The last time SFB caught up with Evil executive producer Rockne S. O’Bannon was a month before the world shut down because of the Covid pandemic, but shortly after episode 6 of season 3 aired on Paramount+, he chatted with Paul Simpson about the last two seasons of the show created by Robert and Michelle King…

 

How much did knowing you were going to be on Paramount+ and you’d got that freedom affect the preparation for this year?

All restraints came off by knowing fully that we were on Paramount+. The first season we were very much an outlier for the CBS network. They’ve had a lot of success with  procedurals, and we were this curious Thursday night at 10 o’clock show that didn’t really match up to anything else on the network. So I’m not sure we would have gotten a third season if we weren’t moved to Paramount+.

I think a lot of that is that the CBS executives really like the show plus it’s a testament to how much they love and trust [creators and executive producers] Robert and Michelle [King]. So [for the] second season, they picked us up after four episodes and we were told at the time it was the earliest pickup for a first season show in CBS history.

We were gratified to get the early pickup but yes, there were expected restraints when we were on CBS in terms of scares and edginess and language. I found on Farscape that it’s just so tough for actors to have to downshift their language, because you’re acting something that’s artificial. That’s why I came up with ‘frell’ as a substitute for fuck on Farscape because it allowed the actors not restrain themselves. So yes, that was a big, freeing change for our actors on Evil as well.

The second season was interesting because we wrote the entire season and filmed most of it thinking we were going to be on the CBS network and then, I’m not sure maybe while filming episode six or seven, CBS said they were going to premiere the season on Paramount+ instead. I know Robert and Michelle went in and made some adjustments on set, language wise and that sort of thing. One of the episodes they literally went back in with a single closeup on Kristen and dubbed in the word fuck. It may be the first historical incident where someone went in and instead of dubbing in a milder word when the actor on stage was saying ‘fuck’ it was exactly the opposite.

I think there were a couple of big differences because now we can do whatever the story requires and so it just opens up a lot more scares – but I think we were doing well with the scares. We don’t want to go over the top with them anyway, that’s not our interest to just do gross out for gross out’s sake.

For me, it allows us to do things that are also humorous – for example, the demon who shows his ass and things like that, we wouldn’t have been able to do on CBS. We can do it on Paramount+ and it’s that cagey blend of horror with humour that I think the show does very well. And so much of that is Robert. Robert’s the master of that.

The other thing that I think is most significant is that I don’t know that we would have gotten a third or a fourth season if we weren’t on Paramount+. As much as the CBS broadcast network appreciated the show, we weren’t a ratings juggernaut. Plus we have a lot of visual effects and practical creatures and the cost of those things adds up, so I’m guessing that when it was time for a decision about a third season, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the broadcast network executives would have gone, ‘We love it but we have nothing to match it to, it’s really hard to program. We love you guys but we had to make the tough decision to end the series after two seasons.’

I think getting on Paramount+ has given us a new lease on life and now we’re going to head into the writers room in September to start season 4.

I suppose the other benefit is that you’re not restricted on length of episode. It’s felt paced right for whatever length the episode has been.

That’s a really good observation. It is wonderful to not have that constraint.

I’ve worked in network and streaming and cable and whenever an artist has certain governors it can actually fuel your creativity because you’ve got to figure out how to do that, so there’s a certain value to it as well. But if you’re someone who does have some discipline in terms of not demanding ‘This has to be an hour and a half episode, I love every moment of this!’ then yes, it’s just great to not have to hit a very specific target run-time down to the second as is required by network TV.

Presumably there’s a budget for the season. If you start doing lots of 55 minute episodes rather than 42 minutes for each of the ten episodes, you haven’t got as much to spend per minute on screen.

We haven’t adjusted our script length at all. We’re still shooting for production drafts in the 50s, 55 or 57. I don’t think we’ve ever had a 60 – in the world of TV, you don’t want to be over 60. In the old days it was 65 or whatever but this is a good sweet spot for us.

I know on Cult for example for the CW we were shooting 48 page scripts and that was strictly for budgetary reasons – that took an incredible amount of discipline to get to 48 pages.

On this show because we’re not a lawyer show or doctor show, there’s a lot more description needed. You need to describe the creatures more, the demon more, you have to describe the exotic action more than you would if you were doing, say, a medical show.

Season 2 obviously was being done under the strictest of Covid protocols, and everybody was finding their feet with that. How much did the show alter once you worked out how you were going to be able to shoot it? Did you go back to scratch completely or was the attitude, ‘These are the ideas we’ve got, how are we going to bring them to life now?’

It’s a great question. The first part of this is just obviously the discussion in the writers room going into this. We started the writers room in April I think of 2020 which was all on Zoom so we were adjusting to that new experience which actually worked out great. We adapted well to it, very very well.

It’s interesting. Traditionally, and of course for our first season, we were all together. You start at 10 and you go to 6 and it’s a full day in person. On Zoom we could do maybe four or five hours and then we were all just ready for a nap – but having said that, we got a lot done and it was still fun. It focuses you in a really nice way.

There’s a lot to be said about it being in person, there may be some ideas and some preassociation that might happen more readily if you’re just around a table but Zoom really worked well for us.

Anyway, we were adapting to that and the big discussion, like all the shows at that time was, do we integrate Covid into our storylines? It’s a pandemic, the world has changed, do we bring this into the show? Does this become a story point in some way?

We talked very earnestly about that and my point of view at the time was people don’t want to see a show about Covid, plus it was evolving so rapidly that when the show finally aired – and since we didn’t know when we were going to shoot, we kind of expected that we wouldn’t be airing in the fall on the traditional network calendar – what we were filming may be wildly past where the world was when it finally aired.

Plus season 1 ended with the cliffhanger that Kristen had just murdered LeRoux, so the natural progression would have been to open season 2 with that (as we did). And where would Covid fit in if we just picked up immediately? One option discussed in the writers room was whether to do one of those things where you start season 2 and it’s now six months or a year later and then you slowly reveal what happened in the interim. And that way we could fit Covid in as much or little as we wanted. Ultimately, we decided to just plough on, not make an issue of it and essentially create our own little fantasy world, since it’s a fantasy show anyway, where Covid wasn’t a part of it.

Did you just stick with the same stories you had intended for season 2?

Certainly early on we had no idea when we’d be able to shoot, what the protocols would be, any of that sort of thing. CBS itself was scrambling to figure it out themselves and Michelle made sure that whatever the official protocols ended up being, our show was even more protective of everybody. Because of that, I think we only had a couple of Covid incidents, very well contained.

As for the stories, since we didn’t know what we may or may not be able to film, we just broke the stories as we wanted to, aware that things might have to adjust. Right up front we were going to do a haunted subway for the season premier.

We scrapped that because in the earliest days of returning to production we just wanted to be on our sets, in that controlled environment, as much as possible. We started out by segmenting the cast and crew by zones: there was a zone with the actors and makeup and the director, and then there were other separate pods of production personnel working in proximity to each other who stayed together. Each zone would social distance from the others, only having lunch beside members of their own zone, that sort of thing. That’s why we scrapped the subway story for our premier, but It was much easier to control that on your own sound stages, not out among the general public on location.

Other than that one subway story, we didn’t really scrap any other full story. We were discovering the parameters as we went along.

For example, once production began, episode by episode they’d say, ‘Can we put this scene in Ben’s apartment? Let’s put that conversation there as opposed to somewhere else like a bar.’

This season, Leland seems to have stepped up his campaign quite a bit. Is that because you’ve got more access to Michael? It just feels like we’ve got more Leland and, obviously, more Sheryl going on than we did.

No, it’s not for any external reasons other than we obviously adore him in terms of what he brings to the show.

I think as you’ll see, as the current season three unfolds, it’s all a little more serialised. In the first two seasons, because the scripts were prepared and written for network, each episode had a very specific A story, their case of the week.

This season we still have a case our characters are on, but there’s also a new greater emphasis on the stories of the main characters as they relate to their personal brushes with evil. The latter part of this season, you’ll see even more of a shift in the emphasis from stories focused on outside characters to our regulars.

Leland is very much key to the overarching Evil saga so watching his moves is especially delicious. I love writing Leland, he’s great fun to write. I don’t know what that says about me (laughs) but I do love writing Leland. I think that cynical, that bent point of view, appeals to me or comes naturally to me for some unfortunate reason.

As Michael said, he infects the show.

Exactly! And what’s great is that it’s not just Leland functioning in his own evil world. He is very much tied into Kristen’s life because of his interest in Lexis and obviously there’s the Sheryl of it all.

Sheryl, to me, is one of the most interesting and complex characters on the show because there’s so much going on there. She’s a grandmother who clearly loves her grandchildren but is also becoming more and more deeply involved in the evil world and that’s fulfilling something in her. When we met her she was just this online poker player, available to take care of the kids; she didn’t have any missions or whatever her personal interests had been. We understood that she was sort of bohemian in her youth, but it seemed that that had all been suppressed in her… but now she’s found an incredible outlet.

She did it first through just online dating with Leland, who stirred something in her but that was just on a romantic level. That stopped, but it didn’t stop her from continuing to go in even deeper with him, beyond the personal relationship. It’s now totally fulfilling her. It’s a really interesting tightrope for her to walk because it does involve her grandchildren and potentially apparently Lexis in particular.

And now this whole thing with Andy too, whom she’s clearly never thought much of. In some twisted way, she feels she’s actually protecting Kristen’s family even though she’s dividing wife and children from their husband and father.

The relationship between the three central characters, David, Kristen and Ben: is that something that you look at in each episode or is it something that you’ve got an overall feel for the season, from where they start to where they finish? Is that triangle still at the heart of the show?

It very much is. You spend the first week or two in the writers room talking about season arcs and each of the characters, where they are and where they could possibly go, and you take each character and plan an arc for them. Then obviously it gets adjusted as the season goes along.

Obviously, David and Kristen because of the kiss at the end of the last season and all that, there’s a relief of tension and then a drum beat, a sub rosa drum beat or heartbeat, through it that’s just there. The audience is always aware of it. So it’s really nice because it just simmers on its own, there’s no action required to just let that play.

In terms of their beliefs I think it’s finding a really interesting place because yes when the series began David was obviously David, the priest in training, so very much a believer. Kristen was a non believer who had been a Catholic. She’s turned a corner and, decades ago presumably, had put that behind her. Ben was just a very pragmatic science guy, empirical science guy.

But why I think it’s getting really interesting now is with Kristen. For example at the end of season 2 David helped her confess – which is an entirely religious act. I guess she could tell herself, ‘It’s just helping me psychologically’ but she’s still doing it. Even though she’ll say out loud, ‘Bullshit, I don’t believe… I’m not a believer’ her actions are otherwise, so I think she’s in this interesting place.

And Ben, who’s always been the empiricist and very steadfast and continues to be so, we keep throwing things at him that are inexplicable. Things that we may not have answers for at the moment, but that doesn’t mean they’re supernatural. So it’s got to be very hard for Ben to process that especially when he’s working beside David, primarily someone who is a steadfast believer and someone whom Ben certainly admires. David is taking him into situations that are obviously undetermined.

All that, I think, is an interesting challenge for Ben. He was brought up as a Muslim and has that bubbling in the back of his mind. I think that’s one of the reasons why we had him join the science club this year because we thought it was natural for him to try to seek out others who are more of his herd. Just to recentre himself in what his personal beliefs are. But then at the same time as he’s doing that, he’s going out on cases and having things happen and happen to him, personally, that are unexplainable.

And obviously, the nature of television being what it is, there are constant new things going on. Whereas he might, in the real world, encounter two or three of these things, he’s encountered thirteen in season 1, ten in season 2 etc.

Exactly, yes. He’s a hard rock to crack, not that he will ever crack but…

What’s great is that because you’ve got those three prototypes, if you will, at levels of belief, there’s potentially someone for anyone to identify with. You can look at David and say, ’OK, I’m a believer, so I appreciate his certitude’. With Ben, others may say, ‘I understand his absolutism as a non believer,’ and probably end up asking themselves, ‘What would I do if I were challenged with that?’

And then there’s Kristen in the middle. A mum in a fairly traditional family situation. A former believer now a professed non believer. But also open to turning to faith, albeit briefly, when the chips are down. There’s a lot to identify with her as well.

To me, that’s when drama is working at its best: when the audience is thinking, ‘What if I were in that situation?’ That’s the glue that holds us all to stories because we ourselves have personalised it, thinking in terms of what would they do in that situation.

I think the characters are the strength of the show.

That’s all from Robert and Michelle. Look at all the shows they’ve created. The characters are fascinating, surprising, multifaceted, and so often just plain funny, I was a fan of theirs before they invited me to be part of Evil. And this entire writing staff is truly remarkable. We’ve kept the same staff through all three seasons, which is a terrific feat. But there’s a fantastic alchemy that exists among us.

The characters are just incredibly rich and very surprising. We all work very hard to take characters down unexpected emotional paths,

It’s finding a way of making it surprising without it feeling jarring. It’s that fine line between them.

It’s things like, for example Leland’s demon psychologist. That was entirely in the Robert and Michelle rewrite. It was not conceived in the room, it was not something that we had discussed at all. It was simply when they were doing their executive producer pass on the script, that just came to them. So I’m reading the script and suddenly this scene shows up! It breaks your brain because you’re like, ‘This is so awesome and so out of left field.’ That sort of stuff makes it fun for the rest of us to be surprised by.

 

Evil season 3 is running on Paramount+ with new episodes every Sunday; seasons 1 and 2 are available in the UK via Alibi