The Franchise Cast Talks Female Empowerment and Overlooked Roles On Set at New York Comic Con
HBO’s new series The Franchise follows a crew working on the set of a superhero film franchise called Tecto. The film stars Adam (Billy Magnussen) and Peter (Richard E. Grant) with the crew consisting of first AD Daniel (Himesh Patel), award-winning director Eric (Daniel Brühl), producer Anita (Aya Cash), script supervisor Steph (Jessica Hynes), studio representative Pat (Darren Goldstein), personal assistant Bryson (Isaac Powell), and second AD Dag (Lolly Adefope). The comedy series follows all the characters as they navigate the grueling world of filmmaking and the chaos that ensues. The cast, including showrunner Jon Brown and writers Rachel Axler and Juli Weiner, met up at New York Comic Con for a special panel that included an exclusive screening of the third episode.
Filmmaking proves to be an overwhelming and heavily involved project with many holding a lot of responsibilities as seen in The Franchise. Brown shared that casting these specific roles was the hardest thing to get right in the series, but was interested in the role of first AD’s because they do all the work and no one acknowledges it. Weiner also revealed the process behind getting the first hand accounts of filmmaking. “We just had a lot of Zooms and meetings with people who work in the industry and work on these films,” she said. “Just really getting a sense of the passion, the hard work, and the effort that goes into all of this. It was just apparent talking to everyone who’s dedicated their career in life to building these things. Experiences vary, a lot of these things can go really well and when they go wrong, they really go wrong. I think just getting a wide spectrum of experiences and people think more candid talking to us under the cover of darkness so we got to hear stories that people wouldn’t normally say in public.”
Though the series centers around a fake superhero film, Brown explained the delicate world building around Tecto. “The world building on a show like this is really crucial. We spent a lot of time talking about that in the room,” he said. “We wrote a really detailed treatment for the movie, spent a lot of time thinking about other properties, what phase we were in, where Centurios 2 fits, what comes out of it. But the show moves really quickly, so sometimes you only catch that detail in the background. We’ve got it all in our heads whenever we need it.”
Brown continued: “It’s funny, I don’t think any of the cast have any idea what’s happening in the movie. We were shooting in Scotland and there was a scene where Richard is walking out of this green hula-hoop that’s going to be a portal and Billy is following him. They were asking questions and I was like, ‘Do you want to know what’s happening in the scene?’ and Billy’s like, ‘Yes,’ and Richard’s like, ‘Honestly, don’t give a f***.’ It was a really hot day. He’s got a helmet on and this really big robe and he’s all ‘Genuinely, I don’t give a s***.’ So it’s like five minutes of me telling Billy all this stuff about Tecto.”
The latest episode deals with conversations about misogyny and negative fan reactions to female-led superhero films. Cash opens up about her experiences on set and the feeling of empowerment. “I feel very lucky that I’ve mostly felt pretty empowered to speak up on set,” Cash shared. “I think things are changing and it's one step forward, two steps back often. Even if there’s a corrective, I remember someone saying something to me like, ‘Do it ditsy, like you’re with your girlfriends,’ and I remember going, ‘Well that's not a great note for a lady,’ and he said, ‘Oh, you’re right. Sorry about that’. That’s how that interaction is supposed to go, we’re not perfect.”
Adefope spoke about portraying multifaceted female characters. “I think Dag is a very well-rounded, messy, complicated, flawed character,” she said. “I think a lot of the time when people write female characters, they feel a responsibility to make them wise and perfect in some way and not show the flaws because they don’t want it to seem like stereotypes. It was quite fun to inhabit Dag in all of her annoying sensibilities and quick witted unhelpful responses.”
The cast and crew come from various backgrounds in the entertainment industry including, Powell whose experience in theater helped him navigate the scenes. “There’s all these really big group scenes. There’s a kind of rhythm that you learn when you’re doing theater where you are just exchanging so much energy,” he said. “It's kind of like a big game of ping pong where everybody’s throwing energy to each other. That first big shot that you see in the show where you are introduced to all the characters, we kind of rehearsed it like a play almost. There's so many incredible theater actors on the show, you can see Billy now Off-Broadway and Sam Mendes is a theater director. I can't really pinpoint an exact sort of translation of that skill, but I would say the really beautiful rhythm that is in the writing here is something I understood from doing theater.”
The first three episodes of The Franchise are out now on Max, with new episodes premiering every Sunday.
