Speaker 1: It's in the news today, but it was actually on
Speaker 1: TV Reload.
Speaker 2: The podcast past weep thatline.
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, thanks for clicking and downloading.
Speaker 3: On today's episode of TV Reload with Troy Lum, we
Speaker 3: will be talking about Boyce Swallows Universe, which is now
Speaker 3: out on Netflix. This Australian drama series for Netflix has
Speaker 3: an all star Australian cast, stunning cinematography and eighties period
Speaker 3: setting that fills modern and a fast paced story that
Speaker 3: is deadly serious but full of love, hope and humor.
Speaker 3: And a becoming of age story set in the nineteen
Speaker 3: eighties Brisbane that blends the magic of innocence of youth
Speaker 3: with the brutal.
Speaker 1: Reality of the adult world. A lost father, a mute.
Speaker 3: Brother, a recovering addict mum, a heroin dealing stepfather, and
Speaker 3: a notoriously criminal babysitter. Hmmm sounds interesting. Adapted from Trent
Speaker 3: Dalton's iconic Australian novel boy Swallows Universe, exploring the crossroads
Speaker 3: where a boy becomes a man, toys with good and evil,
Speaker 3: and the everyday meets the extraordinary. Today's guest, Troy Lum's
Speaker 3: film career started in distribution and exhibition at Dandi Films
Speaker 3: in the late nineteen eighties, and while he has a
Speaker 3: quiet and release some of the biggest independent movies in history,
Speaker 3: including The Blair Witch Project and Amie, the twenty seven
Speaker 3: year old launched Hopscotch Films alongside Sandy Don and Frank Cox.
Speaker 3: The independent film distribution company's many successes include Pans, Labyrinth,
Speaker 3: Fahrenheit nine to eleven, The Sapphires, Spotlight, and even the
Speaker 3: Oscar winning Lala land Lum shares the role of series
Speaker 3: in executive producer title with Andrew Mason, and with the
Speaker 3: massive success around the world with this title, I think
Speaker 3: we're going to continue to see plenty more collaborations between
Speaker 3: the two. There is actually so much to unpack with
Speaker 3: Troy today, which I'm very excited about. What drew him
Speaker 3: to the project, how they captured the tremendous performances from
Speaker 3: their young actors, what techniques they use to balance out
Speaker 3: the bleak at times overtones with things like music and cinematography.
Speaker 3: I will ask about the possibility of continuing their relationship
Speaker 3: with author Trent Dalton and what their relationship was like
Speaker 3: with him, and if there was a bit of pressure
Speaker 3: having him as the author on set. Anyway, let's bring
Speaker 3: Troy into the podcast and guys, sit back, relax, and
Speaker 3: I hope you enjoyed this deep dive into the world
Speaker 3: of Australian television. Hi Troy, thank you for joining me
Speaker 3: talking about this series Pleasure. This could be the most
Speaker 3: successful Australian made series for twenty twenty four. You must
Speaker 3: be so elated at this point by the success of
Speaker 3: the show.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm over the moon. It's it happens so rarely
Speaker 2: that you have something that catches fire like this, and
Speaker 2: so I'm just enjoying the wild ride as they say,
Speaker 2: so you should.
Speaker 3: I mean, at this point you've been through the press
Speaker 3: and spoken about this before people could see it, and
Speaker 3: now people are reveling in how good.
Speaker 1: This series actually is.
Speaker 3: So yeah, is it interesting now to be talking to
Speaker 3: me at this point now that audiences are lapping it up?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because look, you never really know, and you know,
Speaker 2: this has been five years of my life and I
Speaker 2: moved to Brisbane to shoot the show and was living
Speaker 2: there for six months, and so there's a whole kind
Speaker 2: of journey that goes along with something like this. You
Speaker 2: never really know. And because it was based on such
Speaker 2: a beloved book. You know, I was bracing myself for
Speaker 2: people to really, you know, be disappointed by the show
Speaker 2: because they loved the book so much. And so look,
Speaker 2: the last week has just been well, first of all,
Speaker 2: one of relief just to know that people really like it.
Speaker 2: But then since the relief has subsided, it's more been
Speaker 2: an excitement about how the whole world has actually been
Speaker 2: loving the show. And that was something that I probably
Speaker 2: didn't expect that it would be such a global hit.
Speaker 1: Well, you've taken so much of people's time.
Speaker 3: I had this story where we would recommend my mother
Speaker 3: in law shows to watch, and so we went to
Speaker 3: recommend this and she was like, no, I watched it
Speaker 3: all in one sitting, which is a lot of content,
Speaker 3: but that's the start. That's what this show is. It's
Speaker 3: so intoxicating, it's so real, so visceral, that I feel
Speaker 3: like people step into that and they don't want to
Speaker 3: step out.
Speaker 1: They need to know what happens next.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all of that was obviously based on trans amazing novel,
Speaker 2: which is all in there, but I guess the challenge
Speaker 2: for was to how do we adapt that for screen
Speaker 2: and then kind of make it so that at the
Speaker 2: end of every episode, you were leaving the audience wanting more,
Speaker 2: and so there was a real kind of challenge on
Speaker 2: how do we break the book down into what became
Speaker 2: seven episodes so that every time you finished and up
Speaker 2: you were wanting more.
Speaker 3: Well, there's many ways to talk about the success of
Speaker 3: this story and why it translates so well to audiences,
Speaker 3: But at the heart of where I think this series
Speaker 3: really works is that choice that happened in the book
Speaker 3: and that you carried through to the series, in that
Speaker 3: choice of telling a story from the pov of a child,
Speaker 3: and I think allowing Eli to actually act out all
Speaker 3: of those things that kids want to do and look.
Speaker 2: I think also kids are essentially hopeful beings, and when
Speaker 2: you do something through the eyes of a kid, it
Speaker 2: can't help but being magical and hopeful. And I think
Speaker 2: what Trent did with the book, and I like to
Speaker 2: think what we've translated onto the screen was that real
Speaker 2: feeling of hope and magic. And I think that is
Speaker 2: what the universal theme is. It's it's the fact that
Speaker 2: no matter where your life is at or who's in
Speaker 2: your life, as long as you have a lot of
Speaker 2: love in your life and hope that that will always
Speaker 2: see through. And I think it's been quite interesting looking
Speaker 2: at I was looking at the global metrics of where
Speaker 2: the show was really ranking, you know, like we're ranking
Speaker 2: we're ranking top five globally, which I think will move up.
Speaker 2: But there were certain places where it was ranking number
Speaker 2: one or number two, and I was places like Jamaica
Speaker 2: and lots of places in South and Central America where
Speaker 2: I think the resonance of the story of you know,
Speaker 2: working class people under peril who are trying to do
Speaker 2: their best and it's really about family. I think that's
Speaker 2: where it all comes together for a lot of people anyway.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's been such a it's been so great
Speaker 2: watching the response.
Speaker 3: Going back to my point though, I guess it allows
Speaker 3: audiences to be a kid again for a while, you know,
Speaker 3: without and also remembering our original instincts. It takes you
Speaker 3: back to thinking, how would I as a child before
Speaker 3: the lens of being an adult that we now have.
Speaker 2: For surely, Yeah, I think the magic was really I
Speaker 2: think when Trent wrote the novel, the magical Realism was
Speaker 2: really about the child inventing a world to overcome trauma. Really,
Speaker 2: and what we've done in the book is done the
Speaker 2: same thing. And obviously we're really lucky to have Felix
Speaker 2: Cameron play Eli, who I think encapsulated that childlike wonder
Speaker 2: in such a meaningful emotional way. And I realized sort
Speaker 2: of three days into the shoot, how lucky you were
Speaker 2: to have feelings, because if we didn't have him, I
Speaker 2: think the whole series would have fallen apart, because he's
Speaker 2: basically in every single scene in the first four episodes,
Speaker 2: and he holds the whole thing together, which was a
Speaker 2: lot of pressure for a thirteen year old, But.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of heavy lifting.
Speaker 3: That's a lot of heavy lifting for any actor of
Speaker 3: any age to be able to engage like that and
Speaker 3: keep you engaged with you know. The only thing I
Speaker 3: thought was that because he was so powerful in that
Speaker 3: role at the very end, in the final scene, I
Speaker 3: kind of felt like we needed a flashback to that
Speaker 3: early stages of him, you know, almost like him.
Speaker 2: Funny our action that because we we talked about it,
Speaker 2: we tried different things, we actually putting little flushbacks at
Speaker 2: the end. There was a there was a version of
Speaker 2: the of the last episode where where Guss is holding
Speaker 2: Eli at the clocktailer and sort of crying whilst holding him,
Speaker 2: and we and we actually did this little sequence where
Speaker 2: we flushed back into sort of Guss and Eli's little journey.
Speaker 2: But I think we just decided that it took us
Speaker 2: out of the show in that brief moment, and although
Speaker 2: it kind of worked, it was eventually we decided to
Speaker 2: take it out.
Speaker 3: I kin'd of feel I kept thinking of Steven Spielberg
Speaker 3: when he was making Jurassic Park, where he was like,
Speaker 3: we need to change the ending, we need to bring
Speaker 3: the t Rex back, because the t Rex was so
Speaker 3: huge in the story, and that wasn't originally in the script,
Speaker 3: but Steven Spielberg understood the gravitas of the t Rex.
Speaker 1: It was like all right back in. So it must
Speaker 1: have been that similar feeling of.
Speaker 2: Very tempted little feelings. It is so amazing. I think
Speaker 2: we all decided that just took us out of the
Speaker 2: show too much where we were at in the show,
Speaker 2: because it was a bit of a bit of a
Speaker 2: rollercoaster from really that end part to get to the ending,
Speaker 2: and it just slowed us down a little bit. But
Speaker 2: it's funny. It was actually quite a strong debate. So
Speaker 2: it's funny how you've landed on that because we did
Speaker 2: talk about it a lot.
Speaker 3: Well, taking a step back and then asking you what
Speaker 3: drew you to this story, you know, how did you
Speaker 3: come across the book and what was the evolution of
Speaker 3: you wanting to join the project?
Speaker 2: Well, actually I got the book from a UK company
Speaker 2: called Chapter One, who produced the show with us, and
Speaker 2: the head of that company, Sophie Gardner, sent me the
Speaker 2: book and I'd never heard of it before, and it's
Speaker 2: very rare that an overseas person would send me an
Speaker 2: Australian novel and say this is amazing, and so I
Speaker 2: read it straight away and I just yeah, they needed
Speaker 2: an Australian partner, and I read it straight away and
Speaker 2: just recognized that for me, it was Australian in all
Speaker 2: the right ways. You know, sometimes you read stuff, we'll
Speaker 2: look at stuff and for me anyway, as a as
Speaker 2: an Aussie, but someone who had a child of migrants,
Speaker 2: I look at Australia a completely different way, I think.
Speaker 2: And what I loved about Boys Fellows Universe is that
Speaker 2: it was Aussie in all the ways that I really loved,
Speaker 2: and that's what kind of got me.
Speaker 1: Involved like that.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you've read Christos Chokos's books, but
Speaker 3: it's like his.
Speaker 2: I love him to also. I think just the emotional
Speaker 2: sophistication of being Australian and the fact that we have
Speaker 2: a unique culture, we have a unique perspective, which I
Speaker 2: think Boyce Weellow's universe through its storytelling devices, really shows
Speaker 2: and that's what Christos does as well. And that's what
Speaker 2: I love about it. It's it's it's a it's a
Speaker 2: story that's about storytelling in a way. It's about how
Speaker 2: you tell stories, what you remember, and I love how
Speaker 2: nostalgic it is for a certain time, but I love
Speaker 2: how it's so confident and you know, there's a great
Speaker 2: what we what we were really focused on making the
Speaker 2: show was we had to be really authentic to the
Speaker 2: time in the period, and we realized that the more
Speaker 2: authentic you are and telling a story, actually, ironically, the
Speaker 2: more universal it becomes, because people really truly understand what
Speaker 2: these people are going through and when they're going through
Speaker 2: and how they're going through it. So we're really focused
Speaker 2: on the detail just to make sure that we got
Speaker 2: that sort of Brisbane nineteen eighties, that spirit of Australia
Speaker 2: really shining through it.
Speaker 3: Helps us tap in. When you see the bushel's coffee
Speaker 3: and you know, just the smaller details, you're like, oh,
Speaker 3: You're like, oh my gosh, I can smell this, do
Speaker 3: you know what I mean? That's when it becomes more
Speaker 3: than just that cinematic experience. All of that stuff was
Speaker 3: extraordinarily clever. You did talk about this before, but Voyce
Speaker 3: Faller's Universe is such a much loved book, and it
Speaker 3: had been for so long, which would have come with
Speaker 3: so much pressure from the fans.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Can we talk about the journey of wanting to choose
Speaker 3: a book and turn it into a series like this,
Speaker 3: and had you been worried about using novels before.
Speaker 2: There's always that pressure when dealing with with novels. I
Speaker 2: you know, many years ago I was involved in film
Speaker 2: called Males Last Dancer, which was also a very beloved novel,
Speaker 2: so I've had some sort of experience with it. But
Speaker 2: I think you just have to be first of all,
Speaker 2: you have to have the key creative on born in
Speaker 2: this case Trent Dalton, who I think was just, I've
Speaker 2: got to say, just so incredibly supportive every step of
Speaker 2: the way. And it's not easy for an author watching
Speaker 2: their you know, their imagination come to life. But never
Speaker 2: during the process was he ever precious about it, just
Speaker 2: really encouraging about Look, I think the testament to Trent
Speaker 2: was that, you know, when you make a show and
Speaker 2: adapted for screen from a book, you have to make
Speaker 2: certain changes to the book. It's just natural that you
Speaker 2: have to do that. And in Boyce wa As the Universe,
Speaker 2: there is certain departures from the book that are quite profound.
Speaker 2: But every time we did that, Trent would read that
Speaker 2: in the script and he'd actually always comment about it,
Speaker 2: but in a positive way. He will say, oh, I
Speaker 2: love how he did that. It was so much better
Speaker 2: than what I did. Or you'd always be very generous
Speaker 2: about the changes. And look, in my experience, authors can
Speaker 2: be the opposite. You know, they can be really intransient
Speaker 2: about up their materials. So yeah, I think having him
Speaker 2: was always our north style. Knowing that he supported us
Speaker 2: and so it always gave us the confidence going through.
Speaker 2: And then you know, we had him on set a
Speaker 2: number of times and you know, he would literally walk
Speaker 2: onto a set and burst into tears, like look at
Speaker 2: the way that we designed the house and look at
Speaker 2: little Felix, And he would just be like, this is
Speaker 2: this is incredible. So, yeah, that was all really special.
Speaker 3: Were the things in the book that were non negotiable
Speaker 3: in making their way making its way to the Netflix adaptation.
Speaker 2: Well, I think one of the one of the kind
Speaker 2: of riskiest things about the adaptation was the sort of
Speaker 2: magical realism scenes. So the scenes with Gus riding in
Speaker 2: the air and the sort of gene sequences of the
Speaker 2: car and all that, all that stuff in the in
Speaker 2: the first four episodes, and you know that if that
Speaker 2: gets handled badly, it can really ostracize an audience because
Speaker 2: they're like, what am I watching? Suddenly there's a kid
Speaker 2: writing in the air, There's there's station wagons flying past
Speaker 2: the moon, and so I think tonally we needed to
Speaker 2: get that right. And Netflix will always super encouraging about
Speaker 2: embracing the magic, and that gave us a lot of
Speaker 2: confidence to make sure that we kept at it. We
Speaker 2: kept doing it, and we were really confident about doing it,
Speaker 2: and I think that makes a huge difference to the show,
Speaker 2: where you're watching something that's more than just a drama
Speaker 2: that has that element of magic to it, and I
Speaker 2: think that's what audiences around the world are really embracing
Speaker 2: is that it's so different.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess it's a huge risk when you're going
Speaker 3: to do some of that surrealism. All it has to
Speaker 3: be just right, It has to feel like it fits
Speaker 3: within the universe. An audience have to go there with
Speaker 3: You could be silly, and thinking back to it, it
Speaker 3: is silly. But when I watched this, considering i'd read
Speaker 3: the book, I was delighted by that part of it,
Speaker 3: like it actually added to the hope in a weird
Speaker 3: way that this sort of fantasy added to it, complemented it.
Speaker 2: I guess what we're always really conscious of was grounding
Speaker 2: all of that stuff in something real, And so whenever
Speaker 2: we went to one of those moments, it was always
Speaker 2: from Elie's perspective, So it always knew that you were
Speaker 2: grounded in a third ten year old's point of view,
Speaker 2: and I think that allowed the audience to sort of
Speaker 2: go with them, And so it was there was a
Speaker 2: method to the madness.
Speaker 3: What were the hardest obstacles in translating the book to
Speaker 3: the screenplay? Were there things that you had to lose?
Speaker 3: Or I think they call it cutting their babies, or
Speaker 3: there's a saying for it, the.
Speaker 1: Killing their babies try it's a terrible saying it like for.
Speaker 3: Me to get it wrong as well, But I was
Speaker 3: so interested in that, you know, about those choices.
Speaker 2: I think this in this one, we were quite lucky
Speaker 2: we didn't have to kill a lot of babies, but
Speaker 2: we had to think long and hard about how we're
Speaker 2: going to do things. I mean, one of the things
Speaker 2: in the book that is, you know, the book gets
Speaker 2: very fanciful with you know, the limbs factory and all
Speaker 2: that stuff in the ending is is like it gets
Speaker 2: it almost turns into a genre, like a totally different show,
Speaker 2: And with the TV show we had to do the
Speaker 2: same thing. We had to follow this narrative, which at
Speaker 2: times was quite cooky, and I think one of the
Speaker 2: challenges we had was trying to bring some sort of
Speaker 2: logic like screen logic, film logic to that narrative because
Speaker 2: in a book it kind of works completely differently the
Speaker 2: way Trent wrote it, and we had to sort of
Speaker 2: match that ambition but give it more internal logic, I think,
Speaker 2: and there was a lot of consternation about how to
Speaker 2: do that, and I think we largely succeeded, but it
Speaker 2: was challenging. The other thing that was really challenging was
Speaker 2: was aging the boys, because in the book and also
Speaker 2: the series, there's an age leap, and obviously we lose
Speaker 2: Felix in after episode five and we gained Zach Burgess.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of consternation about who that actor
Speaker 2: was going to be, and I know Zach did so
Speaker 2: many rehearsals, bless him to get that role, But it
Speaker 2: was only because we were just so we knew that
Speaker 2: Felix that people were going to fall in love with him,
Speaker 2: and we needed an actor who the audience could really
Speaker 2: go with. And then we were meant to replace Lee
Speaker 2: Tiger Halley as well for an older Gus and we
Speaker 2: honestly we could not find an actor to not just
Speaker 2: match Lee's look, which is incredible, but just his sensibility.
Speaker 2: His sensitivity is something about the way he encompasses the
Speaker 2: screen that's very unique. I think Lee's quite a unique guy.
Speaker 2: And so we took the big leap of actually keeping
Speaker 2: Lee Tiger Halle all the way through the series and
Speaker 2: aging him up to twenty three, which at the time
Speaker 2: he was like seventeen years old, and I think he
Speaker 2: did it really well. I was so proud of the
Speaker 2: way that he was able to do it, and yeah,
Speaker 2: but that was a little challenge. We went through hundreds
Speaker 2: of hundreds and hundreds of auditions to land back at
Speaker 2: Lee Tiger Halle.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean they're acting from these children, I mean,
Speaker 3: is a good way to put it, but is unbelievable.
Speaker 3: How do you go about getting the children to be
Speaker 3: able to portray such deep emotions without affecting them, you know,
Speaker 3: in their real life. You know, the subject matter is
Speaker 3: quite bleak. You know, how are you controlling those elements?
Speaker 2: So there was two things. One is that we always
Speaker 2: had their parents on set. So Lee's parents and Felix's
Speaker 2: parents were on set all the time, and so when
Speaker 2: anything was sort of a emotionally confronting, which there was
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff, we made sure that their parents
Speaker 2: were there, that they were feeling okay, but everything that
Speaker 2: was going on. Luckily, Ivan Kroll Christopher, who plays Ivan
Speaker 2: Kroll in real life, is like an absolute sweeth hunts
Speaker 2: It makings a lot easier that he was so he
Speaker 2: would switch to wive and Cole to being Chris and
Speaker 2: was just the nicest man and the boys were comfortable
Speaker 2: with him and in full threatened. So there was that
Speaker 2: and we also had this incredible drama tag, this woman
Speaker 2: called Nadia, who a dramaturg is someone who sort of
Speaker 2: coaches the actors offset and gets them ready for scenes.
Speaker 2: And so you obviously have your director who does all
Speaker 2: that work, and then Nadia's work was to get really
Speaker 2: granular with the boys and so she would spend weekends
Speaker 2: after after hours and then just prepping specially Felix and
Speaker 2: Lee for each scene. And so that he was she
Speaker 2: was kind of their life after acting coach, their bit
Speaker 2: of a life coach at the same time. And she's
Speaker 2: really incredible and it was great at the premiere to
Speaker 2: see Felix and Nadia see each other for the first
Speaker 2: time after all these months. Such a connection there. But yeah,
Speaker 2: a lot of I mean, they were both they're both
Speaker 2: incredible actors. But yeah, there's a lot of preparation that
Speaker 2: goes into making sure aim that those kids are their
Speaker 2: welfare is sound, but also that their performance was up
Speaker 2: to scratch, because it's hard to get kids to be
Speaker 2: so for such we're talking about months, I mean months.
Speaker 2: You know, they were working six to eight hours a
Speaker 2: day for months, and you know, to be last.
Speaker 3: It's huge, I mean it's huge but there's not a
Speaker 3: frame of this series where these characters are broken at all.
Speaker 3: Like the integrity of their process of how they're relating
Speaker 3: to what's happening in their surroundings is just so so
Speaker 3: deep and so believable. And again it goes back to
Speaker 3: what I was saying about. You know, so much heavy
Speaker 3: lifting for this particular story is done by children, So
Speaker 3: it's a real testament to the way in which you
Speaker 3: created that environment for them to be able to be
Speaker 3: in that space. I just have two questions, but we'll
Speaker 3: go through these very quickly, if that's okay. I finished
Speaker 3: the podcast with the question I'm going to ask second,
Speaker 3: but it would be remissive me if audiences listened to
Speaker 3: this they don't see this. But there certainly is elements
Speaker 3: of darker the darker side of crime and poverty, drug used,
Speaker 3: domestic violence. But you really hit home with making this
Speaker 3: story hopeful and fun. Did you have conversations about what
Speaker 3: works on screen to balance out some of that dark so?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: People talked about how blick the book was. I wondered
Speaker 3: whether or not it was find another eighties rock tune
Speaker 3: that's uplifting or showcase Brisbane you know what were those
Speaker 3: decisions to counteract that.
Speaker 2: So one was definitely soundtracked, and and we went through
Speaker 2: and made really precise musical choices from the era. It
Speaker 2: was actually one of my most enjoyable processes was delving
Speaker 2: into the archives and listening to music and coming up
Speaker 2: with ideas. But more importantly, though, I think this production
Speaker 2: design was really important. And one of the things that
Speaker 2: we decided at the beginning was that every shot had
Speaker 2: to look hopeful. And so that meant that I think
Speaker 2: if you look at when you watch the series, everything's
Speaker 2: really colorful, like it's not dark, it's lit in a
Speaker 2: certain way that eveynthing looks bright, sunny and hopeful, and that,
Speaker 2: for me is what Australian summers are like, you know,
Speaker 2: the Australian And when I look back on my childhood,
Speaker 2: my idea of Australia, even though I grew up in Sydney,
Speaker 2: it's just this kind of sunny, bright, colorful place and
Speaker 2: I think that's the way that oversees people see our
Speaker 2: country as well. And so yeah, we made a decision
Speaker 2: that every shot had to look bright and sunny and joyful.
Speaker 2: So even in their house, which is you know, you
Speaker 2: know they are very working class people living in quite
Speaker 2: a poor neighborhood. It made sure their house looked warm
Speaker 2: and loving and there were elements of joy that even
Speaker 2: if they were poor. And we did that across the
Speaker 2: board with everything, just to make sure that, yeah, that
Speaker 2: everything looked very, very bright and crisp and hopeful.
Speaker 3: You could smell it. You could smell the chopped grass.
Speaker 3: You know, That's what reminded me of my childhood. You know, Troy,
Speaker 3: I could literally talk to you forever, but I will
Speaker 3: finish the podcast with asking you the same question ask
Speaker 3: everyone who joins the show, and that is, what is
Speaker 3: something from behind the scenes, something that you can share,
Speaker 3: kind of like a bit of an easter egg. I
Speaker 3: guess of what it was like to make this show
Speaker 3: something audiences might not see.
Speaker 2: Well, I think there was a very strong sense of
Speaker 2: camaraderie on the set in real I know people say
Speaker 2: this about who they work with all the time after
Speaker 2: they finished something, but there really was something special about
Speaker 2: this crew of people that we worked with. And I
Speaker 2: think one of the really great moments of that is
Speaker 2: in the first episode there's a scene of Little Felix
Speaker 2: and Travis Finnl who was also wonderful, and it's the
Speaker 2: scene where he says, oh, there's a lot of tears
Speaker 2: inside of me, and he breaks down while he's talking
Speaker 2: to his father figure. It's an incredible scene and we
Speaker 2: knew how important that scene was for episode one, that
Speaker 2: Felix really needed to bring it that day, and we
Speaker 2: actually booked out the whole night just to shoot this
Speaker 2: one scene. So hours and hours to shoot this one scene.
Speaker 2: And we brought Felix on set and got in prepped
Speaker 2: and he did that scene, that crying scene. He did
Speaker 2: it in the first take, one take, and he did it,
Speaker 2: and everyone was sort of hardened crew of you know,
Speaker 2: great dps and all these amazing people who have worked
Speaker 2: on big Hollywood stuff. I saw that the whole crew
Speaker 2: was silent when were watching the playback and watching it happen,
Speaker 2: and there was a few people crying, and Barrat, our
Speaker 2: director of the first series, just said, that's it. We
Speaker 2: don't need to do it again. He's done it. It's
Speaker 2: we're never going to get anything.
Speaker 1: Take the kids to McDonald's. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So we actually had this whole night looked out for
Speaker 2: this one scene, and we only I think we only
Speaker 2: did it for like twenty minutes because that's because because
Speaker 2: Felix was so amazing and yeah, and so I think
Speaker 2: that's one of the I'm going to remember one thing
Speaker 2: is probably that moment.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you for sharing that. Yeah, thank you so
Speaker 3: much for being able to take me through this. I mean,
Speaker 3: you and Andrew did such an incredible job with this series.
Speaker 1: I kind of hope that every year we get.
Speaker 3: One of Trent's books translated by you guys on Netflix
Speaker 3: to launch the year. I think that might be an
Speaker 3: impossible ask, but I think there'd be a lot to
Speaker 3: think so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, times ticking mate.
Speaker 3: Anyway, I appreciate your generosity with your time and talking
Speaker 3: to me today. I'm such a big fan of your
Speaker 3: work and this series is incredible, So thank you, and
Speaker 3: thank you to the team at Netflix for organizing this pleasure.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much.