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I saw thatThe Magicianswas renewed for a fifth season.
Congratulations!Thank you.
Were very excited and grateful.
But yeah, a lot of stuff in the show is pure invention on the part of the writers.
The books put Quentin at the center story-wise, but also emotionally.
Inyour show, hes not the only one.
That starts in Lev Grossmans books, because he created this protagonist whos an unlikely sort of hero.
Hes a guy who dresses up to go to Comic-Con.
Hes just the guy we followed into the story.
We treat each of them as the star of their own movie.
In season four, none of the characters remember who they are.
How hard it is to essentially be starting from the beginning again?
Was that a fun thought experiment?Well, it was engineered to be frustrating.
Was there any character who was particularly frustrating in this new situation?
It would be so much easier if they could use their powers.It felt like that with all of them.
Suddenly, we were there.
It was really fun.
Has the room always wanted to write a procedural cop magic show?
Why is that something that you tried to avoid?No, no.
Its still going and its fantastic, but I had worked on about 150 episodes of that show.
Were all more fond of the storytelling where every episode feels like its own little bespoke universe.
Im always pleased when it feels like an episode has an identity.Us too.
That makes me think about your other show,You.
To make the first season ofYou, we had to have a really intense conversation about that.
When somebody would talk about, Who is the central person in the story?
I was all ready to go.
I had been talking about that for several hours.
Did you seethe video of Millie Bobby Browntalking about how much she loves Joe?I heard about it.
When you read Caroline [Kepnes]s book, he gets creepy almost immediately.
When I sat down and thought about that, that is really disturbing.
All you’ve got the option to really do is investigate.
I dont see it as our jobs to preach to anybody about how theyre supposed to feel.
Whether fans of Joe will feel upset or validated?I dont think too much about that, personally.
And I cant say hes fully reformed.
It isnt like all hes getting shelter dogs adopted in season two.
Hes doing some pretty crazy shit.
And the show has never made much of an attempt to condone what hes doing.
The thing we always remember is that hes not any kind of a professional killer.
He doesnt consider himself a killer at all.
And these things come back to haunt him.
Going into the second season, are you tempted to further prove the point that hes a bad person?
Again, I dont think our intention has ever been to tell you how to feel about Joe.
Its just the addition of magic that makes things so murder-y.
