You likely know writer, director and showrunner Sam Esmail from his breakout series “Mr. Robot.” But the Emmy-nominated visionary showrunner actually has something new for you to binge on beginning this Friday. On the same day that “Mr. Robot’s” star, Rami Malek, appears in the biggest movie of his career, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Esmail will make an equally impressive jump with his new series, “Homecoming.” And, frankly, in this era of Peak TV where prestige players debut on a weekly basis, Esmail has helped shape one of the more impressive pieces of original narrative content this year.
The Amazon Prime Video series is based on a podcast of the same title that centers on Heidi Bergman (Julia Roberts), a counselor at a private facility, also called Homecoming, seemingly intent on assisting soldiers in transitioning back to civilian life. While Heidi bonds with new arrival Walter Cruz (Stephen James), the series cuts to four years in the future where Heidi is now working as a waitress. When a defense department investigator (Shea Whigham) finds her to question her on why she left Homecoming, she realizes she can’t answer the question because she simply doesn’t remember why. Thus begins a mystery where over the course of 10 episodes the present and the future slowly merge to uncover a conspiracy that involves
“Homecoming” is definitely a slow burn, but once you get past the first three episodes it’s hard to stop watching. Happily, each episode is around 30 minutes each and that makes for one of the more enjoyable binges you’ll experience this year. It doesn’t hurt that the last two episodes arguably feature Roberts’ best performance since her Oscar-winning work in “Erin Brockovich” (and yes we realize that’s no small feat). She’s simply spectacular.
Esmail took some time from his busy schedule to jump on the phone this week to chat about the origins of his involvement, working with Roberts and making a thriller in a half-hour format.
Note: There is a minor spoiler about the show’s visual aesthetic in this interview.
_____
The Playlist: How are you doing Sam?
Sam Esmail: I’m doing well. How are you?
Good. So I just spoke to Rami Malek an hour-and-a-half ago for another piece I’m writing. He raved about how he could not have portrayed Freddie Mercury in “Bohemian Rhapsody” without learning under your tutelage on “Mr. Robot.” I thought that was a pretty great compliment.
Oh, wow. Well, that’s very, very nice, but he deserves all the accolades for what he’s done. He’s so brilliant and it’s just great to see all the success he’s going through right now with “Bohemian.” He did such a great job.
He really did, but let’s talk about “Homecoming” because I honestly thought it was fantastic. How did you discover the original podcast? Were you a listener?
Well, [I discovered it through] my agent actually. Yeah, it’s a lot more boring than that, my agent sent it to me and said, “These guys are potentially interested in adapting this to a film or a show.” They didn’t quite know. And my instinct initially was to not do anything with it because if the podcast was doing so well in that format I’m not one of these guys whose instinct is to adapt something into another medium just because it’s popular. But I binged the entire six episodes of the first season and I became pretty obsessed with it. And then I binged it again shortly thereafter with my wife. So those first two binges were just me listening to it as a fan, and then I think I binged it a third time. And it was in that third time that I started to just see how it could be a TV show in its own way. That it could be a different creature from the podcast and that there was some relevant thing about the story and about the way we could tell the story in a TV show that felt like it would be different enough.
I haven’t listened to the podcast myself but if someone has, how different is the TV show? Without giving too much away, obviously.
It deviates quite a bit. And I always say that you could probably listen to one or the other and it won’t cannibalize the other experience. The set up is basically the same but there is a point where they both deviate quite a bit from each other.
And also, correct me if I’m wrong, is the plan still to do a second season? To continue it as a series?
Oh yeah, we’re in the middle of writing the second season right now.
I’m sort of getting ahead of myself, but one of the things I loved about the end of it…I’m not sure I’d call it an ending, but it has a resolution?
It does, you can call it an ending because that’s actually quite intentional. We wanted to make sure that, and I actually feel this way in general about seasons of television, that it should feel like a complete story from beginning to end. And that, yes, there can be a set up for the next season, but we looked at the first season as this enclosed story.
The other thing that I appreciated about it was that every episode was just 30 minutes long or close to 30 minutes long. Was that because of the podcast format or something that you wanted to experiment with in a drama series?
It was a little bit of both. So the podcast was 30 minutes [and it was] essentially two people talking, for the most part. It’s either Heidi and Walter in a room talking or Heidi and Colin [a character played by Bobby Cannavale on the TV series] on the phone talking. But I think the knee-jerk reaction in thinking about adapting that, is to break those conversations up or create set pieces and transform it into something that’s more “cinematic.” And I didn’t want to do any of that. I thought the brilliance of the podcast was that it was this character based thriller and what was refreshing was that it felt more intimate. And it was less about set pieces and less about these action sequences and really just about people and their relationships and the way they interact with one another. And I really wanted to keep that intact. So I thought, “Well look, your mileage may vary if you try and take those 30-minute episodes full of conversations, and then, arbitrarily I might add, extend it to an hour long because that’s typically what dramas do.” I felt like that would really wear down on the audience and get a little stale and boring. Keeping in that 30-minute format actually reminded me of another great drama that was 30 minutes that was about two people talking, which is a show called “In Treatment” that was on HBO years ago. I don’t know if that was their intention back then, but I thought the genius behind that was is that I think you could take two people talking in more intimate settings in 30-minute doses. And, not for nothing, when you’re also doing a mystery, there’s something really enticing about just giving you a little piece at a time. It really amps up the suspense, it makes you lean in a little more. So it’s for all those variety of reasons we landed on the 30-minute drama.
Can we talk about the aesthetic choice you make about … for those of you who haven’t seen the show, the “current” timeframe is in traditional widescreen and four years from now you start off in this, I don’t know the exact dimensions are but it’s almost…
In a box, it’s like a perfect square aspect ratio.
Yes! Where did that inspiration originate from?
Yeah, so [cinematographer Tod Campbell] and I, whenever we design shots for the show, we really start with the character and we start with what their point of view is because that’s our way in visually. And with Heidi in 2022, she’s obviously downtrodden, defeated. She’s on the outs in her life and her career. So we talked visually about the lighting being a little flatter and the colors being a little more de-saturated. But then there was the idea of memory. And since memory’s such a big theme in the show, it’s like how do we represent that? So I thought why not put her in this box? Why not put her in this box where it clearly shows she doesn’t see the full picture? That not only is she not seeing the full picture, but that she’s sort of cornered and claustrophobic, and only limited to this very narrow view of the world. I thought that that really reflected her journey, and I don’t know if … are we doing spoilers?
I’ll put a spoiler warning in it.
Note: This is your second official spoiler warning.
Well, as Tod and I continued storyboarding and shot listing the entire season when we got to episode 8, the moment where Heidi sort of remembers everything, that’s when that device really came into play because now the world expands. Her memories start to flood back and the aspect ratio widens out to that full picture. Again that decision was all driven by Heidi and her emotional journey throughout the show.
In my opinion, this is some of the best work Julia’s done in quite a long time. Can you talk about working with her and those last two chapters in particular?
Working with her was such a dream because it’s almost like you always have an ace up your sleeve. No matter what, no matter how tricky the scene is, no matter how many layers, no matter how many props I give her, and no matter how crazy the shot is. Which was, by the way, quite often the shots are crazy and I couldn’t cut because it was a long take. Julia can just juggle everything and bring this depth and warmth to every moment. She keeps things alive, in between lines she keeps things alive. [Usually], in between I can’t give all my notes to the actor, right? Because only a few are gonna sink in. So I kind of parse it out. A few notes every take. [With Julia] I could give her all of my notes and then some and not only will she come back on the next take and do them all, but she’ll elevate it and bring it to another dimension that totally surprised me. So that’s just the beautiful thing about Julia is that she’s just so skilled and her craft is so impeccable that you can really get granular and really get specific and she just does it without batting an eyelash. It just feels so effortless.
“Homecoming” debuts on Amazon Prime this Friday.