Beau Willimon, the showrunner behind “House of Cards” and writer of “Andor,” says he is very proud of the second season of the “Star Wars” franchise instalment. Speaking at an industry event at Canneseries, the producer said writing the Disney+ series is “like being a session musician on someone’s album,” praising his creative collaborator and series creator Tony Gilroy.
“Tony helped me on ‘House of Cards’ for a couple of seasons as a consulting producer to give me notes on the scripts and became a good friend and mentor,” he recalled. “When he was developing ‘Andor,’ he asked if I wanted to write a few episodes and I thought he was joking because I grew up with and love ‘Star Wars’ but I’m not an aficionado. He said, ‘the less you know, the better because I want to tell a human story and a grown-up story.’”
Despite never having written a show he hadn’t created, Willimon jumped onboard alongside Tony Gilroy’s brother, Dan Gilroy, and broke the entire first season of the show in six days.
“It was so fun,” he added of that time. “I didn’t have to bear any of the burden of what a showrunner usually has to deal with. All I had to do for the first time in my life was function as a writer who was delivering scripts to my friend Tony Gilroy. As long as he liked them, I was good. The writer said the process was very similar for season 2, which premiered on Disney+ earlier this month. “I’m very proud of the second season.”
Courtesy of Rafa Sales Ross
Willimon also had his hand on another majorly successful series this year, boarding Apple TV+’s hit psychological drama “Severance” as an executive producer for Season 2. Of the experience, the creative said that the show is “very different from what I normally do” but the team “needed some extra help.”
“I came in to assist on the production side of it, with the writers,” continued Willimon. “It was an extraordinary experience because there is nothing like this show. I am really interested in doing projects where I don’t fully know how to do it. With ‘Severance,’ it was this beautifully built world and tone and I challenged myself to help that team bring the second season to fruition. I was in service of the story like anyone else.”
The executive emphasized he “loves” producing and finds it a joy to “facilitate someone else’s vision.” “Sometimes I have a bit of distance and perspective that can be helpful, or it can purely facilitate on a practical level. I don’t have to bear the burden of this being my baby, I can simply help someone raise this child.”
This creative distance is, of course, the very opposite of the job Willimon had as the showrunner of the first four seasons of Netflix’s history-making political drama “House of Cards.” Elsewhere during the conversation, the writer recalled the early days of working on the project, saying he initially wasn’t interested in the idea of doing a political series on the back of his lauded political play, “Farragut North.” What made Willimon take the leap? Easy: David Fincher’s name.
The chance of meeting with the “Se7en” director had the playwright investigate the eponymous British show that inspired Netflix’s flagship series. “I watched the British series and started to have a lot of ideas of what to do with it, and then it turned out that David and I hit it off in terms of what we wanted to do with the show.”
‘House of Cards’ courtesy of Netflix
Talking about the first sparks of inspiration for Kevin Spacey’s Frank Underwood, Willimon cited the series’ infamous opening scene as an example, where the politician strangles a dog to death. “He has this movie star entrance, comes down and gives us his first direct address. Not about politics, but about something more elemental, which is his relationship to pain, and that he is the sort of person who does the difficult thing. Strangling the dog to put it out of its misery could be seen as both an act of cruelty and an act of generosity, and that contradiction is interesting. This is how you start to layer up a character, from something very simple.”
“I don’t think any writer, no matter how good they are, can start in a place of sophistication,” he added. “You often start in a place of the mundane. Sophistication is organizing and layering the mundane in such a way that hopefully becomes complex.”
On his relationship working with high-profile actors in projects such as “House of Cards,” Willimon said it is becoming more and more common for shows to be packaged with talent, the expectation being that showrunners and higher-level creatives have to work alongside actors in making key decisions for projects. “Talent is coming on board before [projects] are even sold. Depending on the star value of those actors, they’ll expect a certain level of input and involvement. I like working with actors and welcome that, so it’s usually an enjoyable part of the process.”
A less enjoyable part of his craft, perhaps, is the struggle of those early days as a writer. Advising budding creatives in the room, the award-winning showrunner said: “‘When you’re starting, you have all of this energy and a sort of desperation, a hunger to share what you have with the world. Try not to squander that energy in a careerist mentality. It’s the only time that you get to be a pure artist — when no one cares. Use that to your advantage.”
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