Speaker 1: Welcome to return to the Shadows once again, and today
Speaker 1: we have a very special guest um our first, as
Speaker 1: far as recording goes, I don't know how these episodes
Speaker 1: are going to air. Our first guest from behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: That is not an actor whose face you saw on
Speaker 1: the show, correct, somebody who I think is one of
Speaker 1: the first people both of us met on the production.
Speaker 1: Definitely up there, yeah, because it would have been in
Speaker 1: the offices pre pre to us even being on set
Speaker 1: and filming. I'd still have brown hair when I met
Speaker 1: this person. Without further ado, Taylor Mallory, Hello, my love,
Speaker 1: how are you? Hello? Whoa? This is so weird to
Speaker 1: have these headphones on. I've never done this. Welcome clearly
Speaker 1: behind the scenes person, We've barely done this, so we're
Speaker 1: we're still learning as well. So thank you for being
Speaker 1: here and thank you for bearing with us, and welcome
Speaker 1: to return to the Shadows. Thank you. I listened to
Speaker 1: the first two episodes and they were very nostalgic for me.
Speaker 1: Miss you guys, but I know we miss you too.
Speaker 1: And this is the thing, this is what's been so
Speaker 1: wonderful about you know, all of this is I think,
Speaker 1: particularly for folks like us who are so young, and
Speaker 1: it was kind of one of our first major jobs.
Speaker 1: This was such a transformative experience and kind of shaped
Speaker 1: us both personally and professionally into to who we are
Speaker 1: as artists. And you know, I know for you, you you
Speaker 1: were one of the first people that you know, Dom
Speaker 1: and I met in this. I think you were literally
Speaker 1: the first person who spoke to me in the office
Speaker 1: when I walked in for my first audition. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you've been such an instrumental part of this,
Speaker 1: and you know, knowing that you're a fan of the
Speaker 1: books and coming in as this encyclopedia to the writer's
Speaker 1: room as it were, you know, we we really you
Speaker 1: were really high on our priority list of people to
Speaker 1: bring on and pick your brain for a few minutes. Thanks, guys,
Speaker 1: I mean you kind of have surpassed me with the expertise.
Speaker 1: I would like come to set to explain something and
Speaker 1: you'd already know the answer most of the time. But
Speaker 1: that's that's great about these books is that we you know,
Speaker 1: we some of us read them, some of us didn't,
Speaker 1: and even those of us that read them, reading a
Speaker 1: book is such a personal experience and it's such a
Speaker 1: you know, so much of your own imagination feeds into it,
Speaker 1: and that's something that you know. I think you guys
Speaker 1: in the writer's room did such a beautiful job at
Speaker 1: balancing is creating an experience that would be fresh and
Speaker 1: new and exciting and suspenseful, both for people who knew
Speaker 1: the books cover to cover and people who had never
Speaker 1: opened them at all. You know, So tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about your experience. Come mean to the show.
Speaker 1: But first of all, why did you want to become
Speaker 1: a writer and how did you end up as a
Speaker 1: TV writer and sort of you know, that whole process
Speaker 1: creatively of how you found your way into this wonderful
Speaker 1: shadow world that we love. It's all kind of bizarrely connected.
Speaker 1: I think I've told you this, cat, but I don't
Speaker 1: know if Dom knows. When I was in middle school
Speaker 1: and elementary school, I was a big theater kid. So
Speaker 1: that's one side of why I wanted to get into writing.
Speaker 1: When you do theater, you get exposed to all the
Speaker 1: best material, like you know, Tony Award winning musicals. So
Speaker 1: I was a theater kid all throughout my childhood. When
Speaker 1: I graduated from college, I started working for an agency
Speaker 1: pretty quickly and my boss. My boss was married to
Speaker 1: Margot Cluence, who was an executive producer. I dped. Yes,
Speaker 1: she was not working in television at all at the
Speaker 1: time when I started that desk. Her husband is a
Speaker 1: lovely Frenchman who represents like exclusively foreign film directors. So
Speaker 1: I didn't think that that was going to connect me
Speaker 1: to television at all, and so I just became friends
Speaker 1: with ago. She would call and we would just like
Speaker 1: we just chat. She'd be like, hey, how you do it, Like,
Speaker 1: how's my husband treating you? And we became like really
Speaker 1: good buddies, to the point that when she like went abroad.
Speaker 1: I remember one time she brought me back macaroons from Paris,
Speaker 1: Like with this woman, So how can you not be
Speaker 1: smitten with Margot Cluin's I mean cool. I love that
Speaker 1: we have like the matching deep voices. We would like
Speaker 1: deep voice at each other. So she's got like a
Speaker 1: very cool vibe that I aspired to. So when I
Speaker 1: saw just randomly that the company she was working for
Speaker 1: was working with Cassie Claire, and I put together that
Speaker 1: they had done the Shadow Hunters movie, so I just
Speaker 1: casually was like, by the way, I love those books, like, congratulations,
Speaker 1: it's so cool you're working with this author. She's kind
Speaker 1: of the reason I wanted one of the reasons I
Speaker 1: wanted to be a writer. And Marco was like, funny
Speaker 1: you say that, I know you want to organ TV.
Speaker 1: I'm developing a Shadow Hunters television show, so if anything happens,
Speaker 1: I'll put your resume in and then she did. That's
Speaker 1: I was one of the first people to meet with Ed,
Speaker 1: so I very quickly became the book expert in the room.
Speaker 1: You're overqualified, like right at the beginning. For those who
Speaker 1: don't know, Ed Dector was the creator of the show,
Speaker 1: the brain child behind the show, and our original showrunner
Speaker 1: before it changed hands in season two. So that was
Speaker 1: Ed that we were just referencing and he heired all
Speaker 1: three of us. One thing that I want to ask
Speaker 1: that I think it would be an interesting perspective from
Speaker 1: someone like you, especially for so many of the listeners
Speaker 1: who were book fans originally. What what did you feel
Speaker 1: the first day you walked on set and you saw
Speaker 1: these these images. You know, these people that you'd read
Speaker 1: that you enjoyed the stories of, You knew what their
Speaker 1: journey is going to be. Sort of vaguely what was
Speaker 1: your feeling what like what what did that? How did
Speaker 1: that sort of evolve inside you when you first saw
Speaker 1: everything that you've read about. Well, I didn't step on
Speaker 1: the set until like a year plus after I started
Speaker 1: working on the show, So I think my first experience
Speaker 1: was watching the dailies for the listeners, the the raw
Speaker 1: footage from like a day of filming, so which includes
Speaker 1: like many many takes of the same scenes and all
Speaker 1: of our shenanigans. Yeah, exactly. When I saw the foot edge,
Speaker 1: I was so excited because the Institute especially is one
Speaker 1: of those like really special visuals. When you see that
Speaker 1: place come together, that's really the most unique I think
Speaker 1: set piece of our show. Stepping onto it in real
Speaker 1: life was the first time that happened, because you guys
Speaker 1: are in Toronto and I was an assistant. Even when
Speaker 1: I wrote my first episode, I didn't get to go
Speaker 1: to set because I was still an assistant and the
Speaker 1: writer's guilds wouldn't It doesn't cover sending you to set.
Speaker 1: My first time was season three, episode nine, Way Deeper.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that was my first time visiting set and
Speaker 1: stepping on their being so familiar with it from watching
Speaker 1: the show and watching the dailies, it's just so different
Speaker 1: from like actually being on the set. It just completely
Speaker 1: blew my mind. Like just the level of detail too.
Speaker 1: It's ways bigger then you think it's bigger. It's been
Speaker 1: like when you photos of like a house. I just
Speaker 1: bought a house and you see the photos and then
Speaker 1: you walk into it and you're like, this is bigger.
Speaker 1: This is much bigger than I thought it was going
Speaker 1: to be. Yeah, you gotta fit that camera DOLLI in there,
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, and a human Yeah, exactly right. Just
Speaker 1: I remember going up to like the random screens that
Speaker 1: are in the institute and like seeing the level of
Speaker 1: someone had to program every single symbol on there, and
Speaker 1: I was just having fun playing with it and looking
Speaker 1: at it. And also the first time I went to set,
Speaker 1: I had the luxury of my sister and my mom
Speaker 1: and my sister's baby came to set to visit me.
Speaker 1: I remember that it was so cute. So they were
Speaker 1: kind of wandering around and they were like thinking I
Speaker 1: was some sort of expert. So I was kind of
Speaker 1: faking like, yeah, this is a this is that's what
Speaker 1: I do when people come to set there, Like what's
Speaker 1: this thing, and I'm like, oh, that's just that's a
Speaker 1: thing of a jig that we use for Jerry rigging
Speaker 1: the flim flam. I don't know what that is or
Speaker 1: what it does. Question. We just stand on the tape
Speaker 1: and say the words, what's what's crazier? Actually, I think
Speaker 1: because I had sort of I've known what the look
Speaker 1: of the show was, the sets were gorgeous, and that
Speaker 1: was striking to me. But I think what strikes what
Speaker 1: struck me by far the most was how many human
Speaker 1: beings were on set. Because you as a writer or
Speaker 1: in a room with like ten people tops and you're
Speaker 1: creating all the ideas behind the show, but you don't
Speaker 1: really internalize until you're there that there are hundreds of
Speaker 1: people putting together every element of what you've written. Like
Speaker 1: some random prop that you've described, there's a guy who
Speaker 1: spent like two days making that prop, and then a
Speaker 1: team of people who are responsible for you holding it
Speaker 1: in one hand and it being in your hoster and
Speaker 1: like how it works and whatever. So I described sets
Speaker 1: very often as twenty teams of ten people, like that's
Speaker 1: sort of the amount of people that will be on set,
Speaker 1: like average, Like whether it's in the office or actually
Speaker 1: on set, the camera crews, produces, writers, actors, every makeup teams.
Speaker 1: Everyone is probably about twenty teams of ten people, So
Speaker 1: there's on average anywhere between a hundred and two hundred
Speaker 1: people on like on a set. So even if it's
Speaker 1: a scene between two people, if you were to turn
Speaker 1: the camera around, there's an audience, like there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of people watching and and sort of scrutinizing a different element,
Speaker 1: whether it's the lighting or the position of the camera,
Speaker 1: or whether or not Dom's on his mark, which he
Speaker 1: very rarely is. All of those different like little bits,
Speaker 1: like there's a team of people that are in charge
Speaker 1: of making sure that happens. But I will say something
Speaker 1: that's so beautiful about Shadow Hunters that I think is
Speaker 1: the reason that we're all still here is that each
Speaker 1: of those teams, everyone was so excited to create this
Speaker 1: world together. And I haven't I've been on you know,
Speaker 1: sets with amazing people and collaborative teams, but I've never
Speaker 1: been on a set where I experience every single human
Speaker 1: being from the office to the writer's room to every
Speaker 1: single person in background and catering and everything that just
Speaker 1: is happy to be there and wants to to build
Speaker 1: this together as a team and to collaborate and share
Speaker 1: resources and elements and ideas and put ego aside to
Speaker 1: build a cohesive world. I never put my ego aside.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking about. Never, Taylor. I
Speaker 1: have a question for you, And this is fun because
Speaker 1: you are first sort of behind the scenes person to
Speaker 1: come in and I think I'm gonna make this a thing.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask everyone, what is your favorite episode and why?
Speaker 1: Oh it can be when you wrote, okay, good, because
Speaker 1: it's probably going to be when I wrote. I will
Speaker 1: preface by saying I just rewatched season one and I
Speaker 1: still think that wedding scene holds up beautifully as like
Speaker 1: a scene that I love. My favorite episode, i'm very biased,
Speaker 1: is the see Court. But that's because I did. That
Speaker 1: was my first episode I wrote behind the scenes that
Speaker 1: you guys don't know is I was devastated we couldn't
Speaker 1: make it work in season one. It was something like,
Speaker 1: it's really tied to Simon becoming a vampire. We're gonna
Speaker 1: do that's the red line. We think about doing the
Speaker 1: Seely Court, and it just didn't fit in season one,
Speaker 1: like the way that things have been restructured, it really
Speaker 1: didn't make sense to kind of wedge it in. And
Speaker 1: I'm so add that that decision was made because I
Speaker 1: think it fit better where it went, because we got
Speaker 1: to spend time with Simon and Clary in a couple
Speaker 1: you get, you know what's interesting about these scenes when
Speaker 1: we get to experience them, because we read them obviously,
Speaker 1: and there's a whole, you know, a whole just ship
Speaker 1: ton of work that's gone into it before it even
Speaker 1: reaches us. And you can really tell in those sort
Speaker 1: of specific scenes where like one or all of the
Speaker 1: writers had a chunk of their heart in this, Like
Speaker 1: you can tell by the way the sets are set up,
Speaker 1: by how much of the script is dedicated to this
Speaker 1: one scene, you know, whether it's the malic wedding or
Speaker 1: the steely court or whatever. We knew that this was
Speaker 1: going to be, like, this was going to be a
Speaker 1: special one. This is one of the ones that like
Speaker 1: people have really put their heart and soul into putting
Speaker 1: this together, all the way from you know, the early
Speaker 1: conception of the idea, all the way through the sets
Speaker 1: being built, through the special effects, Like we have those
Speaker 1: things around our neck do you remember those They're like
Speaker 1: thorns things strangling as the vines. What are they called visors?
Speaker 1: Fair at us? Yeah, look at you, dumb. It's almost
Speaker 1: like I was in the show and see you know,
Speaker 1: this is something that being one of the ones that
Speaker 1: read the books, there are certain scenes that I was
Speaker 1: so excited to play out. That was the Seely Court.
Speaker 1: That was leg Lynn, It was bone chandelier. It was
Speaker 1: like Jason Clary meeting for the first time finding the cup.
Speaker 1: All of these elements that you go through time and
Speaker 1: time again and get to see. You you experienced it
Speaker 1: reading the book and you just imagine it in your
Speaker 1: head and having met all the cast, you you have
Speaker 1: an image of it and you just know it's going
Speaker 1: to be special. And there are these moments that are
Speaker 1: your favorites from a book that you know you actually
Speaker 1: get to live out and experience as as a character
Speaker 1: and as a person. But having someone write that episode who,
Speaker 1: as dom said, put so much heart into it, it
Speaker 1: just elevated it that much more. And I remember sitting
Speaker 1: there and set that day and I think the three
Speaker 1: of us, I mean, we were, you know, having fun
Speaker 1: and goofing around as it were. But Domino there's We've
Speaker 1: talked about this with other scenes. There's a few times
Speaker 1: where you can just tell there's an extra bit of
Speaker 1: magic in the air, and that episode was definitely one
Speaker 1: of those times. So happy to hear you say that
Speaker 1: we should get Lola on the show for sure, because
Speaker 1: she's so amazing. Like so, I'm so excited to see
Speaker 1: how she progresses as a young actor because she's like
Speaker 1: I would watch her and go, man, I wish I
Speaker 1: was that good. That's really cool, that's really great. She
Speaker 1: did a good job being like a little adult, because
Speaker 1: that was part of the deal. It was like, we
Speaker 1: need a kid that like it's an ancient yeahs. It
Speaker 1: blows my mind where I'm like, I just now know
Speaker 1: how to be a grown up barely. I don't know
Speaker 1: how you figured this out a young age. Is crazy
Speaker 1: to me. Well, that's just it is that we had
Speaker 1: a set where we weren't used to having kids around,
Speaker 1: Like I think Dum, you and I were the biggest
Speaker 1: kids on set for in certain moments, and it's it's
Speaker 1: funny when you have a kid come on set, there's
Speaker 1: suddenly school and there's parents and it changes everything. But
Speaker 1: to have someone like Lola come in whose mom was
Speaker 1: so awesome, and and kids like Jack as well, who
Speaker 1: plays um Max Lightwood. We had these kids come in
Speaker 1: who were just astronomically talented and so mature, and it
Speaker 1: just it added so much to the show because you
Speaker 1: get to have, you know, people of all ages and
Speaker 1: bringing so much to this world. Well, Cat, you probably
Speaker 1: remember the Seeley Queen is not a kid in the book,
Speaker 1: So that was an invention of the show. And there's
Speaker 1: a kind of funny story behind that, which was when
Speaker 1: I was pitching the details of that episode to Todd
Speaker 1: and Darren, and I was like, it's really important that
Speaker 1: it ends with this weird little mind game where she's
Speaker 1: she has to kiss the one that she loves most,
Speaker 1: like that you know, wants the most. That is like
Speaker 1: the key to the whole episode. And Tod was like,
Speaker 1: I don't really know if it's going to play on
Speaker 1: screen if it's a grown up like I see it
Speaker 1: in the book, because it's this ethereal being who's like otherworldly.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if I see it as like
Speaker 1: a grown up woman playing games with somebody. And I
Speaker 1: was like, well, that was my non negotiable store. We've
Speaker 1: got to figure out a way to make this work.
Speaker 1: And he's like, what if the Seeley Queen were like
Speaker 1: a little child? Like that's part of the manipulation is
Speaker 1: It's all feels like fun and games until this moment.
Speaker 1: I was like, that's amazing because I get the tooth
Speaker 1: scene that I want. It was a it was a
Speaker 1: really clever way to sort of let your guards down
Speaker 1: because they he wanted this whole like non threatening element
Speaker 1: until the moment where she goes in for the kill.
Speaker 1: And so that was why we and I think it's
Speaker 1: such a cool little piece of texture to the episode
Speaker 1: to have her there. But it allowed us to have
Speaker 1: the Seeley Queen be this sort of ever changing ethereal
Speaker 1: being that was sort of fluid in how she shifted
Speaker 1: and changed and morphed into all of these different iterations.
Speaker 1: You know it it opened up a door for some
Speaker 1: really kick as actresses to come in and play very
Speaker 1: different versions of her. You know that. I'll started with you.
Speaker 1: So thanks for that. Thanks Gay, Yeah, that was a
Speaker 1: really special episode. You went to Princeton. Yeah, why did
Speaker 1: she come? If someone does text you that, no, no,
Speaker 1: we have a cheat sheet. We get given it sheet, Like,
Speaker 1: so it's in front of me, and I'm just I'm
Speaker 1: like flicking through it. Wow, that's that's pretty incredible. What
Speaker 1: else we got here? Listen, let me take a sidebar.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do a little Taylor reading's on my infoition
Speaker 1: comparative literature. So, Taylor, you and I have talked about this,
Speaker 1: but tell us a little bit about because you had
Speaker 1: a very specific focus in part of your studies in
Speaker 1: comparative literature, right, something to do with I. So it
Speaker 1: wasn't like a specialization within comparative literature. So I went
Speaker 1: to Princeton and was going to be a theater major,
Speaker 1: but that didn't exist. So I was like, what's next English?
Speaker 1: And then somebody that I was friends with through like
Speaker 1: the whole Acapella theater scene, was like comparative literature. It's
Speaker 1: like fancy English, but you have to learn foreign languages
Speaker 1: and read foreign texts. And I was like that sounds cool.
Speaker 1: I want to speak foreign languages. Yeah. My senior thesis
Speaker 1: was about was was a theater minded thesis where it
Speaker 1: was like studying theater texts in different languages that were
Speaker 1: all its weird about Orpheus and Euridicy, No way, I
Speaker 1: love that story I love that story. Have you seen
Speaker 1: Hades Town? Oh? Yeah that. There has never been a
Speaker 1: musical more designed for my taste than that show. I
Speaker 1: wish I could add this as like an addendum to
Speaker 1: my thesis. Who plays Orpheous? What was his name? Oh?
Speaker 1: The guy from Penny Dreadful? Yeah, it was spider Man
Speaker 1: and Turn Off the Dark. Yeah, I saw the original cast.
Speaker 1: That's unbelievable. He was in Penny, but he was also
Speaker 1: in a Taylor Swift music video, so we I was
Speaker 1: talking to John Logan when we did Penny. I was like, dude,
Speaker 1: this guy like him and I have sort of had
Speaker 1: these like weird parallel careers that have happened at the
Speaker 1: same time. He's like, you should do a musical next,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I can't, but I would love to. Yes,
Speaker 1: you can, um come on. It's I still rude the
Speaker 1: day that we never did a Shadow Hunters musical episode,
Speaker 1: I would quit. I would have walked out that I
Speaker 1: once audition for a musical and it was fucking dreadful
Speaker 1: just a Broadway musical or yeah, they flew me to
Speaker 1: New York for it. They was it. It was a remake,
Speaker 1: not a remake. It's a musical of almost famous, the
Speaker 1: Cameron Chrome movie. And I went in and did the
Speaker 1: audition and they wanted me to go on audition. I
Speaker 1: was like, guys, are not really a singer, but whatever,
Speaker 1: I'll going because it's almost famous and the casting director.
Speaker 1: This was on a Friday, and the casting director was like,
Speaker 1: can you come back in tomorrow? And I'm like tomorrow Saturday,
Speaker 1: and I was going to go drinking tonight and I
Speaker 1: probition and he went words to meet Cameron Crowe and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, make time, I'll figure it out.
Speaker 1: I'll come in. I didn't hear anything, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's fair enough, that's probably the right choice to Three
Speaker 1: weeks later, they call me back and go, hey, here's
Speaker 1: three songs in sheet the original songs in sheet music.
Speaker 1: We want you to fly to New York in two
Speaker 1: days and do it in front of the Cameron crow
Speaker 1: the director, and then the entire producing team. I of
Speaker 1: course have lied at this point and said that I
Speaker 1: can read sheet music. I fucking can't. So I'm sat
Speaker 1: on an airplane trying to like deconnotate note by note
Speaker 1: three songs and then memorize them before I meet Tom
Speaker 1: kitt who's arguably one of the most prolific like writers
Speaker 1: of music in the entire industry, to I to perform
Speaker 1: in front of knowing there's only like four guys left
Speaker 1: and I didn't get the role, And I think that
Speaker 1: was the correct choice from everyone made the right choice.
Speaker 1: The recording of the songs, though, come on, they gave
Speaker 1: me like a little thing. Yeah, sometimes they do. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they don't. Just imagining you want to plane with an
Speaker 1: iPhone like an app that's like a piano and you're
Speaker 1: just like dinging. I'm talking about learning as we go,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's one of those moments where you
Speaker 1: This is something else that I love about Shadow Hunters
Speaker 1: is that not only did you know people like Dom
Speaker 1: and I get to develop our careers and our work
Speaker 1: as we did the show, but we got to see
Speaker 1: so many folks like you get to develop and grow
Speaker 1: and move up the ranks in your career as well
Speaker 1: while being on the show. So tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about because I know almost nothing about how writer's
Speaker 1: rooms work and how that process happens. So for folks
Speaker 1: out there who you know might want to follow in
Speaker 1: your footsteps, tell us a little bit about what that
Speaker 1: was like for you and how that works and sort
Speaker 1: of what your journey was. Yeah, I can't really speak
Speaker 1: to what the typical path is to a writer's room
Speaker 1: because there isn't one, and I even think that the
Speaker 1: path that I took might be a little outdated at
Speaker 1: this point, because who knows. I'll just speak to my experience. Luckily,
Speaker 1: because of the Princeton connection, I had a I had
Speaker 1: a friend who is at an agency. Actually, my first
Speaker 1: job was as an intern on The Crazy Ones, which
Speaker 1: was a CBS show with Robin Williams and the late
Speaker 1: great Robin Williams Sarah Michelle Geller. Backing up a little further,
Speaker 1: I took a class my senior year at Princeton that
Speaker 1: David E. Kelly randomly was teaching. This was before like
Speaker 1: the Kelly songs. This was when he was developing Crazy
Speaker 1: Ones and he hadn't done Big Little Eyes yet, but
Speaker 1: his daughter was a student and he wanted like an
Speaker 1: excuse to visit, so he was teaching the seminar. I
Speaker 1: was one of ten students in his class. He very
Speaker 1: sweetly hired me as an intern on his show, and
Speaker 1: I graduated because I hit him up and was like
Speaker 1: please hire me. So I did that job and I
Speaker 1: got to be on set and the hours were outrageous.
Speaker 1: So I have so much respect for actors and the
Speaker 1: entire production crew, just like okay, five am, let's get here,
Speaker 1: and like, let's get going. I couldn't. It was unsustainable
Speaker 1: for me. But I got a little glimpse of what
Speaker 1: the life was like and then quickly realized I wanted
Speaker 1: to not do that. So yeah, seriously, my my friend
Speaker 1: was at William Morris and she put my resume in.
Speaker 1: That's when I worked for Jerome. I started in the
Speaker 1: mail room. He quickly scooped me up because I spoke French.
Speaker 1: Why I even went that way was because I was
Speaker 1: telling people around town. I was like, I want to
Speaker 1: be in a writer's room. What is the best path
Speaker 1: to getting into a writer's room? And I kept hearing
Speaker 1: writer's assistant was there was like the golden ticket. Because
Speaker 1: there's showrunners assistance, there's you know, production assistance. But when
Speaker 1: you are a writer's assistant, you were assistant to the
Speaker 1: writer's room, so you get to be in that room
Speaker 1: all the time, listening to the report of these writers,
Speaker 1: like basically learning silently like a fly on the wall,
Speaker 1: but you're also taking notes, You're transcribing everything that's being said.
Speaker 1: So it becomes a bit of a skill to like
Speaker 1: be listening and transposing and also thinking, I got really
Speaker 1: good at that after a lot of training. Not surprised.
Speaker 1: It's it's like now when I'm in a writer's room
Speaker 1: and I don't use my hands, I'm like, what do
Speaker 1: I do with them? Can you turn it off? When
Speaker 1: you're in just like when you're at dinner, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like if you're just with a group
Speaker 1: of people, you constantly like silently judging and also like
Speaker 1: thinking I can make turn you into a character and
Speaker 1: like taking notes under the table or you're doing all
Speaker 1: of that. Can you or can you turn it off?
Speaker 1: I can turn it off, but know when you're I
Speaker 1: think I'm at a point where my if this is
Speaker 1: a like my story sensor is always on if someone's
Speaker 1: telling a story and I'm like, damn that make a
Speaker 1: good movie that I can't turn that off. But I
Speaker 1: can turn off my like phantom hands at least. But no,
Speaker 1: I I got the job because Mark, I'll put my
Speaker 1: resume in so I'll say that this job. Getting it
Speaker 1: is such a combination of like preparation and less. See,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. I believe that there's an element of
Speaker 1: people taking a chance on you in this business, both
Speaker 1: from our part and yours, and probably in every facet
Speaker 1: of this career, someone took a shot on us at
Speaker 1: some point. But also, it really fucking pays to be
Speaker 1: a nice human being. It pays to be a decent,
Speaker 1: hard working, passionate human being. If they if people can,
Speaker 1: if people above you can see like this person cares
Speaker 1: about what this is, this person cares about this in
Speaker 1: the correct way, then they're more willing to take that
Speaker 1: risk on you. So I don't necessarily think it. Maybe
Speaker 1: there's an element of luck in there that you had
Speaker 1: that connection with Margot in the first place, perhaps, But
Speaker 1: I also think being good and being passionate and being
Speaker 1: hard working is far more important than hoping the Margot
Speaker 1: clones of the world pick up your resume and send
Speaker 1: it to the right person. Anyway, please continue, that's very
Speaker 1: sweet to say. I do think that like, passion and
Speaker 1: kindness were very important to me getting this job, because uh,
Speaker 1: I was lucky that getting into it, I was working
Speaker 1: with very kind people, which rubs off on you. It
Speaker 1: just is a trickle down effect. So if your bosses
Speaker 1: are kind, it's going to be a good environment. And
Speaker 1: that was true of Ed and Todd and Darren. The
Speaker 1: fact that Margo just happened, kitty, that Margo just happened
Speaker 1: to be somebody I had a kind relationship with, and
Speaker 1: then I truly had passion about the project. Those two
Speaker 1: things were like essential to me getting the job. Faking
Speaker 1: your passion for a writing project is pretty tough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you get you get picked for the stuff
Speaker 1: that you are sincerely interested in, and so it's good
Speaker 1: not to try to force passion where there is none.
Speaker 1: For can never imagine like you're stuck on this for
Speaker 1: whatever it is, like it's a contract is for us
Speaker 1: is for six years seven years now. The last contracts
Speaker 1: I just signed with seven years long. If you are
Speaker 1: not interested in it like you, I once given a
Speaker 1: piece of advice that was like, if this is what
Speaker 1: you want to do, you better be sure that you
Speaker 1: love it, because you're gonna be doing it forever. And
Speaker 1: that's really that's a really important piece of advice. No,
Speaker 1: it's really a good piece of advice. When you're even
Speaker 1: writing a new thing, you it's like, if you want
Speaker 1: to sell the show, you better be prepared to live
Speaker 1: with these people for a really long time. Or if
Speaker 1: you're going to join the staff of a show, you're
Speaker 1: gonna live with these people for a really long time.
Speaker 1: Well that's it. And as you know, you know from
Speaker 1: being on set, but also in the writer's room, I
Speaker 1: you know, having spoken to a good few of you,
Speaker 1: it's long hours and it's all of your You're constantly
Speaker 1: sort of developing and thinking and trying to work out
Speaker 1: whatever not only is happening in the episode that you
Speaker 1: might be writing or covering set for, but then you know,
Speaker 1: four episodes down the line, the story you guys are
Speaker 1: breaking is all dependent upon all these elements that keep changing.
Speaker 1: And you know, for Dom and I, I know we
Speaker 1: spent more hours on set in costume than we did
Speaker 1: with our families during those years, and it becomes television,
Speaker 1: especially becomes this kind of all consuming machine. And when
Speaker 1: you're with the running joke for me, Alberto would say
Speaker 1: that he for four years had heard me in an
Speaker 1: American accent more than in a British accent because of
Speaker 1: how frequently we were on set. But I mean, I
Speaker 1: certainly have heard you more with American. It bugs me that, like,
Speaker 1: it feels like you're doing an accent now, because I
Speaker 1: was mostly was exposed to you until I met you
Speaker 1: through on set. You maintain your accent totally. So Actually,
Speaker 1: at the rat party for season one, there were a
Speaker 1: lot of crew that were like, why are you talking
Speaker 1: about that? Man? What's going on? And I was like, listen,
Speaker 1: this is how I really speak. I was so excited
Speaker 1: the most recent job I just finished, which is show
Speaker 1: called Partner Track for Netflix. Really excited about it. I'm British.
Speaker 1: I used my accent, but I have been adapted it
Speaker 1: a little because my accent is my accent, you know,
Speaker 1: so I how does he talk? Why does he talk
Speaker 1: that way? And what are the elements of how you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? So there's for me, accents is
Speaker 1: like one of the first things that I mess with
Speaker 1: as a an actor, because every everyone's accent, everyone's inflection
Speaker 1: is a little different. And that's the first time I
Speaker 1: think for me that the writer's hand off to us
Speaker 1: a little bit where it's like you've written the story,
Speaker 1: You've written who these people are. Now I get to
Speaker 1: start putting some nuance into this person. I get to
Speaker 1: start thinking about why, because McGee even asked me. I
Speaker 1: remember I was in training and he came in. He goes, hey, man,
Speaker 1: we're thinking about making Jay's British. What do you think?
Speaker 1: And I was like, I don't make any sense. He
Speaker 1: was raised thanks he was he was raised in New York.
Speaker 1: His brother and sister are American. His adopted parents are American,
Speaker 1: who he likes to come to find out is his father,
Speaker 1: but not his father American, So it doesn't make any
Speaker 1: sense for him to be British. Everyone has a kind
Speaker 1: of worms though, because then Valentine was British, is Michael Wayland?
Speaker 1: And then Who's British? And address It was just didn't
Speaker 1: make any sense. So I was like, I think it
Speaker 1: makes sense for him to be British. And that was
Speaker 1: the first. That's our first like shaking hands with the
Speaker 1: writers where it's like we are you know, you're sort
Speaker 1: of you have quite a lot of faith in us,
Speaker 1: you as are great though we for a reason. Well,
Speaker 1: I was also going to say when I was unset
Speaker 1: for the first time, it like through me. I was like,
Speaker 1: he's English, but you were speaking in your American accent,
Speaker 1: like between takes, like sitting in your chair like behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, and you'd be speaking with American accent. I
Speaker 1: was like, I'm just I'm not good enough to switch Saylor.
Speaker 1: That's the issue. I'm not good enough to go back
Speaker 1: and forth. I I have to keep it in my
Speaker 1: head otherwise I'm like, like, midway through an American accent,
Speaker 1: I'll say like aluminium and You're like, you say what
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Well, speaking on that, this
Speaker 1: is a question I sort of had for you as well,
Speaker 1: and something that I've been dying to ask you forever.
Speaker 1: You know, so much of this show was creating these
Speaker 1: characters and the mythology of the show, and you know,
Speaker 1: we had it based on the books, but obviously you
Speaker 1: in the writer's room had to adapt a lot of that.
Speaker 1: So being someone who read the books and knew the
Speaker 1: sort of rules of the world that Cassie had established
Speaker 1: in the books, what was what was sort of the
Speaker 1: process and what did you think about when you were
Speaker 1: pulling things to be this physical representation on TV. Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of that process happened with me not weighing
Speaker 1: in a ton, but I got to witness it because
Speaker 1: when you're a writer's assistant, you don't most of my
Speaker 1: contributions in season one, we're providing like research materials to
Speaker 1: the writers. Whenever they were like, oh, what's this character like,
Speaker 1: I was like, well, here's literally their life story and everything.
Speaker 1: I could pull them books and then they would decide
Speaker 1: what worked. Probably one of my biggest contributions was just
Speaker 1: figuring out which characters would have been on the map
Speaker 1: for the first book that Cassie hadn't come up with
Speaker 1: yet who could be in the show. So, like Camille
Speaker 1: was not at all in the first book, she would
Speaker 1: have theoretically been. She's referenced and she would have been around,
Speaker 1: and so the writers got really excited about like sort
Speaker 1: of creating an origin story for her and Magnus and
Speaker 1: actually showing it. Those kinds of changes really just excited
Speaker 1: the writers because it provided an opportunity to create that
Speaker 1: wasn't contradicting the material. Those were sort of the fun
Speaker 1: versions of invention. Violence must be so tricky. I can't
Speaker 1: even imagine tricky though, Yeah, and well what was I
Speaker 1: was just texting with Pete benz Winger, who's the only
Speaker 1: other writer. Zoe Broad was on the show the whole time.
Speaker 1: The three of us were the only people from literally
Speaker 1: day one until the GS maybe the O. And he
Speaker 1: reminded me though that you guys we got green lit
Speaker 1: UM without a pilot. Correct, Yeah, thirteen episode season one
Speaker 1: green Lit when we were casting you guys, And it
Speaker 1: was so funny because I we did get to watch
Speaker 1: some of the auditions as like, you know, baby assistant,
Speaker 1: Like I remember watching you cat like with one of
Speaker 1: the other finalists for Clary and Ed being like, who
Speaker 1: do you guys think between these, you know, like couple
Speaker 1: of two or three options, who's like speaking to you?
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, I think Kat is probably
Speaker 1: the right one. I remember, like I remember voting for you.
Speaker 1: So I wanted that credit to UM. But Pete reminded
Speaker 1: me that we cast you guys, and we're filming the
Speaker 1: pilot when we got dailies. The first set of dailies,
Speaker 1: we were like writing episode eight. It was highly late
Speaker 1: in and so a big part of the process of
Speaker 1: like kind of merging actors and characters was kind of
Speaker 1: going back and trying to make as many adjustments as
Speaker 1: we could to the actors that we had, because you know,
Speaker 1: you're never going to get the exact person from the page,
Speaker 1: and as you said Cat. Every every person's interpretation of
Speaker 1: these characters is going to be different in their heads.
Speaker 1: So it was like trying to kind of manufacture how
Speaker 1: to how to kind of merge the two and who
Speaker 1: has great chemistry together and who do we want to
Speaker 1: see in more scenes together. I remember, like you and
Speaker 1: Matt had that really fun fighting episode five of season one,
Speaker 1: and we were like, we saw those dailies and we're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we gotta we gotta figure out a way to just
Speaker 1: like make them butt heads more. That's great. So a
Speaker 1: lot of it comes from inspiration from how you guys
Speaker 1: interact with each other, which is really lovely. So Season
Speaker 1: two I think was the first full season where we
Speaker 1: had your voices and faces in our heads when we
Speaker 1: were writing, and I think to viewers that might be
Speaker 1: a little bit be more odd is that the cohesion
Speaker 1: was there even more as far as writing to you guys.
Speaker 1: I guess by the finale we were doing that too.
Speaker 1: That's really wonderful to hear because that's something I know,
Speaker 1: you know dominant both having worked in television doing a
Speaker 1: few different shows and living with characters. I love television
Speaker 1: because you get to live with characters for years and
Speaker 1: kind of go through your journey as a human developing
Speaker 1: with this character's journey. And and so much of that
Speaker 1: is because you get to know the writers, and the
Speaker 1: writers get to know you, and even though you don't
Speaker 1: always get to interact, almost through the dailies and through
Speaker 1: the story, you kind of have this give and take
Speaker 1: in this working relationship of creating the character together. And
Speaker 1: I've always felt that way, and to hear that it's
Speaker 1: you know, the same on your end, it's that's awesome.
Speaker 1: It's so weird though that I didn't get to know
Speaker 1: you guys personally until well in and well except Kat
Speaker 1: kept bringing us cookies, so I new. But but like
Speaker 1: thinking that I know you guys as people, and then
Speaker 1: going to set. That was another weird thing about going
Speaker 1: to set. I was like hey, Matt, and he was like,
Speaker 1: have I ever met you in my life? I was like, oh, right,
Speaker 1: here's the thing for us as well, because you're like,
Speaker 1: oh no, yeah, I have I forgotten who this person is.
Speaker 1: This is really bad And it's because we do the reverse.
Speaker 1: I do the reverse. I can speak to me, but
Speaker 1: like award shows and stuff, I'll go like, oh I
Speaker 1: know that person. No, I don't. I've just seen them
Speaker 1: in a movie. I don't know who you are. That's
Speaker 1: always the thought process, like do I know you were?
Speaker 1: I really want to go and say hi, because you
Speaker 1: seem like a cool person that I feel like I've
Speaker 1: bonded with already, but I haven't, because all I've done
Speaker 1: is seen you you do this thing, you know? Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I was very grateful to go to set and
Speaker 1: actually meet people and have actual friendships with them after
Speaker 1: years of just feeling kind of creepy and watching Day
Speaker 1: a little wearistic kind of. We shared a very cold
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving dinner together on set, because you know, filming in Canada,
Speaker 1: we work on American Thanksgiving and it was also my birthday,
Speaker 1: and so we, you know, we got to have like
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving birthday pumpkin pie together while I was getting almost executed,
Speaker 1: and it was really one of my favorite memories. You,
Speaker 1: me and Stephanie right, the woman who plays Iris Rouse.
Speaker 1: Remember it was like the three of us in our
Speaker 1: wearing like your prison jumpsuits. Yeah. Happy Thanksgiving. Yeah, Tom,
Speaker 1: I don't think you were there that day because it
Speaker 1: was it was the same place that we shot a
Speaker 1: lot of the Season two finale was that same kind
Speaker 1: of park, but in the remember that old Castle ruin
Speaker 1: that we learned that fight in that one morning. It
Speaker 1: did this for four years. I did that like twice
Speaker 1: a week, I know, I know. But anyway, that that
Speaker 1: old ruin that we learned that fight in right before
Speaker 1: we went to go shoot it at Golden Hour. In
Speaker 1: season three, we went back to that same spot and
Speaker 1: that's where we shot thesecution. Yeah you remember, now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we were there on Thanksgiving in the snow eating
Speaker 1: pumpkin pine attack and it was great because you know,
Speaker 1: you have people like Taylor and you know, Matt's kids
Speaker 1: can't Matt Hastings kids came to work that day and
Speaker 1: we you know, we got to all hang out and
Speaker 1: share a very cold, very odd my execution. Robs snatched
Speaker 1: the pumpkin pie and it was grand. There was like
Speaker 1: this is the kind of like ridiculous minute things. It
Speaker 1: was like what color should those execution clothing be? Taylor,
Speaker 1: I was like, uh, goes into my research to like
Speaker 1: look at the significance of colors into the Shadow Hunters Lord,
Speaker 1: which became a big thing, didn't it. There's a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of that that I didn't really know like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got in real trouble for I think I posted
Speaker 1: something and I was wearing I was wearing white for
Speaker 1: something and I posted something about it, and they were like,
Speaker 1: you can't. You can't post that, and I was like,
Speaker 1: first of all, why, and they're like, white is for
Speaker 1: mourning for the shadow answers. I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not good, and then I was and then it
Speaker 1: dawned on me that I was like, I think social
Speaker 1: media post that for me. I didn't post anything. I
Speaker 1: don't do anything without permission. I'm pretty sure the social
Speaker 1: media team posted and they had to go back through
Speaker 1: and get rid of it. But it also wasn't for
Speaker 1: a funeral. It was from a camera test, and then
Speaker 1: obviously they ended up going, well, now we can't use
Speaker 1: this because it's for a fucking funeral. We're not supposed
Speaker 1: to be wearing this. Change this costume up. I think
Speaker 1: there's just like I think, because of the like Twitter age,
Speaker 1: the most educated people in the shadow Hunter's lore will
Speaker 1: disseminate the information because not every viewer is going to
Speaker 1: know that, but like the super experts will be very
Speaker 1: loud and share them with with the entire Twitter verse,
Speaker 1: which is a cold and unforgiving place. Being a super expert,
Speaker 1: this is one question we've We've been going through several
Speaker 1: of the episodes in season one, and we've just been
Speaker 1: through the flashback episode in season one where you get
Speaker 1: to see sort of the origin story of the parents
Speaker 1: of the Jocelyn Luke. Oh no, that's no good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've disappeared. It happened. Sometimes people ditch. I wonder what
Speaker 1: she was gonna ask. Hopefully she comes back. I have
Speaker 1: questions of my own, so fuck it, um funk. I
Speaker 1: did have a question, and now it's completely gone out
Speaker 1: of my mind. I had a thought I wanted to share,
Speaker 1: like my favorite Don memory, which was that I feel
Speaker 1: like you and I didn't bond until episode one, my
Speaker 1: second episode, which was three eight Team, which is very late.
Speaker 1: I just didn't have like my great bonding moment with
Speaker 1: you until then. We went out after some end of
Speaker 1: filming day and I learned that you're like a huge
Speaker 1: musical fan, and I was like, yeah, great. Also a
Speaker 1: lot of actors do, so that's not like a huge twist,
Speaker 1: but I was like, we're going to get along. I
Speaker 1: think that night ended with was in my finger day,
Speaker 1: was that you was you there that day? No judging
Speaker 1: by your face, I guess your finger someone, Yeah it was.
Speaker 1: It was a game we're playing and I wasn't supposed
Speaker 1: to move from the dartboard and I didn't, but the
Speaker 1: dart win in my hand. It's the whole thing. Um.
Speaker 1: But evidently that wasn't that day. No, we ended up
Speaker 1: singing Defying Gravity. That was that made my favorite. God,
Speaker 1: it's my favorite. I love it so much. Well, poor Cat,
Speaker 1: I feel so bad as it's okay, she'll be she'll
Speaker 1: be back. Okay, what is there anything this is actually
Speaker 1: a good one. Is there anything from the books that
Speaker 1: you really wanted to get into the show that didn't
Speaker 1: make it into the show? It was there any like
Speaker 1: iconic sort of thing that you wanted to be in
Speaker 1: there that didn't make it. I can like feel the
Speaker 1: tinkles of me from like four years ago being like this, this, this,
Speaker 1: and I'm not thinking of it. What I was sad
Speaker 1: about was just not being able to get to Sizzy.
Speaker 1: That was devastating that we couldn't do like that. Hi, sorry,
Speaker 1: dons asked what what I wish were what we would
Speaker 1: have gotten to into in the show that was in
Speaker 1: the books, and I would say that was my biggest
Speaker 1: probably the biggest one. Walking away was just like, oh god,
Speaker 1: that would have been so much fun. If you watched
Speaker 1: season one. We were teasing it so hard and it
Speaker 1: was pretty amazing that we didn't like hit that relationship
Speaker 1: yet and it was so well built and I was
Speaker 1: so excited to get to it. So that and there's
Speaker 1: you know, some Book six stuff that we had to
Speaker 1: either lose or compact in the final two episodes. One
Speaker 1: for Me and Darkened. Yeah, that's my brain is drawing
Speaker 1: a blank. What are the oh? The and Darkened? Oh
Speaker 1: d the battle army from from book six, which, weirdly,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it would have been that way though,
Speaker 1: because we did a flip in the adaptation that's like
Speaker 1: a big flip, which we decided early on that we
Speaker 1: wanted to do something different from the books where Valentine
Speaker 1: has a demon army that he's raising with the Mortal Cup,
Speaker 1: and we in the writer's room the decision was made
Speaker 1: that we wanted him to have a shadow Hunter army
Speaker 1: rather than a demon army because he was so anti
Speaker 1: demon and that in our show he was so visc
Speaker 1: really hateful of demons that we flipped it, and so
Speaker 1: I think Jonathan wouldn't have had an in darkened army.
Speaker 1: I think he would have had a demon army. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're right. So that was the plan, was
Speaker 1: that he was going to raise an army of demons,
Speaker 1: which would have been really really cool and really good.
Speaker 1: C G, I've been so cool. Was there anything like
Speaker 1: what were your plans for season four? We never We
Speaker 1: don't know this, Like what would the This is the
Speaker 1: first time, like you can say whatever you want. We're
Speaker 1: not gonna get fired for it. The show's done. Like
Speaker 1: anything specific you wanted in there? Is there anything that
Speaker 1: you that you had ideas that you started jotting down already?
Speaker 1: Like what what was the sort of the future? I mean,
Speaker 1: I know I talked to Todd and Darren about some things,
Speaker 1: but tell me, tell me I knew a few things.
Speaker 1: I know that we were going to do Jonathan's demon army.
Speaker 1: I knew we were going to do Sizzy. There was
Speaker 1: kind of question about what Luke storyline was going to be,
Speaker 1: if he was going to actually if the show we're
Speaker 1: going to go on maybe making him a human and
Speaker 1: then working him up to drinking from the cup and
Speaker 1: becoming a shadow Hunter. Luke and Marris would have had
Speaker 1: like time to breathe. There were there was such a
Speaker 1: cute scene between them in episode eighteen, and then Isaiah
Speaker 1: had to go and get cast in it and have
Speaker 1: an awesome gig that prevented us from filming that scene.
Speaker 1: So that was a bummer. But um, that just like
Speaker 1: giving certain relationships time to breathe. So I think Izzy
Speaker 1: and and uh Clary would have absolutely become Parapitae. We
Speaker 1: hinted at it, but that would have been a sure
Speaker 1: thing because that's really different from the books. It's Simon
Speaker 1: and the book series Simon and Clary that become parapita
Speaker 1: That's right, and it's like a longer process. I don't
Speaker 1: there's this element that I won't get too into it
Speaker 1: because it's a little boring. But we found out some
Speaker 1: of the secondary material we didn't own the rights to,
Speaker 1: so there were some things that fans were so excited about.
Speaker 1: It's like, we actually don't own that story. We could
Speaker 1: not do Simon's Shadow Hunter Adventure. We didn't own the
Speaker 1: rights to that, so we had to diverge. And I
Speaker 1: don't think we owned the books past the six, so
Speaker 1: we had to kind of pull back on some of
Speaker 1: our plans that were, you know, tracking perfectly with the
Speaker 1: can verse. But the nice thing was the show had
Speaker 1: diverged enough that I think audiences were pretty forgiving and
Speaker 1: we're really accepting it as its own thing. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that would have been a big change. I think Simon
Speaker 1: working up to Simon working up to drink from the cup,
Speaker 1: I think was a big plan because he had become
Speaker 1: human by the end of the show, so him training
Speaker 1: as opposed to the time jump. Basically everything that we
Speaker 1: hinted at that happened in the time jump with stuff
Speaker 1: that would have been season four. I see, you know,
Speaker 1: so you just sort of jumped to the end. I
Speaker 1: just want to take this moment briefly to say what
Speaker 1: you guys did as writers in the writer's room for
Speaker 1: those last two episodes. The situation wasn't ideal. It's not
Speaker 1: how we wanted to finish off our story. It's not
Speaker 1: how we wanted to say goodbye to shadow Hunters. But
Speaker 1: what you guys did in two episodes to round out
Speaker 1: the stories of fucking a hundred and fifty different characters
Speaker 1: that span over these different worlds and Realms and Races
Speaker 1: was really like heroic. It was like a herculean effort,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't be prouder to have been part of
Speaker 1: those two pisode. So as our first writer on the podcast,
Speaker 1: I want to say thank you. It's so true. Well
Speaker 1: thank you for saying that. I I'm just happy we
Speaker 1: got the Jason milly or In storyline that I've been
Speaker 1: craving forever. I was like one of so much fun
Speaker 1: to do it with Jade. He was such it was
Speaker 1: such a just to be able to just that's so like,
Speaker 1: so done, I'm so done with you asking me these questions.
Speaker 1: Please stop. It was so much fun to work with Jade.
Speaker 1: And by that time Jade and I, I mean pretty
Speaker 1: early Jade and I have gotten pretty close. But to
Speaker 1: be able to talk a lot about trust in the
Speaker 1: podcast and trusting the people around you, the people you
Speaker 1: work with and the other actors and the writers, the crew,
Speaker 1: the stunt teams, you know, and that was a big
Speaker 1: one where you do have to you have to sort
Speaker 1: of emotionally trust this person because we are doing some
Speaker 1: sort of not emotionally necessarily very devastating compared to I
Speaker 1: guess what you put jas through over the course of
Speaker 1: the previous three seasons. But if it is this like
Speaker 1: when you when you're doing this sort of this whip
Speaker 1: smart like Aaron Sorkin style sort of comedy, you really
Speaker 1: do have to trust that other person is there. I'm
Speaker 1: going to send it back to you so it can
Speaker 1: be sent back. And that was really good fun. I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed doing that stuff. And it's nice, you know,
Speaker 1: talking about that. It is nice to have these brief
Speaker 1: moments of levity when I spent three years, you know,
Speaker 1: crying and accidentally making out with my sister and not
Speaker 1: knowing who my dad is. Like, it's nice to have
Speaker 1: these brief moments. It's like, let's just have fun for
Speaker 1: a second. This is gonna be like we're doing a comedy.
Speaker 1: It gets really heavy. They I was happy that the
Speaker 1: show found its sense of humor because season one, the
Speaker 1: stakes are so high and things get so dark, and
Speaker 1: I think we managed to we manage I mean, the
Speaker 1: books have these really heavy moments, but they also have
Speaker 1: a cheekiness, and I felt like that we really found
Speaker 1: that as as the rim progressed, and I credit Pete
Speaker 1: for a lot of the best singers. I got a
Speaker 1: few in there too. But you know, I think that's
Speaker 1: my like love of you know, the Buffy style of writing.
Speaker 1: I was like, you got to cut some of this
Speaker 1: harshness with a little self reference chill humor, because it
Speaker 1: can be so bleak that you kind of have the
Speaker 1: gallows humor that would be real to life too. I
Speaker 1: think I agree, because there's just extraordinarily devastating things that
Speaker 1: happened to your characters. Well, it's true, but then you
Speaker 1: cut that with things like the ice skating date and
Speaker 1: the weird awkward double date that that you know Simon
Speaker 1: and Clarie and Jason maya have or I love yeah,
Speaker 1: or I remember even on set in the finale with
Speaker 1: I had to go Alberto, how do I do vampire speed?
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm doing for Hobby Dum and
Speaker 1: Jade and Alberto had to sit there while I in
Speaker 1: five inch heels try and run around the institute training
Speaker 1: all in some kind of ping pong pattern. I still
Speaker 1: to this day, I don't know how you guys kept
Speaker 1: a straight face with my myself doing that. We didn't
Speaker 1: watch it watch it back. They had to cut around us.
Speaker 1: We absolutely did not keep a straight face. It's not
Speaker 1: the first time they had to cut around us corpsing dum.
Speaker 1: I I realized I didn't learned fully answer like a
Speaker 1: question that you had asked earlier, which was it speaks
Speaker 1: to the specialness of this show, which is like how
Speaker 1: does the writer's room actually function? And to the hours
Speaker 1: you spend together. I'll say that, like some of my
Speaker 1: very best friends in the world are writers that I
Speaker 1: worked with on the show, because it was a really
Speaker 1: rare and special situation that we were in a writer's
Speaker 1: room for like ten months. Because now, as a writer
Speaker 1: on other things, writers from last like three to five
Speaker 1: months most of the time, now like that's the new normal.
Speaker 1: And so to work on a show for three years
Speaker 1: and to be working ten months at a time and
Speaker 1: those ten months being sitting at a table from ten
Speaker 1: am to six pm with the same group of people
Speaker 1: and just kind of looking at a white wall and
Speaker 1: going like that level of bonding is so unique. So
Speaker 1: I have not bonded the same way, kind of the
Speaker 1: way that you speak about the Shadow Hunter's crew on set.
Speaker 1: I've never had that level of bonding with the writers
Speaker 1: room since even I've worked with great people, but that
Speaker 1: amount of time together in the trenches. It just there's
Speaker 1: nothing to compare to it. It's it's a rare murder
Speaker 1: each other. Right, those are the two things that could
Speaker 1: people wanted to murder me because I'm stickler. I'm like,
Speaker 1: we can't do that kind of portal. My questions just
Speaker 1: came back. My questions just came back as far as
Speaker 1: the rules go, because we had we actually had like
Speaker 1: a codex on set that was that was written like
Speaker 1: in partnership with the books, and we would reference that,
Speaker 1: especially in season one, with things like the ruins and
Speaker 1: like the placement and what exactly what they were used
Speaker 1: for and why we would put them in the show
Speaker 1: because we just just previously what I wrote the Ruine
Speaker 1: book that you guys had. You're talking about an excel
Speaker 1: sheet that says every instance of how we've used the run,
Speaker 1: how it compares to other runes, like exact episode numbers,
Speaker 1: and then exactly I wrote that. My question is, did
Speaker 1: you have this like cheat sheet for like, oh, we
Speaker 1: can't do this because this conflicts with this, or like
Speaker 1: this needs to be here because of X, Y and
Speaker 1: Z or whatever. So I was running the materials that
Speaker 1: we would reference and I just memorized them enough that
Speaker 1: at a certain point it would be like, Taylor, how
Speaker 1: does that work? And I would But then I became
Speaker 1: the cheat sheet. There were a couple of times in
Speaker 1: season one and two where someone would call the show
Speaker 1: runner and be like, we need to understand how this
Speaker 1: weapon works, and they would just hand me the phone.
Speaker 1: I love that. What color is it? That's wrong? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And there were a couple of ones. That's the one
Speaker 1: that haunts me is that the Fearless Room. Yes, I
Speaker 1: was devastated, was built into the set. I was like,
Speaker 1: we gotta I went to add I was like, we
Speaker 1: gotta cut that down right now. He was like, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: it's built in and we filmed it on it already. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because people have that tattoo. Yeah. I remember seeing it
Speaker 1: like episode two and I was like, wait, is that
Speaker 1: the It's one of the ones that Clary makes, and
Speaker 1: it's famously one that she creates. Yet yeah, in the book,
Speaker 1: it's the first room that Clary creates, and it was
Speaker 1: already built into our set, which I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: nobody can know everything, and it's the fear of those
Speaker 1: through and so of course, as a set designer, you're
Speaker 1: going to think, oh, yeah, I'll put that front and center,
Speaker 1: and you're like, but no, you and I shared this
Speaker 1: one sad moment where we like sad kid shuffled away
Speaker 1: and just like that's all I lost today. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's there's hundreds of people who weigh in on this stuff,
Speaker 1: so it's hard to it's hard to monitor every single thing,
Speaker 1: and you know, you just kind of go at a
Speaker 1: certain point because magic, and you know, because TV and
Speaker 1: move on about certain things. Speaking of magic and the
Speaker 1: relationships that we all formed through this. You went on
Speaker 1: to do Mysterious Benedic Society with Todd and Darren. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so tell us a little bit about that and
Speaker 1: life after shadow Hunters. And I don't know if you
Speaker 1: can talk about what you're doing now, but that's really
Speaker 1: cool too. I can't talk about what I'm doing. Literally,
Speaker 1: my next job starts next Monday, and that is the
Speaker 1: first job that I have to be like super top
Speaker 1: secret about, which is really cool, but I can reveal.
Speaker 1: And so I worked on Mysterious Benedic with Todd Darren,
Speaker 1: which was amazing because they're like, they're my mentors, They're
Speaker 1: like my show business dads. I love them so much.
Speaker 1: They are the reason that I'm a writer. I mean,
Speaker 1: they kind of amazingly. That shuffle of them coming in
Speaker 1: in season two was so bizarre. We had written like
Speaker 1: five episodes and they had to come in and start
Speaker 1: from the beginning. It was. It was an insane assignment.
Speaker 1: And they were so cool headed and so kind, and
Speaker 1: they told me that they were giving me a freelance
Speaker 1: like a month into season two when they joined. That's
Speaker 1: so nice. We just we like connected, and they were
Speaker 1: just like, we know what we can tell that you're
Speaker 1: going to be a great writer on the show, which
Speaker 1: was really special. I know they're the best. So they
Speaker 1: hired me on Benedict and that was a really sweet experience.
Speaker 1: It was sort of like writing like an early Harry
Speaker 1: Potter book because it's you know, preteen, like twelve year
Speaker 1: old kids in this sort of dangerous academy environment. And
Speaker 1: Tony Hale was amazing and so good in it, and
Speaker 1: just our cast was brilliant and the set design was gorgeous.
Speaker 1: And Karen m directed my episode, which is the list
Speaker 1: ever because she's married to one of the two creators
Speaker 1: of the show. That was a different environment because I
Speaker 1: knew Ton and Darren and Claire Hupie, who was the
Speaker 1: writer's assist, the show runners assistant, and then yeah um
Speaker 1: on season three became our writer's assistant, so I knew
Speaker 1: some people. The new writers were also excellent. It was
Speaker 1: a very short gig and and COVID cut us off
Speaker 1: at like right, you know, a month, a month short
Speaker 1: of finishing, So I didn't get to go to set
Speaker 1: because of COVID, which was devastating. But then I got
Speaker 1: hired on another fan I got to fan girl again,
Speaker 1: which was very cool. My next job was writing on
Speaker 1: Outlander season seven. Yeah is that cool? A small I
Speaker 1: have pictures from when I went to Comic Con to
Speaker 1: see you guys on a panel of me separately chasing
Speaker 1: men and kilts who were there to represent Outlander, like
Speaker 1: literally like chasing after these guys to get a picture
Speaker 1: with them. So I am a genuine fan of that show,
Speaker 1: so so hardcore, Like it's just another example of like
Speaker 1: passion leading you to a great job. So I got
Speaker 1: to do it again. And this is the great thing
Speaker 1: about shadow Hunters, as we get to watch so many
Speaker 1: people cast and crue and everything go on to these
Speaker 1: amazing things that that because we have this foundation of
Speaker 1: shadow Hunters, we sort of get to go to this
Speaker 1: next level of jobs dreams and shadow Hunters is and
Speaker 1: always will be a dream job, but even more astronomical
Speaker 1: things as time goes on. And I remember seeing that
Speaker 1: news and just being so proud of you. Immediately texted
Speaker 1: all my buddies on Outlander, being like, you take care
Speaker 1: of her. She's wonderful and we're lucky to have sweet.
Speaker 1: You're so sweet again. I was not able to go
Speaker 1: to set, but I'm hoping I'll get to meet them
Speaker 1: at some premier gig because I think again it was
Speaker 1: COVID was kind of preventing them from from sending up
Speaker 1: and they just started filming it. I mean, it's wild
Speaker 1: the way that's it's staggered because the new the new
Speaker 1: process of filming anything like this last job I just
Speaker 1: did partner track. I met the show running and like
Speaker 1: the resident writers, so those three I met them, but
Speaker 1: I didn't. I don't think I met a single one
Speaker 1: of the writer's room writers because they you couldn't bring
Speaker 1: people to set. COVID was such a nightmare. We were
Speaker 1: shut down probably like I mean, I want to say
Speaker 1: once a month, the whole production was shut down. For
Speaker 1: something for COVID from some capacity like it was. It
Speaker 1: was really bad and it's all in the interest of safety,
Speaker 1: of course, which is fair enough. But I also feel
Speaker 1: like I missed out on this, Like these relationships that
Speaker 1: we've been talking about that I want to develop with
Speaker 1: the people that you know fingers cross these shows continue on,
Speaker 1: I want to know who these people are. I want
Speaker 1: them to know who I am. I want to I
Speaker 1: want to have that cordial relationship with people so we
Speaker 1: can move on to do things like this in the future,
Speaker 1: which I you know, I I speak for myself of course,
Speaker 1: but hopefully you guys as well are really thoroughly enjoying.
Speaker 1: We had to go back and look at these things
Speaker 1: that we loved so much and and talk about them,
Speaker 1: which is great. Yeah, Shadow Hunners was such a good
Speaker 1: teaching experience. Like I I don't know if I'll ever
Speaker 1: feel that kind of connection again to a show, because
Speaker 1: it was just the longevity of it, but also just
Speaker 1: the relationships we built with you guys, the just camaraderie
Speaker 1: of it. It was so special. And as a writer
Speaker 1: working with those guys Todd and Darren and then giving
Speaker 1: putting so much faith in their writers and sending us
Speaker 1: to set even when we're totally green. That is so rare.
Speaker 1: Like shows even that send writers to set, they won't
Speaker 1: always send baby writers that they want someone who's experienced
Speaker 1: in production. I got my training wheels with you guys,
Speaker 1: and we got ours with you. But something else, you know,
Speaker 1: before we let you go, I wanted to touch on
Speaker 1: the fandom because I know you know you're you're one
Speaker 1: of the beloved treasures of the fandom as well, Taylor,
Speaker 1: And you know something, I wanted to talk about your
Speaker 1: experience with the fandom and with kind of what that's
Speaker 1: been like for you as a writer through social media
Speaker 1: and through all these other aspects, you know, having people
Speaker 1: love your work as much as you loved reading the original.
Speaker 1: Just speaking to what that was like. It was it
Speaker 1: as a joy, and it was terrifying because I I
Speaker 1: felt a lot of pressure of when we deviated or
Speaker 1: when we didn't meet the expectations of the super fans
Speaker 1: that they were going to like look at me and say, like,
Speaker 1: how did you not stop this from happening? When the
Speaker 1: reality was I was a low level assistant and then
Speaker 1: a low level writer and didn't have the power to
Speaker 1: like you know, manipulate things at that grand of a scale.
Speaker 1: But every time somebody like acknowledged a little thing that
Speaker 1: I managed to sort of, you know, an easter EGGA
Speaker 1: managed to plant, or just any any kind of nod
Speaker 1: that I thought I would really admire as a fan,
Speaker 1: that I would really enjoy. I was so happy when
Speaker 1: people picked up on it, and to just be a
Speaker 1: part of something that I was also separately a fan of.
Speaker 1: It's just I'm now realizing that's as we're getting into.
Speaker 1: I mean, social media has allowed writers to kind of
Speaker 1: connect to fan properties, and I'm sure a lot of
Speaker 1: writers on like Marvel projects feel this way. It's just
Speaker 1: so special to be able to work on something that
Speaker 1: you loved and to like, actually, we really relate to
Speaker 1: the audience that you're selling to. And my special relationship
Speaker 1: on this show was the writers turning to me and saying,
Speaker 1: what do you think the fans are going to think
Speaker 1: of that? Are we alienating them? Are they going to
Speaker 1: like this change? Like? What would your heart say if
Speaker 1: you were watching the show? Ed and Todd and Darren
Speaker 1: acknowledge that the assistants were the age and the experience
Speaker 1: of the typical fan of Shadow hunters, and so that
Speaker 1: did empower us to kind of weigh in and speak
Speaker 1: with our hearts a little. It's a world in which
Speaker 1: that should be sort of the norm with anything that's
Speaker 1: come from a different subject matter. There's a world in
Speaker 1: which we are production should be like we hire one
Speaker 1: super fan that's our tenth man, and their job is
Speaker 1: almost to like disagree with the changes, just so you
Speaker 1: have that balance in the room of like, you can't
Speaker 1: do this because this is such a poignant part in
Speaker 1: the books, like this is you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: like and whether or not they choose to put that
Speaker 1: in the show, at least that voice is being heard
Speaker 1: at some point that they the representation I suppose is
Speaker 1: there of the ends of the original cortex. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess you guys have experiences on such
Speaker 1: an incredibly high level, as as the actors in the show.
Speaker 1: It's it allows writers have a certain level of like
Speaker 1: we can we can pass by and actually kind of
Speaker 1: listening to what fans are saying and not and and
Speaker 1: go undetected sometimes. And I think it was such a
Speaker 1: like it was such a cool thing to see what
Speaker 1: the fans were generating in response to the show. Like
Speaker 1: the fan art and the edits and the billboards when
Speaker 1: we got cancer, just the way that response was so
Speaker 1: passionate and loving. I have had that reaction to Harry Potter.
Speaker 1: I I didn't get to experience being a fan on
Speaker 1: the show because I was on it from the beginning,
Speaker 1: but I remember feeling that way as a Potter kid,
Speaker 1: dressing up and waiting in line to see the movies.
Speaker 1: It's always Hermione because of my curly hair. And but
Speaker 1: like seeing people in runs and showing up to the
Speaker 1: fan events and like relating to them on a heart level.
Speaker 1: That was so cool. And knowing that, like there's an
Speaker 1: alternate universe where I'm one of those kids so well,
Speaker 1: and that's the great thing, you know. I feel like
Speaker 1: everybody who's been a part of the show is a
Speaker 1: part of the fandom. That's why we called him the
Speaker 1: Shadow fan, because we all love this story. And that's
Speaker 1: why you know, we Domina continue to do these comic
Speaker 1: cons and we're trying to you know, one day New
Speaker 1: York Shadow Con is going to happen and we'll get
Speaker 1: everybody in one place and get to sell every aspect
Speaker 1: of the show properly. Be there if it happens, and
Speaker 1: it's just it is. It is a family, both in
Speaker 1: front of and behind the camera and with the fandom.
Speaker 1: It speaks to the sort of connectivity of why we
Speaker 1: love stories and why we all can connect on a
Speaker 1: very human level too, these things that bring a little
Speaker 1: magic into the mundane, as it were, for lack of
Speaker 1: better terminology. On that note, Taylor, I want to say
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being here with us. Thank
Speaker 1: you first starting this journey with us, and thank you
Speaker 1: for giving so much to Cat and I and the
Speaker 1: rest of the cast and the crew, and most importantly
Speaker 1: the fans over the course of them many years that
Speaker 1: we work together. So thank you very much, and thank
Speaker 1: you for being on this podcast. It's been a real pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having you, Taylor. We just adore you, and
Speaker 1: you know, from day one, you've been such a special
Speaker 1: part of this journey for us, so it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's been a real gift having you on the podcast today.
Speaker 1: And thanks for returning to the Shadows. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Returned to the Shadows as hosted an executive produced by
Speaker 1: Katherine McNamara and Dominic Sherwood. Our executive producer is Langley.
Speaker 1: Our Senior producers are Liz Hayes and Diego Tapia, and
Speaker 1: our producers are Hannah Harris and Kristin Vermilia. Original music
Speaker 1: by Alex Kinsey and performed by Alex Kinsey and Katherine McNamara.
Speaker 1: The episode was mixed by said the Landscape