Take 47 - Derek Simonds, The Sinner

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Any of us who've been in it for long enough, our entire career has been littered with jobs that we didn't get, projects that we thought were gonna go for sure, dozens of unproduced scripts littering the floor.

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All of us are running into both major and minor failures in Hollywood every single day.

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For every success, there is means, sometimes even years of painful failure. This is one of the only businesses I can think of where failure is the default.

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That's the thing we have to be able to persevere. Like everything in our business here and council.

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I was being told by my manager that it's yours to lose. And I probably lost it. And I remember thinking like, well, that's it for me. I blew my one big shot. What I've realized from that moment is it's never one big shot. There will be other shots.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and absurd and adversity in the entertainment industry. I am and your non-entertainment co-host, Dan Rutstein, and we have at the other end of the Zoom, as always, Noah.

SPEAKER_02 1:14

This is I'm sitting here smiling because of the 50 podcasts we've done so far. This is the first time I've ever heard Dan screw up the intro. That's normally my job. On today's podcast, we have TV writer and director Derek Simons. Although Derek has worked on the staff of such shows as the Astronaut Wives Club and When We Rise, he's best known for creating The Center on USA, which just started airing season four on USA. He also has an executive producer credit on the Academy Award-winning film Call Me by Your Name. Welcome, Derek. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Glad to be here. So I'm I'm actually going to start. I guess this is probably an adversity question. I've seen in a couple of interviews that you've given, you I'm not going to say complaining, but you stating that the showrunners job is an incredibly difficult job because it's four or five jobs sort of rolled into one and you can't really focus on any of the areas that might you might want to. Um plus throwing in on top of that, I know that actually you do some composing yourself. So there's a you've got an interest in music that maybe other people don't. So maybe that adds a sixth job. Um just let's start with you're on a new show. Obviously, Jessica Beale's there, who is you know, a reasonable size star, it would be fair to say, and you're now suddenly doing not just sort of one job for the first time, but as you've said, sort of five jobs all in one. What was it like when you first started at the beginning of this, when you suddenly became the holder of all those jobs and having to manage that?

SPEAKER_03 2:51

Yeah, I mean, I was totally unprepared the the first season. I mean, I had only I'd only staffed on two shows before, which you you named. As what happens now in today's industry often is that um because of short orders, uh, most writers on staff aren't participating in production uh on their shows. You know, they're writing for a five-month period and then production happens later. So I just had no idea what the production process was going to be like. And, you know, you start with, oh, get these scripts ready in time to shoot. And I naively thought, oh, once I get a production draft done, that's I'm through with writing. But you know, you end up writing until the moment the scene is shot, really. You know, actors have notes, there's production issues, uh, there's always changes. And then the really hard thing is prepping episodes while others are being produced. So you're dealing with new incoming directors, prepping those. And then there's the kind of the third job that starts to gear up, especially on a live broadcast schedule, where you have to start editing and locking episodes to get them ready in time to be broadcast while you're shooting. You know, not all shows are created equal that way. You know, there's a lot of shows on streamers that get to just focus on production and then they still have their editing period after, kind of like a feature. But uh on a live broadcast schedule, that really became overwhelming. I was like, wait, I've got to lock episode one, prep episode four, rewrite episode two and three, and I'm still working on breaking episode eight, like all at the same time. And that felt um kind of crazy to me because I had come from the indie film world, you know, as a writer director. And in that world, you know, filmmaking, you get to spend all, you know, you put all your attention on one thing, the writing, the production, and then the editing consecutively. So yeah, it was really tough. And there were times, oh God, I would complain a lot, but only to my assistant who was very patient in listening to me.

SPEAKER_02 5:03

So I I have a follow-up question and I want to stay here for a second. I also noticed that you had this big jump from sort of, you know, mid-level writer to staff, you know, to showrunner. And we've had other showrunners on talking about how people just all run always prepared to be a showrunner. Well, first off, there's no way to prepare to be a showrunner until you're a showrunner. Number one. And number two, there are people who have gone up on staff, you know, worked 15 years, worked their way up, and maybe they they've kind of, you know, if they were lucky enough to stay through production and all the meetings, they kind of have an idea. But again, you never really have an idea until it's all coming at you. So I I want to talk a little bit about the emotional weight of that. There's the excitement, you have the center, this show that's gonna start to air on TV.

SPEAKER_03 5:47

I could show you, I could show you all my doctor's bills.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

That that's that's what I'm getting at. Like, what like what what happens emotionally to you? Do you does it begin to eat at you?

SPEAKER_03 5:56

Are you is it like I mean, honestly, it does. Like, I mean, the center's been a life-changing experience, and I wouldn't trade it for the world, but like I've paid for it with my health, uh, definitely. Like at the end of each season, I was pretty wrecked, and I'd have about two months before people were saying, What's the new story? Who are the new actors? You need to start delivering. And that happened four times over. And here I am sort of finishing up my fourth season. And I'm I definitely feel like it's like I need a break, you know. And a lot of times, you know, the TV machine doesn't really account for psychological well-being, mental health, physical health. So yeah, it's emotionally, it's I find it's tough, you know. There are days when things go great and you feel like you're on top of it all, and you're like, no, this is sustainable, I can do this. And then there's just the the grind of, and I say grind when I when I refer to like eight episodes, which is not what people do when they do 22 episodes, which I can't, I can't imagine, honestly. But just with eight episodes getting through, you know, eight, eight productions, eight sound mixes, eight, you know, rewrites, eight, all of those things is really, really uh exhausting. I like to, I'm detail-oriented too, probably to a fault. And as a filmmaker, that was my entree. So, you know, it's in the details that I think things kind of make or break. So the speed of TV was something I really had to get used to. Uh, and the fact that as a showrunner, you are kind of forced into a relatively like superficial state where you're you're skimming all these different areas. And you know, my my desire is to like stay in one place and really go deep there before I move on to the next. So there was a lot to get accustomed to. And then, like you said, um emotionally, um, you know, just delivering a season of TV to a studio and a network that costs millions of dollars and holding the responsibility for that is just hard. And it follows you on the weekends and it follows you between seasons. And, you know, you might have a bad day or a bad week in the writer's room, but you know, most of the staff is going home and not worrying about the show and the problems you haven't solved yet. That sort of comes down to the showrunner, and that's that's the job, you know, that's not the other writer's faults. Uh, it's just the way it is. But you are definitely psychologically holding that responsibility through it all. And that is, I think it's it's hard to quantify the exhaustion that comes from that, but it's it's definitely significant.

SPEAKER_02 8:43

Uh one of my first shows I was on as a writer was a USA show uh colony. And uh the the show runner there uh used to say that his every time he starts a new season, his his wife says that she's now a TV widow because he's not, I mean, because he's not, I mean he might be there for meals and whatever, but he's there's so much involved in keeping the show running, you know, in his head at all times that he's not there. Is there a toll on, you know, I don't again, we don't, I don't, we don't know each other personally often. I do know the people that come on, but uh to to your family, to to your how do you begin to balance? And now you're in your four. So have you got to better?

SPEAKER_03 9:23

Yeah, I mean, I think I've definitely gotten to a better place. I I know now where to ask and in some cases demand the time that I need, uh, where I was insecure about doing that and just didn't know in the first couple of seasons. So, you know, um I I know that it's so important to get a head start on the scripts, to have time to gestate a story before you're delivering outlines and drafts, that I think it's really important in these sort of shorter episodes, uh episode orders, uh like eight or six or 10, where each episode is so much more important to the story than like a 22-episode arc, for instance, that like you need to be able to get all the scripts in line before you go into production. Um, I think in a way, TV in this shorter order universe is moving more towards or should move more towards uh filmmaking style schedules and away from this outdated mode that is inherited from the age of 22 episodes or 13, you know, as the standard. Um, I'd say emotionally, yeah, it's it's it's um, I'll say this, my my nerves, I I I literally feel sometimes like my my nerve endings have gotten fried, like there's too much adrenaline. And so I'll find myself not as excited by things in my life that normally I would be, you know, see an event, uh, a show, uh a meeting with friends. There's like a there's like I've been hopped up on the high stakes, you know, issues of the production so much that there's almost a burnout. Uh and so I there's like a weird deadening effect that can happen when you're in a state of hyper-vigilance for such a long period of time. And I think that's dangerous to stay in for too long without a significant rest. Um definitely just emotionally, you just have limited energy, and and that goes towards the show. So other places like relationships and family don't don't get it as much. I've definitely found more balance, but still it's just a lot of work, you know. So so to me, I I I think the TV industry should really respect the time between seasons for showrunners to recoup. Um and uh and I think that's happening more and more now with this sort of anthology series, limited series sort of mode that we're in, you know. Uh people aren't as scared of, oh my God, more than six, nine months went by between seasons, we're gonna lose our audience. They found that no. I mean, people will wait two and a half years for Game of Thrones, you know. So um uh I think that's starting to shift, but it's it's really it's really fighting the powers that be and also the the time equals money kind of you know, algorithms that everyone's locked into.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

So I'm gonna ask a couple of questions about how you got into this. So I guess sort of two beginning questions. So one is uh at the beginning of the sinner, and then we're gonna go to sort of before the sinner. So just starting at the beginning, just going back to because I we like to ask these sorts of questions, going back to the it was a lot, you know, you'd you've you've just become showrunner of this big show. Are there any you know, without telling tales that you can't tell, are there any moments where it either nearly went horribly wrong because you made a poor decision or you were just genuinely overwhelmed? You know, was there a sort of near-miss on an actual calamity? And was there any point where you thought this is going to be too much, there is no way I'm gonna be able to do this? Before obviously they went on to do it and it got nominated for things and lasted four seasons. But just you know, how bad was it at the beginning, just in terms of your process and struggling? Um, how bad was it?

SPEAKER_03 13:21

I mean, um I I can't say there was like one moment where there was that crisis moment of oh god, the ship could just sink right now. Um there were incredibly stressful moments in season one and two where, you know, if you watch the show, you know, The Center, it's like there's there's constant flashbacks and setups and payoffs that happen later later in the season. And so you kind of need to know the whole story before you can start shooting it. You know, it's like it's like shooting a feature without having written the final act of the story, you know. And yet that's what we were forced to do. So there were these really white knuckle moments where the the next day on Tuesday, we were shooting a scene that was corresponding for for episode three, say that was corresponding to a payoff in episode eight that we hadn't locked down yet, you know, and there were all of these moments where the story was looping back on itself and we were already setting those first moments in stone. And that was really, really scary. I mean, there were all these like last minute like scramblings, and then once it was committed to, it was done, you know. So it was like we were constantly sort of reshaping and uh figuring out uh those connections. Um, I was fortunate in that I, you know, I had great producers working with me and I had a really strong relationship in the season one with with Jessica Beale. She was so awesome and so open and approachable. And she really, she really came to the to the show like a student who wanted to collaborate with me rather than saying, like, step off, I've got this, let me do my thing. You know, so there was no battling of egos. And we actually worked together. I I coach actors as a sort of side thing that I've done for years until the show, because I don't have time now, uh doing uh Jungian archetypal work and dream work and working on roles. And it's a type of coaching process that I learned from a dear friend of mine in Los Angeles. And Jessica was open to like diving deep with me on that. And so we prepped the role together one-on-one for several months, you know, and had the good fortune of working on the pilot first and having a little break before the show was picked up. So we were really tight going in. And so I really felt she had my back, and vice versa. And that felt really, really good. Um, so I was fortunate. The thing that was probably the most scary moment for me was season two, actually, because the show was an unexpected success. And the network was adamant about maintaining the same air date the following year already. So I had just finished this nine-month sprint to finish season one. We aired in August and September. And in six weeks, they wanted us to start again and finish a whole new season in time for the next August. And that when you're doing an anthology show, when it's been a hit and everyone has expectations, will Jessica be in the new season or not? Is it a whole new story? Isn't it? What is that whole new story? Who's the cast of that whole new story? What's the ending to that new story? All of that done in the same amount of time that we did the first season, but no book, no pilot, eight episodes from a blank page. That was terrifying. And that that season two process was the tightest and most frantic that I've ever worked. And it was after that moment that I was like, I'm never doing this again. Like this was in some ways, um, I was like, is the studio setting me up to fail? Like, does the network want to sync its own show? You know, it was it felt kind of reckless to me uh to push it that fast. But you know, the network felt that part of the success was, you know, the the time that it aired and you know where it was positioned. And so they they wanted to go for that. And so we did, but that was really scary. That was really scary.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

So taking another step back to actually getting the this job as showrunner now. Um, Noah's too nice to say it's probably annoying for people like him because so many people work in these rooms, as he was sort of saying, alluding to at the beginning, people work for the years and never get to showrunner, or they've done their time and you magically appear, as it were. Um you know, we've had other people on here who saw, I mean, no one actually magically appears, of course, but um you know it there happens that way. But I read something when you were pitching this at the beginning. I think uh my understanding is you saw you had some pitches that didn't really land, and then you ended up actually literally writing out your pitch like an essay. Um reading it.

SPEAKER_03 18:22

Um which is well, this was this was something I learned from Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage of Fake Empire, the producers who did, you know, um, oh my god, why am I Gossip Girl and uh you know uh uh the OC. And I worked with them on a pitch that we didn't end up selling, but um I'd been so nervous about pitching up until that point because I had this idea that pitching was this performance where you had to go in with like a few notes scribbled on a page, but appear like you're not even looking at the notes and like you know, deliver this half hour spiel about your show. And that the uncertainty of that was always so terrifying. And I remember Josh saying, oh no, no, no, no, Derek, like you work on a pitch document and you write out every word of that pitch. And then I realized that this is quite a standard thing that no one had told me up until that point. But I was even told a story by one of them about some writer who was so nervous because writers are introverts. Like the last thing we want to do is go perform in a room and talk for a half an hour while a bunch of people listen. I mean, that is precisely why we're writers and not actors, you know. And uh I was told the story of a guy who was so terrified, this super introverted, like kind of asocial writer, uh, who came in. He's like, hello, I'm really nervous. I don't want to talk to anyone. He clutched his pieces of paper and he was like, I'm just gonna sit and read this. And he sat in a chair in the conference room opposite like five execs. He swiveled his chair so his back was to them. So he was looking out the window, and he read his 10 pages and then he left and they still bought the pitch because the pitch was great, you know. Uh, and it's it just goes to show, yes, I mean, there's some personality maybe involved, but truly it's about the document. And when you write out your pitch, you also really know where the weak spots are, you know where the connective tissue is in your show that you haven't actually worked out, and you know where things get slow and disconnected. And when you've perfected that document, I do this every time now. Pitching is so much fun. You go in and you're like, I got this. This is exactly what I want to say and how I want to say. If they don't like it, then so be it. But like, here we go. Um, and that sort of changed my whole approach to pitching. And I don't dread it the way I used to.

SPEAKER_02 20:50

It's totally totally insane, by the way. I'm glad you bring it up about how we have to normally perform these pitches that that you know, ultimately hundreds of millions of dollars might hinge on you doing a great pitch in 200, 300 jobs, or at the very least, just your pay for the next year. And you have to you got to sell yourself. There's this is a quick pitch story that I've never told, but I was pitching Warner Brothers. I might as well just say it. One of the highest levels pitches I've ever done with the great producers. And I walk in the room and the assistant says, Do you want some water? I said, I'd love some water. They put the water bottle right in my hands, and I'm realizing that it's all wet, like the water bottle's all wet and cold. And then the head of Warner, not the head of Warner Brothers, but the head of the development, you know, at Warner Brothers reaches out her hand and says, you know, I'm so and so. And I'm still like processing this wet water bottle. And I reach out my wet hand to shake her hand, and she she shakes my hand and then has a look on her face like, ew. Cold and wet and clammy. And then I'm I'm trying to explain what happened, but she's not listening to me. And I'm like, and I and I just completely can't the rest of the pitch. I'm like, they set me up in that moment for total failure. It's one curveball. Oh God. And it threw me off. And like I think with Zoom now, it makes it easier to read your pitches. And you gave some really good advice about just you know preparing your pitch on the page because we're writers. But going back a little bit, maybe you you mentioned sort of Jungian, you know, use using different techniques to get into actors' heads and help them. And I'm sure that's also helped you. Do you have any techniques to that you use outside of writing and showrunning to help stabilize you, calm you, settle you? I mean, because you mentioned, I mean, you uh, you know, you using Jungian philosophy is definitely its own thing to help an actor. Do you use it to help yourself? Do you use other methods to help yourself?

SPEAKER_03 22:42

Yeah, I mean, I've had a fitful meditation practice, and every time I go into production, I'm like, I'm going to stick with it through production. It's like the first thing that goes uh, you know, when I wake up exhausted, ready for a long day. Um, I mean, the Jungian, the Jungian work that I've done has been the most life-changing for me. And I think anything, whatever mode people find, I think the most useful thing is whatever helps you keep a broader macro perspective on what you're doing. So that you know, you're you're reminding yourself somehow in a daily way, wait, we're all gonna be dead someday, like we're flying through space on a rock and no one knows anything. So uh rather than get it's whatever can get you out of believing wholeheartedly in the stakes that you're facing, because they they can feel life or death so quickly with the amount of money and the time race uh that gets attached to everything. And I think just whatever practice you have that just expands you to be like, okay, right. This is this is only a TV show, you know, um, is really, really important. Uh for me, it's been this Jungian work and other other types of work. Um, I find too, just like off-camera, like the more honest you can be with your cast, the more time you can like really connect through your vulnerabilities and their vulnerabilities. Like it just makes such a huge difference on set, you know, to not be, you know, stepping forward with your persona and their persona and having this kind of air satz uh conversation. You know, actors really need a lot of support. What they do is very scary, especially if it's challenging emotional material. And uh I find like what really what really helps more than anything is just giving them permission. And um, you know, there were a lot of times working with with Matt Bomer in season three of The Sinner, and he delivered an incredible performance that he dug so deep. And we worked together one-on-one a lot. Uh, and there were several moments where I asked the crew in front of him to give him the support as well, so that he felt he had not just me behind the monitor, but like every department person, everyone who was on set around him was like aware of what he was going through as a person embodying those things in the character. And that really, I think gave him such a sense of permission um to go there, you know. So I think I think that can really help, just like staying really grounded and treating people as honestly as you can.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

So a question about what happens next. So you know, you talk about challenging actors, but challenging you now. So you you've you've taken on this job or five jobs, depending on how you want to describe it. It was incredibly hard and it was hard for the first year, obviously, because of the way they turned around the second season, it was very hard. It's still hard now, but at least you know what you're doing and you know what you're sort of walking into. In terms of what comes next, I mean obviously if the center keeps doing well, you may have another couple of seasons of this. But whenever the sinner stops and you move on to the next project, is there a part of you that's obviously because you're a showrunner now, you want to go and show run another big show for you know another network or a stream, or is there a part of you that maybe wants to go into another show, but maybe almost the level below so that you can see another show run and learn from them for when you do it again? Like where does because you obviously missed your education bit. Do you so do you still need it, or would you like to go and get it from somewhere?

SPEAKER_03 26:40

Yeah, I I think about that a lot where I'm like, God, I wish I could just be a fly on the wall in other people's writers' rooms and other showrunners, uh, how they how they structure uh getting through a season. Because you're right. Like I for me it was kind of trial by fire and just kind of common sense and then picking it up. And now I know my particular preferences. So I'm like, oh well, I I want to do this and that a little differently uh on you know, the next season or the next show. Um yeah, I mean, it's a really good point. I mean, I'd I'd love to um to work on other people's shows intermittently with my own. I think it's nice to have periods of time where you're not shouldering the full weight of the show on on your shoulders, but you can actually uh help someone else bear that weight, you know, as like a number two. Um uh or supervising other uh people. You know, there I work with several writers on my staffs who I really like, who I've you know maintained relationships with and would love to help them get their own shows on the air, you know. So uh I think there's a there's a nice sort of opportunity where I am, fortunately, to not just you know forge ahead in in what I want to do, but help other people around me. Because the getting a show on the air is is I often describe it as like you have to be good enough to get up to the roulette table, but at a certain point you're spinning the wheel, you know, uh what your content is is and and whether people want it. Um the the criteria of that change is daily. It's like a weather system, and you can't really, really predict what the weather's gonna be when you go out to pitch that idea you've been working on for four months. So uh yeah, yeah. Um I'm I'm excited to kind of do a little bit of it all that way.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

And talking of doing a little bit of it all, I don't know. Obviously, you know, watching the cinema, it's there's a sort of cinematic quality to the to the shots that's a a little bit beyond TV uh in some ways. Um and obviously I know I think I think you once said that you know it's basically it's not really because of the nature of your show and it's not a procedure in the you know, the obvious sense, it's basically a sort of five-hour movie anyway, that's just broken up. But is there a part of you that wants to uh go to the other side and uh try to the feature side? The feature side. We talk about this a lot because there's there's a lot of grass is greener. I mean, it's uh yeah, yeah. So that's a new challenge. You want to crack at that side of things as well?

SPEAKER_03 29:24

Well, yeah, I mean, you know, I I you know entered into the business, you know, like post-college wanting to be an indie writer director. Like I was inspired by Todd Salons and Alexander Payne and Steven Soderbergh, you know, in the 90s, and and I was really dead set on only doing that like well into my 30s. And you know, you were talking before about like how some T writer TV writers have worked really a long time and never gotten to showrun. I felt I feel that way as a writer-director. Like I worked on so many projects in my 30s that like almost happened, but not quite. Like we almost got this great cast, and then it fell apart. Then we lost the money at the last minute. Call me by your name was a project that I started myself reaching out to the author. I wrote the first drafts of that, that um that project and was going to direct it. And then uh certain things happened with the producers and we parted ways. But um, so I had a lot of frustrating, hard hits uh in the feature worlds. And it wasn't until I sort of exhausted my um, I don't know, uh exhausted myself there that I kind of moved to TV and also moved out of like an art house mentality into a little bit more commercial storytelling. And that's really when my career changed was moving into TV and it's been night and day difference. But I will say I do, I do fantasize about the feature going back to features intermittently, mainly just again, be because of this way the feature is constructed, where you really have time to just focus on the script and then just focus on production and then just focus for like four or five months on the edit. I mean, that just seems like a luxury. I have to do cuts in like less than two weeks, you know. Uh so to have that time, it feels really exciting. That said, I think the I think the limited series, uh, you know, the eight episode story, to me as a writer is an ideal form. Um, I find in features you never have enough time. It's always this battle of being, you know, concise, concise, concise. And so you don't get to have this novelistic depth in a feature. And by the same token, I'm not interested in like a five season serialized story per se, where the audience kind of knows you're treading water sometimes, and you're just it's about just keeping people watching. So to me, I love as a writer writing with an ending in mind, aiming towards that ending the whole way, but having more than just a feature length, having eight episodes to tell a story to me is kind of a perfect form. So that's why I've enjoyed the center so much because the anthology, I'm basically doing a limited series every year, you know, of eight episodes. And um uh I have a few ideas for some more serialized shows and stories, but uh I really like that format. And uh it feels I I I take it as a huge compliment when you said it feels cinematic. Like that's what we try to do every step of the way is treat it like a movie. So uh all of our extra effort is is put towards that.

SPEAKER_02 32:41

The reintroduction of the eight episode uh limited series has been amazing for TV. I think I think it's one of the creation of the resurgence of of the golden age of TV. And I think you know, things like The Sinner or like Midnight Mass, where you they can really focus on this, like you said, novelization of of TV in a way that movies really can't do because it's too compressed in two hours and you don't normally do across five seasons. So it's this like perfect form for what you guys are doing. And I'm really excited to see what people like you continue to do in this space because networks are willing to make this kind of product now. Um, but you know, going into my question, I was actually really curious about what um this is Dan, Dan's great at the hypotheticals, and I rarely do them, but I'm gonna do one for you today. Um it's it's 11:30 at night, and you're just going to bed, assuming you go to bed at 11:30. And um, and it's been a great day, and you're sitting in bed smiling because of things that happened at work, and that's hypothetical A. It's 11:30 at night and it's been a terrible day, and you're you're in bed glowering and you can't you can't get it whatever happened out of your head. What does a great day look like for you, Derek? And what does a terrible day look like for you, Derek, in the same job? And what sort of keeps you thinking at night before you doze off?

SPEAKER_03 33:58

Oh, that's a good question. I mean, the first image that pops into my mind when you said a great day is I just I have a series of days on the center where there's been like a really emotional scene that we shot, like something where the actors have gone deep. And we've been looking forward to this scene for a while. The actors have been preparing for it, and we get through it and it goes really, really well. And it feels that it feels in those, in those moments in certain scenes, it feels like you pierce through all of the to-do list mentality of making the show, and you pierce into something really human through the performances and the scene where you're like you're reminded, oh, this is why I'm doing this. Like, this is why I got excited about the story was to reach this moment. This is why, you know, I'm working like hell for 14 months straight with no break, you know, is is to have the story reach these cathartic moments. And so, like, that's always like coming off of set sometimes in the middle of the night with all the lights on in the woods somewhere, and you're like, we got it, and the actors are buzzing, you know, from from that experience, and you feel really connected on a human level, not just we got it for the show, but just on a human level, like an experience was shared, you know, a ritual was kind of enacted. That's really, really exciting to me, uh, and it's been the basis of a lot of great days on the show. The bad days are always um, the bad days are are are less specific in terms of it's it's less about a catastrophe and more about a, oh my God, I'm so tired and I'm behind on 10 things as I go to bed and I'm going to bed with the weight of that. And and I'm only going to get through two of them tomorrow. You know, that feeling of just like the wave kind of being so much higher than you, and it's breaking over your head and having to live in that space is tough.

SPEAKER_02 36:06

Those are great answers. Uh uh, this, you know, we're we're heading to the time where we have to unfortunately, you know, ask our final question that we ask everybody that that comes on the show. If you had to give one piece of advice to somebody who was, you know, coming into this business, and in this case as a TV writer, uh what advice would that be?

SPEAKER_03 36:27

Oh man. Um I mean, I it depends, you know, what that TV writer wants. Um I think I'll say this from my experience that like hold on to your voice. Um like keep staying true to what interests you, even if it doesn't seem popular. And and uh I just think what can happen in TV with the this constant need for content and what do people want? Like, what can I sell? You can get even just by small degrees, you can kind of lose what makes you you. And I find there's a lot of writing in the industry that's very good and adequate, but not memorable. Um, and when someone lets themselves, you know, vulnerably into their writing, it becomes memorable. So maybe that's what it is. Maybe I'm what maybe what I'm trying to say is uh continue to be vulnerable in your writing, in your interactions with other writers on set in the writer's room. Like continue to be vulnerable because if you're vulnerable, then you're hitting some level of honesty, and that's gonna make it worth it in the end.

SPEAKER_01 37:44

Yeah, that's great advice. And frankly, you've shown that on this podcast by coming on and saying, I didn't really know what I was doing at the beginning. The level of vulnerability that I didn't. We're you know, our audience love that, and that's what this podcast is all about. Um, but we still need people to be able to do that, and we appreciate your your honesty and being so candid with us today. And uh so just want to say, Derek, thank you very much for your time. Obviously, congratulations on managing not to mess it up at the beginning when you didn't know what you're doing and getting four seasons into this, and congratulations on the launch of the fourth.

SPEAKER_03 38:19

And uh thanks for being part of the podcast. Oh, I I enjoyed it a lot. Thanks, guys. I really liked it. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 38:26

Thank you, Derek.

SPEAKER_01 38:28

Thank you for listening to another one of our fantastic episodes. Yet again, I think you'll find that I ask better questions than Noah. Noah, have you got anything to say?

SPEAKER_02 38:38

Um, as always, uh, since you've done most of the talking, I'm just gonna sit here quietly again.

SPEAKER_01 38:44

Surely there's some people to thank.

SPEAKER_02 38:46

Oh, right, right, right, right. Uh, I would love to thank James Launch for doing all of our outro music. Um, as always, I think we owe a big thank you to both of our wives who support us through this endeavor that started in our basement and seems to be ever growing. And if you want to reach out to either Dan or I, I am at at Nebsilin on Twitter. I'm not sure Dan has a Twitter account. Dan, do you have a Twitter account?

SPEAKER_01 39:11

I mean, I I do, but no one cares. All they care about is being on Noah's podcast. So well done, Noah, for conceiving, producing, editing, writing, and asking the best questions of the two of us because you've done all this work and well done you.