[Eliot and Quentin are sitting on the altar at Castle Whitespire remembering the Mosaic. Both of them say peaches and peaches, as “Evolve” by Phoria plays in the background. The two discuss growing old, dying, and having a family. ] CLARA: Welcome to Episode 305 of Physical Kids Weekly, “A Life in the Day.” I’m Clara. DANI: And I’m Dani. CLARA: And today we’re joined by Mike Moore, who wrote this week’s episode. Welcome, Mike! MIKE: Hey guys! Good to be here! CLARA: Before we get into the episode, there are a few questions we try to ask everyone the first time we have them on and since this is your first time on-- MIKE: Oh so the hazing part of the show? CLARA: Oh, no no no! Just the fun interview part and actually not all of these are things we ask everyone, just some of them. Dani, I'm gonna let you take it away. DANI: Alrighty, let's start with some basics. Why did you get into television? Were there particular reasons that inspired you? MIKE: Television specifically? I knew I wanted to write and I had wanted to write for a long time since I was probably in high school, I guess. But television specifically just because in Hollywood, in the industry, TV is where the writer gets respected the most. And also in terms of being able to pay bills when you're out of school-- CLARA: Yeah we know what that's like. MIKE: Yeah, like if you get on a show, then you have steady pay, but just trying to sell spec. features can lead to a lot of barista-ing. [LAUGHTER] CLARA: Yeah, that makes sense. Were there particular shows that inspired you when you were growing up? MIKE: I mean, yeah. So I was in college right when Mad Men and Breaking Bad were really taking off. I actually got to do an internship at AMC during that time. So those two stick out in my mind especially, but looking back more long term, oddly enough The Simpsons has [CLARA: How fun] been a huge influence. Not just in terms of like, it's hysterical, but also it's just a smart show. Like, I'll watch episodes from freaking twenty years ago-- Oh, I'm sorry. Can we-- CLARA: Yeah. DANI: Yeah, we can curse. CLARA: We do it all the time. MIKE: Okay, cool. Like, I'll go watch an episode from fucking twenty years ago and it's still smarter than 80%, 90% of the stuff on now. It was just such sharp, quick, witty writing. CLARA: Yeah. And it's still on. MIKE: Yeah, I think we can all agree that the quality may not have stayed with it this whole time, but the OG Simpsons was really some fantastic TV. CLARA: There's still some solid episodes too. It's hard to keep that up over what are we up to now? Twenty-five seasons now? MIKE: Twenty-NINE. I thought it was about my age, which is insane to think about. CLARA: Absolutely. I'm also curious how you got involved with The Magicians in the first place because everyone we’ve talked to seems to have a different story. So yeah, what's yours? MIKE: Mine was, it was through John and Sera, the showrunners. I worked with them on Aquarius, which was a show John ran-- CLARA: That's right. MIKE: And I was a writer's assistant for them there. So they brought me over to Magicians to be a writer's assistant and that's pretty-- I don't know if there's any aspiring TV writers listening-- but that's actually the best way to get into a room. Somehow get yourself into that kinda position. But being a writer's assistant for them for two seasons of Aquarius and one season of Magicians, that was like my grad school. That's where I got to learn how they broke down story, how they broke down characters, how you would sort of piece together an episode in a way that's dramatically captivating but still also entertaining, and so being able to learn under them for three seasons before getting staffed was so nice and such a help. CLARA: Did you know the source material? Did you know The Magicians books before you came on? MIKE: By the time we started season one, I did. [LAUGHS] But when the pilot got picked up, when Syfy picked up the pilot, that's when I started reading them. So there was a little bit of cramming in there, but yeah. CLARA: Did you feel like, when you read them, did you feel like there was any particular part that connected with you especially? MIKE: Yeah so reading the first book was, cuz I'm not a big fantasy reader before the show, so I think a lot of the... I think a lot of what Lev does is subverting a lot of tropes. But being new to fantasy, I didn't really recognize specifically what he was doing at that point. So my attention was more focused on just how he described the work of magic and I think that what I learned most from book one was the way he talks about their fingers, like they tut 'til their fingers ached and they'd read books until their eyes were bluing and couldn't read any more. And I just flashed to watching Fort Knox or like football practice or any athlete playing a sport, like yeah it's like you watch a game on Sunday and you're like, oh these guys get to play, play the game for a living, that's great! What you don't see is the tutting practice or the studying-- CLARA: Yeah. MIKE: So him shining a light on the mundanity of the work, I guess, that goes into the polish was [what] I really engaged with. CLARA: Cool. DANI: So how is working on an adaptation different from working on a completely original show? MIKE: I mean every advantage is also a... it's not a hindrance, but it's a challenge. You know there's-- we have so many characters and events and plot lines to choose from, this whole mythology to pick from, which is just a great wealth of material and resource obviously. But at the same time there's balancing it verses we don't just want to tell the story that's in the book, which you could probably tell that a couple episodes in, but I think we reached a point now where plot wise, we burned through a fair amount of stuff and a majority of stuff we have left is a lot of the stuff that comes in book three, which is more about resolving some of these arcs, which we're not really ready to get to yet. CLARA: Yeah, we hope we get a few more seasons. MIKE: Yeah! For this interim, we're in this cool place where we've done a large majority of the stuff in the books, but we don't want to get to the end stuff yet, so there's sort of this big, fun bucket of characters and events to choose from. There's a couple scenes that come to mind that we haven’t gotten to yet and I probably shouldn't say any of those right now. CLARA: Spoilers! MIKE: But I know that they have extremely strong emotional resonance and are just dramatic as hell because Lev's a great writer. He writes great scenes. And now we're kinda in this position where we're at a buffet and we still have room on our plate so we can kinda grab what we need to. I think I'm hungry, maybe that's why I went with the buffet. [LAUGHTER] CLARA: Yeah I definitely feel you. I am hungry. DANI: Yeah. MIKE: Yeah so right now it's like we have all the benefits of writing an adaptation without having to feel tied to a specific story we have to tell. CLARA: Yeah. DANI: Yeah. So a lot of the writers on the show have fairly distinctive voices. What do you think makes your episodes unique? MIKE: Ummm, the masturbation jokes probably. [LAUGHTER] MIKE: But besides that, that's actually a really good question. I mean as a writer on a show, your job is not to necessarily write your voice, it's like, this is Sera's show so whenever I'm writing I think about it through that lens and in the same breath, she does really give us a lot of freedom of expression to put in as much jerk off jokes as we want. [LAUGHTER] But I think that's a really great question and I don't feel like I have a great answer for it. Whenever we're in the room and we're talking, cuz we talk about each episode before the writer goes off to write it, and whenever we do that, it's this, it's like the final class presentation and everybody gets to chime in. It's basically like you pitch out the episode from start to finish and it usually takes an hour and a half or two hours sometimes and as you're pitching it, people chime in with their thoughts. Like sometimes it's this doesn't work, and maybe change this, but most times it's just suggestions and touch ups so-- CLARA: They develop it. MIKE: Yeah. So I feel like by the time I have a script, a lot of the stuff in there, most of the stuff in there, is stuff that people said that I [have] typed. [LAUGHTER] Yeah I think the community aspect of how we approach the episodes is definitely not unique to the show, but it's certainly something I think The Magicians writers room prides itself on and is better because of it. CLARA: That's great. DANI: Yeah, so who’s your favorite character to write for? MIKE: Margo. Without a doubt. CLARA: That was so fast. MIKE: Margo is SO much fun to write. I mean, each character-- when I'm feeling grumpy, Penny's so much fun to write. When I'm in that writing mode where I feel like my heart is directly connected to the keyboard, I feel Quentin and Julia and Alice are so much fun to write. But writing Margo is just, I can not tell you. That's what I do for free. I mean they pay me for some of the other stuff. Just cuz Summer can just pull off the most absurd, the most vulgar lines. CLARA: Yeah and they sound natural from her. MIKE: Yeah! And she puts this delicious spin on them that I would never in a million years imagine. CLARA: She elevates your masturbation jokes! MIKE: Exactly! Exactly! Like writing Margo scenes are just a blast. Usually because they also have Tick in them too and-- CLARA: Oh he's so great. MIKE: He's such a delight. DANI: Bless. CLARA: Oh yeah, Dani was talking about how much she loves Tick in the last episode. MIKE: Yes! DANI [LAUGHING]: Yes I do! I love him. CLARA: He's so funny. DANI: I love that actor. He's so funny. CLARA: Rizwan. MIKE: Rizwan. He is great. He has a great ability to just take the most just purely exposition kind of line and make it so hilarious and engaging. CLARA: That's something that Summer does really well too. There's some episode last season where she had this monologue that was mostly exposition and it was only the second time watching it that I realized that's what was going on because the first time I was just so engaged. MIKE: Margo always has, now that we're talking about it, and this might be, Margo never hides her point of view or her goals so they're always just there. They're bold and that's a good thing. They're a benefit. It's part of her character, part of what makes Margo, Margo, and what makes Summer's performance especially shine is that. And maybe subconsciously that's why I like her the most, I don't know. CLARA: Well let's flip the question too. Are there particular types of stories you like to tell? MIKE: Oh um, definitely the challenging stories, like in season two it was not easy or fun to write, but Julia's abortion storyline. It was one of those where it was not fun to write obviously, I would be worried if someone relished in that, but it was a story that we felt really strongly about. When you feel really strong about a story like that, you just really really want to tell it and I think that's something that I personally love, not just about writing on the show, but also about Sera and John, Henry as a new EP this year, is that they really encourage us to find those stories that aren't going to be comfortable, but they're stories we really want to explore and just look at the human aspect of it. CLARA: Speaking of Henry Myers, when we had him on for season one, one of the things we asked him about was his literary preferences. So for you, what sorts of books do you like to read and what are you reading now? MIKE: I don't know if I necessarily have a favorite. Like in general, American Westerns like Cormac McCarthy, are my very quick to go for when you're asked what's your favorite, who's your favorite author, whatever. and your mind just goes blank. But I've definitely gone more into non-fiction lately. I'm reading Dreamland right now. It's about the opioid epidemic, another story that's not fun to live in and is a very compelling story. It's sorta like the double narrative about black tar Heroin in the US while Oxycontin is advertised and marketed and how it sorta created a perfect storm that led to what we have today. But I think besides that.. What else am I reading right now? See, when you ask me my mind goes blank. CLARA: I know how that is. If I didn't have Goodreads, I wouldn't know what was on my list. [LAUGHTER] I'm always reading like four things at once and I can almost never name one. DANI: I think according to Goodreads I'm reading like fourteen books and half of them I've probably abandoned. CLARA: You gotta create yourself an abandoned shelf. I'll tell you how to do that. DANI: I do have one actually. I'm just bad at updating it. [LAUGHTER] MIKE: I do read a lot of newspaper articles because you get a sense of accomplishment cuz you finish it in like, thirty minutes. CLARA: Oh yeah. I have my Wash. Post subscription. MIKE: Yeah. DANI: I think at least ten books of mine a year on Goodreads come from finishing a thirty-page comic so I feel. MIKE: Nice. [LAUGHTER] DANI: So moving on, aside from The Magicians what do you watch? MIKE: Oh! [SILENCE] This is one of those same ones. Okay, here's what I just finished. I just finished End of the F***ing World which is-- CLARA: Oh I loved that! MIKE: So good! CLARA: It's SO good. MIKE: Yeah, the way that show just dived right into the deep end of the pure humanity of telling a story about an adolescent who's going through puberty and realizing he might be a psychopath was just... I've never seen that before. DANI: I haven't seen it yet, but just from the trailers I was like, this makes me think if Holden Caufield met American Psycho so. MIKE: Yeah. CLARA: That's actually a really good summary, yeah. MIKE: Are you sure you haven't watched it? DANI: Yeah. [LAUGHTER] I might have thought it, but. MIKE: What I love about it most, especially earlier in the season, how whenever I was watching it, I felt like I was feeling two things at the same time. Like, I cared him so I wanted him to succeed, but also-- CLARA: Murder. Murder is bad, MIKE: And I didn't want her to die. And those are infalic. I'm not spoiling anything, don't worry Dani. [LAUGHTER] DANI: Okay, okay. MIKE: I'm watching that. I'm finishing episodes right now, the last season, La Blanc on Showtime. And that's just a pure delight. It's like very inside baseball, for showbiz. So it's a bit of a guilty pleasure but yeah, it's good. That and the newest season of Black Mirror. CLARA: Oh yeah. MIKE: It's not as fucked up as I thought it would be. CLARA: Ah. Just wait. Just wait. MIKE: Cuz I'm like four in-- DANI: I don't think anything can beat that episode with the guy, like the guy who's into child pornography, and then they like, troll him. CLARA: Oh yeah. DANI: That one was fucked up. MIKE:That was like my favorite fucking episode-- the was so good, the video game episode. DANI: That one really played me for a trip. MIKE: Yeah. And I think a lot-- I think that was such a great really haunted house episode. It was written really well. It was directed almost perfectly. DANI: I also like the one with Bryce Dallas Howard. MIKE: Yeah! Me too. DANI: That one was really, it was too real almost. I was like, we're getting into this territory. MIKE: Yeah, Yeah. [LAUGHTER] DANI: Yeah. MIKE: Well they have that in China now. The social points system. DANI: Oh wow. MIKE: It's being rolled out in China. DANI: Oh no. MIKE: Yeah. Yeah. Check it out. CLARA: Wait. I don't know who the actor is so which one are you talking about? Are you talking about the MeowMeowBeenz episode or the one that seemed like a Sliders episode? DANI: It was the first one of last season where she-- where they have the app where they are all rating each other. CLARA: Yeah that's the MeowMeowBeenz episode. Okay. [LAUGHTER] MIKE: I love how you've named them different titles in your mind. CLARA: I named them--well in Community there's the same episode-- MIKE: Oh that's right! DANI: Oh yeah! CLARA: It's MeowMeowBeenz. DANI: MeowMeowBeenz. I forgot about that. [LAUGHTER] CLARA: But the other one I was thinking of was the one where they-- on no, never mind. That's an episode of The Orville. That's not an episode of Black Mirror. MIKE: You might be the first episode besides David Reed to mix up The Orville and Black Mirror. CLARA: Well okay, look. In fairness right, this is an episode where they go to a planet that seems like its an alternate reality where everyone is rating each other, kinda similar to the MeowMeowBeenz things except for the consequences are much greater if you get a lower rating you can die so. DANI: Oh wow. CLARA: You can be sentenced to death. Sorry, spoilers, whatever. I think it happens in the first ten minutes, it's fine. So in my defence, that's the most Black Mirror sounding show to The Orville. MIKE: Yeah, I mean definitely. CLARA: But it's in The Orville tone. The Orville is my guilty pleasure cuz I love it but I also feel like it's not good. MIKE: Yup. CLARA: And I don't know what to do with that. [LAUGHTER] MIKE: Had David Reed come to this podcast yet? CLARA: No, we'd love to have him on! We need to make that-- now we're actually lucky enough, in season three that we now have like a backlog of people we need to set up episodes with. MIKE: Well at least talk to him about The Orville. CLARA: Okay! I'll pin that; I'll remember it. [DANI and CLARA talk over each other] CLARA: What was that? [Audio cuts out on DANI's end] CLARA: There was definitely a little cutting out there, but I'm guessing you were making fun of me for being a nerd so cool. DANI: No no no. I was saying I think we all have that show that we know is terrible but we love it anyways. CLARA: The thing is, I don't even know if it's actually terrible. It's just like... it doesn't know what its tone is. MIKE: Mhm. CLARA: Like, at all. And I think that's sorta the point, because it’s Star Trek, which is this super Utopian thing, except for it's Star Trek with mediocre people. Like what would happen if you made an Utopian society out of normal people. [LAUGHTER] DANI: That's the one that umm... what's his face is in. The guy from Family Guy. What's his name? I'm blanking. CLARA: Yeah, well it's his show. Seth McFarland. MIKE: Yeah. CLARA: It's his show. It's like, basically Seth McFarland wanted to be in Star Trek and no, you don't have the right tone for this, so he made a Star Trek without the right tone. [LAUGHTER] Anyway. I do actually love this show despite all of the sass, all of the shade, I'm throwing at it. Okay, we should move on. So last question and I'm sorry Dani, I'm stealing this one. It's Dani's favorite: What's your Hogwarts house? MIKE: Umm.. I've been told many, many times that I am a Hufflepuff. CLARA: Aww Hufflepuffs! I love them. MIKE: Yeah. I think that question is best answered not by what you think you are, but what everybody else says you are because otherwise It'd be like 90% Gryffindor and like 10% naysayers saying I'm Slytherin. CLARA: See, I think that is what most of the fandom world is. DANI and I are both Ravenclaw/ Slytherin hybrids. MIKE: Oh! Oh, double majors, nice. DANI: Yeah. [LAUGHTER] CLARA: Wouldn't it be-- that would be weird if they had double majors in Hogwarts. That would be a really interesting book. Someone should write that. That's probably already on AO3. MIKE: Can you do like a semester abroad? Like if you're in Slytherin can you do a semester abroad in Gryffindor? CLARA: Oh my husband insists he's from a different magic school. I insist he is a Ravenclaw/Gryffindor hybrid, but. DANI: Well there are many in other schools to choose from now. CLARA: Oh yeah, it's true. Oh, I didn't even think about all that. Anyway, Hufflepuff, cool! So you're hardworking, super into like fairness and justice, and you like food. MIKE: I mean, 2 out of 3 ain't bad. CLARA: Which one was wrong? MIKE: I mean I really like food so many that would count as two. [LAUGHTER] CLARA: Alright, alright. Two truths and a lie, Mike Moore style. Okay, we should get into the episode. This is SUCH an extraordinary one. It's really deeply moving and a whole lot happens and I promise we'll get to all of it, but I want to start out with Quentin and Eliot's story because I think that's what really sets the tone for this whole episode. So it says quick recap in my notes, but it's really not that quick of a recap. I'm gonna give a recap of that part of it. Quentin and Eliot return to Fillory through the ram’s head clock, only to find they’ve traveled through time as well. To obtain the next key from the quest, they must solve a puzzle called “the mosaic” by basically crafting an image out of tiles that represents “the beauty of all life.” It takes them their whole lives to solve it, and Quentin only figures it out after he sees Eliot die, like immediately afterwards. So he figures it out, he’s rewarded with the key, and pretty much right after that, a young Jane shows up and tells him she needs it to save Fillory from her brother. So despite everything it took him to solve the puzzle and everything it cost him, including he believes Eliot is dead forever, he gives the key to Jane. And then sends a message to Margo telling her to find Jane in the present day, retrieve the key, and continue the quest. Near the end of the episode, the storylines merge and Margo retrieves the key and finds Quentin and Eliot just in time to stop them from going through the clock. For a while, it looks like they're not gonna remember anything...and then, just as we saw in the opening clip, Quentin and Eliot encounter relics of their other life, and in this very pristine moment, it all comes flooding back. So Mike-- MIKE: That was a good recap. CLARA: Thank you! I wrote this at like 3:30 in the morning right after I saw it. MIKE: Ohmygod CLARA: That was actually after I saw it the second time cuz I had to watch it twice in a row. [LAUGHTER] CLARA: So Mike I think like to ask you what you hoped viewers would feel as they watched this episode. MIKE: The idea was to feel, especially during that big sequence, the aging sequence, just feel that frustration. We wanted people to feel a lot of things. We wanted to really build an emotional rollercoaster of sorts to take people on. The idea of it being [the] friendship [that] spawns between Quentin and Eliot, those are the kinds that can go through every high and every low and also get better because of it. It's something that I'm sure-- I have a life long best friend that I've had since I was six and we've been through all kinds of ups and downs and I know that that's made our friendship stronger and I'm sure a lot of people have the same kind of things, but really just taking the audience and let's sit down here for ten minutes or whatever it ended up being, and have a really rushed--rushed but complete feeling having a lifetime stuck in this box. And you see them grow with each other, you see them fight against each other, you see them bond, you see them test limits here and there, find out where their personal boundaries are, where the definition of their friendship is. I think something that really instructed us and moved us [was] this short by Charlotte Regan and it's called Standby. It's one shot-- I mean it's supposed to be a year in the life of these two cops, and there's this one shot through the windshield. One cop's always the driver; one cop's always the passenger and it's just five minutes but it's the entire year of their partnership. And seeing how much of a story Charlotte was able to tell in that short; in five minutes she told an entire year, and I think that really instructed us on, economy-wise, how big of a story we could tell. So that really kind of mentally allowed us, granted us the permission, whatever, to even tackle this, but obviously we're not in control of what people ultimately feel, but the idea and the hope was that we all get trapped in this ten foot by ten foot square with Quentin and Eliot for an emotional lifetime and everything that comes with that. CLARA: That's very beautiful. Dani, is that anything like you felt? DANI: Well I definitely thought that the episode was beautiful. I pretty much raved about it immediately after seeing it. CLARA: She was sending me texts for two hours straight before I could get home from work. [LAUGHTER] DANI: Yeah, it's true. I told her I would have to wait until I got home to watch it. Then I was like, well I'm not waiting, so I watched it. Then I was just immediately talking about it all day to her. DANI: Yeah, it's true. I told her I would have to wait until I got home to watch it. Then I was like, well I'm not waiting, so I watched it. Then I was just immediately talking about it all day to her. [LAUGHTER] And uh-- CLARA: Here's the problem with screeners, you only have the one other person you can talk to. [LAUGHTER] DANI: Yeah, I mean I posted on Twitter basically telling everyone like, I can't wait until everyone sees it because it's such an emotional ride and it's honestly one of the most beautiful hours of TV I've probably ever seen. I think I've watched a lot of TV so I was very pleased with it. MIKE: That's fantastic. CLARA: When I saw the title of this episode, I immediately thought of another really groundbreaking TV episode that does a lot of similar things-- “The Inner Light” from Star Trek: The Next Generation. MIKE: Yeah, that's actually, this was a huge reference for us. Not just during the break, but while I was on script. Cuz yeah, structure-wise it was extremely similar. Like they're for different purposes. Ya know, in Star Trek, it's more like emotional instruction, I guess. And ours is slightly, oh they actually did physically go back in time and all that stuff. But one thing that's probably pretty obvious is the flute from Star Trek was very instructive for us because we knew we wanted to tie the two worlds together somehow. Not just for the emotional catharsis of the episode, but also for the characters, for Quentin and Eliot, so that this wasn't just a complete one-off thing that doesn't have any impact on their lives going forward. We wanted, like, if they were gonna have fifty years of life experience together, we wanted to feel that going forward. And so I think the... I mean the flute was definitely storytelling-wise, probably the most constructive part of that [Star Trek episode]. And also from a purely production/technical standpoint, seeing how they did it. Like, how many times they aged up Patrick Stewart, and what his makeup looked like, and when it was effective and when it wasn't effective, was instructive for us knowing like, production wise, how many different looks we can get, how many we should even try to get. Cuz you can write the most perfect, beautiful script, but if it's unshootable then it's gonna be a headache on production and all you have is fifty pages of paper and that's not the point, so. [LAUGHTER] While we're on that point, I want to give a huge, huge shutout to our art department and our makeup and special effects department. This was a big episode for everybody, but those two departments in particular had a WHOLE LOT on their plate and I just thought they nailed it. CLARA: Yeah. So actually, that brings me to something else I wanted to sorta cover and I'm asking this with no prior knowledge, but there's this line that Eliot delivers in the episode when they're talking about the key and it's something like, 'Don't you love when the metaphor turns out to be literal.' And baring in mind, I went into this looking for “The Inner Light” references and to sort of see that in here, one of the things that really struck me about the episode was how much light there is. Like how much physical light there is all over the episode. And so for me, it was one of the first episodes I noticed the lighting and I noticed in a big way. Like you see it, like it's coming out of the ram’s head clock, which is literally an inner light. MIKE: Yeah. CLARA: The one that was like, really interesting to me was, in Fillory, there's the whole forest area, right? And you have the production's spotlights and there's no attempt to hide them. MIKE: Right, yeah. CLARA: Like that's what they are and that to me was like such an interesting and bold move, to make these production spotlights part of the scene setting. And then there's like the light coming out of the mosaic when Quentin completes it. And then in some of the other storylines too, like the light shining down on OLU sort of-- I don't know where that scene is, but it seems like its inside Julia’s mind. MIKE: Yeah. CLARA: Do you know if any of that was intentional? MIKE: Yeah, so I know-- I can only speak so much to this. I think François who DP-ed this episode and Elie Smolkin who helps out on the look for the whole show, can probably give better answers to this, but I know, so when we go back to Fillory, that's the first time these guys have seen magic this entire season and we wanted that to really, really hit. And we wanted it to be big and bold and obvious that these guys are back in magic Fillory. So yeah, we wanted the magic to be very obvious and prominent and strong, but that's probably a question they could answer a bit better than I. Or John [McNamara]. CLARA: We have to get Elie on the show at some point. MIKE: That would be fantastic actually. Just like... one thing I've come to really really really love about working in TV or just film in general is just how watching how different department heads approach the same story. Like I'll write the script and I'll think I know everything about it and then we'll go to shoot it and the DP is talking about how purple is just the right storytelling color for this one-- CLARA: Oh yeaaaah. MIKE: And I'm like, 'what the fuck? I never fucking said purple! What is this guy talking about?' But just seeing-- CLARA: But they know what they're talking about. MIKE: Yeah! Yeah, absolutely! And I think my first reaction, like when I first started, was 'what the...? These guys are just spinning yarn. I don't know what the fuck these guys are talking about.' And then the more exposure I've had, the more experience I've had, no. These guys know exactly what the hell they're talking about. And they're really smart. Like Margot Ready, she's our production designer this season. CLARA: Yeah. MIKE: The way she and her team accomplished that village of the mosaic and the patterns and everything just blew my mind. I could never have sniffed at anything as brilliant as what she and her team did. So I think that's stuff that's lost on me, but it's something you see and obviously those production decisions had a huge impact on you. That's one of the true pleasures of working in TV or in film. It's just seeing the brilliance that other people bring to the same story. DANI and CLARA: Yeah. DANI: So What else inspired you? Are there any other references we may have missed? MIKE: Hmm.. Unless there's something super meta in there that I'm blanking on... Yeah, I wanna say those two are the main major reference points. The Charlotte Regan short, “Standby”, and “The Inner Light”. Yeah, no besides that, there's also just a lot of story to dig through with this episode. CLARA: Oh yeah, for sure. MIKE: So I definitely had my hands full with just getting through the storytonage we had to tell in this episode. CLARA: I will say that this episode awoke me to as far as the potential of this season is that-- so the last two seasons, have -- for the most part -- kinda been one continuous dramatic arc with a handful of little exceptions, like the heist episode. But the quest frame that this whole season is wrapped in and the fact that it's sorta split into seven mini quests. It really opens this season up to do more episodic content and not be stuck with a single arc. And yeah, I found that one of the reasons this episode did that to me was because it is self contained, like you said. It's just Quentin and Eliot in their own little world for that part of it. And while the other components tie to the broader story--I mean everything ties to the broader story--. I was curious if that's something you've been thinking of as writers. If it's something you're excited about. MIKE: Yeah! Absolutely we're excited about it. I think one of the joys slash challenges of writing season three. Jallenges, if you will, was it wa-- CLARA: Wait did you say 'jallenges'? MIKE: Oh, I said jallenges, yes indeed. CLARA: Oh my. Continue on your way. [LAUGHTER] MIKE: --was that it was, like it's a quest. We knew it was a fucking quest so we have to be ambitious and we really felt the... pressure's not the right word. I guess just the urge to just tell stories in the strongest way that we kinda could. Penny's arc, for example, comes to mind with that. We got Penny super sick and then we got him even sicker. And then he was dead and like now we have to deal with that. And so I think this season in a weird way by taking magic away from these characters, it made the show bigger in a sense. In what I think (and what I hope) other people think is a good way in that if we want to have some magic on the show we have to go find it or we have to go make it or mine it or whatever. And each episode can be about different ways to find something you lost or question why you even want it in the first place. Sorry I got off on a little tangent there. But with all that said, the framework does keep it all as the same story, that we all are on the same quest at the end of every episode. DANI: So let's start talking about other storylines starting with Margo. Things got a little Game of Throne-y for her in this episode, didn't they? MIKE: A little bit! CLARA: So what's up with that? MIKE: What's up with that? That's a great question. What is up with that? Well we--one thing we have done on the show is kinda looked at marriage in a non-twentieth century view. Cuz marriage up until about 150 years ago wasn't about who you loved-- CLARA: It was about alliances. MIKE:-- especially the more political or social clout you had. And that's not just for kings and queens and some of that can exist today in different ways. But yeah, let's make Margo marry somebody and maybe for a second she could feel good-- CLARA: But that can't last. Not in this show. MIKE: Yeah, like he's gonna be fun to boss around, and he's totally into her and totally devoted to serving her, but yeah, she's not gonna get that for more than like two acts. [LAUGHTER] What show is this? CLARA: Yeah, not with the Cormac McCarthy reader over here. [LAUGHTER] DANI: I know. I was starting to also change my mind about the Prince Es of Loria. MIKE: Yeah? You're starting to go back on him? DANI: I was just like, 'hm.' Surprising turn on him. He seems to actually care about her a little bit. MIKE: Yeah, enough-- DANI: And now he's locked away. CLARA: Does he even know what happened? I wonder at this point. Somebody must have let him out. [LAUGHTER] DANI: Eh maybe, maybe. I thought it was funny because as soon as she said, lock him away, I knew he didn't do it. MIKE: Because he checked his watch like, wait a minute it's only thirty minutes. there's still more episode to go. CLARA: Speaking of, we should also get to Julia, at least briefly. Cuz kinda a big thing happens with Julia. She and Alice have this bonding moment and Alice helps her use the key-- the second key?-- to see her own truth -- which, kinda like what happens in the book, is that OLU (well it's a little different) planted a seed of Reynard’s magic in her. So does this mean we’re going to see demigoddess Julia this season? MIKE: We are going to see-- and obviously I can't, y'know. Don't try to get me to spoiler! CLARA: Okay so what can you tell us? MIKE: We're going to see what happens when the best news in the world turns into the absolute worst news in the world. CLARA: Intrigue. MIKE: And what that does to you as a person and what do you [do]. I mean Julia has this one singular trauma which is the absolute matter of her entire life in every considerable way and now that's intrinsically tied to possibly... like their only lead on how to bring magic [back], on magic existing in the world. They have this quest and they have what little bit Julia can do. And remember early on in the season how great that was. It got Quentin out of his flunk. Julia's little smoke spell reignited Josh. It gave Josh a reason not to mope. So Julia knows what the power of good she can do with this, but oh my god, now it's tied to Reynard. CLARA: Yeaaaah. MIKE: And it's part of Reynard. And you know her finding this out with Alice being in the room, that... it could be better for her if other people were in the room, but Alice's desire and Julia's desire match up like puzzle pieces in just the right way, at just the right moment for them too... I mean you heard them talk about it at the ending. I don't think this is a spoiler to say: Things might not turn out well if they do that. CLARA: Yeah. DANI: Yeah, I'm hoping they don't. CLARA: I'm hoping they don't too, but I know better. DANI: Although it's like... [LAUGHTER] Yeah. I'm just hoping for that demigoddess Julia. I think a lot of fans of the books have been waiting for it patiently. MIKE: Yeah. [LAUGHS] DANI: Yeah. CLARA: Okay so we should get on to fashion and I had an unusually high number of fashion notes for this episode, but when I look back at them, they're mostly me yelling in all caps about what Margo gets to wear. [Transcribers note: Can confirm, lots of caps.] MIKE: Right? DANI: Amazing CLARA: So I have this note that says, 'Margo's fucking dress, o-m-fucking-g'. This is not the wedding dress, I talk about that too. So there's like this corset top and a beaded belt and it's short in front and long in back and she has these amazing boots which are like calf length and I think they're like-- MIKE: Is this the black dress from earlier in the episode or what she was wearing when she went to meet Jane Chatwin? CLARA: The one earlier in the episode although I didn't even put that one down, but that's awesome. And then she has like this beaded eye patch, which like we've been seeing all these nice lace things, but I just love how her eyepatches are changing over the course of the season. [MIKE and DANI speak at the same time] MIKE: I'm sorry, go ahead. DANI: I said I'm pretty sure Clara could go on for twenty minutes alone about how amazing Margo looks every episode. CLARA: Yeah. MIKE:That's completely fair. I mean we are--blessed is a mild word-- to describe how lucky we are to have Magali, our costume designer. I'm sure other people have talked about her at length. DANI: Oh yeah. MIKE: She just designs these--this kinda gets what I was talking about before about how different departments approach [a story]. But when we got the costume meeting with Magali for this episode, she had a FUCKLOAD of work. She had to design the look of the Floaters, the Floater delegation, and what their wedding gowns would look like, and what Quentin and Eliot-- what their costumes would age over fucking fifty years. So she had a WHOLE lot of work and bare in mind, these departments get about eight days [CLARA: Oh my god] maybe to prep all of these things. CLARA: That's crazy. DANI: Wow. MIKE: I mean sometimes more, but its just the nature of TV production. They can get the scripts in advance, but they're busy doing the episode they're doing so you know they only have so many hands. So for the costume department to put all that stuff together so quickly was amazing. Talking specifically about Margo's costume, I think the one she was wearing at the beginning of the episode we might have actually seen before? But only once and probably very briefly. But I do, I love the costume and I love how you get to see the big M in her cacodemon tattoo. CLARA: Yeah, it was nice to see that was something that hadn't been forgotten. MIKE: Right right! Plus it's like how great is it to be dressed in all black than find out that day is your wedding day? Like, that's just a little stroke from genius from Magali. CLARA: It's foreshadowing. MIKE: Yeah, exactly! And like that's the kind of storytelling you can do. You never have to say it, you never have to make a point of it, but it's in there. It's in your brain. CLARA: Let's talk about her wedding costume too and part of what interests me about her wedding garb is that it's not really very Margo-like. Other than the eyepatch, which is not I think the one she got from the Fairy Queen. She's wearing like a different eyepatch, which makes sense. I wouldn't wear... that would not be my 'something borrowed', that's for sure. MIKE: Right [LAUGHTER] CLARA: And then this gorgeous, white dress with this gold lace ribbon, which gets completely covered in blood. [LAUGHTER] MIKE: Yup. Yup. Yeah, I mean the very first instant of that costume is: She's gonna get covered in blood and we wanna see it. You wanna see the blood. That's rule number one. But also we still want to celebrate what a royal wedding is like in Fillory. We've seen... one Fillorian wedding, but it wasn't a royal wedding and ya they have Children of Earth coming to rule, that's definitely going to influence their costumes, but it's not necessarily the end all be all. Like from what we've seen its a lot of western influence, because its you know the Chatwins are very western, but Magali also wanted to make a point of including other cultures like in China, for example--and this is all stuff she's telling me, so if I screw any of it up, it's because I'm misremembering it and whatever is right is what she said, trust me on that-- red and gold are big wedding colors in some eastern cultures, so she wanted to include some of that while also just letting this be a garment that would have been made in Fillory. It's amazing how diligent they are with [that]--like we can't put Margo in this dress because its made with this kinda print and they wouldn't have that kinda printing technology in Fillory. So the level of detail they go into, not just in like what they put into the costumes, but what they don't put into the costumes is really just fascinating. CLARA: There's one last thing I wanna mention, but I don't wanna spend too much time on it because oh my gosh we've taken so much time. MIKE: Yeah! CLARA: So one of the things I noticed was that Alice's sweater in this is reminiscent of the dress she wears when she's going niffin, that she wears for like four episodes. Because it's got those same diamond pattern jagged lines, but it's in the stiching and I've been noticing, and I mentioned in the last episode, like she's been in more blue tones, especially her makeup, this season. So I just thought that was really cool and I kinda wonder if its doing anything, but I'm not gonna ask you that cuz you know, spoilers. And then the last thing is not really fashion, but I wanted to point out that technically we got white-haired Quentin in this episode. [LAUGHTER] MIKE: Yes! [LAUGHTER] I'm so glad you noticed that. Yes, yeah no. [MIKE continues to laugh] So that was absolutely one of the things we talked about when bringing up the new episode. Like, oh shit we can do white-haired Quentin. Yeah, let's go with that! CLARA: I'm sure the listeners will tell us if it really counts. But it was cool, right?! MIKE and DANI: Yeah CLARA: The one place it felt really what I expected was that overhead shot when he's putting the tile in to solve the mosaic. That really felt like everything I expected from white-haired Q so it was cool. Okay. MIKE: Sweet. CLARA: Is that it for fashion? I think it probably is so let's move on to the MVP. DANI: Yeah. CLARA: The three contenders for me in this episode are Jason, Hale, and Summer, and it’s like a really tough call between the three of them! And I think sorta in the end, I decided I can't give it to three so I can maybe get away with giving it to two so I’m gonna split it between Hale and Summer. Hale for his physicality, especially in that ending scene, was just so impressive to me, like really you get so much nuisance out of that. And then Summer for the sheer range she had to contend with in this episode and just like making that really over the top wedding scene feel real and feel like that was a real reaction. MIKE: Mhm. Mhm. Yeah no, I think those are spot on. I mean Hale and Jason did so much work and I think it really shines through just with how they approached not only the mental work of aging fifty years but also the physical work. Like that's not easy. It's one of those things were unless you get it exactly right, it looks like you're trying, and that looks worse than not trying at all, and I think both of them really nailed it honestly. Yeah it was wonderful to see on the day and yeah with Summer, she had a fucking hell of an arc. CLARA: All of the feelings. MIKE: God, I don't know how many highs and lows she had. And just, each one of her scenes, she didn't have any scenes she could just rest during. Each scene, every single scene she was in was just her at 110%. Cuz she had to be. Cuz she's just caught alone in this situation and having to just run with it. Wait was I supposed to give one or... CLARA: We'll get back to you! We'll get back to you. I'm gonna ask Dani what hers is first. DANI: I'm just gonna keep this short and sweet and say Jason for me. CLARA: You're rounding out my triad. My triangle? [LAUGHTER] MIKE: Ooooh. CLARA: All the listeners can't see it, but I'm making weird faces with my eyebrows. MIKE: She's drawing triangles on a whiteboard-- CLARA: Yeah, I added a whiteboard to my closet {LAUGHTER] MIKE: It's not complete squares, duh. CLARA: Okay, I know it’s torture to answer this question, but Mike, we’ve have to know. Who is your MVP? MIKE: My MVP is the art department. I have to say, they really just did SUCH a great job, I thought. I mean everybody did but the art department doesn't get recognized a whole lot and this was an episode I thought they really got to just show how great they are and they did. CLARA: Great answer. Okay, so now we do episode ratings. Dani, you go first this time DANI: I'll give it a 10/10. This is just a perfect episode. CLARA: Yeah, you took the score right out of my mouth. 10/10 for me too. [LAUGHTER] CLARA: So Mike i'm not gonna ask you to rate an episode you wrote of course, but I am curious – of the episodes you’ve written, which has been your favorite? MIKE: Ooof. Oh. I mean part of me has gotta be partial to the one that has a fucking dragon in it. CLARA: Fair. MIKE [LAUGHING]: But I think I'm gonna go with this one. It was a unique story that I don't know if I'll ever be able to write again cuz how many other shows have this kind of an opportunity to write a story like that. Yeah, I think I gotta go with this one. CLARA: Good answer. This is my favorite of your episodes too so there you go. DANI: Yeah! CLARA: Though the dragon was excellent. DANI: Same. It was a good episode. [LAUGHTER] CLARA: Alright. Anything we missed? Anything you want to plug? MIKE: Nah, I mean thank you everybody for listening to this and watching our show. Keep watching. Keep telling your friends to watch. And hopefully we'll be back in season four. CLARA: Thank you for joining us today. I really hope we get the opportunity. I hope there is a season four, god forbid that doesn't happen and I hope that you'll join us again then so that we can talk about yet another great episode that you will have written. So yeah, it's just been a sheer delight, sheer inner delight? Okay, I'm done. [LAUGHS] MIKE: OH yeah! I see where you're going. CLARA: Gotta get the puns. Gotta get the puns going. [LAUGHTER] Listeners, thank you for sticking with us for season three. Remember to subscribe and rate us on iTunes. The more positive ratings we get, the higher we show up in search results, which means more fans can find us and hear awesome interviews with people involved with the show, like Mike. And as always, follow us on Twitter or Facebook @physicalkidspod. Bye! DANI: Bye!