Speaker 1: Warning, Today's episode contains kind of contains spoilers for Blue
Speaker 1: Eyed Samurai. Hello, my name is Jason Exceptio and I'm
Speaker 1: Rosy Night, and welcome back to x Ray Vision of
Speaker 1: podcast where we dive deep to your favorite shows, movies,
Speaker 1: comics and pop culture. Coming to you from my Heart podcast,
Speaker 1: where we're bringing you two episodes week every Tuesday and Thursday.
Speaker 2: In today's episode.
Speaker 3: In the previously on, we're talking about that stunningly impressive
Speaker 3: Alien Romulus box office in space. Everyone can hear you
Speaker 3: make money apparently because it's making money. We're talking Archie
Speaker 3: comics and a new superhero take that they're bringing out,
Speaker 3: and the controversy and slowly unfolded revelations around X Men
Speaker 3: ninety seven show runner Bodomeo. And in a wonderful interview,
Speaker 3: Jason will be chatting to the Blue Eye Samurai create
Speaker 3: as Amba Nazumi and Michael Green Up next.
Speaker 1: Previously on, First Up on News. Alien Romulus box office
Speaker 1: numbers are in Oh baby, folks, it is a hit.
Speaker 1: Forty one and a half million domestically, sixty six point
Speaker 1: seven million internationally, a total of one hundred and eight
Speaker 1: million plus globally. Wows Part of the secret sauce, of course,
Speaker 1: is does the movie open in China. It opened in
Speaker 1: China twenty five point seven million in China, and folks,
Speaker 1: big hit Alien Romulus.
Speaker 2: This is just unbelievable.
Speaker 3: Smash it full overseas debut on twentieth Century Studios. Slash
Speaker 3: Disney's Alien Romulus is forty seven percent ahead of A
Speaker 3: Quiet Place Day one Hello, which I feel like everyone
Speaker 3: was like, this is.
Speaker 2: A good hit.
Speaker 3: Also seventeen percent above the controversial but now kind of
Speaker 3: in hindsight, loved Prometheus in like for like markets, So
Speaker 3: I'm just saying movie is great. Enjoyed the movie, love
Speaker 3: to see the good box office numbers. I also have
Speaker 3: to say, sure, it is also a Disney movie, so
Speaker 3: you know, but Disney kind of went low on the
Speaker 3: marketing with this one. I think there was not a
Speaker 3: lot of promo in the same way there was for
Speaker 3: like Deadpool, So I think it's kind of crazy that
Speaker 3: this overtook Deadpool in just like a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: Yes, you know, but I like to see it. It's
Speaker 2: like we said, you can always bet on horror.
Speaker 1: Yes you can.
Speaker 3: That's what we're finding at the box office, and we're
Speaker 3: gonna be talking about a lot more horror as we get
Speaker 3: into spooky season.
Speaker 1: Next up, Archie Comics, the home to the Archie line
Speaker 1: of comics, but also back in the day, way way
Speaker 1: way back, a line of superhero comics and a variety
Speaker 1: of other comic book stories, is getting back into the
Speaker 1: superheroes with Rarioru miniseries. That quote blends a metaitextual examination
Speaker 1: of Archie comics history with superheroes and the Golden Age
Speaker 1: of comics with a new story of Archie himself coming
Speaker 1: into Powers Unknown and becoming the world's mightiest hero. First
Speaker 1: release is November twentieth.
Speaker 2: Rosie series is called Archie Is Mister Justice. I feel
Speaker 2: like the titles a little bit longer.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think Mister Justice could have been cool, but
Speaker 3: I'm sure that might be part of the metatextual nature
Speaker 3: of it. And what I do like about this is
Speaker 3: all the conversation around it is essentially Archie is like
Speaker 3: a good guy. And Mike Norton, who's going to be
Speaker 3: the artist on the first issue, he basically said that
Speaker 3: is really what this is about, Like, what is it
Speaker 3: like to be an incorruptible soul in like a corrupt world, Like,
Speaker 3: what will we see Archie get into.
Speaker 2: I'm interested. I'm a lover of the.
Speaker 3: Weird Riverdale esque, you know, the horror Archie style stuff,
Speaker 3: so this is very interesting to me.
Speaker 2: They've definitely been trying a lot of stuff out.
Speaker 3: There was recently an Archie one shot that was like
Speaker 3: a take on basically Fist of the North Stop but
Speaker 3: with Archie, and Yeah, they've been really getting out that
Speaker 3: with some of these things. They did a horror anthology
Speaker 3: called Pop's Chocolate Shop. So I think this is gonna
Speaker 3: be interesting and definitely could be kind of like what
Speaker 3: we saw pre Rivedell where that was kind of a
Speaker 3: Boom and Archie comics. So we'll have to check it out.
Speaker 1: And finally, former X Men ninety seven showrunner bo DeMeo
Speaker 1: has surfaced. Last week, he posted that he had lost
Speaker 1: his season two credits, which he had worked on season two,
Speaker 1: because of a gay Pride post. It kind of like
Speaker 1: very very team illustration of himself that he posted to
Speaker 1: social media, and he said that that's the reason that
Speaker 1: Disney took his season two credit, but in that post,
Speaker 1: he did not grapple with why he was let go
Speaker 1: in the first place. Disney then fired back, saying no,
Speaker 1: it's actually because of a litany of serious allegations, including
Speaker 1: unwanted nudes sent to staffers, including other unwant sexual harassment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: other unwanted advances, and you hate to see it, and
Speaker 1: I hate to see it. Certainly appears, Rosie. We've been
Speaker 1: talking about this quite a bit on chat. The alleations
Speaker 1: are serious and bad. It was also it also seems
Speaker 1: as if Disney was going to let this go away quietly.
Speaker 2: If he didn't, if he didn't.
Speaker 1: Tweet about it and hear he is posting about it,
Speaker 1: causing Disney to fire back. Just a sad situational.
Speaker 2: Definitely a sad situation.
Speaker 3: I'm feeling for the people who were impacted by this
Speaker 3: worked on the show. I also feel for the cost
Speaker 3: and crew because I feel like because of the nature
Speaker 3: of whatever agreement Disney made with BO, it kind of
Speaker 3: stayed on the radar, so he's been doing a lot
Speaker 3: of events with them.
Speaker 2: It kind of looked like they were backing him.
Speaker 3: Like Disney did make some weird choices here, like Barad
Speaker 3: Winderborm came out and said what good work BO had
Speaker 3: done to make it look like it wasn't there wasn't
Speaker 3: kind of any issues between the two of them after
Speaker 3: he left. But yeah, it's it's not ideal. You hate
Speaker 3: to see it, and it makes sense now why they
Speaker 3: bought in new writers for season two to kind of
Speaker 3: adapt it and to see what happens. So I hope
Speaker 3: that everyone who's still working on the show is fine,
Speaker 3: and I'm sure this will not be the last we
Speaker 3: hear of this, because bo also has a very aggressive
Speaker 3: lawyer who put out a statement after the Disney statement
Speaker 3: that was it sounds on him.
Speaker 1: I'm not a legal person, but it felt a lot.
Speaker 3: It doesn't feel Yeah, it doesn't feel like a statement
Speaker 3: a lawyer would make.
Speaker 2: So I'm sure this is not the last we've heard
Speaker 2: of this.
Speaker 1: That's right. Well, coming up next, we're stepping out of
Speaker 1: their lock and talking to Blue Eyed Samurai creators Amber
Speaker 1: Noi Zuomi and Michael Green. We're so delighted to welcome
Speaker 1: Amber Noi Zuomi and Michael Green, the co creators of
Speaker 1: Blue Eyed Samurai on Netflix. Welcome to the show, and
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining.
Speaker 4: Us, Thank you for having me, Thank you.
Speaker 1: Let's start with the latest news first. So season two
Speaker 1: expected not until twenty twenty six. I am of the
Speaker 1: opinion that good things are worth waiting for, and that
Speaker 1: excellent things, which truly, truly, truly Bloyd Samurai is so good,
Speaker 1: so excellent, excellent things are really worth waiting for. Explain
Speaker 1: to our audience, who I'm sure are ravenous for the
Speaker 1: new season. Why making something as good as this takes time?
Speaker 5: Sort of like ordering the souflet. It says on the menu, Yeah,
Speaker 5: to take forty minutes, So if you want it, order
Speaker 5: it early. Yeah. But right now we're on schedule. Because
Speaker 5: there was some some uh, there was different information going up.
Speaker 5: We can confirm November twenty twenty six is when we
Speaker 5: are on the Netflix schedule.
Speaker 6: We're we are on track to deliver it then. And
Speaker 6: I mean, look, we could you know, we could do
Speaker 6: really rinkaging animation and get it phone these scripts in
Speaker 6: get it, get it yeah, in six months.
Speaker 7: But you know, these things take time.
Speaker 6: We have our artists who diligently, you know, research everything
Speaker 6: to make it, you know, really come to life. And
Speaker 6: you know, we're we're trying our best to write scripts
Speaker 6: that are worthy of our audience.
Speaker 5: And you know, but you know, the whole show, it
Speaker 5: really just goes back to how we made it in
Speaker 5: the first place. That teak nature to this show. We
Speaker 5: you know, our animation studio is Blue Spirit. They're wonderful,
Speaker 5: they are talented, and it's outside the sort of run
Speaker 5: and gun smash it out as quickly as you can.
Speaker 5: And there are plenty of shows that are amazing. I'm
Speaker 5: not denigrating to anyone's pipeline, but we chose something that
Speaker 5: just takes a bit more time. So first season was
Speaker 5: definitely a fluffy sou flet. And right now we are
Speaker 5: beating the egg whites and a little pinch of tartar,
Speaker 5: cream of tartar, and uh maybe truffles, little truffles, truffle
Speaker 5: season truffle pig. We literally just confirmed with our team
Speaker 5: that we're going to have a pig in an episode forward.
Speaker 6: To the.
Speaker 1: You've spoken about in previous interviews. The genesis of the
Speaker 1: idea of this, this kind of long gest stating project
Speaker 1: that has become Blue Eid. Samurai is wondering if you
Speaker 1: could expound on that for our audience. This is inspired
Speaker 1: by your multi racial daughter, and then how do you
Speaker 1: get from there to the show that we've all watched.
Speaker 7: That's that's a good question.
Speaker 6: I mean, yeah, I mean it started out as actually
Speaker 6: the icky feelings that I had about my views of
Speaker 6: my daughter who looked more white than Asian, and being like, ooh,
Speaker 6: she's got blue ass, it's so pretty. She's got you know,
Speaker 6: blondish hair, and being excited and why am I excited
Speaker 6: about that? And those conflicting feelings I think so many
Speaker 6: mixed race people have, like wanting to appear more like
Speaker 6: one culture than the other, or and then the feelings
Speaker 6: of shame about maybe wanting to reject one side and
Speaker 6: just and sometimes it goes back and forth your whole life.
Speaker 7: Where you want to be more of this or more that.
Speaker 6: And yeah, I mean, look, we turned that into a
Speaker 6: care character who really just loathes this part of her,
Speaker 6: and you know, we're hoping to, you know, really complicate
Speaker 6: those emotions where I don't want to give anything away.
Speaker 6: But maybe she you know, starts to embrace parts of
Speaker 6: her that she wouldn't have before and embraces new people
Speaker 6: in her life when she's able to accept some things
Speaker 6: about herself, which I think is a journey for all
Speaker 6: of us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I was workshopping this feeling I had
Speaker 1: about the show with the production team. I think one
Speaker 1: of the things I really it hits me so hard
Speaker 1: about the show is that that's to your point, you know,
Speaker 1: as an Asian in media and entertainment, I think one
Speaker 1: of the things that can feel wearying is like the
Speaker 1: whole conversation around diversity. It feels like sometimes like you're
Speaker 1: shoving like medicine down people's throats. And this show is
Speaker 1: it's so authentic to its characters and their journey and
Speaker 1: everything else is there, all the themes, the very real
Speaker 1: experiences of being a multi racial slash agent character that
Speaker 1: feels out of place. It's all right there if you
Speaker 1: want to engage with it. But it's also just like
Speaker 1: a ripping story that's wonderfully told and looks so good.
Speaker 7: How do you.
Speaker 1: Balance How did you balance all of that stuff, that
Speaker 1: the themes, the things you want to say, and also
Speaker 1: just create a great engaging story that I feel like
Speaker 1: anybody could watch and feel like, wow, that was awesome.
Speaker 6: I mean, I think with our story, it just you know,
Speaker 6: it was just something that had been as you called it,
Speaker 6: gest dating for so long that we weren't trying to
Speaker 6: check any boxes or fulfill an assignment, and you know,
Speaker 6: that's no, that's no shade to any other show out there,
Speaker 6: who of course pasts somebody diverse. Diversity is wonderful all
Speaker 6: the way around. But this, this just is a story
Speaker 6: about a mixed race person.
Speaker 7: We're not shoehorning in any themes.
Speaker 6: And it takes place in Japan, so all of the
Speaker 6: culture is innate to the story.
Speaker 5: So all story flowed from a character in a predicament.
Speaker 4: It's an intention.
Speaker 5: So that was just you know, someone wants revenge of
Speaker 5: a certain type in a certain place, and she looks
Speaker 5: like this, So everything just flowed from there. And I
Speaker 5: won't say the storytelling was easy, but it was natural.
Speaker 5: We always knew if something wasn't right very quickly, so
Speaker 5: I don't think we went down many wrong roads. It
Speaker 5: was always about how to get things right and then
Speaker 5: just conversation. We kept layering it, you know, like we
Speaker 5: had it tenth draft. Wasn't good enough for us by
Speaker 5: the time we shared it with anyone else. It was,
Speaker 5: you know, just the stories we felt we had to tell.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, and I think we just we need
Speaker 6: more stories out there where the main character is a
Speaker 6: person of color, and sometimes people try to put in
Speaker 6: a character just to check the box and it feels
Speaker 6: forced or it can feel forced sometimes, so you know,
Speaker 6: just more stories about different kinds of people.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the cast, because I think one of
Speaker 1: the cast is so stacked and amazing, and I think
Speaker 1: one of the indications that y'all did get it right
Speaker 1: with your script was, you know, I've read various interviews
Speaker 1: from the cast where they're asking, oh, yeah, what was
Speaker 1: the casting process like, and you're like, well, we sent
Speaker 1: it out and people just said yes immediately, so what
Speaker 1: was You don't.
Speaker 5: Always get that lucky, but I was remembering that, like
Speaker 5: George d Kay was our first yes.
Speaker 4: I think we're like really like.
Speaker 5: Okay, like okay, that was you know, we thought that
Speaker 5: would be a one like that, and people were you know,
Speaker 5: they they read it and they liked it.
Speaker 4: It was COVID, so there's some people.
Speaker 5: You know, people had time to read it if if
Speaker 5: they weren't going crazy in their own homes. It was
Speaker 5: a remote show that people could work on.
Speaker 6: But I mean at the time, there hadn't been many
Speaker 6: adult animated shows like this, and we we were worried
Speaker 6: people be like, what they want us to do?
Speaker 7: A cartoon? Like I'm not doing a cartoon.
Speaker 6: But I think I think the pandemic allowed people to
Speaker 6: just be like, all right, I'll try anything.
Speaker 7: I just want to work.
Speaker 5: And it was it was so much because like you know,
Speaker 5: they they kind of did it on spec I mean
Speaker 5: obviously they were they were higher, but like creatively, we
Speaker 5: would be telling them what it would be, but we
Speaker 5: had nothing to point to. And then you know, maybe
Speaker 5: a few months down the line after they'd recorded, we're like, hey,
Speaker 5: here's a picture of your character, and they're like, oh,
Speaker 5: it's going to look like this, and then we'd show that.
Speaker 4: You know, they'd come back for the rare bit of adr.
Speaker 5: And you know, they would see like scenes and they'd
Speaker 5: be like what you know, and it was really touching,
Speaker 5: like the reactions we got. I mean, speaking of George
Speaker 5: k one of the nicest things anyone said early on
Speaker 5: when he was doing some medir he saw it and
Speaker 5: he said, you need to get this out sooner. People need,
Speaker 5: you know, we need this kind of thing out there.
Speaker 5: And we said, George, we are drawing it as fast
Speaker 5: as we fucking can.
Speaker 4: We are the.
Speaker 5: Animators in Montreal and in France are you know, blistering
Speaker 5: their fingers?
Speaker 1: I think there can be for people who aren't steeped
Speaker 1: in animation, there can be kind of like a preconceived
Speaker 1: notion about what animation is. It's for kids. Did you
Speaker 1: need to overcome that at all?
Speaker 7: I think we're still trying to overcome that. I think
Speaker 7: people do.
Speaker 6: I think the audio, I mean the audience, I mean
Speaker 6: the audience has a definitely has a preconceived idea of
Speaker 6: you know, adult animation is comedy, right like The Symptoms
Speaker 6: and Big Mouth Family Guy, which are great shows. But
Speaker 6: or there's anime, and anime is for a specific type
Speaker 6: of person. So we wanted we wanted to show somebody,
Speaker 6: you know, show people that, I mean, animation is just storytelling,
Speaker 6: and you know there's.
Speaker 5: Some of it out there, like Undone on Amazon, wonderful
Speaker 5: show half an Hour took a lot of people by surprise, like, wow,
Speaker 5: this is a grown up show happens to be animated
Speaker 5: because it fell so neatly and with its themes. And
Speaker 5: then you have a show like Invincible, which is super
Speaker 5: fun but definitely feels more like what people expect from
Speaker 5: adult animation, saying with Harlee and Ivy and now Kiteman all.
Speaker 4: Great shows we enjoy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know when we kept saying, but like our
Speaker 5: emotions are grounded, our storytelling is grounded, and you know,
Speaker 5: it was a lot of like people kind of getting
Speaker 5: it intellectually or kind of going okay, But performance wise,
Speaker 5: when when we were working with the actors, it was
Speaker 5: a very it's very I mean, records were fun and easy,
Speaker 5: like we would just talk about it. They would read
Speaker 5: the scenes and they're like, okay, so we're playing the
Speaker 5: straight yep, and everyone kind of keyed in really quickly
Speaker 5: and well, so that way, when we went to our
Speaker 5: storyboard process, they were boarding off of those performances. So
Speaker 5: you know, internally everyone got it. Netflix got it. They
Speaker 5: We never had to do anything any backflips to explain
Speaker 5: to them what we were after. It's more that since
Speaker 5: the show was you know, since a trailer went to
Speaker 5: the world, people were kind of like even my friends
Speaker 5: I'd been telling the show about for years saw the trailer.
Speaker 5: First time, I went, oh, that's what you meant. We
Speaker 5: thought you were nuts because for two and a half
Speaker 5: three years we've been saying, you know, Amber and I
Speaker 5: are doing this thing, and they're like, oh no, they would.
Speaker 4: Like one of my best friends said, this is really
Speaker 4: good like.
Speaker 5: You you really like, yeah, you know, you're finally doing
Speaker 5: cartoons like you always want to, and you know, and
Speaker 5: it's great that a lot of audience members were surprisedly,
Speaker 5: I didn't know animation could do this, But it's more
Speaker 5: fun when people are like, finally more animation like we.
Speaker 4: Were hoping for.
Speaker 1: The show has so many unexpected turns, and I think
Speaker 1: one of my favorite ones is the relationship between that
Speaker 1: Meets You and Tigan, which starts out as antagonistic and
Speaker 1: then develops into something that I think I've never really
Speaker 1: seen before, which is, you know, there's still foils who
Speaker 1: are working together. What was it like developing that storyline.
Speaker 1: It's so fun because it's respected again.
Speaker 5: They grudgingly start to respect each you know, game game
Speaker 5: the Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean I think we're still we're still definitely exploring it.
Speaker 7: But yeah.
Speaker 6: That was always our intention, was that Mitsu only understood
Speaker 6: one thing, and that was revenge and sword play. And
Speaker 6: so even as much as she hated Tigan's guts, he
Speaker 6: gets that, like they have they have this shared hyper
Speaker 6: focus of you know, swordsmanships, and so he's he's the
Speaker 6: closest she has to somebody who gets her.
Speaker 1: I mean when he draws up a contract. Yes, and
Speaker 1: it was it was wonderful.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's he's trying to make it formal because at
Speaker 5: the time you could have formal like okay, we're going
Speaker 5: to do all right, And they put him up as
Speaker 5: a placard in the center of town like this was
Speaker 5: a public, formalized thing you could do, and mesas like,
Speaker 5: you know, fuck that. If you want to, if you
Speaker 5: want to kill someone, you just take a knife and
Speaker 5: you kill him. Why why being so fancy? And he's
Speaker 5: because he wants to get his honor back. He's you know,
Speaker 5: he's trying to reclaim a title and a and a
Speaker 5: man bun that was got you know, she got his hair.
Speaker 5: That was a big loss of stature. So it was
Speaker 5: definitely a fun It was a relationship that surprised us.
Speaker 5: And you know, you make assumptions about people, uh, you know,
Speaker 5: based on share childhood, Jason, just do you think they are?
Speaker 5: And then she she begrudgingly starts to respect him. The
Speaker 5: part that always got me is that when he was
Speaker 5: being tortured for information about Mesu, he doesn't give it up.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because it's like.
Speaker 5: It would have been you know, it would have been nicer.
Speaker 5: But like there's a there's an innate sense of honor.
Speaker 1: This is clearly such a deeply researched piece of work.
Speaker 1: What was that process like And how do you not
Speaker 1: get lost in the rear It.
Speaker 7: Is very easy to get lost in the research.
Speaker 5: It's it was fun research. I have a few I
Speaker 5: don't have a rule about it. You just as a writer,
Speaker 5: you have to at some point say I am done
Speaker 5: researching now, or I will never And I talked to you,
Speaker 5: you know, young writers all the time who are like,
Speaker 5: you know, and I'm still reading this and this. I'm like,
Speaker 5: you're done, put the book down, do your work, because
Speaker 5: someone's already written the book that you're reading, Like.
Speaker 4: You know, I don't know. It was it was a
Speaker 4: lot of fun. We got to read books.
Speaker 5: We always want, you know, watch during COVID, we watched
Speaker 5: all the movies, you know, we read all the comics,
Speaker 5: but some academic texts were really essential. Working with researchers
Speaker 5: and of course our art team uh Are production signer
Speaker 5: Toby Wilson. These are all people who love getting it
Speaker 5: right and making it beautiful, so they would just you know,
Speaker 5: we would put things in there and they would come
Speaker 5: back and go like, oh, if it isn't this type
Speaker 5: of candle, could we use this type of brazier that
Speaker 5: we found? And we're like, we always joke about how
Speaker 5: much our our team overperforms. We'd say, give us a
Speaker 5: simple zakaya and they're like, right, simple, And then suddenly
Speaker 5: it would be like the most beautiful thing, like you know, okay,
Speaker 5: we're gonna put a little decoration on the wall, and
Speaker 5: it wouldn't suddenly be these like yeah, it would.
Speaker 6: Call it a lantern and they're like, here are seventeen
Speaker 6: types of lanterns.
Speaker 7: That they had.
Speaker 5: So you know, there was a lot of intensity and
Speaker 5: enthusiasm from our team for like they finally got to
Speaker 5: do the kind of stuff. I mean, all of them
Speaker 5: have worked on incredible things, but there was the specific,
Speaker 5: specific hyper focuses and sub passions all came to bear.
Speaker 1: How long did it take to nail down the character designs?
Speaker 1: That must have been such a fun process.
Speaker 6: Oh goodness, I don't remember.
Speaker 5: No, no, I mean you remember timeline. It was very
Speaker 5: much a part of figuring out how to animate the show.
Speaker 5: So we started with, you know, just design of what
Speaker 5: they would look like, and we had a wonderful uh
Speaker 5: character designer at the time was really thinking about it
Speaker 5: in three D terms, and then we realized, we.
Speaker 4: Need to look at this in two D terms. And
Speaker 4: even though we're going to be doing a three D
Speaker 4: two D process.
Speaker 6: There's some very cool, uh, you know, three D images
Speaker 6: of early, early, early design.
Speaker 5: But when working with our supervising director Jane Wu and
Speaker 5: her character lead Brian Kessinger, it was it was like
Speaker 5: taking those and then finding the animatable essence of them
Speaker 5: until you like find, you know, and we really have
Speaker 5: these very detailed conversations about how feminine should Mezo look
Speaker 5: when we first meet her, you know, because how much
Speaker 5: are we trying to hide the ball? Will the trailer
Speaker 5: give it away anyway? So why are we you know,
Speaker 5: how arc the circles under her eyes, like how pink
Speaker 5: the edge of her nose because we know she's been
Speaker 5: out in the cold wardrobe? How it came into play
Speaker 5: and always our team very conscious of how it'll be
Speaker 5: animated over time so that it's they to the integrity
Speaker 5: of its day. But we have a lot of characters
Speaker 5: and all the love went into all of them. We're
Speaker 5: now designing characters for season two a lot of new
Speaker 5: a lot of new people to meet. It's a really
Speaker 5: fun part of the process. But it helps when you're
Speaker 5: working with such a strong team.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the art style is magnificent. It's so immersive and
Speaker 1: so fluid, you know, the the from the action scenes
Speaker 1: to the cooking scenes, everything moves in this really like liquid,
Speaker 1: wonderfully inspiring style. You know, what was how do you
Speaker 1: design stuff like that? Like the action scenes I'm thinking
Speaker 1: in particular, are so stylized and graphic and edible. How
Speaker 1: long does it take to kind of pin down that?
Speaker 5: I mean we've talked about it the action and other interviews.
Speaker 4: We haven't talked as much about like the food stuff.
Speaker 1: The food stuff is so good.
Speaker 5: Starving for so but no, I mean we wrote it
Speaker 5: into the drafts that there were slow mo close ups
Speaker 5: of Soba making process, like in the opening episode, and
Speaker 5: you know, something that had to be cultivated and we
Speaker 5: all worked at but took getting right and it is
Speaker 5: one of those things that shakes out very easily, similarly
Speaker 5: like language shots of walking through nature. I mean, you
Speaker 5: know there's a shot that we scripted that was animated
Speaker 5: beautifully about like the frozen leaves. You know, just slowly
Speaker 5: swishing and sounding like wind chimes when the ice tinkles in,
Speaker 5: and you know, you just you have to make sure
Speaker 5: you save the resources to get that because it's very
Speaker 5: easy to want to cut it because it's not story,
Speaker 5: but it's feeling right, So you know, it comes from
Speaker 5: having it in script, having a team that gets that
Speaker 5: stuff and values it too, and then just making making
Speaker 5: space for Michael and I went.
Speaker 6: And took a soba making class in Japan, so we
Speaker 6: really had that feeling. Our biggest regret was that we
Speaker 6: couldn't take our whole team to Japan for a research trip.
Speaker 5: But maybe one day, maybe COVID, but yeah, you know,
Speaker 5: just just we wanted the pace of the show to
Speaker 5: allow moments of breath, moments of just experiential feeling. And
Speaker 5: that also came down to, like, you know, the way
Speaker 5: it's colored, the way the effects come in, little dust
Speaker 5: motes or little bits of flower floating through the air.
Speaker 5: And then sound, our sound team led by you know,
Speaker 5: they're up for an Emmy for a reason, Like they
Speaker 5: really created the soundscape where it was experiential and hopefully transportive.
Speaker 1: The show comes out and becomes a word of mouth hit,
Speaker 1: a critical hit, obviously multiple Immy nominations. What's what's that been? Like?
Speaker 7: I mean, very very exciting.
Speaker 6: I mean it's I feel like we didn't know we
Speaker 6: were exactly a hit. Like it's kind of a it's
Speaker 6: not like you get the big numbers like I think,
Speaker 6: like you used to get these, you know, it's.
Speaker 5: Not like you know Wednesday where it's like one trillion
Speaker 5: people for more.
Speaker 6: So I think we would just slowly start to hear
Speaker 6: from people and like, oh you watch that, and I
Speaker 6: think people are still discovering it, which was just exciting.
Speaker 5: But it's you know, so many people trusted us in
Speaker 5: making the show and gave their talent and time.
Speaker 4: For so long. It's so great to just be able
Speaker 4: to say, like it was you know that it was
Speaker 4: worth it.
Speaker 5: You know that Netflix trusted us with with resources, with
Speaker 5: making an original. Uh you know, hopefully it means that
Speaker 5: they'll now keep betting on originals. So for us, there
Speaker 5: was a lot of relief of like, after a lot
Speaker 5: of trust.
Speaker 4: To be able to go, okay, you aren't.
Speaker 5: That's good, Thank goodness, because you know, on paper the
Speaker 5: idea is nuts.
Speaker 1: Agreed. I think from a from a certain from a
Speaker 1: certain executive position. Certainly it feels nuts. I will say,
Speaker 1: you know, as a person who watches too much TV
Speaker 1: and too many movies, no such thing, no such something
Speaker 1: something like this that comes, you know, I'd read a
Speaker 1: couple of trade pieces about it, but that comes it
Speaker 1: basically out of nowhere and is so good that you
Speaker 1: can't believe it is. It's really a joy. So congratulations
Speaker 1: to both you and really what is a magnificent season
Speaker 1: of television. We eagerly await season two. Amber Noiszumi and
Speaker 1: Michael Green. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you.
Speaker 4: I really appreciate talking to you.
Speaker 1: On the next episode of X ray Vision, we're diving
Speaker 1: into reactions to an alien Romulus, including a very special
Speaker 1: interview with a wo who plays Novarro. That's it for
Speaker 1: this episode. Thanks for listening. X ray Vision is hosted
Speaker 1: by Jason kenspcion and Rosie Knight and is a production
Speaker 1: of iHeart Podcasts. Our executive producers are Joelle Smith and
Speaker 1: Aaron Kaufman. Our supervising producer is a Boo Zafar. Our
Speaker 1: producers are Carmen Laurent and Mia Taylor. Our theme song
Speaker 1: is by Brian Basquez.
Speaker 3: Special thanks to Soul Rubin and Chris Lord, Kenny Goodman
Speaker 3: and Heidi A disco moderata