunked and that was
Bruce Miller: because it had been assaulted by the women in my
Bruce Miller: office. The idea had been pounded and I think that
Bruce Miller: in the end, the only thing that would have allowed
Bruce Miller: it to stand up is having it be rewritten and
Bruce Miller: refocused and challenged by the smart women I have worked with.
Jenny Curtis: You have a writer's room that's majority female. I think
Jenny Curtis: you've seven out of 10 writers are female.
Bruce Miller: That sounds right, but they do 10 out of 10 of the work,
Bruce Miller: so it counts (inaudible)
Jenny Curtis: What is that atmosphere like though, because Gilead is a heavy place,
Jenny Curtis: so I imagine the writers room must be very heavy
Jenny Curtis: at times?
Bruce Miller: Almost never. It is the most remarkable thing that you've
Bruce Miller: ever seen. One of our consultants, a UN employee, sometimes
Bruce Miller: when she's in town uses an office in our offices
Bruce Miller: and consults with us about the UN and she says
Bruce Miller: it's just shocking if anybody knew the peals of laughter
Bruce Miller: coming out of the writers' room. It seemed so incongruous,
Bruce Miller: but I actually think it's a function of how heavy
Bruce Miller: the material is. The room is supportive and funny and
Bruce Miller: knows how to kind of defuse tensions, but also, you have
Bruce Miller: to be very comfortable in a room, not just talking about
Bruce Miller: yourself, but having those things challenged and interrogated, not a
Bruce Miller: bad way, but it only does you a certain amount
Bruce Miller: of good for someone to tell you a story for
Bruce Miller: you to understand that you have to be able to ask them questions
Bruce Miller: about it. A lot of these stories are sexual assault stories, sexual harassment stories,
Bruce Miller: just terrible things that happen to people's lives, problems with
Bruce Miller: their husband or whatever, and you have to know you're
Bruce Miller: surrounded by people who are not asking you questions for
Bruce Miller: prurient reasons. That they want to know because they are
Bruce Miller: curious, because they are writers, because they need to know
Bruce Miller: for the show, and you never feel like they're poking
Bruce Miller: into your personal life. And that's a level of comfort
Bruce Miller: that I think allows people to not feel like when
Bruce Miller: you're talking about all this terrible stuff that you can't
Bruce Miller: make a joke. And the set is the same way,
Bruce Miller: by the way, Lizzie sets an example, Elizabeth moss has
Bruce Miller: an example and everybody follows. It's shocking how much of
Bruce Miller: a seventh grade giggle fest. And so, we're very lucky
Bruce Miller: in that way that we have a very heavy show
Bruce Miller: and quite a wonderful, joyous working environment.
Jenny Curtis: I think that's important.
Bruce Miller: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jenny Curtis: To discuss The Handmaid's Tale, again, starting at the beginning,
Jenny Curtis: how did it come into being?
Bruce Miller: I had read the book when I was in college, actually, strangely
Bruce Miller: enough in a new fiction class, which tells you how
Bruce Miller: long ago, that was like a really long time and I loved
Bruce Miller: it as a book. It was really one of those
Bruce Miller: books that taught me a writing style that I wanted
Bruce Miller: to emulate. And so, as I said before, I'm very
Bruce Miller: dyslexic, so I tend to read the same books over
Bruce Miller: and over again. So, I read the book a bunch
Bruce Miller: of times over the years, and I always loved it
Bruce Miller: and every time I read it, I thought, this is
Bruce Miller: the time where it's the most prescient, this is the
Bruce Miller: time where every time you read it, you're like, " Aha." Margaret Atwood
Bruce Miller: really put her finger on it. She's so smart and
Bruce Miller: such a witch that she can put her finger on
Bruce Miller: any time period because I'm sure she travels to those
Bruce Miller: times and I heard they were making a TV series
Bruce Miller: out of it. This is very early on in my career and
Bruce Miller: Ilene Chaiken had the rights and she was making it at Showtime,
Bruce Miller: and I was a fan. I was just, " Oh, Ilene
Bruce Miller: Chaiken. I can't wait." I mean, she's a spectacular writer
Bruce Miller: and showrunner. I was on all ready to sit down and
Bruce Miller: watch Showtime with my popcorn, but it never kind of
Bruce Miller: came back. It never appeared, and so I would check
Bruce Miller: every year with my agents and have those agents look
Bruce Miller: around, see where it is. And kismet, I was out
Bruce Miller: of work when they were looking for a showrunner. Showtime
Bruce Miller: had sold it to, Ilene Chaiken, who was doing Empire quite
Bruce Miller: handily and didn't have time to do it, so there
Bruce Miller: was an opportunity, but they were looking for a woman,
Bruce Miller: and I was completely on their side, except I wanted
Bruce Miller: the job, so I didn't know what to do with
Bruce Miller: that situation. It's like, " I 100% agree with you, but
Bruce Miller: in this case I would really like it." So, I
Bruce Miller: waited and waited and waited patiently and I know they
Bruce Miller: spoke to a lot of people and then they very
Bruce Miller: kindly invited me into pitch and it was very nice
Bruce Miller: and thoughtful of them to do it. So I went
Bruce Miller: in and I pitched what I thought of the story and
Bruce Miller: it kind of went very easily and comfortably by then, I
Bruce Miller: think because I was a long time thinker about this
Bruce Miller: book, not a short- timer. I had really thought about
Bruce Miller: what kind of show this would make just because it
Bruce Miller: was always one of those things that even reading, I
Bruce Miller: was like, " Oh, my God. It tickles such a visual
Bruce Miller: funny bone in me." So, I had thought about it
Bruce Miller: a lot. The thing you don't get when you're called
Bruce Miller: into adapter project is time and I like to have
Bruce Miller: much more time than most people. I mean, the time
Bruce Miller: that I had to think about Handmaid's Tale was just
Bruce Miller: about right for me, so like 30 years is probably
Bruce Miller: a good solid number.
Jenny Curtis: So, then being a fan of the book for that
Jenny Curtis: long, what was it like to meet Margaret Atwood?
Bruce Miller: Terrifying. Not only that, I have to meet her, but
Bruce Miller: before I met her, you can imagine this. They sent
Bruce Miller: the first two episodes that I had written to her
Bruce Miller: to see what she thought. That was a nice weekend. I
Bruce Miller: didn't go to the bathroom that weekend. Well, can you imagine?
Bruce Miller: I mean, it's like, " Margaret Atwood, here read this." And
Bruce Miller: so it was awful, I mean, it was terrifying for
Bruce Miller: me. She really liked them. She had a question about
Bruce Miller: what carpet muncher meant because that was in the second episode. So
Bruce Miller: luckily, she Googled that I didn't have to explain, although
Bruce Miller: I did save that email.
Jenny Curtis: Frame it.
Bruce Miller: Forever for Margaret Atwood, yeah. And then I went up
Bruce Miller: to Toronto and I met her and she has gone out of her way
Bruce Miller: to treat me like a writer, like a colleague, and
Bruce Miller: that has been the secret to the success of the
Bruce Miller: show, and I really count her as my friend. She's
Bruce Miller: lovely and funny and smart and a pleasure and we
Bruce Miller: get to see each other a lot. So, she's very
Bruce Miller: involved in the show. I mean, I'd love her to
Bruce Miller: be more involved, but the three of us are not
Bruce Miller: nearly as busy as she is, like all of us
Bruce Miller: put together. So, I'm always trying to squeeze more time
Bruce Miller: out of her, but we get a good chance to
Bruce Miller: talk a couple of times a season, a really long
Bruce Miller: chat. And so, I feel like she is not only
Bruce Miller: kind of the mother of the project, but kind of
Bruce Miller: the ongoing caregiver of the project.
Jenny Curtis: Last year, she released The Testaments
Bruce Miller: Yes.
Jenny Curtis: And that's the sequel to Handmaid's Tale. And so, you both
Jenny Curtis: had to kind of work together as to not contradict
Jenny Curtis: each other. Is that correct?
Bruce Miller: Yes, which, even hearing that out loud is so shocking
Bruce Miller: to me that there was any time I was in any
Bruce Miller: way could be defined as collaborating with Margaret Atwood. So,
Bruce Miller: she I was writing and we would talk and it was
Bruce Miller: very funny to because it was very general things, like she'd call and go, "
Bruce Miller: Okay, don't kill this person." And I'd be like, " Okay," and then, because in TV, we
Bruce Miller: do a lot more of that stuff casually, like I'll
Bruce Miller: make a change in a script and then just in
Bruce Miller: the office, I'll say that the next three people, right, " Oh,
Bruce Miller: by the way, I killed this person, so you can't
Bruce Miller: use them," or something. It's all done very casually and
Bruce Miller: you work together to kind of make sure everything flows.
Bruce Miller: Margaret had never worked with anybody before, but she had
Bruce Miller: worked with our writing staff a lot, so she knew
Bruce Miller: kind of how things changed and worked and how they
Bruce Miller: bounced around, so I think that that was fun for
Bruce Miller: her. She could bounce it off me, like it was the writing
Bruce Miller: staff. She had written Episode One, I had written Episode
Bruce Miller: Two in the middle, and she was writing Episode Three.
Bruce Miller: So in that way, it was a very comfortable relationship for
Bruce Miller: me, shockingly comfortable. I mean, I just never expected it
Bruce Miller: to be that comfortable and she had very few requests. She
Bruce Miller: was a big fan of the show. She liked where
Bruce Miller: we were going with the show. She was happy to kind of
Bruce Miller: fit her puzzle piece into mine, but honestly, when you're
Bruce Miller: adapting a classic like Handmaid's Tale, most of the time the
Bruce Miller: author is long gone and certainly they're not writing books
Bruce Miller: that cover the same ground again. Basically, she's saying you
Bruce Miller: started here and now, I want you to end here because I'm
Bruce Miller: going to pick up the ball, and so it's hilarious.
Bruce Miller: It just makes it so much harder, and it was
Bruce Miller: so hard to begin with and I was so terrified
Bruce Miller: of screwing it up, and then she's like, " Oh, here's
Bruce Miller: something where you could screw up." But we've been very lucky
Bruce Miller: on the show. I think the people who liked the
Bruce Miller: book like the show, which was really what I was
Bruce Miller: trying to do, because that was me. They're not uncomfortable
Bruce Miller: with the fact that there are differences in those two universes.
Bruce Miller: It's not canon once a novel and it's certainly a
Bruce Miller: novelist that deserves to build her own world and I'm
Bruce Miller: building what I hope is a nice little set of
Bruce Miller: DVDs to sit on the shelf between the two books,
Bruce Miller: so they add something. But you are kind of doing
Bruce Miller: Oliver Twist, The Series and Oliver Twist is going to
Bruce Miller: be around long after your series is gone.
Jenny Curtis: At the end of Season One that's the complete book of the
Jenny Curtis: Handmaid's Tale and then you kind of depart into your
Jenny Curtis: story and Margaret has said that the characters really should
Jenny Curtis: have been killed by now, in that world. They're getting
Jenny Curtis: more outspoken, they're growing a lot, but also that that's
Jenny Curtis: not really possible in TV because you need your characters
Jenny Curtis: to stay alive, so that you can tell a story.
Jenny Curtis: So, how do you navigate that in keeping true to
Jenny Curtis: the world you're building, but also making sure your characters
Jenny Curtis: are growing?
Bruce Miller: It's very difficult that Margaret's write in one way, but in
Bruce Miller: the other way. I think a lot of times especially
Bruce Miller: this book has a particular construct that allows you to
Bruce Miller: believe exactly what I'm selling, which is this is a
Bruce Miller: story told in retrospect, so you know she survived, by
Bruce Miller: definition because The Handmaid's Tale exists. The Handmaid lasted long enough
Bruce Miller: to tell that tale. So yes, but with the construct
Bruce Miller: of the show the fact that it is a story
Bruce Miller: told in retrospect, a collection of tapes that someone found,
Bruce Miller: the fact is, we know she lives until that point.
Bruce Miller: So, in terms of off- read the conceit of the
Bruce Miller: show, and I'm not going to break that is, this is
Bruce Miller: her story. She lived to tell it and she's not
Bruce Miller: going to die before she gets to tell it. It
Bruce Miller: may be unlikely that you live, but almost all stories
Bruce Miller: that come out of a situation like that, that are
Bruce Miller: as singular and notable as this would be the story
Bruce Miller: of someone who did something unusual and survived. That wouldn't
Bruce Miller: be the normal story, so she's right, they would be
Bruce Miller: killed. We're trying to stay true to the world. What
Bruce Miller: I tried to do is make sure that more often
Bruce Miller: than not, I just do it. If someone should get
Bruce Miller: punished, they're punished. I mean, everybody is protected by their
Bruce Miller: fertility more at times than others because fertility rates are
Bruce Miller: going up and down. But I have to get some
Bruce Miller: buy in from the audience in order to continue and
Bruce Miller: not pass the baton to another group of actors, and
Bruce Miller: I would rather not do that. I feel like the
Bruce Miller: big thing in TV is you're very connected to these
Bruce Miller: people. You know there's a difference between TV and movies.
Bruce Miller: TVs in your house. You're bringing those people in your
Bruce Miller: house, it's very different. I think it's harder to change
Bruce Miller: your point of view and your guide in the TV
Bruce Miller: show. You can have a movie with a horrible antihero, who
Bruce Miller: you don't want to spend more than two hours with.
Bruce Miller: But June Osborne's been holding your hand for years, you
Bruce Miller: have to kind of make some concessions, so that she retains her
Bruce Miller: position as your guide.
Jenny Curtis: Yeah. I think we all like inviting Elisabeth Moss into our house.
Bruce Miller: I certainly like it. She's delightful.
Jenny Curtis: How did you find her? How did she come on
Jenny Curtis: board and Has she affected the development of June?
Bruce Miller: To answer the end first, absolutely 100% in a zillion ways
Bruce Miller: and I'll talk about them, but of course, it's the
Bruce Miller: great benefit of television, which is in a movie, you
Bruce Miller: write a script you give it to someone else and
Bruce Miller: then you see it, you go, " Wow. Okay, they didn't
Bruce Miller: really have chemistry," but in TV, you watch the day's
Bruce Miller: work and you go, " Whoa, those two people have chemistry,
Bruce Miller: let's get together. And for Lizzie, Lizzie is a spectacular
Bruce Miller: professional. She's been doing it a very long time. She
Bruce Miller: could not be a better number one on the call,
Bruce Miller: in terms of professionalism and welcoming other actors. She's also an EP
Bruce Miller: on the show and does that job in total, in
Bruce Miller: full. She's done it from the beginning and she didn't
Bruce Miller: want it to be a title and I wanted to
Bruce Miller: help and we work very well together. So, I think
Bruce Miller: that Lizzie would say that June inspires her in her
Bruce Miller: real life. I've heard her say that, to be more brave,
Bruce Miller: but I think it's the other way around. I think
Bruce Miller: what is Lizzie comes out in June because I get
Bruce Miller: to know Lizzie and just the way someone goes to the
Bruce Miller: world and thinks and talks and how their jokes are.
Bruce Miller: I mean Lizzie is a very strong positive force in the
Bruce Miller: universe, very, very intelligent, very committed and all those things
Bruce Miller: have become more like June. June has grown I taking
Bruce Miller: on pieces of Lizzie, I feel like more than the
Bruce Miller: other way around. By the way, she's one of my
Bruce Miller: favorite people and everything you hear about her is true
Bruce Miller: times a thousand. She really is a great collaborator. I
Bruce Miller: feel very lucky.
Jenny Curtis: So much of the show is told in imagery and
Jenny Curtis: reaction. You see June or Offred or whatever her name is at that time.
Bruce Miller: Ofjoseph.
Jenny Curtis: Ofjoseph. She will walk into a space and you'll just
Jenny Curtis: let her look at the space for minutes on end
Jenny Curtis: and it's so effective.
Bruce Miller: Yeah.
Jenny Curtis: And it's rare that that something that happens in TV because you
Jenny Curtis: really have to go, go, go most of the time.
Bruce Miller: Yeah. I like slower stories. Our show is scarier when
Bruce Miller: it's slow anyway, because there's a looming countdown of something
Bruce Miller: terrible going to happen, so every time anybody pauses, you're
Bruce Miller: like, "No, no, no, keep moving. It's coming back at you. Something's going to happen."
Jenny Curtis: "You have to go."
Bruce Miller: Yeah. There's always that feeling, but it was something I
Bruce Miller: put in the pilot script. One of the things I
Bruce Miller: really wanted was kind of to have that pace and part
Bruce Miller: of it is because the character isn't free to speak.
Bruce Miller: So, a lot of her conflict is June verses Offred. Like
Bruce Miller: Offred has to be quiet and Offred has to keep
Bruce Miller: your eyes down or Offred can't be snarky and Offred
Bruce Miller: can't roll their eyes, but June wants to do all
Bruce Miller: those things. So, you've got June saying to Offred, " Why are
Bruce Miller: you such a fucking wimp? Why don't you stand up
Bruce Miller: for yourself?" And then Offred saying to June, " You're going
Bruce Miller: to get us killed. Shut up." So it's really that
Bruce Miller: conflict, and that's why you can have all that silence
Bruce Miller: because you're seeing those two things fight each other. You're
Bruce Miller: seeing here, she wants to June. She wants to go, " What
Bruce Miller: are you crazy doing this?" But she has to be
Bruce Miller: Offred and she doesn't want to be Offred, so I think that that's why those
Bruce Miller: silences work. And also I like movies with those kinds of things.
Bruce Miller: Dialogue is just another action, like running or punching or
Bruce Miller: making love or kissing or anything. It isn't what they
Bruce Miller: say that matters as much as the fact that they're
Bruce Miller: doing it. It's like if you punch someone in the face,
Bruce Miller: that's an action. If you say, " Hi, I'm here," that's
Bruce Miller: an action. It's not necessarily means " Hi, I'm here." And
Bruce Miller: on our show, I would say comically 90% of the
Bruce Miller: things that people say are absolutely the opposite of what
Bruce Miller: they mean. " Blessed be the fruit." They don't mean like, "
Bruce Miller: Good morning." They actually mean, " I would like you to
Bruce Miller: drop dead right now," but they're saying, " Good morning." So,
Bruce Miller: it's one of those shows and I think that that's one of
Bruce Miller: the things that Lizzie and I work very well together is
Bruce Miller: I write incredibly spare scripts and she likes that.
Female: A Moment Of Your Time. A new podcast from CurtCo
Female: Media. Currently 21 years old and today, I'm going to read a poem for you.
Female: I felt like magic extended from her fingertips down to the base of my spine.
Male: You'll have to take care of yourself because the world needs
Male: you and your worth.
Female: Trust me every do- good that had asked about me was
Female: ready to spit on my dream.
Male: Like her fingers were facing me.
Female: I feel like your purpose and your worth is really being questioned.
Male: I'm going to stop me from playing the piano.
Female: She buys walkie- talkies, wonders to whom she should give
Female: the second dollies.
Male: Cats don't love humans. We never did. We never will.
Male: We just find (crosstalk) .
Male: The beauty of rock climbing is that you can only
Male: focus on what's right in front of you.
Female: And so our American life begins.
Female: We may need to stay apart, but let's create together.
Female: Available on all podcast platforms. Submit your piece by curtco. com/ amomentofyourtime.
Jenny Curtis: So, Season Three, it appears for the first half that
Jenny Curtis: June has snapped.
Bruce Miller: And she has.
Jenny Curtis: Yeah.
Bruce Miller: Yeah. No, but at the beginning, you kind of think, "
Bruce Miller: Oh, my God. She really is kind of a beaten
Bruce Miller: thing, at the beginning."
Jenny Curtis: But it clicked so much for me when they were
Jenny Curtis: in the hospital and the doctor said to her, " You're
Jenny Curtis: not homicidal, you're suicidal." She didn't even know that's what
Jenny Curtis: she was doing, that gave me chills. One line ties
Jenny Curtis: your whole series together.
Bruce Miller: Yeah. One of the things about not having much dialogue is that a piece of dialogue
Bruce Miller: can be very thoughtful and that they cause June to
Bruce Miller: ponder them for a while because you kind of dangle
Bruce Miller: them out there, the doctors doesn't say very many things to her, but that's the
Bruce Miller: one thing that lands. I'd like to see when she puts her hand
Bruce Miller: in the sharp box to try to get something out and she
Bruce Miller: comes out with the needle and then she puts her
Bruce Miller: hand back in? That's like, " Okay, that's a crazy person."
Bruce Miller: After you put your hand and finger in and get the needles and she goes-
Jenny Curtis: She literally has it like sticking.
Bruce Miller: Yeah, So, that to me is like, " Oh, okay." And
Bruce Miller: then I was worried after about when someone says, " No,
Bruce Miller: no, you're suicidal. I'm telling you." That makes much, much sense.
Jenny Curtis: And then on the other side of character who is more
Jenny Curtis: reserved, but trying to come to terms with it is
Jenny Curtis: Emily who's landed in Canada, and oh, my God, I
Jenny Curtis: cry every time there's a scene with her.
Bruce Miller: I do, too.
Jenny Curtis: Alexis Bledel was fantastic.
Bruce Miller: Alexis Bledel is an astonishing actress at the peak of
Bruce Miller: her skill. It's such a thing to watch, because like
Bruce Miller: you said, she is very subtle, and it is very,
Bruce Miller: very quiet, but wow, I mean, I'm blown away every
Bruce Miller: single time and honestly, the first day she was working,
Bruce Miller: the very first day, I kept thinking, she's not doing
Bruce Miller: anything. This isn't going to cut together and then you
Bruce Miller: watch it, you're like, " Oh, I'm completely wrong. She's completely
Bruce Miller: right. Look at that. That's fantastic." Like, it's so subtle.
Bruce Miller: It's so much about her posture and the kind of the
Bruce Miller: sound of her voice and everything. She's remarkable and her
Bruce Miller: character has kind of drawn from the fact that she's a
Bruce Miller: scientist. She's a molecular biologist, so she sees the world
Bruce Miller: in a very, very different way. And it's funny compared
Bruce Miller: to her character on Gilmore Girls who is very talky, this
Bruce Miller: character very much reminds me of what an academic is
Bruce Miller: like. She's super- duper smart. She's a little slow to
Bruce Miller: get a joke. She's not humorless, but she's a little
Bruce Miller: slow, and kind of her emotional life, she holds it
Bruce Miller: very close and when she lets it out, sometimes she
Bruce Miller: like shatters. It's a magical performance. It really is and
Bruce Miller: Clea DuVall, who comes in once in a while to
Bruce Miller: play her wife, the two of them together, I find
Bruce Miller: it so convincing. And in Season Three, that story is
Bruce Miller: pretty remarkable.
Jenny Curtis: When you had originally started writing this, it didn't reflect
Jenny Curtis: society as much as it suddenly did moments later?
Bruce Miller: I started to write before the election in 2016, before the primaries, so before
Bruce Miller: anybody was in the race. I didn't know who was
Bruce Miller: going to run.
Jenny Curtis: And then suddenly it felt incredibly relevant.
Bruce Miller: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jenny Curtis: Are you following that path? Because talking about Emily being
Jenny Curtis: a refugee and there was the scene with all of
Jenny Curtis: the women in cages, is that a reflection of our
Jenny Curtis: society or is that following the story?
Bruce Miller: It's always following the story, but I think you're influenced
Bruce Miller: by society just because we have a very news junkie
Bruce Miller: group, cast, crew, writers, everybody. So, I think you can't
Bruce Miller: help but be kind of influenced by that. But two things. First
Bruce Miller: of all, I think a lot of it goes back to the construct that
Bruce Miller: Margaret built. That one of the things that makes the show so
Bruce Miller: prescient is that she's fictionalized it in a way that
Bruce Miller: she taps on a bunch of things that are going
Bruce Miller: on and continue to go on. And so I think
Bruce Miller: that unfortunately, misogyny or racism, rape, obsessive, gross masculinity, all
Bruce Miller: of those things are perennial problems, so I think that
Bruce Miller: that's why it kind of seems consistently relevant. We don't
Bruce Miller: do anything in terms of trying to predict or come
Bruce Miller: up with, we don't even think about the stuff that's
Bruce Miller: happening. Sometimes when they shoot. If they're shooting and something
Bruce Miller: actually has occurred, we sometimes look at those visuals that
Bruce Miller: kind of influence you, but the rule of thumb for
Bruce Miller: the book was that Margaret didn't put anything into it,
Bruce Miller: that wasn't happening to women or didn't happen to women
Bruce Miller: at some point in history. We have the same thing and
Bruce Miller: it mostly is almost all what's happening to women now.
Bruce Miller: We're not in the business of inventing cruelties. I mean,
Bruce Miller: anybody could sit around and come up with horrible things
Bruce Miller: to do to people, so we try to keep it
Bruce Miller: grounded in that way. And I think that it allows you
Bruce Miller: to be a little more scary and broad because it is
Bruce Miller: tied to the real world. I'm not coming up with
Bruce Miller: female genital mutilation, but we can tell a story about
Bruce Miller: it and it is a story that feels different because
Bruce Miller: it's not about a brown person.
Jenny Curtis: In the book, there were no people of color, and
Jenny Curtis: you chose to go against that. Can you talk about that for a little bit?
Bruce Miller: Yeah. It was a very interesting part of the book
Bruce Miller: where they said they had relocated what they called the
Bruce Miller: Children of Hand, which I think where, it's hard to
Bruce Miller: tell because people of color had such a wide definition
Bruce Miller: but the idea I think was that it was mostly
Bruce Miller: African Americans who had been sent off to somewhere in
Bruce Miller: Nebraska to farm and it was just the most horrible story and the
Bruce Miller: way she tells it is like, she assumes all those
Bruce Miller: people were just sent off and didn't make it. I
Bruce Miller: made it for two reasons, and that was a long
Bruce Miller: time ago, and it was at the beginning of the show. The first
Bruce Miller: was it's a lot easier to have an all- white
Bruce Miller: world in a novel because you don't see it all
Bruce Miller: the time, it's not in your face. And although it makes
Bruce Miller: a great statement, you're still making a TV show without
Bruce Miller: the black actors. You're still making a TV show that
Bruce Miller: doesn't tell anything about the black story. You're just saying, "
Bruce Miller: That story is off- screen and we're going to watch
Bruce Miller: the white girl." I understood the idea behind it, but
Bruce Miller: it's hard to make a TV show about racism without being
Bruce Miller: a racist when you make it, by not casting people,
Bruce Miller: by not telling people certain, so I just, I thought it
Bruce Miller: seemed to adapt better to our time. And then once
Bruce Miller: we started casting, it became kind of a nonissue because
Bruce Miller: as soon as we found O- T Fagbenle who plays
Bruce Miller: Luke, he was so delightful. And then Moira who, we
Bruce Miller: weren't looking for anybody of any particular color, and then
Bruce Miller: Samira is so and she was Moira, she was so
Bruce Miller: spectacular. So, once that started, you're kind of like, " Okay.
Bruce Miller: Well, we have to change that conceit in the book,
Bruce Miller: and let's just not do it." And also our conceit was, "
Bruce Miller: Fertility trumps everything." People might be racist and certainly are
Bruce Miller: racist, but probably in a society where over let's say
Bruce Miller: 10 years, the birth rate drops 90%, 95%, I think
Bruce Miller: that there might be a movement of people not being
Bruce Miller: as tweaked by color as they would have been because
Bruce Miller: they're more interested in having children and that's the more
Bruce Miller: important thing. I'd much prefer this way even though in
Bruce Miller: that way, it'd be easier to address issues of race
Bruce Miller: because it would be much more apparent and cruel.
Jenny Curtis: Yeah. So, I want to jump over to the cinematography for
Jenny Curtis: a minute because it is always stunning, along with the
Jenny Curtis: art direction and the costume design, the art for this show-
Bruce Miller: It's breathtaking.
Jenny Curtis: What is the process of developing that? How did you
Jenny Curtis: come up with the look? Colin Watkinson was your original
Jenny Curtis: cinematographer and he's done most of it. You've also brought
Jenny Curtis: on Zoë White and Stuart Biddlecombe.
Bruce Miller: Isn't that a great name?
Jenny Curtis: That is a great name.
Bruce Miller: And he's British, so yeah, it's even better.
Jenny Curtis: Did the look start with the cinematography? Did it start
Jenny Curtis: with art? How does everybody work together to create the
Jenny Curtis: look of this world?
Bruce Miller: There was certainly a look that I had in my
Bruce Miller: head and that's how I was so attracted to Reed
Bruce Miller: Morano as the director, redirected our first three episodes. She
Bruce Miller: was also a DP. She had been a Director of
Bruce Miller: Photography. I think she was one of the first women
Bruce Miller: to be allowed into the American Society of Cinematographers, which is
Bruce Miller: a crime that it took that long. Anyway, when she brought in Colin,
Bruce Miller: they spoke a certain language about cinematography that I was very,
Bruce Miller: very new to. But one of the things that we
Bruce Miller: did at the beginning is we chose our color palette
Bruce Miller: and did camera tests and fussed with that forever, and
Bruce Miller: every department was in on. So, it wasn't a decision
Bruce Miller: by the Wardrobe Department to choose the color of the
Bruce Miller: dresses and that's continued on. And I think the biggest
Bruce Miller: thing that we do is we have a cohesive look,
Bruce Miller: so the color palette is thought through. There's lots and
Bruce Miller: lots of mood boards and all these kind of things.
Bruce Miller: I think the first thing is, is there's a ton of communication
Bruce Miller: between the departments and most of those departments we try
Bruce Miller: to be as a female- driven show as possible, behind
Bruce Miller: the scenes as well. So, Elisabeth Williams is our production
Bruce Miller: designer. Julie Berghoff started the show. The amazing Ane Crabtree
Bruce Miller: did the wardrobe, so a lot of this is women
Bruce Miller: driven as well. But the thing that I really like
Bruce Miller: to know and I think that this helps is I try to let the
Bruce Miller: DP, be the DP, make it look cool, not tell them how
Bruce Miller: to because I don't know how to, I don't know
Bruce Miller: what lens to choose. I don't know those things and
Bruce Miller: so I think that I try to give them the
Bruce Miller: creative freedom to tell the story with pictures. And when
Bruce Miller: you're telling a story this complicated in this weird with
Bruce Miller: pictures, the pictures are kind of interesting and it's all
Bruce Miller: on purpose. That's the other thing. Nothing in any scene,
Bruce Miller: I mean, the Handmaids wore different OBs, different belts, because
Bruce Miller: they're a little bit different in terms of their style.
Bruce Miller: It's just something to show their style. Nobody ever sees
Bruce Miller: that. The level of detail, for example, in the Waterford
Bruce Miller: house. Do you remember there was paintings on the wall in
Bruce Miller: the Waterford house?
Jenny Curtis: Yes, but I don't remember what they were.
Bruce Miller: All of those paintings are our paintings that hang in the
Bruce Miller: Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and they were all
Bruce Miller: looted, just like the Gestapo looted the museum. So, all of
Bruce Miller: those pictures are not only copies of the pictures, but
Bruce Miller: they are the right size. They are the pictures that
Bruce Miller: they took. Also, the living room has very different pictures
Bruce Miller: than the Commander's office, which has kind of more edgy,
Bruce Miller: there's like a (inaudible) in there and stuff like
Bruce Miller: that. It's a little more edgy and wild and degenerate.
Bruce Miller: And so that level of detail, and you can do it
Bruce Miller: in the show because it's a very curated world. Gilead
Bruce Miller: wants to curate it. They want it to look a
Bruce Miller: certain way, so it doesn't look the way it looks
Bruce Miller: by accident. Gilead wants it to look that way, so the
Bruce Miller: way the lawns are, the way that houses are, so
Bruce Miller: it's very, very beautiful, because they want to make it
Bruce Miller: beautiful, not because it happens to be beautiful, so because they're doing
Bruce Miller: it on purpose, we can do it on purpose. But
Bruce Miller: if you see something in the show that you really don't
Bruce Miller: like or you think is stupid, you could be pretty sure that
Bruce Miller: I did it on purpose, that you don't like something I
Bruce Miller: chose to do. So if you think it's a mistake,
Bruce Miller: it's probably not. You probably just don't like it and
Bruce Miller: I chose different.
Jenny Curtis: Do you have people who tell you things like that? And you have to say, "This is why."?
Bruce Miller: I try not to say this is why, because in
Bruce Miller: some ways, I got my shot. I had my 43
Bruce Miller: minutes or 63 minutes of show and if they got
Bruce Miller: it or didn't, then it's not mine anymore. I don't
Bruce Miller: want them to think what I think. I want them
Bruce Miller: to think what they think, so I try not to
Bruce Miller: guide them at all in that. The nice thing is
Bruce Miller: though that for me, people can extrapolate from the details.
Bruce Miller: If you see this, that's there on purpose. There's a
Bruce Miller: reason why it happens exactly that way. We took off
Bruce Miller: someone's hand in the first season. Took off the hand of
Bruce Miller: a man that would touch the Handmaid and people asked why
Bruce Miller: the surgery was done that way. They did this weird
Bruce Miller: cut on his arm and everything, and it was because
Bruce Miller: instead of hiring an extra, we hired a hand surgeon
Bruce Miller: and the way he drew the line of what you
Bruce Miller: cut is so that if you have the choice of
Bruce Miller: how to cut, you leave something that you can comfortably
Bruce Miller: make into a flap over the person's leftover stuff. And
Bruce Miller: so that's why that was that way, but that means that it's not like they take an
Bruce Miller: ax and chop it off. They do it in a
Bruce Miller: way, so then it's kind of both uncivilized and super high-
Bruce Miller: tech, so that was a weird combination. So that was a question that
Bruce Miller: people ask us, " Why did you do that?" It's because
Bruce Miller: there's a medical reason. It's a big difference in Gilead
Bruce Miller: between bringing out a circular saw and cutting off someone's
Bruce Miller: hand and sending them into surgery.
Jenny Curtis: In Season Two, you introduced Bradley Whitford's character, Commander Lawrence,
Jenny Curtis: and then he became a major player in this season.
Jenny Curtis: The bad guy who's also the good guy?
Bruce Miller: That's my stocking trade.
Jenny Curtis: What was the process in bringing him on?
Bruce Miller: I knew that Bradley wanted to do the show. He had been,
Bruce Miller: not just a fan of the show, but someone who had inquired about being on the
Bruce Miller: show, but I didn't really think about kind of who
Bruce Miller: I want Brad would fit into this role. We had
Bruce Miller: been thinking about the role for a while. And I
Bruce Miller: think what we wanted to do was create a character
Bruce Miller: who was looking at his own ideas in practice and
Bruce Miller: what does that feel like? What does it feel like to
Bruce Miller: be the intellectual Father of Gilead? Not the practical, not
Bruce Miller: on the ground? Because I think everybody's asking "What the hell are they trying
Bruce Miller: to do?" And this is the guy who can tell
Bruce Miller: you that. Also, he's the guy who says, " We can
Bruce Miller: still do it and we are kind of doing it,"
Bruce Miller: and he was always defending what he did. But with him, I
Bruce Miller: just loved how everybody is an experimental subject to him,
Bruce Miller: so the way he treats June is as a curiosity
Bruce Miller: and that was fascinating. I also loved the fact that
Bruce Miller: he could see through her. Fred was so easy to
Bruce Miller: manipulate. She smiled and undid her button and he fell
Bruce Miller: to pieces. She tries that with Lawrence early on, kind
Bruce Miller: of tries to flirt with him. He's like, " Wow. Did
Bruce Miller: that work with Fred? He's such a simpleton. You're so
Bruce Miller: transactional." So, that presented her with a big problem of
Bruce Miller: how do you change, she wants to manipulate someone, so
Bruce Miller: she tried it this way. She tries all these different
Bruce Miller: ways, and in the end, she doesn't manipulate him. She just kind
Bruce Miller: of goes front and center and kind of makes the
Bruce Miller: intellectual argument to him that, " This is what we have
Bruce Miller: to do." But she's pretty straightforward and that's how she
Bruce Miller: changes. She stops being cagey and she starts saying to him, "
Bruce Miller: Do you really still believe this is your house, really?" So, she
Bruce Miller: starts being a lot more direct and for him, that's
Bruce Miller: a much better strategy.
Jenny Curtis: It was fun to watch him. He's a very complicated
Jenny Curtis: character. Also, everybody in Gilead has a complicated character. Nick, who
Jenny Curtis: we find out, " Oh, no, Nick is not the boy
Jenny Curtis: we thought he was."
Bruce Miller: Did you think he was a nice guy?
Jenny Curtis: I mean, I didn't think he was a nice guy, but I thought that he would be
Jenny Curtis: on June's side first and foremost, no matter what.
Bruce Miller: Well, I think he is on June's side, no matter. He went
Bruce Miller: to talk to them. She asked him to go talk
Bruce Miller: to these people and he did. They realized who he wasn't didn't want
Bruce Miller: to work with him.
Jenny Curtis: Oh.
Bruce Miller: He did what he did for June.
Jenny Curtis: Well, I missed that.
Bruce Miller: They said, " This is not a guy who we are
Bruce Miller: willing to deal with. We know who this is." So
Bruce Miller: yeah, certainly the people outside Gilead think of him as
Bruce Miller: a villain and people inside Gilead think of him as
Bruce Miller: a hero, and the people who fall into that category
Bruce Miller: are not really our friends generally. But we've seen flashbacks
Bruce Miller: of him. We know he was in a very different
Bruce Miller: mindset at the beginning and he had very big hopes for Gilead.
Bruce Miller: He is a person who when he's committed to something,
Bruce Miller: he follows it through and he has not wavered at
Bruce Miller: all and his affection for June. He's a pretty stalwart fellow
Bruce Miller: and that is both good and bad. And that's I
Bruce Miller: think what I was trying to say is the same
Bruce Miller: really loyal guy who's really loyal to June, is also
Bruce Miller: a really loyal guy who's really loyal to Gilead and
Bruce Miller: you're going to get one with the other. And also,
Bruce Miller: I like the fact for us for in the audience,
Bruce Miller: you sort of want to believe that he's like everybody else and learning
Bruce Miller: someone is like everybody else, I think is that big step
Bruce Miller: you take at some point in the relationship learning that
Bruce Miller: the person you love has regular feet. So, anyway, those
Bruce Miller: two actors together are so remarkable. And Max Minghella is
Bruce Miller: a brilliant director and a great writer and he comes
Bruce Miller: and acts on my show once in a while, which was
Bruce Miller: just spectacular. So, part of the reason the character is
Bruce Miller: the way it is, is because of the way that
Bruce Miller: Max, you really do feel like he's always struggling, that
Bruce Miller: he's always struggling. He wants to do the right thing,
Bruce Miller: but he doesn't want to make waves. It really is the personality
Bruce Miller: of someone who's a fighter and then turns into a driver.
Jenny Curtis: Yeah. Talking about he wants to do the right thing, the scene where he goes
Jenny Curtis: and talks to Luke. Oh, it was heartbreaking.
Bruce Miller: Oh, that was so good, that was so good, and it was so
Bruce Miller: good by both of them because those scenes are kind
Bruce Miller: of avoided generally. It's like it's hard to write, like when finally,
Bruce Miller: those two people meet, what's going to happen? And I
Bruce Miller: like to write those scenes because I like to take
Bruce Miller: the mystery off of it. It's like, " Okay, it's just
Bruce Miller: a conversation." It is. They're just talking to each other.
Bruce Miller: And it's a conversation like you have with people. So,
Bruce Miller: it takes the mystery out of these big scenes. You
Bruce Miller: keep thinking, " Oh, when they connect, it's going to be
Bruce Miller: this huge moving, profound thing." And it just two guys fighting.
Bruce Miller: And that's what most things are. I think I'm trying
Bruce Miller: to lower the expectations of people in their life. I
Bruce Miller: think the TV sells such false expectations. June if she
Bruce Miller: just puts her mind to it can change the world
Bruce Miller: and it takes putting your mind to it, and getting
Bruce Miller: back up when you're knocked down 25 million times, and
Bruce Miller: that's the part they leave out.
Jenny Curtis: So, you've said they're quarantined. You guys are still working.
Jenny Curtis: How far along are you in the development of Season Four?
Bruce Miller: We were about two weeks into shooting, so we had
Bruce Miller: written almost all of it. And now, I'm writing the
Bruce Miller: finale now during quarantine, which I would have been doing
Bruce Miller: during the first few episodes of filming, so we have
Bruce Miller: our complete fourth season all figured out. We had it
Bruce Miller: figured out at the beginning and we've taken this opportunity
Bruce Miller: to get a little bit further ahead on scripts and
Bruce Miller: it's a great advantage to be able to have the whole season to look
Bruce Miller: at and go through and make sure everything tracks because
Bruce Miller: there's always some things that bump and some things you
Bruce Miller: miss that don't track with the characters and you end
Bruce Miller: up having to change them or take them out and
Bruce Miller: post. We don't make any mistakes like that, just because
Bruce Miller: we have people who their job is to track the
Bruce Miller: characters and people have different characters assigned to them, so
Bruce Miller: they're very mindful of that. But this affords a great
Bruce Miller: opportunity to kind of polish it and sculpt it a little, so that it runs
Bruce Miller: one episode into another.
Jenny Curtis: Do you guys do table reads before they get to the actors?
Bruce Miller: We don't do table reads before. I read my scripts,
Bruce Miller: I read them out loud to me, then that helps
Bruce Miller: me find... if you use a safety word like " Well"
Bruce Miller: before every sentence, you start to notice that in the
Bruce Miller: dialogue. Every script I have some weird tick. I'm constantly
Bruce Miller: using one word or another, so reading it out loud
Bruce Miller: helps that. It's also I think, for me, because I'm
Bruce Miller: dyslexic, it isn't the reading, it's the hearing, and so, I'm
Bruce Miller: kind of reading it out loud to myself. We did
Bruce Miller: table reads at the beginning. It's complicated logistically. We have
Bruce Miller: a very big cast and I don't want to do
Bruce Miller: a table read without everybody and they're almost never all there
Bruce Miller: at the same time. So, in order to do a
Bruce Miller: table read, you have to bring in people specifically and then
Bruce Miller: also you have to get Elisabeth Moss who works, I
Bruce Miller: mean, it's hard to imagine anybody working harder than her
Bruce Miller: on this show. There's episodes where she's in every shot,
Bruce Miller: much less every scene. And so, it just didn't seem
Bruce Miller: practical to do. I love read- throughs. I learned a
Bruce Miller: ton mostly about polishing dialogue. The way things sound in
Bruce Miller: people's mouths. Sometimes it's harder than others. Joe finds his
Bruce Miller: character doesn't have a British accent and he does. Yvonne
Bruce Miller: Strahovski, she's Australian, and she has a really thick Australian
Bruce Miller: accent, and so I can't really hear her voice as
Bruce Miller: Serena. I mean, Serena's voice is so very, very different.
Bruce Miller: But read-throughs are incredibly valuable and I think maybe if
Bruce Miller: we could do it on Zoom, now that everyone is a little more
Bruce Miller: comfortable with that, that'd be great, but scripts are written
Bruce Miller: for such a limited audience. I write a script. The
Bruce Miller: only people who reads it are executives and not even many.
Bruce Miller: A few executives and actors and crew. Nobody else gives
Bruce Miller: a crap about my script. So the only people that
Bruce Miller: matters that they understand it are the actors and the crew. It doesn't
Bruce Miller: matter if you get it, you don't have to do anything with
Bruce Miller: it. So it's a communication device between me and them,
Bruce Miller: but it's not a communication device between me and the audience.
Bruce Miller: They're communicating to the audience, so the most important thing
Bruce Miller: is that I see in a read through or any
Bruce Miller: of these meetings that we have a zillion of them,
Bruce Miller: is that they're seeing the script the way that I
Bruce Miller: want them to see it, because if they don't, it doesn't
Bruce Miller: matter how clever I think I am. So, that's kind of it's a good reason to do read-throughs.
Jenny Curtis: Is there anything you could share with us about Season Four?
Bruce Miller: It's 10 episodes.
Jenny Curtis: Thank you.
Bruce Miller: June's in it.
Jenny Curtis: Oh, good.
Bruce Miller: I would say the biggest piece of advice I could
Bruce Miller: give you is don't try to predict. I'm very proud
Bruce Miller: of this season. I'm proud of all the seasons. This one
Bruce Miller: I'm proud of just because I never get a chance to be
Bruce Miller: proud of it before, so I'm proud of the story
Bruce Miller: itself. But what I would like to say about Season
Bruce Miller: Four is really just hold on tight. It's quite an
Bruce Miller: emotional and physical ride.
Jenny Curtis: Awesome.
Female: If you're like us, you're looking for a way to
Female: make stay at home a little more special. Well, we're
Female: going to let you in on our secret. Join Robb
Female: Vices to get luxury cocktail kits, toys, tools, tech and
Female: other incredible items delivered straight to your home on a
Female: monthly basis. The value is incredible. Your first box is
Female: going to be a $ 400 tequila curation and you can
Female: sign up for as little as 99 bucks a month.
Female: Use the code " podcast" and you'll save an extra 50
Female: bucks at sign up. So head to robbvices.com to bring
Female: exciting experiences safely to your door. Remember, use the code "
Female: podcast" and go to R- O- B- B- V- I- C- E- S. com.
Jenny Curtis: Is there a moment in your career you would go
Jenny Curtis: back to either to change because you want to fix
Jenny Curtis: it or to pick up from where you left off
Jenny Curtis: and continue something that you feel is unfinished?
Bruce Miller: I have two answers. One of my first jobs was on ER,
Bruce Miller: one of my first TV jobs and I was so unqualified to
Bruce Miller: be a producer and a television writer that I feel
Bruce Miller: like I owe them. I was there for two years.
Bruce Miller: They taught me everything. I don't know that I contributed
Bruce Miller: anything. So, John Wells and all those other writers, I
Bruce Miller: owe them a couple of years of work, so I
Bruce Miller: feel like that's kind of unfinished. It was a great
Bruce Miller: learning experience and I love all those people, and I
Bruce Miller: still work with them. The moment I thought I wish things
Bruce Miller: had gone differently was it's very simple. I was in
Bruce Miller: a writing room and someone and I had a jerky
Bruce Miller: boss and he was screaming at someone and I did
Bruce Miller: kind of pull his attention to me, but what I
Bruce Miller: should have done is say, " Don't treat her that way.
Bruce Miller: You know you can't treat people that way," and left.
Bruce Miller: And our businesses getting away from having kind of the
Bruce Miller: totalitarian government that exists in television be completely autonomous with
Bruce Miller: a showrunner that can be a tyrant and abusive and
Bruce Miller: horrible, and no one can stop them. But that would
Bruce Miller: have been a time to speak up, that would have
Bruce Miller: been a time to say, " Don't do this." I mean,
Bruce Miller: it's like want to call the person's mother and say, " Listen
Bruce Miller: to how they're behaving. This is horrible." So I really
Bruce Miller: wish I had done more there. And it was bad
Bruce Miller: for me and everybody else but I mean, certainly by the
Bruce Miller: time I left. That show, when he fired me a
Bruce Miller: few months later, it took me forever to physically recover
Bruce Miller: from that. I mean, I don't think I am physically recovered
Bruce Miller: from that. Those kind of people screaming at you and your
Bruce Miller: face, so that you get spit on your nose. That's just
Bruce Miller: something you don't recover from and it's not that person's
Bruce Miller: place to ruin your life like that. They actually don't
Bruce Miller: matter that much and you shouldn't be able to do
Bruce Miller: that to someone. So, we live in a business where
Bruce Miller: people because they are artists are giving indulgences and I think there
Bruce Miller: are certainly some indulgences that everybody deserves in their job,
Bruce Miller: artists or not and lots of slack, but I think
Bruce Miller: that we give indulgences to bad behavior, excusing it by
Bruce Miller: saying that person is a good artist when the two
Bruce Miller: things are completely unrelated. There's a point in this business
Bruce Miller: where someone does something horrible to you when you're young
Bruce Miller: and they say, " Oh, that's just the way the business
Bruce Miller: works." I know that like they do something immoral or
Bruce Miller: they are amoral, or they're just horrible to someone. I'm
Bruce Miller: 55. I've been doing this a long time. It's not the way the
Bruce Miller: business works. Those are assholes and the business works poorly,
Bruce Miller: because they're in it, but I've met plenty of people
Bruce Miller: who are normal and lovely and loyal and responsible and
Bruce Miller: smart, and they're a lot more talented and successful than those
Bruce Miller: people. But when someone tells you, " Oh, this is standard
Bruce Miller: operating procedure," don't be so quick to believe that. Be pretty skeptical.
Jenny Curtis: So, if you were talking to someone who was looking
Jenny Curtis: to be a showrunner, what would you tell them is the job, based
Jenny Curtis: on what you just said of how people say some
Jenny Curtis: things are the job and they're not?
Bruce Miller: I think the job is to encourage and manage your team
Bruce Miller: to create a great show. Most of it is encouragement
Bruce Miller: and management. Some of it is writing yourself and creating, but
Bruce Miller: most of the job of a showrunner is artistic management, not
Bruce Miller: art. And so I think that if you want to
Bruce Miller: be a showrunner, don't jump ahead of the line, go
Bruce Miller: through the steps as a staff writer, because absolutely when
Bruce Miller: you get to the job of showrunner, the more of that stuff you've
Bruce Miller: seen and the more stuff you know, the better. I was lucky,
Bruce Miller: I know I said it, but I saw 25 show
Bruce Miller: runners because I was fired from 25 jobs, so that's how 25
Bruce Miller: different people do it well and poorly and in very,
Bruce Miller: very different ways. But I think there's two things that
Bruce Miller: I try to do in my job. One is I'm
Bruce Miller: a shock absorber. The stress of the staff and the
Bruce Miller: cast, I absorb it, so it doesn't get to the
Bruce Miller: studio and network and the stress of the studio and network, I
Bruce Miller: absorbed their stress, so it doesn't get to the cast
Bruce Miller: and the writers and the crew. So, I am constantly
Bruce Miller: trying to give people the space to be as creative
Bruce Miller: as they can be, but my rule of thumb really
Bruce Miller: is I cultivated Greek laziness. I would very much like
Bruce Miller: to sit on the couch all day. So, if you
Bruce Miller: bring that into your work ethic, it works quite well,
Bruce Miller: because my theory is being a showrunner is a very difficult time-
Bruce Miller: consuming job that requires a lot of multitasking. All of
Bruce Miller: those things I'm bad at. I'm bad at difficult things.
Bruce Miller: I'm better multitasking. I have learned to do that, but
Bruce Miller: at one point, you're breaking the season and writing and
Bruce Miller: you're also doing post production and you're also on set
Bruce Miller: and you're also casting. So, those four jobs are yours
Bruce Miller: and they're full time. So, what I tried to do
Bruce Miller: is, I think about at the beginning of every season,
Bruce Miller: I'm going to get bronchitis at some point. It's not
Bruce Miller: going to be like, " Oh, I'm a little sick. I
Bruce Miller: can take calls." No. On Thursday, I'm fine. On Friday,
Bruce Miller: I'm in bed and I can't talk to anybody for
Bruce Miller: a week. Everything I do is to make it, so
Bruce Miller: that nobody knows. That the studio, network, the cast, the
Bruce Miller: crew, nobody knows that I'm gone. Everybody is so comfortable
Bruce Miller: taking over and doing their jobs. So, I think as
Bruce Miller: a showrunner, your big job is to make yourself absolutely
Bruce Miller: dispensable. That's what you're shooting for. You're pushing for the
Bruce Miller: machine to run beautifully without you and make art without
Bruce Miller: you and do incredible things without you and then you
Bruce Miller: can add and make it better. Basically, I want a
Bruce Miller: group of people that they can make a fucking much
Bruce Miller: better show than I can. You want to hire a whole
Bruce Miller: bunch of people who are much better at their job than you
Bruce Miller: are. And then just assume that you have to put the pieces
Bruce Miller: in place that when you parachute out for a week,
Bruce Miller: it all works perfectly, so that's kind of how I look at it.
Jenny Curtis: Bruce Miller, thank you so much for joining us.
Bruce Miller: It was a pleasure to be here.
Jenny Curtis: And I am so looking forward to The Handmaid's Tale
Jenny Curtis: Season Four whenever it's able to be finished.
Bruce Miller: It will be a laugh riot. Well, I'll get it finished as soon as possible. Thank you for having me.
Jenny Curtis: Thank you, Bruce. Hollywood Unscripted is created by CurtCo Media.
Jenny Curtis: This special episode of The Stuck At Home series was
Jenny Curtis: hosted, produced and edited by me Jenny Curtis, with guest
Jenny Curtis: Bruce Miller. The executive producer of Hollywood Unscripted is Stuart
Jenny Curtis: Halperin. The Hollywood Unscripted theme song is by Celeste and
Jenny Curtis: Derek Dick. Please take a moment leave a rating and
Jenny Curtis: a review. We want to hear from you. What do
Jenny Curtis: you like? What do you not? What do you want
Jenny Curtis: more of? And make sure to subscribe so that you don't
Jenny Curtis: miss any special episodes of Hollywood Unscripted: Stuck At Home.
Jenny Curtis: Stay safe and healthy and thanks for listening. CurtCo Media, media
Jenny Curtis: for your mind.