David Weil is co-creator, executive producer and writer on Apple TV+’s new SF series Invasion, which launched this week. He’s also executive producer of the Nazi-chasing series Hunters and the SF anthology show Solos. Shortly before Invasion began, he chatted with Paul Simpson…

 

When did you become involved with Invasion?

Audrey Chon, Simon [Kinberg]’s producing partner, spoke to him about the public domain for [HG Wells’] War of the Worlds being available in some capacity [with the expiry of copyright] so Simon was looking for a partner to create this for TV. So we met probably about three years ago.

I came ready with all the characters I wanted to create for the show. I had always wanted to do an adaptation of an alien invasion series. I was so sparked and inspired by War of the Worlds as a kid and just felt such a deep connection to space and to the search for alien life. It was always a passion of mine.

An hour long conversation turned into a four hour-six hour chat in his office. It was such a meeting of the minds, there was such wonderful synergy between us. We dreamt in the same way, we saw the world in both the same and different ways and I think we complemented in the ways our minds worked and this wonderful tapestry of a story that we wanted to create.

It started from that day and I feel so lucky to have created this with him and to work with him. He’s such a master of his craft and of the trade so it was a real thrill.

You say you were intrigued by War of the Worlds as a kid – are we talking the original HG Wells, are we talking about the Marvel Classic Comic, Killraven or which variant of it?

All of the above, I started with War of the Worlds, HG Wells, as a kid and as I grew older Orson Welles’ radio play became incredibly formative. I loved that notion of creating for a society something that you didn’t know if it was fiction or reality. We took that mantra and that ethos to this piece.

There are tons of alien invasion shows and films out there but we wanted to create something that felt real and I think television allows you that ability to live with the characters, to find and explore the nuances in the quiet about their lives. That was the thrill for us, to create something that felt real, that an audience would say, ‘Holy shit… I would choose that’ or ‘I would make that turn’ or ‘I would do that.’ versus what Tom Cruise or Will Smith may do.

This was a story for a global audience and really for the people.

British writer Nigel Kneale told his stories from the point of view of the man in the pub, the man on the bus and how events would affect them. It sounds like you’re coming at it from very much the same idea.

Yes. I think the convention in the canon, especially in the alien invasion canon, is often to centre this on a white western hero, who in some way may be ordinary but extraordinary, right? Our tactic was to turn that convention on its head and to explore this through the lens of global characters who feel like everyday people, who feel like aliens in their own world, who feel alienated in some way and [examine] what happens when an alien invasion hits those characters. That was our premise, our idea of how to make this feel fresh and new and so we’re excited about the show launching globally now.

In terms of the setup, did you work out what day 1 of the invasion was and retro engineer back to what we see on the “last day” in the first episode? Basically moving the people to where you needed them to be at the time of the invasion?

Yes. We knew that we wanted to pick up with our characters in crisis, and the crisis was not the alien invasion. The crisis was a failing marriage or being bullied at school or not being able to see your child at home or a forbidden love story, so we loved that idea.

We started quite organically because I think there was something thrilling about living in these characters’ shoes and when the alien invasion hits, OK what would we do? What would we actually do if this hit us in our lives? And then try to follow the story that way.

Certainly we had a destination at the end of the season, a midpoint and it was a bit of working from the beginning and working from the end and trying to find the middle.

You’ve got very diverse characters and  yet you yourself are coming at it from a white Western perspective. Apart from obviously the writer’s ability to put themself into another person’s headspace, who did you bring in to give it the verisimilitude?

First of all it starts on the page, it starts with the writers. The writers room was incredibly diverse and there were many different voices in that writers room that helped give voice to these characters and bring them to life, but so too we worked with crews from around the world and characters and actors from around the world.

I would say that each of our actors – Golshifteh Farahani, Shamier [Anderson], Billy [Barratt] and Sam [Neill] and Shioli [Kutsana] – of course were co-creators of their own characters. We could write them on the page but they really bring them to life and so there were many changes that were made into their characterisations, mining for authenticity and deepening the dimensions of their experiences and their world. I feel, and I think we all feel, so incredibly lucky that we had a real global team at the helm who were co-creators in this beautiful story.

How far along were you in the writing when you did the casting, because if the input from Sam and the others affects the characterisation, that presumably to a certain extent can affect plot as well as character beats?

Yes, the writing was quite far but I think for any series that I do – and it’s the same on Hunters or Solos or anything I venture to do – collaboration is the most important, especially in television so certain plot points really did change. There were rewrites that were done.

It wasn’t only the incredible input that our characters had but also how they came to life onscreen. Certain characters popped even more than we thought they might, secondary characters really came into their own and so that was a thrill too, really seeing the magic that they conjured on screen and thinking ‘My god, we have to follow this through – maybe this character, this fate doesn’t happen to them. Maybe we go left instead of right.’

So because it was such a long production process, we had the ability to do that.

Just very briefly sidelining, Solos, that felt like you weren’t really building in the same way this was. This feels far more ensemble…

Yes, they’re such different forms and flexing of different muscles. You’re absolutely right and still Solos created so many new challenges. To work with Helen Mirren (right) or Anne Hathaway or Morgan Freeman and to ponder about these characters and bring them to life in certain ways and nuances… to me, each episode of Solos was almost three episodes of TV in one. You still have the three acts in each of those episodes, just like in season one of Invasion we have some great three act structure.

What was the biggest challenge of creating this first season? Not necessarily the show but specifically this first season?

I think that whenever you’re dealing with disparate characters in desperate places there’s always that great challenge. It’s wonderful to have Walter White at the centre of a story and every other character is an appendage from his central journey, but when you have four or five lead characters and they each are the heroes of their own story it becomes an issue of real estate and of time. How do you service each of these stories and have them collide? So ultimately there is an inevitability that these characters by design will collide in some way but it is this grand great puzzle and tapestry.

Every series is [like that] but especially this one where they are so disparate, and like Game of Thrones, they slowly begin to collide and come together. To me that was the greatest challenge.

Hopefully with a bit less blood and a few less purple weddings!

I hope so or maybe not (laughs). No, I do hope so.

Invasion is streaming now on Apple TV+; new episodes arrive each Friday.

Photo of David Weil by F. Scott Schafer and used with permission