[Rafe announces that Eliot lost the election for High King. Tick has also lost. Margo is declared to be High King as a write-in by the talking animals. Margo won by talking about bestiality with the bear Humbledrum. Margo remarks about how Rafe loves Abigail]


CLARA: Welcome back everyone to Episode 312 of Physical Kids Weekly, “The Fillorian Candidate.” I’m Clara, 


DANI: And I’m Dani. 


CLARA: We have two guests again for this week’s episode. Our first plays the hilarious sloth translator, Rafe -- it’s Sergio Osuna! Welcome, Sergio!


SERGIO: Thank you for having me. Hello everyone.


DANI: Our second guest has been called “the heart and soul of the show” by his colleagues in the writers room. He’s written some of my favorite episodes, including “Be the Penny” and “Six Short Stories About Magic” -- it’s David Reed! Welcome, David!


DAVID: Thank you guys for having me. It’s fun to finally be on the ‘thing’, the podcast!


CLARA: I’m so excited that Henry helped facilitate this. He emailed me and he said, have you ever talked about having DAVID on the show and I keep tweeting at him and he keeps liking them, but I don’t know how to get in touch with him.


[LAUGHTER]


DAVID: Yeah, I like to randomly like things on Twitter and I had actually talked to Henry about it before because he’s had such a good time on the show so it’s always kind of been on the back of my mind, but I’d always figured, eh they’ll figure how to talk to me if they want too. 


[LAUGHTER]


CLARA: Turns out your boss helped with that one. 


DAVID: Henry’s very friendly and he likes to make people be friends.


[LAUGHTER]


CLARA: Cool. Well we’ll start with a couple get-to-know you questions for each of you. First, how did you get involved with the show, and what’s your relationship with the novels the show is based on? David, why don’t you start?


DAVID: Well I kind of consider myself the first employee of The Magicians and by that, when Sera and John were trending the pilot, before it was picked up by Syfy, before it had been brought by anyone, when they had paid for the option themselves out of their own pocket and were writing the script together in John’s garage. I had worked for both of them separately.


CLARA: Right.


DAVID: The fact that they are both friends and created a show together was like kesmate for me because I had worked for Sera on the show Supernatural for several seasons and I had worked for John on the show Philanthropist, which was on NBC in like 2009. So the fact that they are like best friends was coincidental to all that. So when they first wrote the pilot I had been a script coordinator, like the person on the staff who does all the formatting and makes sure all the logic mostly makes sense and prepares a script to be produced. So I did that for The Magicians pilot. At the time I was working on the show Revolution, just on the weekends I would work on The Magicians as giving logical notes and fixing typos and stuff like that, getting it ready to be sent out to networks and stuff like that to be sold. Then in-between when that happened and when the show was actually picked up by Syfy, I’d gone to work for John on the show Aquarius on NBC. Basically we strip mined Aquarius for Magicians personnel at this point: Mike Moore was our writers’ assistant on Aquarius and now he’s a writer on Magicians, there’s a bunch of cast members, Sera was an executive producer as well, directors that we now know and love on Magicians were on Aquarius, several of them. Emma Dumont, who plays the White Lady, was one of the series regulars. Grey Damon, Spencer Garrett who played Ted. The list is truly endless of people who came from that to Magicians. 


So in the middle of all this, I had read The Magicians [book], just as a person who likes books, so one of the most exciting things for me was when Sera said, hey we’re going to do this show, would you like to come work on it? She treated it like she had to convince me. I was like, I love this book, I love the pilot, I want to work on this show so bad, and she sent me, I think it’s called a galley, the unproofed, unpolished, version of The Magician's Land before it was published because when we were starting to work on season one, the third book hadn’t even come out yet, so that was one of the most exciting parts. Like I get to find out before the rest of the world.


CLARA: Oh my god, I’m so jealous.   


DANI: Same.


DAVID: That was pretty cool, and then I truly owe my writing career to a couple of people, but mostly Sera, John, and Eric Kricpke, who created Supernatural and Revolution. Like my first episode of TV, I wrote for him. So those three together made me; I owe them a lot. 


DANI: SERGIO, how about you? How did you get involved with the show, and what drew you to Rafe as a character?


SERGIO: I had auditioned for The Magicians in season one for a different character. I was traveling in I think it was Vegas by self-tape, so I did not book that one. And then, like many other auditions for actors, you forget about it. When I got the audition for Rafe, I was like, okay I’m going to binge watch season one. So I did and I really got into it. I thought that the story was just so based in reality and real emotions, real characters, and it gets really dark, and I love that. It gets weird and I love weird. When I got the sides and everything, and I was prepping the audition for Rafe, I don’t know if I’ve told this, but they’d combined two episodes and I had some of Tick’s lines too, only for the audition, and so it was a lengthy [audition]. I remember having said something about Abigail, something about how she wanted to set spikes on someone. Like a fifth spike was just going to ram into the guy– not in those words obviously. I really had fun with that and I thought, this character is so weird and so into it too. So I got into it and throughout season two and then season three I feel like he’s become a little more weird with every single thing that he does and he says and his relationship with Abigail, which I love. So luckily I didn’t book the first one that I’d done in season one, because Rafe is someone that I really, really, really like. So I’m excited about just being Rafe. 


DAVID: So I have a little bit to add to that story because I wrote–


SERGIO: You did write “The Flying Forest”, yes!


DAVID: So when we were doing “The Flying Forest”, we knew we needed to have someone to be the human mouthpiece of Abigail and we knew those parts tended to be very exposition-heavy. Like it’s gonna be someone who explains the rules of something in Fillory or some situation happening in Fillory, so you end up wanting it to be kind of funny. So when we saw SERGIO’s audition, we were like, okay this actually could be amazing, and we just saw a couple of little things. Like it wasn’t our intention in the beginning that Rafe was in love with Abigail, but it was like the choice that Sergio made, that was like, this is the beating heart of this character and we’re just going to gently poke at it every now and again. So you get to, in an episode like this, 3x12 where a pretty big plot turn comes off of that, which is 100% just little looks between Sergio and Sassy the sloth.


CLARA: And little taps!


[LAUGHTER]


DAVID: Right.


SERGIO: I know, that little tap.


DAVID: So it’s the part that was not intended to be like a major recurring part and then you just see the choices and the dailies and you’re like, this turned out so much better than we even hoped, so he just comes back again and again and again. Because as a writer, I have to find a way to get across this information to the audience and if we can do it in a way that’s full of character and the genasaqua, the little spark of life that Sergio puts into it, it just makes it all the more special and interesting. 


And secondly, going back to Aquarius for one second, the character of Rafe is named after one of the Aquarius writers, Rafael Yglesias


SERGIO: Oh wow.


DAVID: Who’s this screenwriter who's written a bunch of these famous movies, so he’s the same Rafael Yglesias who we put on the Fillory and Further script, because he was a big screenwriter in the 90s. So when Quentin, in season two, finds that screenplay that says it was written by Rafael Yglesias on it, that’s the same Rafael Yglesias that we named Rafe after.


SERGIO: All of this is nice to know. Interesting. I did not know that. For me, it’s super easy to be in love with Abigail just because of the way it’s just there on the page, and I do love Sassy. I mean Sassy’s like so cute, slow, but cute. She’s just a great, great character to play [with]. I love it.


DANI: I love sloths on a Kristen Bell level. I just wanted to follow up though, so who did you originally audition for?


SERGIO: I auditioned for… I think his name was Othniel. 


DAVID: Oh yeah, he was a character in the Julia story in season one.


DANI: Oh, Free Trader.


DAVID: He wasn’t the Free Trader, he was the guy that was like the doorman at Pete’s little hedgewitch safe house.


DANI: Ohhh.


DAVID: When we first envisioned the character, we were like, oh this could be a recurring little thing, like the muscle out front, and it ended up not being important to the story so I think we saw him once and never again.


DANI: Well we’re really glad that you didn’t get that role then.


SERGIO: Me too. Me too. I thought I nailed that audition, but I guess not. But me too.


[LAUGHTER]


CLARA: So in a lot of ways, and we sort of touched upon this, you play the straight man in your double act with Rizwan Manji. 


SERGIO: Yes.


CLARA: So one of the things I wanted to ask was what do you do to bring out Rafe’s personality and individuality while you’re part of a duo? And whether you have to approach things differently as part of that duo than you have in other roles?


SERGIO: Right, I think that it was important to me to have a difference between Rafe with Abigail and Rafe with any other person, and I think that a lot of how Rafe interacts with other people, especially with Tick (Riz) is just Riz, what we do just back and forth. I remember back in season two he did something, one of his lines, his reply to me, gave me a little bit of attitude and I decided in that moment that, if you want attitude, I’ll give you attitude back. So I changed my delivery for that next line so that and that became a thing between us that has a lot to do with Riz’s response to anything that Rafe has to say. And in this episode I’m working below him, like he’s my boss, I guess, and I don’t think Rafe likes that, accepts it. I wanted the difference between love or in love Rafe to this sloth, Abigail, and the official Rafe, that works for, in this case Tick, to be very different.


CLARA: I think one of the things I really appreciate about your performance is how there always is an attitude to Rafe and you can always see it like just below the surface of your face. It’s like just the slight tilt of your chin that just tells you Rafe is not fully on board with what the people around him are doing and that he probably has a lot of secret power that we don’t know about.


[SERGIO LAUGHS]


DANI: Piggybacking off that, what can you tell us about Rafe’s backstory? Who was he before he was Abigail’s translator? And how did he learn to speak sloth?


SERGIO: How did he learn to speak sloth? I think there was a little bit of backstory to that in “The Rattening”', that episode 2x09 when he cannot communicate, his frustration with not being able to communicate with Abigail, because she’s a rat. And he’s like, I wish I’d learned how to speak rat in school. 


So the backstory that I have, that I created for Rafe, is that this is the only language he learned how to speak properly, at 100%, because he aspired to be this person who can translate for Abigail because he had been a fan for a long time and whatnot. So this is his dream job, in my mind, that gives him a lot of adoration towards her, and I can build up on that as big as I can. So this is a dream job for him and the fact that Abigail is responding to whatever connection and whatever love he has for her is just the cherry on top. Ya, no, he’s very loyal, like you mentioned. He’s very loyal to her, but at the same time, I don’t know if he’s 100% on board with some of the decisions that she’s making or that everybody else is making. You see that hesitance in him and some of the lines that he delivers and how he delivers the lines. But his loyalty, I find, I mean I would always play it, is to Abigail. Cuz she’s his main boo. 


[LAUGHTER]


CLARA: So speaking of Abigail, what’s it like working so closely with a live animal? How’s Sassy as a scene partner?


SERGIO: She is the best. When I auditioned for the first time, I read the sloth and I thought, oh okay that’s gonna be a CGI sloth. And when I got to set, it was like, oh no that’s a real sloth. And I thought, that’s awesome! I’m a big animal lover. I’ve worked with animals before, but never a sloth, and so the handler told me that the way that [sloths] get to know you is by blowing on their face a little bit. 


CLARA: Oh! [picture the pleading eyes emoji]


SERGIO: So immediately when she got close to me, I was like, okay we’ll be working together, so I blew on her face and she looked at me and opened her eyes a little bit wider and whatnot. And then throughout the entire season two, everytime we would work together, I would blow on her face again and then she would calm down and she would recognize me. I would be the only one who would get to feed her aside from Sassy’s handlers. Then from season three, it was at the beginning of the season, I got to work with her and I blew in her face and she remembered me! Like she was a little bit hectic and then I blew in her face and she slowed down and it was like, okay, I gotchu. I remember you. And then in this specific episode, when she tapped on my shoulder to… I think she was hungry and she wanted more food [PRECIOUS LAUGHTER]. I just blew on her face and she calmed down again. It’s amazing to work with Sassy. She’s the cutest and she’s so, so cute. 


DAVID: There’s an unscripted moment in this episode where she reaches out, you're trying to get a point across to Tick, and she’s just reaching out and touching you. And I wasn’t on set that day. Noga Landau, who I co-wrote this episode with, was there and I saw the dailies for it and we just died laughing in the writers room when we were watching that. Because you just stayed completely in character, like just give me a second lady. 


CLARA: It’s so perfect. It’s so perfect. 


DANI: Well when we had Hale on he told us that Sassy bites, so has she bitten you?


SERGIO: Oh no, she hasn’t. I haven’t gotten that close to her. I feed her to get her close to me and so it looks like she’s talking to me, but then after that, after I feed her, we go our separate ways. But no, she’s never bitten me. I wouldn’t like it, but I bet Rafe would. 


[LAUGHTER]


DANI: Yeah, probably 


CLARA: My husband, who edits our podcasts and watched the episode with me, was like, are we gonna get a sloth sex scene now? That would be like the slowest sex scene in the history of the world. 


SERGIO: A lot of foreplay, yeah


[LAUGHTER]


DAVID: I mean, it does feel like we’re building up to something so


[LAUGHTER]


SERGIO: I’ll start going to the gym. 


CLARA: Alright so, We’ve talked to a few writers from the show at this point, and one of the things we’ve noticed is that certain writers seem to wind up telling certain types of stories on the show. I’m curious, what kinds of stories are you drawn to, David, and what unique qualities do you think you bring to the episodes you write?


DAVID: I think that certainly in season three, the thing I was focused on consciously from the beginning of the season, is that there’s so much TV now, and there’s so many opportunities to change the channel if you’re not completely enthralled, so we have to make every episode special. So when we’re trying to figure out what the story of this season is, this is one sort of story-breaking process, we have one big story. But I really believe that episodes need to be its own unique special little thing so if you look at the ones I’ve done, 3x04 and 3x08, both of them are kind of structurally weird for us. I think that’s definitely on purpose and definitely what I was trying to do, like get to the point where you think you know what’s going to happen in a typical episode of The Magicians and turn it on its head a little bit. 


I also think that people end up writing sequels to their own episodes. You get invested in a story because you spend so much time between working on an outline and scripting and going to set and working on it in post-production, and then you want to go back and figure out how to finish off that story. So things like Quentin’s dad, that’s a story that he’s referenced like three times in the entire series and I wrote all of them because it’s something that was very personal to me and important. So in season one, when we first introduced him, I wrote that episode as it was assigned, like that was just the order where I landed in the rotation. But ever since then I really wanted to go back, so I think everyone ends up having issues and characters and storylines that are very important to them that they want to get back into. Like Henry Alonso Myers really, I think, takes a lot of ownership over Alice’s parents and so he ends up working on a lot of those episodes, and that applies to everybody throughout the seasons, the whole staff. When it comes to how we all contribute to each episode, Henry and Mike are both very comedy-heavy guys. Like Mike wanted to be a comedy writer before he was ever a drama writer and Henry’s worked on cult dramedies, like hour long shows, and so they kind of lean that way. And John McNamara loves musicals and he loves heists, and those two words should be very familiar at this point to Magicians  fans, and you know when he’s done that.  I think one of the big things I try to do is find ways to pull things from the books, from Lev’s books, and put it into the show, because I’m a huge fan of his writing and the characters. Even if we’ve written ourselves into a position where we can’t do the scene verbatim, if there’s just a hint of something it makes me feel more grounded and connected and feel like we’re on the right course. So one of my personal pet causes on the show is the character of Humbledrum.


CLARA: Yay!


DAVID: Who is very memberably in the first and third books and I’ve wanted to put him in the show since season one. In the season one finale when they go to the pub, originally it was gonna be Humbledrum who they’re talking to.


CLARA: Right!


DAVID: It turned out the acting bear in Vancouver was hibernating at the time.


CLARA: We heard this! It’s so great. 


SERGIO: They’re so difficult.


DAVID: In season two, I put this card on the wall that says, fucking Humbledrum shows up or DAVID quits. And so it’s like whenever I’m frustrated about something it’s like, don’t worry, we’re going to get Humbledrum for you somewhere. [LAUGHTER] So this season finally we were able to do it. So every episode I’m like, is this a place were Humbledrum might show up?


CLARA: Well you found him. So David, I tempted you here by promising we’d talk about The Orville.


DAVID: Oh yeah, oh my god. 


SERGIO: I remember listening to that and wondering if you were gonna ask him about that.


[LAUGHTER]


CLARA: So yeah, do you love it, or hate it, or hate yourself for loving it?


DAVID: Okay so here’s the thing, I don’t hate myself for loving it. I think that we have a tendency as a culture to shit on things and to dunk on bad things and I don’t even think it’s qualitatively bad. I think that it’s a really interesting and ernest show that is exactly what 15 year old me would have wanted, because I was the biggest Star Trek fan in the universe–


CLARA: I question that. 


DAVID: Okay, alright, well you can. We’ll have a nerd trivia contest later then. But I’m a very big Star Trek fan and as a kid, I didn’t want to be a writer. I wanted to be a Star Trek writer. The moment I realized I could be a TV writer, I was sitting at home on the couch watching an episode of Deep Space Nine, and the credits popped by and it said, written by whoever. And I was like, wait, wait, that means that this person’s job is to come up with Star Trek stories, and it was like a light bulb moment for me. So I think The Orville does a better job than some of the actual Star Terk series, by the heart of what I love about Star Trek, which is going to new places and seeing new things and new ideas about what’s possible in the universe, and it fills it with dumb dick jokes, which I think if you’re listening to this podcast, you must enjoy at some level. At the same time, there’s certainly parts of it that I think are just the worst, but I think that’s true of a lot of things, and it wears its’ heart on its sleeve. I went into thinking, I’m gonna hate-watch this and I’m gonna laugh at it, and I found myself actually interested in the episodiac stories. 


CLARA: It seems like the storylines are very Star Trek storylines, and it’s like what would happen if you created a Star Trek-utopian society, but what if you populated it with shitty, or even normal, people.


DAVID: So most of the time… Like Jimmy Conway, who’s a director who we love on The Magicians and who has done a lot of episodes for us, he directed an episode of it, and I think he got that gig because he’s directed 18 episodes of Star Trek, so he’s done a lot of my favorite episodes of The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. So he walks on that set and what he told me was it’s like walking on the set of Star Trek, they want it to be the same. They have production designers and cinematographers they’re basically stealing from the ranks of Star Trek to replicate that look and tone and feeling.


CLARA: Yeah.


DAVID: I don’t know. I think it’s crazy that someone did that and I think it’s crazy that it actually seems to be kind of popular. But more power to him.


[LAUGHTER]


DANI: I watch a lot of TV so I definitely understand the whole, hate-watching TV. I’ve always said I’ve been binge watching TV since before Netflix was ever really a thing. Like I would buy TV series from Walmart and bring it back home and just watch the whole thing in one sitting when I was sixteen years old, which I like to call, well that’s depression. [LAUGHTER] Joking, not joking. With movies I’m a super harsh critic and will tear something down, but with TV I’m like forgiving, it’s entertaining, it’s whatever. 


DAVID: It’s the show that I watch on the treadmill, you know? This is not important television for me. It’s the show that I watch while I’m at the gym. 


CLARA: It is!


DAVID: It’s kinda perfect for that. It holds that kind of attention. 


DANI: I’m also one of those people who rides a show through, like all the way to the end, even if I’ve started to hate it. Unless it’s really, really bad. Like I definitely watched Gossip Girl all the way to the end and was hating myself for it.


CLARA: I felt that way with True Blood


SERGIO: It’s because you invested so much time. 


CLARA: Yeah, I feel like the last season or two were… one there were faeries, I was like I don’t know if this is working anymore, but I watched it. Every last episode. 


DANI: And when faeries were introduced on The Magicians I was sorta bitter. I was like, please don’t be True Blood again.


CLARA: I feel like The Magicians has it pretty well. 


DAVID: We had a moment actually, because we were talking about that when we first introduced the idea. Like we were pretty confident we were gonna find a new take on a lot of these kinds of supernatural creatures, but we were like, is there so much baggage with faeries that we won’t be able to do that? And going into season three I think our biggest goal was, how do we figure out a way to surprise the audience because it’s one thing to just have the faeries be nefarious, or to have them be cute. Like there’s two poles, there’s the one where they’re evil creepy creatures, or the one where they’re Tinkerbell. 


SERGIO: Yeah


DAVID: We wanted to find a way to let you go back and forth between the two, and it was really the thing I was most scared of in season three. Will the fact that you have all this baggage with the word ‘fairy’, will it keep people from appreciating what we’re trying to do with them? And so we spent the most time of any storyline playing with the audience’s sympathy and telling a version of it that people aren’t expecting but actually have something to say about the world and the people within it.


CLARA: Yeah.


DANI: Well we have one more question before we dive into the episode. Sergio, what other shows do you watch? And are there any other projects you have going on right now that you’d like to tell us about?


SERGIO: I like to watch very dramatic shows. I was a big big big fan of The Good Wife and now I’m a fan of The Good Fight and I’m very glad they can curse in it. It makes it way better. But I also like not stupid shows, but funny shows. I love 30 Rock. I like Superstore. I don’t know if you guys watch that.


DANI: I do! I do and I work for Target, so it’s funnier. 


[LAUGHTER]


SERGIO: All the little things, yeah. You work in retail? Oh my god. 


DANI: Someone who works on the show had to of worked for Target at sometime


SERGIO: Oh sure!


DANI: Because they use all of our lingo in that show. For real. 


SERGIO: Oh yeah. There’s a spy in there. What other shows do I watch? I also watch reality tv sometimes. 


DAVID: Oh Sergio...why do you do that? 


SERGIO: I know. [JOKING] And I just logged off. [LAUGHTER] It’s my guilty pleasure and I’m not gonna show you my screensaver or the wallpaper of my phone cuz…


CLARA: Wait, what is it?


SERGIO: I don’t know if I can…


CLARA: He says as he grabs it and logs in. 


SERGIO: It’s this. Can you see it?


CLARA: Yes, and I don’t know what it is because I clearly don’t watch that show. 


SERGIO: It’s the best. Don’t get me into it, but it’s called 90 Day Fiance [LAUGHTER] Have you guys heard about it?


DANI: Yeah


CLARA: No!


SERGIO: It’s just something you can watch. No, not even watch, just put on in the background, and then you get really into it, and I’m clearly into it because it’s my wallpaper. It just makes me smile. 


CLARA: I’ve got to check that out. 


SERGIO: My taste is all over the place. In terms of projects, the week after I was done with The Magicians, I started working on Colony, this other sci-fi show. It was a really good experience; different, very different character than I’d ever done before, so that was exciting. That comes out I think this summer. And then on Netflix right now is this other show I was shooting as I was shooting Magicians, called Dirk Gently.


CLARA: Oh, right. 


SERGIO: This season, I think it was season two, and I had a few episodes of that too, and right now  I’m producing this short film with my writing partner, Katherine Hill, and Shiren Van Cooten, our second producer, that has one three festivals for screenwriting, best script. 


CLARA: That’s awesome!


SERGIO: So we’re just starting to do that soon. And I just finished something else, but I can’t say. 


CLARA: The one that you’re writing, can you tell us the title of that? 


SERGIO: It’s called Empty, and it deals with human trafficking, but in a different kind of way and a relationship between a mother who’s searching for her child, and this guy who is in the human trafficking world and how this unconventional relationship kind fulls them up as their dealing with this heavy problem.


DANI: Wow, sounds heavy. 


SERGIO. It is. It is, but it’s really, really good. I’m excited to do it.


CLARA: Yeah. Okay so, episode time! Before we dive in, I’ll give a quick recap for our listeners: Julia’s powers increase and she, Penny, and Kady seek information from an old adversary. Meanwhile, Alice and the librarians cook up a plan to contain magic once the questers bring it back — one that could kill Julia. And back in Fillory, Margo becomes the first democratically elected High King thanks to a write-in campaign led by the talking bear Humbledrum. In her first act as High King, she grants the fairies full citizenship and convinces the Fairy Queen to hand over the sixth key.


So I’ll start with our usual question. Dani, what did you think of this episode?


DANI: I loved it because I absolutely had no idea what was coming in this episode and I love being surprised with TV. It rarely happens because I’ve watched so much of it. I mean, I wasn’t really surprised with the outcome, per say, but just the episode in general, how it folded out. It was like elements that I knew would come back. Like Reynard’s going to come back, obviously, come back around somewhere. But I love the fact that Margo became High King. It was very touching. 


CLARA: So true.


DANI: And as a woman, I might have been a little teary-eyed. 


CLARA: Yeah, I definitely laughed, cried, and yelled holy shit at my screen in this episode. [LAUGHTER] I found it really satisfying too. 


DAVID: It worked.


CLARA: It did. It did. I found it really satisfying too, both because the election was really fun to watch– And I agree with you, as a woman, especially after November 2016, and because it brought together a lot of puzzle pieces that the season has laid out. That has by no means finished, as our longass texting will say, since we left this episode with at least as many questions as answers. But it got me thinking and theorizing and made me excited for the finale, which I think is what a penultimate episode really should do. 


So DAVID, when we had Mike Moore on to talk about “A Life in the Day,” I asked him what he hoped fans would take away from the episode -- what they would feel. I’d like to ask you the same question about this episode. What did you hope fans would get out of “The Fillorian Candidate”?


DAVID: I think that the most important thing I was going for, and again, I wrote this episode with Noga Landau so I’m speaking for her right now as well, but we really wanted to break your heart with the Quentin story, which has been something we set up very early in the season and at the time Quentin just set it aside and said, I can’t deal with this right now so I’m just gonna keep on keeping on, I’m just going to pretend this isn’t a problem. And I just wanted to make sure that we came back around to that and made him face it, but what you’re talking about with your feelings of jubilation of High King Margo, that was probably the biggest thing. We have been setting up that story since episode… certainly in the first four episodes of season two. We started talking about Fillory Clinton and how we can really tell the story of how it feels to be a woman in a world that is even more patriarchal than ours, but with even more rules. So I think that Fillory gives her an opportunity to go into a position of power in a way that’s easier than on Earth. But it also lets us talk out some feelings and frustrations that we have about our world. 


Every single story in this, like you said this is the penultimate episode, there are things that we have to do to set up stories for next week’s finale. We just wanted to bring each one to a tipping point. Bringing Reynard back, we wanted to make Julia face her feelings about him now that she’s in a different position. Bringing Quentin’s dad back, we wanted him to face his feelings now that he’s in a different position. Margo’s facing her feelings about who she is in relation to Eliot and who she is in relation to Fillory. It was a lot about making people face some of the decisions they’ve made in the past that now come back up again. 


CLARA: Yeah. So one of the things I really loved about this episode is that it twists all the standard assumptions that Tick and Eliot and even I think we as viewers have about what works in politics, and it also really makes us aware of how critical the women in this episode are to everything that does actually work.Like Fen is the one who suggests enlisting Fray’s help to attract the Fairy Queen, Margo is the one who realizes they can force Tick’s hand about the election, and Julia provides the show of magical strength they need to inspire Fillorians to vote the Children of Earth into power. David, can you speak to that? Was it intentional? Was that something you and Noga were thinking about as you were crafting this?


DAVID: It certainly was intentional and it’s more than just me and Noga. We are really taking Sera’s vision for the characters of Margo and Julia especially and where she wanted to take them over the course of this season. Like one of the first conversations we had about Margo for season three was: Where is she at the beginning? Where is she at the end? Is there a way to put her into that position of power that she’s always wanted and felt like she’d be good at, but because of the rules of Fillory, she was kinda held back from. 


So yeah, absolutely we were trying to show in all of the stories that they’re some of the smartest characters on the show, and they have a lot of agency and ideas and it’s not like they’ve never screwed up on the show. We want them to be real and we’re not just gonna hand the victory to the dude because he’s the star of the show, or he’s the biggest face on the poster or whatever. We always want to have an even balance. 


CLARA: So there’s been a lot of talk among fans about the title of this episode. Of course most fans haven’t seen it yet so they’re still in the dark about a lot of stuff. “The Fillorian Candidate,” seems like a pretty clear reference to the 1962 film “The Manchurian Candidate,” which (rolling over the details) involves a communist sleeper agent and some government assassination plots. Because of that, a lot of fans speculated that there would be a sleeper agent among the questers. And I want to ask you, was that just a red herring, or should we remain vigilant?


DAVID: I want to let you remain vigilant. I think I choose to always keep you remaining vigilant. Sometimes the episode titles are very meaningful and we think about them a lot, and sometimes it’s a dumb pun. Like last season Christina Stain and I wrote episode 12. This is sort of my thing now, writing the penultimate episode, and the title for that is “Ramifications”, and it was literally [because] there are rams in it. I thought that was funny.


[LAUGHTER] 


And that’s all there is. That’s all the thought that went into it. For this one, Noga and I had a list of titles, and we kinda sat there for an hour in my office one day, trying to make each other laugh, and you can take from it what you will. We thought a lot about this one. 


DANI: I have to admit, I was a little disappointed that my theory about Rafe didn’t turn out to be true, but I do think there’s one thing I got right: Rafe is more influential and more knowledgeable than either Tick or the Children of Earth give him credit for. Sergio, how do you understand Rafe’s role in Fillorian politics? How does that differ from the way the other characters see him?


SERGIO: Well first of all, just to speak about your theories, I wish one of them was true, because I would have loved to have worked more with the faeries, especially Candace. I mean she’s amazing. So that would have been a Sergio preference. I would have loved that. 


I do think that Rafe does have a little bit more of a say, I guess, in politics, like in this episode, but I think it all has to do with Abigail, and it has to do with where her interests lie. He’s very loyal to the people of Fillory, especially his sloth, his love, and I think that’s where it can all stay. I think he might be a bit restrained in the things that he can do, as you can see in this episode, he works for Tick, and I don’t think he’s happy about that, but this is his job and this is what he needs to do at the moment. But yeah, the loyalty remains with the Fillorian people. 


Going back to something that David said, the way that Margo in that scene when Rafe tells Margo that she has become the High Queen--High King, sorry. I loved this scene, especially because of what Summer did. Every take that we did, she was like, bringing it and bringing it, and being more and more beautiful and honest and vulnerable. It was like a culmination of everything that this show represents. Just having female characters in power and strong and unapologetic and having the recognition of not only Hale, Eliot, but also the people of Fillory that she is the one who should be High King. She just did it beautifully and I just had to say it was an honor and a pleasure to work with her because she’s amazing too. 


DANI: Does that mean that Eliot’s going to be a queen now?


[LAUGHTER]


DAVID: You’re going to have to wait and see what happens in the season finale because the status quo on the show never stays the status quo for long. 


DANI: Yeah. I was just dying of laughter because Eliot, as a gay man, is like a queen now, right? 


[LAUGHTER]


CLARA: I really liked the double entendre for bear. 


DAVID: Oh yes! That was funny. Henry Alonso Myers pitched that in the [writers] room, just kinda as a joke, as I worked the entire scene around that.


DANI: It was too good, I don’t blame you. 


DAVID: One of the lessons that Sera and John have taught over the years is if you really care about something, say you’re really obsessed with a talking bear being on the show, the way that you get something into the show, the way that you make it stick, whether it’s a joke or a character or a plot point, is that you have to make it vital to the plot. So this episode a lot of things happen because I want to see Humbledrum, I want a couple of these jokes, I want a couple of these moments and set pieces, and it was all about how to make them vital so you couldn’t cut them. So you couldn’t get three days into the episode and someone brings out a spreadsheet and goes, look at how much a bear costs. Like can you please cut this whole thing? Because the entire future of Fillory hinges on a conversation with a talking bear about beastiality so, you know it’s absurd, but it’s kinda the heart of the show to me. Like finding those things that are a little weird and a little absurd, but still have human feeling behind them. Then you’re like, oh wow, this is a major plot point that’s gonna change the future of the show. 


DANI: Yeah, Fillory is known for its absurdity at this point. I was watching it with my girlfriend and she was like, slightly turned off by the amount of it. And I was like, you have to remember Fillory is not Earth.


DAVID: They have different taboos. 


DANI: Yeah. So I do want to get back to this episode. At one point, Fen comments that the human vote means nothing in Fillory, and Rafe says that she’s right -- that the human population is dwarfed by the population of talking animals. That makes it seem like Rafe is actually in a pretty powerful position, for a human. Do you think that’s something he’s aware of? How do you imagine he’ll wield that power?


SERGIO: I think that he is aware of it, especially since he’s the one who can communicate whatever it is that the animals are saying, but I don’t know how big of a power this can be. Because, at the same time, I’ve been playing him so that he knows his place. He knows what he is in the pyramid, in the spectrum of things. But yeah, the animals are powerful and he can communicate with them and make them powerful as well. 


CLARA: I’m really looking forward to how… in that scene where he’s delivering the news to Margo and he delivers that line of not having the courage to speak up, I’m really looking forward to seeing that change. Because it seems like it will. It seems like he’s going to develop that courage and start taking on more of an active role.


SERGIO: Right, I remember when we were shooting that scene, I don’t if you remember, David, but you added a line for Margo that wasn’t there, while we were shooting it, and that line [was], you really love that sloth, don’t you, or something like that. 


DAVID: Which is based on your performance in the rehearsal. With the directors and the actors, we shoot the whole thing and then they figure out where they’re gonna put the cameras. And in-between the rehearsal and when we shot, I was thinking about how precious this little relationship between Rafe and Abigail was and how I really wanted people to understand that’s what this is about. This whole story was about us having realized that there are things on Earth that are taboo, but Fillory is a place where an animal is a person 


SERGIO: Right 


DAVID: And that they would have some of the same problems we’d have and they are not given full personhood because of the social mores and moralities of others. And I think that’s what science fiction and fantasy are good at. You can do the funhouse mirror version of our problems and we don’t have to be like, hey everybody you should be nice to gay people. 


SERGIO: Right: 


DAVID: Like just do it. Just be good human beings. But we can kind of put it through a different lens, but yeah, that was totally because of the little quiet, the little smile that SERGIO had on his face during his line. Like you really love that sloth. 


SERGIO: And I thought that was perfect because it kinda brought it back. It took “bestiality is taboo” aspect of it and brought it back to an innocent kind of space and spot, where two, I can’t say people, but two entities loving each other and want can be bad about love? I like that little line and then Joshua is like, do a little quirky face.


DAVID: Yeah, shout out to Josh Butler, director of this episode and many Magicians episodes, who really always finds the way to dig out those little emotional moments. He is an expert at understated little romantic moments between characters in other scenes that aren’t even really about that. I think he did a great job on this one. 


SERGIO: He did. 


CLARA: Okay, so I think we had more questions, but I think we need to move on things that aren’t in the Fillory plotline just for time. So before we do though, Sergio, I know you said that you had some questions for David so I wanted to give you a chance to at least ask one of those.


SERGIO: I think I was in awe listening to him talking about the whole writing of this episode and how the whole process is. Those were kinda my questions and he answered them already. And about the different plotlines and how it works for every writer to write their favorite character or their favorite plot points over the course of the season. So yeah, I think he answered them already. I don’t know if you noticed but I was looking at him, listening to him


CLARA: We’ve seen you. 


SERGIO: And then, I don’t know if I asked you this, but since, were you on set when the bear was there?


DAVID: So the greatest tragedy of my life is two things. After seasons, like literally three seasons of trying to get this talking bear, just because of schedules, Noga was the writer on set for the bear day. She sent me a lot of pictures and videos and I got to enjoy it vicariously through her, but I wasn’t there. But another fun thing about Humbledrum, it’s not in the final episode, but my little brother was the original voice of Humbledrum because I had a very specific idea for what Humbledrum would sound like after thinking about it for years. I was like, hey Aaron (my brother), please send me, and he just recorded [the lines] on his phone. The like, bye Margo, and everything. 


The other thing that I feel like I missed out on is kinda my personal tragedy is that I’m a huge huge huge West Wing fan and so Marlee Matlin has been on the show many times, I’ve written scenes for her many times, and I’ve never once been on set the day she was there. I’ve always had to come back early to break the next episode. But I wanted to mention something. The character of Rafe functionally, the way that we use Rafe, is based on The West Wing and Marlee Matlin’s character on that show, Joey Lucus, because she has a character who is her ASL translator, I don’t know what the technical term is–


CLARA: Interpreter


DAVID: Interpreter, yes, thank you. That is sort of what we were thinking with Rafe, that Rafe would kind of be the person standing next to Joey Lucus and interpreting her. There's this one episode where they’re talking about important political stuff involving the president’s mess on the show and they’re like wait, wait, wait does anyone even know what this guy’s last name is? Like this guy who is the interpreter. 


CLARA: My husband asked that about Rafe’s last name!


[LAUGHTER]


DAVID: I don’t think we’ve ever said what Rafe’s last name is. But we were sort of thinking that about Rafe. About how there’s this guy who’s there, and maybe he’s making up what Abigail said, maybe he has his own idea, maybe he’s acting on [own], like Abigail said you should definitely give me a raise.


[LAUGHTER]


DANI: I’ve definitely thought that. I had moments of time where I’m like, hmmm is he like making this all up?


CLARA: He would never! He would never betray Abigail in that way. 


SERGIO: I just want you to know that you saying that Rafe is a little bit related to Marlee Matlin’s character, I could die right now. [LAUGHTER]. I can retire. I can die right now. My Twitter bio, my resume, that’s it. 


DAVID: Perfect. 


CLARA: Okay, so turning away from Fillory now,  we’ve both been curious about the role of mythology in the show, particularly in this season. At points, it has seemed like the show is casting a wide net, with elements of many different mythological traditions just as the books did. But at other times, as in this episode, it seems to hew closer to the Greek canon. So there’s like a million questions in this, but I think the starter is, what kind of approach have you and the other writers taken in drawing from these different traditions, and how do you understand the role of divinity and mythology of the show?


DAVID: I think that what we’re trying to do is very similar to what Lev does in the books, which is that there are parts of myth that are true and our characters learn are true, and there’s parts that aren’t. There’s combinations; there’s gods which are like, oh this god was actually five different gods across these different religions and traditions. So we never wanted to tie ourselves to one. We’ve definitely done a lot of Greek stuff this season, but that is not to say that the universe where The Magicians tv show that that is the One True Mythology. I think that the way we look at it is that our characters have these reference points, because in the United States we’re taught a lot of Greek myth as children, like it comes up a lot in our culture and in our school and so these are just the easy access points to some of these stories for our characters. We are always looking for ways to turn them just a little bit so it’s not what you’ve heard before, not quite what you’ve seen before, not quite what you’re expecting. 


But then you also want people to be like, hey here’s shorthand, here’s a way to get at the idea of like Bachus, for example, in episode 3x01. That was a case where we could have made up a new name, but I think it helps the audience if you’re at all familiar with the myth of Bachus. Like I get that archetype, I get how that lego piece clicks with the story, using that name. But maybe he has a dozen names across a dozen traditions and this is just the one he’s presenting with today.


 But yeah, we think about it a lot. We think about how much we should be drawing from all these different places. We also think a lot about appropriation and how we don’t to be glib or disrespectful of other cultures and mythologies. I think in this case, because the Greek and Roman myths are so prevalent in our society, it’s the shortcut that gets us there the fastest.


CLARA: Well I’ve been thinking a lot in the last few days. I mean, not just the last few days, but especially with this episode about Titanomachy, the original war between the Titans, who predate most of the Olympians, and the Olympians, where Zeus casts them out, and there’s a lot of variances on the Second Titanomachy in literature, and they almost always follow some version of the same thing. Like Hades or some other god, but usually Hades, gets sick of Zeus being in power, and decides to bring the Titans back to create a new war so that he can overthrow Zeus. And I’m sure that you can’t say anything about where the finale is going, but I just want to put it out there for our listeners that we’ve been talking about that. We’ve been talking what the heck is Cassandra’s story. Well people know we’ve been talking about Hades, because that’s been going on for episodes and episodes.


DANI: And we knew he’d show up.


CLARA: Right, you’d been talking about whether Julia had some relationship to Hera or something, right?


DANI: Yeah, because Julia’s going to open the door, and the person who opened the door to the Titans coming out was Hera, and Hera’s spiritual animal happens to be a fucking peacock. [LAUGHTER] So the person who sent them on the quest happens to be The Great Cock. I don’t know, there’s a lot of stuff and we’re always piggybacking off each other, sending each other different theories. There’s a huge one going around right now that Hades happens to be Penny’s dad as well, because otherwise why would he want to insert himself into Penny’s life. 


CLARA: Do you know if that theory is across all timelines? I guess it would have to be, that’s how timelines work. 


DANI: I would think so, but Penny23 is shady as fuck.


CLARA: He IS! I’m glad you agree with me because everyone on Twitter was like, ohmygod he’s such an upgrade, he’s so compassionate, he’s so in love. And I’m like, do not trust that bitch. 


[LAUGHTER]


DANI: I don’t trust him. 


CLARA: Yeah, so we have a lot of questions about mythology, which you probably can’t answer. Are we gonna see more at the end of the season? Can you answer that?


DAVID: In the finale there’s a little bit more mythology. Well one character in particular from Greek mythology comes up in a big way in the finale, but beyond that I think you’ll just have to wait and see. 


CLARA: Well good thing we don’t have to wait too long. 


DAVID: Yeah.


DANI: So another one for David. This is kinda something we just talked about: What’s Penny23’s deal? Why does he care if Julia and Kady kill Reynard, and why does he want them to use the only god-killing weapon they have?


DAVID: I think that Penny is very– he doesn’t always present this way– but he’s a very empathic character. He’s a guy who, especially this version of him, 23, you might notice that he doesn’t take charge of scenes the way Penny40 would. He sometimes stands in the back, observing, because he’s trying to understand this new place he’s in. And I think when he looks at Kady and Julia and Reynard, he’s been told this story just very recently. He had no idea about any of this in his timeline, so it’s very fresh for him. And when he hears about what happened to this version of Julia, a person to him who he loves and had a very very profound connection to in his own timeline, I think it’s like if you found out someone you loved had been assaulted in this way, you want to do something about it. 


The thing he doesn’t want is to just have to wash his hands with it and walk away. And Kady and Julia are in a very different position because they’ve been dealing with this for two seasons, the trauma of it, and how they feel about it, and how they’re growing beyond it, and what it means for them. So they’re, I think, in a more evolved place then Penny23, because it’s still a very fresh wound for him. So he’s in this scene thinking you’ve just been given a weapon that can finally take out this guy you’ve wanted to kill for two years, how can you walk away from it. I think that Kady, in the beginning of season three would not have made the same choice that she makes at the end of season three. She’s learned a lot and she’s come a long way. And Julia, she’s becoming a different thing; she’s really going through a metamorphosis. So both of them are in a position to take a different view of the situation than Penny23. He’s more reactive and they’re in their heads, while he’s in his heart a little bit more in that scene. I think that’s a really cool place to put them, because usually Kady feels like the more emotional of the two; she’s much more likely to wear her heart on her sleeve and Penny tries to hide his. This version of Penny is still trying to figure out where he fits in that. He doesn’t know what his relationship with Kady is going to be or what his relationship with Julia40 is gonna be. 


CLARA: So following up on that a little, we’ve repeatedly seen Julia choose justice over vengeance on the spectrum between the two, sometimes at great personal cost. But there are other characters who consistently choose vengeance over justice. Like we saw the Red Dinner Party in episode 3x10, which definitely has a lot of vengeance in it. So one of the things I’ve been wondering about is: Whether the show as a whole has a stance as a whole on that kind of morality issue or whether it’s something that you’ve even explored in the writers room, and what sorts of things you’re thinking about when you grapple with those issues in the show? 


DAVID: I think it comes down to each character. The show as a whole I don’t think has a stance. Beyond that, there are some things that are unforgivable. What the consequences for your actions are are going to depend. The world isn’t perfect, so people aren’t always going to get what’s coming to them. Going back to season one, one of the big lessons for Quentin was: You fix what you can. That sometimes all we have is tiny, tiny bits of power to fix one thing, and you just hope that if you fix enough of those you can make a big enough difference. We’ve been talking about that not only in season one, but even now as we talk about the stories in season four. I think the differences between that story with the Red Dinner Party and this story with Reynard, is that first of all, it’s not exactly the same crime, but it’s also not the same people who had that crime committed against them. And I think what matters is what is going to bring Julia peace? What is going to bring Kady peace? Verus The Fairy Queen and all the faeries, and Julia and Fen and that situation. Theirs is very different because they’re very different people. 


DANI: I love that Kady gets to kind of let this go. It’s been something that I’ve been hoping to have resolve over because I know that really screwed her up


DAVID: Yeah, Kady kind of has had that problem again and again where she’s never quite getting what she wants.


DANI: I was really feeling for her in this episode. Like Penny’s been replaced by a different Penny and it’s gonna be traumatizing for her. 


CLARA: I was thinking a lot about how Quentin delivers this line to Alice about how there’s eight questers and only seven keys, and there were a lot of moments in this episode that sort of look at how a bunch of different characters are the odd one out. I don’t have any interpretations of that yet, but it’s just one of those things that’s been kicking around my brain that I found really interesting and kinda hooked me. 


DAVID: One of the things that we took from the books was that they’re all the odd one out. Everybody that is a magician is by definition a little bit weird and a little bit special and they’re all special people from where they came from and now they’re all together in a way that makes them all the same, but by definition they’re all special, unique, different. They all come with their own damage. As an overarching theme for us to build off of, I think that’s really kind of cool.


CLARA: It’s not just the actual magicians. As Sergio was talking about earlier, Rafe is that way too. Tick is that way too. This is a show where every character is an individual and a weirdo. Seeing all those weirdos come together really makes something beautiful.


DAVID: Right, and I don’t think that our Fillory stories would work without that energy. Like if we were doing a thing where the people of Fillory are just generic peasants, you just wouldn’t care about the story the way you do when you populate it with characters like Rafe and Tick.


SERGIO: Right, and as a fan of the show myself, everytime I watch it, it’s just every single character is very well written and you understand why they make the choices that they make and where it’s coming from. It’s always based out of a real place so that just speaks to the great writers of the show.


[DAVID LAUGHS]


DANI: Yeah. Well we have one last question before we move on to fashion. At the end of the episode, Quentin tells his father that he named his son after him. But Quentin’s father is credited as “Ted,” while his son is credited as “Rupert.” What are we meant to take away from that scene? Does Quentin believe his father is Rupert Chatwin? Is he?


DAVID: Well I can tell you the story about that. When we were working on episode 5, where Quentin’s son appears, he didn’t really have a name. There wasn’t a name that we gave him in the script because sometimes what you end up doing is that you name a character kind of for the sake of the actor, because it’s pretty for them if they have a character name, versus Secretary At Desk, you know? So Mike Moore named him Rupert because Quentin’s a nerd, why not? And there was one line of dialogue in that episode where he said Rupert out loud, and it was cut. It was cut because that episode was extremely, extremely long when we first [shot it]. I don’t know if Mike talked to you about it.


DANI: I really hope that we see all of on like the DVD extras. 


DAVID: It was so much stuff, but it wasn’t actually all that extra. Every shot was just like a little bit longer and they found a way to recut it in a way that I thought was beautiful. Like it’s the only time that I’ve watched the show and teared up, like watching something that I’ve worked on. So when we were working on this episode, we knew we had this scene where Quentin goes to talk to his dad. So we worked out the whole story together and then we (me and Noga) went off to write the outline. And for the outline we wrote, it was kinda a placeholder, like we’re gonna figure out what this scene is about and what the emotional core of it is. Then Noga and I really banged our heads against the wall for several days trying to figure out how to wrap up all of the complicated feelings we have about the quest and the purpose of it and the purpose of Quentin’s life and what his dad means to him in one short scene. So there’s something that came to me eventually, and I went to Mike and I said does it matter if this character’s name is actually Rupert or can we go back and retroactively say that his name was not Rupert.


CLARA: It’s a recon! [LAUGHTER]


DAVID: Well it’s not a recon because nobody ever told our post-production people that we renamed the character. Because before that episode was done, was being made, we already renamed the character. There was an old draft of a script that they were going off of when they put the credits together. His name is not Rupert, it was a slip through the cracks.


[LAUGHTER]


CLARA: I got so excited. 


DANI: So what’s his dad’s name? Is it just Ted or is it Theodore?


DAVID: His name is Theodore, but he goes by Ted. 


DANI: Okay, so he’s not Rupert Chatwin. That’s funny because actually the actor who plays Quentin’s dad looks kinda a lot like the young Rupert Chatwin actor.


DAVID: Right. I never thought about that.


CLARA: I’m just gonna point out that he didn’t actually say it’s not Rupert Chatwin, he just said his name is not Rupert. [LAUGHTER]


DANI: Yeah.


DAVID: Wait, is Quentin’s dad Rupert Chatwin? 


CLARA: Slash does he think that he is?


DANI: Or we also threw out the possibility that maybe his son is Rupert Chatwin.


DAVID: No. No, I don’t think that’s true.


DANI: Okay.


[LAUGHTER]


CLARA: Alright, well fashion. 


DANI: Clara was like screaming at me before I’d seen the episode. 


CLARA: I was screaming.


DANI: Like in the last two minutes of the episode. Like I’m at work right now, but you’re really firing me up. 


CLARA: I have a list of texts and if you blanked out my name, all it would be is seven texts from DANI that just say AHHHHH with more and more As and Hs every time. 


[LAUGHTER]


DANI: Yeah, she really had me going there. But I really wanna see Quentin’s son pop up again because I feel like he’s gonna be relevant at some point because of Chekhov's gun. Also we got a literal Chekhov's gun in this episode. 


DAVID: Yeah, you guys were talking about that on the last episode. You were like when’s that god-killing bullet going to back, and I was listening to Mike and Henry’s answers, like hmm yeah interesting. 


[LAUGHTER]


CLARA: Yeah, we definitely had the impression from them that it was gonna be soon, if by their eyebrows if nothing else. 


DANI: Yeah, you can tell by the look on their faces.


CLARA: Like, yeah sure whatever, speculate. Okay so fashion and y’all should feel free to jump in at any point in here. The way that we usually do this is that we run through a list of fashion things that we notice and there’s a lot in this episode so if you have any insights, please just go ahead and scream out or whatever.


So the first thing that I noticed and you’re gonna be really happy about this, was Julia, DANI. 


DANI: Literally, literally one of my first notes down here is that Julia just looks incredible. Like her hair when it’s actually done, like in the back. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her hair up in any way and it looked good.


CLARA: The big thing that I noticed was her necklaces. Because early in the episode, she’s wearing this smaller necklace with what looks like a moonstone or an opal that’s flanked by two crescents above and below it. So there’s some moon imagery there. And later when she’s praying to OLU and ends up in FIllory, she’s wearing another kind of moon-evoking necklace, except it’s bigger and the two crescents look like they’re made out of bone and they’re kind of thin and there’s this gold tassel hanging below them. But when she and Kady and Penny go out to get Reynard, she’s wearing both of them. And I don’t actually know if I have any theories about what that would mean, if it means anything, but it’s the kind of thing where I’m so used to the costume department really thinking through all those details that it really hooked me and made me think there’s gotta be something to that and I wish I knew what it was. 


DANI: Yeah. I’m glad that you finally noticed something that Julia was wearing because you’re always like, so what was Julia wearing? [LAUGHTER] Because I’m the only one who usually pays attention because I very much want to steal her wardrobe. Do you guys have any insights you’d like to share?


DAVID: About the significance of Julia’s wardrobe in this episode? I don’t think that I really have anything to add to that. I always think Magali does a really good job and sometimes it’s written in the script, like I have a lot of detailed thoughts about Hyman Cooper this season, and sometimes it’s like overall discussion with her about where a character’s going, about how Julia’s becoming a little something else over the course of the season and that’s reflected a lot in Julia’s wardrobe. And I think even more so when you see the next episode. In the season finale she’s got kinda a cool little change up in her look. But in this one, I don’t think there was anything that really pops out at me. Like it’s something that we layered in purposefully. 


DANI: Yeah, she’s wearing a lot of lighter colors, like it keeps getting lighter. More flow-y too. Not as tight, I guess. 


DAVID: I think that’s something that Sera Gamble really really really has a lot of strong feelings about and works in very close collaboration with Magali on, and all the hair and makeup people. So this is one of those areas where the rest of us as producers it’s like go ahead, do your thing, we trust you. 


DANI: Yeah.

CLARA: Yeah, they know what they’re doing.


DANI: Yeah, she’s also kind of a little bit reminiscent of Julia season one before shit goes crazy. 


CLARA: Yeah, I’ve been noticing that her hair this season is much more season one Julia. So one of the other things, this is just me ranting about things that I love. I love that Fen is still wearing pants, even in Fillory.


DAVID: Oh yeah! That was the one conversation that we did really have. When Fen goes back to Fillory, what does she take with her from Earth? How is she different? And so the pitch was she’s half Fillory and half Earth now, and that she really loves Earth and she takes pieces of it with her. Like she’s added jeans to her closet.


CLARA: Yeah! Yeah, I love it.


DANI: I wanna see her with an emoji pillow or something. Like on her bed.


CLARA: Oh my god that would be amazing. That’ll be what happens when she finally does leave Eliot for Todd. They’ll have emoji pillows all over their bed.


[LAUGHTER]


DANI: That’s what we want, is Fen and Todd, if you’re not aware. 


DAVID: I’ll take that under advisement. 


CLARA: One of the things I really like about it is both that she’s taking these things from Earth, yes, but also that her time on Earth helped her realize that she can have an identity of her own, separate from Eliot and separate from the expectations that the world she was born into has always placed on her. And I think I’ve been very aware because we know it’s happening with Julia, and we’ve seen it with Margo, of each of the ways the female characters are coming into their own power this season. I think with Fen almost more than anybody else, I’ve seen it in her wardrobe and it feels so natural and I love it. 


DAVID: Yeah, one of themes of the show, I think, is that power is sometimes handed to men and women have to take it. And that’s certainly true of Margo and it’s a little bit true of Julia this season and Fen as a character who originally, the idea was she’ll be in a couple of episodes and we’ll see what we think. Maybe Eliot will find a way to get a divorce in Fillory and we just kept loving all the stories and all the performances. So you start thinking, okay how do we take this character who was intended as an obstacle for Eliot and now has her own storylines and really doesn’t even share that much screen time with Eliot across this season. They have this big reunion this episode after many episodes apart and I think that’s just a cool thing we got to explore because she very easily just could have been Eliot’s Fillory sidekick who’s there to cause problems for him.


DANI: I feel like that’s a testament to how much Brittany loves Fen.


DAVID: Yeah, she does. 


DANI: She loves Fen and she has really made everybody love Fen and even like Eliot and Fen in this episode, you can tell that they really deeply care about each other now. They’re kinda ride-or-die for each other, even though they don’t really need to be married to each other anymore.


DAVID: It’s not a romantic relationship. It’s like a friendship, but also like a practical partnership in a cool way that I don’t think I’ve seen before on TV. So I always like those things when we can find a new angle on something. 


CLARA: So SERGIO, I know that your character, Rafe, wears a uniform so you maybe don’t get the freedom a lot of the other characters have gotten to like, explore in fashion, but are there things that you have worked with Magali on? Like fun little ways for Rafe to express himself?


SERGIO: She’s amazing–Magali – and the costume is extremely comfortable, too comfortable as I actually gained weight a little bit. [LAUGHS] It’s super comfortable. The only thing that changed was last season I got to wear red for the orgy scene 
.
CLARA: I forgot about that scene!


SERGIO: Also I think for the big musical battle scene, there was a different color there, a different vest that he wears. So for special occasions I think that Magali does change it up a bit. But yeah, throughout it’s a uniform. An official royal uniform. 


CLARA: So the other outfits I want to call out in this episode are Margo, no surprise. DANI’s just shaking her head because I’m always calling out Margo’s outfits. We clearly have our types.


DANI: They are amazing!


CLARA: She wears a lot of amazing outfits and one thing that I noticed is that a lot of those outfits have these shoulder-like elements or these big puffy segments on the shoulders or the back, which really lean back to the 80s femesist power suit deal, but noticeably after she is elected and goes through the coronation, she’s wearing a very feminine dress and her shoulders are bare. That was just a really inspiring choice. Like she can be smaller and vulnerable now that she doesn’t have to prove herself and that she realizes she hasn’t had to prove herself all along, that she got where she was by being herself. 


DANI: Yeah.


DAVID: Right. She can wear that dress and also be wearing the crown of the High King, like she’s wearing Eliot’s crown, so she really has the best of both.


CLARA: Yeah


DANI: She looks incredible in that crown too. 


CLARA: Yes she does. 


DANI: Summer always looks amazing. It’s going to be so weird to have her have both eyes again. Her eyepatches are incredible and she looks amazing in them.


DAVID: Yeah, it was actually kind of a hard decision because there's a story that comes from the fact she gets her faery eye, but it does feel like a little bit of a loss because it’s been so much fun to have her in the eyepatch. Just the pirate jokes, just that is worth it. 


DANI: Yeah. So Sergio, if you could steal anyone’s wardrobe from the show, who would it be?


SERGIO: Oh… ummm. Oh my god. I think Eliot’s.


[LAUGHTER]


CLARA: Everyone says that.


SERGIO: He has some very interesting, fun, things that he’s worn. No yeah, I think Eliot’s wardrobe for sure. Or just to piss him off a little bit, Riz, Tick. 


[LAUGHTER]


SERGIO: I would love to just show up one day like, oh I’m wearing this now. 


CLARA: I would love to see that. That would be hilarious. 


DANI: It would be. 


CLARA: That would make an entire scene spontaneously just by showing up and wearing his costume. 


Okay, that’s all I had for fashion. Do either of you have anything you want to add? Anything we missed in this episode, or should we move onto MVP?


DANI: I think you’re good.


DAVID: I think we can keep on, keeping on.


SERGIO: Yup


CLARA: Okay, so MVP, it was a tough choice for me in this episode, but in the end, I think I have to give it to Summer, with Arjun as a close runner-up. I think they both displayed so much range in this episode. I’ve loved seeing how Margo has been developing over the seasons, from queen bee to actual queen to high fucking king in this episode! It’s so great. And it’s wild seeing Arjun play Penny23. Now that we have him out of the 23rd timeline and back in the world that we’re in, I think I’m catching more of those subtle nuances that distinguish him from Penny!Prime. So yeah, that’s me. Summer with a side dose of Arjun. Dani, how about you?


DANI: It was really hard to choose an MVP because it was definitely an ensemble episode. Part of me wants to give it to Summer. Part of me wants to give it to Summer AND Hale because together they’re both great in this episode. And then I also wanted to give it to Jade, because just the emotions she displays on her face as Kady. She doesn’t even have to speak sometimes. Her acting is just incredible. But then I ended up saying, you know what, I’m going to give it to Humbledrum.


[LAUGHTER]


DAVID [Quietly]: Yes. Perfect. 


DANI: I’ve been waiting as well to have him. What’s the bear actor’s name?


DAVID: Oh umm. I forget. We’ve had that same bear on the show before. 


CLARA: Was he the bear who was Mayakovsky?


DAVID: Mayakovsky bear, yeah. I think it was the same bear. Because there’s not a lot bear actors in the world, it turns out. 


DANI: Yeah, so I gave it to Humbledrum. 


CLARA: So DAVID, do you have an MVP for this episode? 


DAVID: I mean, I agree with everything you’ve just said in terms of character growth from season one into this episode, what Summer’s done is remarkable and I think she has amazing instincts and is just heartbreaking at times to watch, then be so hilarious. We had that tiny little bit in the re-cappy teaser where she’s calling The Fairy Queen a creepy bitch, and that’s really something that nobody else I think could pull off in the same way. I think the person I want to call a little bit of attention to is actually Will Bates.


CLARA: Oh the composer!


DAVID: There’s a few scenes in this episode where I think that the music is so beautiful and does such a great job at highlighting the emotions. You never want the music to tell you how you’re supposed to be feeling. You want it to just lag a little bit behind and just amplify what you’re feeling and there’s two moments in this episode that work really really well. One of them is when Margo is actually being installed as the High King, there’s that little montage. And then the scene with Quentin and Ted at the very end. The music is just so beautiful. And I don’t think there’s a lot of TV shows were you notice the music. I worked as a writer’s assistant on Battlestar Galactica for the Syfy channel years ago and Bear McCreary, the composter for that show, is one of the best composters and the fact that he’s doing TV is incredible. And Game of Thrones has amazing, amazing music, and I like now to think that the music on The Magicians can fall into that same category. It’s incredible. 


CLARA: Well my husband will be very happy that you called out the composter since that’s his day job. Alright Sergio, what about you? Anyone you wanna holler at? 


SERGIO: I think I’ll have to agree with all of you. Summer, I just think the strength and power that she has with the vulnerability makes everything work perfectly. She’s amazing. And Humbledrum. 


[LAUGHTER]


DANI: Actually I do wanna shout out Jason too. Just the end scene is incredible. 


DAVID: I mean the last two scenes for him and Julia, how he’s talking about what the quest wants from him is to be cold, I think he brought a lot more depth to that scene then was on the page, which is always great. I mean, he’s worked with Spencer before, not just on this show, but they were both on Aquarius. [DAVID LAUGHS] I forgot to list the biggest contributor from Aquarius, which is Jason Ralph, who had a recurring part on that show. What both of them brought to that final scene really brought it up a level and I really appreciate it because that’s what you hope for when you’re writing– that the people you’re working with will not only understand what you’re trying to do but also bring their own experience and character to it. Those tiny little touches which make you feel. That’s always amazing.


CLARA: And while we’re shouting out tiny touches, I know that SERGIO didn’t have the most screen time of anyone in the episode, but I do wanna shout out just again. Everytime you deliver a line, your face does something and you can tell all the twelve different emotions behind that. And for me, a big part of Rafe’s backstory, as I understand it, is that he’s been trained to do a particular type of thing his entire life, sort of like Fen, and there’s a little bit of good soldier spite to him, this resistance under the mask at all times and you see it again in this episode and I really love it. 


SERGIO: Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much. 


CLARA: Okay so rating time. This has been the thing that’s made us most nervous all season, because this season has just blown us away and last season we gave tens too early and then we were just stuck. 


I really enjoyed this episode, and while it doesn’t have as much drama as the penultimate episode of season 2 or season 1 did, I think it does a really lovely job of building tension in the lead up to the finale. So I was trying to decide between a 9 and a 10 and just because we’ve given out so many tens, I’m going with a 9 this time. But that’s my rating 9/10. DANI, what about you?


DANI: Yeah, I think I’m going to steal your rating. 9/10 is a solid choice. This season has just been so incredible. It’s been such a journey on TV and honestly, I’m so happy because The Magicians is one of my favorite book series ever. Lev is incredible and just to see it brought to life is so different, but it’s so unique. There’s nothing like it on TV at this moment I feel like. Every episode is just completely different, especially this season.


CLARA: Yeah.


DANI: I’m blown away so I’m really excited for the finale. 


CLARA: Yeah!


DANI: It’s probably gonna be a 10. 


DAVID: Here’s hoping!


CLARA: I feel like the conversation I hear when I talk to other fans these days is that they’re so excited for the finale and they’re so sad they’re gonna have to have nine months without The Magicians. 


DANI: Yes.


CLARA: It’s funny because I feel that way too, but there’s this other part of me that’s like, there’s nine months to speculate, where we don’t know anything and we can just get into weird crackpot theories. 


DANI: Well I haven’t been a weird crackpot theorist since between Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows, when the Harry Potter books were out, and that was a way longer wait, so I can speculate on that forever. 


CLARA: But you have been this season!


DANI: It’s fun.


CLARA: You’ve been a fan theorist this season. 


DANI: I have. And I’m really disappointed that my theory went kumpt. 


[LAUGHTER]


CLARA: There’s only one episode to go, but the writing is on the wall for my theory too it looks like. So we’ll see.


DANI: Yeah, I think your theory might be dead in the water as well. 


CLARA: Still, there’s an extra quester. [LAUGHTER] Alright, Sergio and David, I won’t ask you to rate the episode of course, I think it’s really hard to do that when you’re in it, but I would like to know if either of you has a favorite episode from the ones you’ve worked on. SERGIO, let’s start with you.  


SERGIO: It would have to be… of any season?


CLARA: Yeah!


SERGIO: I have a couple. The very first one that I worked on, because I got to work with everybody for the first time and get the energy of everybody together. It’s very difficult whenever you read a scene that you audition for and get it, to imagine how it’s going to be when you’re going to be actually doing it. It exceeded my expectations, just everybody and the crew. That and… actually I have three. 


The second one would be the last season, the musical episode, just because of that whole experience. It was insane. It was amazing. Dream come true. 


Also the first episode of this season, 3x01. Just because it set the tone beautifully for the entire quest. I love that. 


Oh! I guess I’m a huge fan. I also love the “Six More Stories” episode, just because. Especially the Marlee Matlin story and how, for that specific period of time, it was,[SERGIO’s audio cuts out a bit here] the silence was so beautiful and so deep. I love that too. 


CLARA: And David, we definitely need to have you on for something that is not episode specific sometime, just so we can talk about that too, because I cut like two pages of questions. Because I know this has been a long interview already. It could have been a lot longer. [LAUGHS] 


DAVID: I mean, yeah for me I think that my two previous episodes that I wrote for this season, 3x04 “Be the Penny”, and “Six Short Stories” (which I wrote with Sera), those really felt like the most special of the ones I’ve done. You know I love all the episodes for different reasons, but those both felt like we were all doing exactly what we had hoped we would do with this show, which is always good. You always hope that the show can live up to what you hope it can be.


CLARA: David, can I ask you one question about that episode before we leave? 


DAVID: Yeah, of course. 


CLARA: So I was wondering, my stepdad is a film professor and actually I’ll probably get in touch with you sometime after this about whether or not you’d be willing to talk to him and his class, because he has this project he’s been doing for a long time and the class he teaches is on silence in film and tv, and when I told him about this he got really excited because the way he sees this is that it’s connected to the film that Marlee Matlin made in the 80s, Children of a Lesser God, the one where she got her first Oscar. In that movie it’s the story of a deaf character and a hearing teacher, but it’s told entirely from the hearing perspective. So something I was curious about was whether you were familiar with that film, whether you’d seen it, and whether it’s something you were thinking about going into this, or whether it was just, yeah we have to tell this story from Harriet’s point of view, approach?


DAVID: I am familiar with it, and I’ve seen it, and I love it, and at the same time there’s things that we as a culture are a little more sensitive about as a culture than then about issues like this. I mean the way that that sequence came about was that early in the season, we knew that we had Marlee for a certain amount of time, because she was going to go off to be a series regular on the show Quantico, and we wanted to, it’s like smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em. We knew that that meant we wanted to do something really, really special with her. It was me and Sera and a few of the other writers at lunch and it sprouted up, like hey I got this email it seems like Marlee’s going to be unavailable for such and such dates. So that would be like episodes 9 through 13 of this season so we should figure out a way to use her before that. Like whatever cool stuff we can come up with for her. 


And within the course of 30 seconds me and Sera had riffed on it– there should be a raid on the library and she should go on that raid. We had a bunch of ideas and the whole thing should be completely silent, and we’re like cool cool, we know that. And that was when we were breaking I think episode 3x01. So it was way before it was gonna come up. So when we actually got around to writing “Six Short Stories About Magic”, we had a bunch of stuff we owed from the previous episode, like we set up stories, and had to continue them and pay them off, and I was sitting at home, right in this exact room, and I was just thinking about it and I was like, this is the time. This is when we should use the idea we talked about months ago. And I wasn’t sure if Sera was serious about it. I wasn’t sure what the appetite would be to do something like that because it can be hard sometimes to convince everybody at every level of the show, like the studio and the network and everybody, basically that we want to try something new that might be confusing. We don’t want people thinking their TV is broken, but it seemed like a really cool way to not only get into her character, but to respect Marlee as an actress who we adore. Like, how can I write something that is worthy of having Marlee Matlin on the show? And it was thinking about that sequence and being like, how do we delineate it? How do we tell the audience there’s a reason that only one chunk of this episode is told in this way? 


Thinking about that problem is how we got the structure– we’ll do one story an act because then you’re like, well there’s a story about Harriet, that’s one act that we know, that’s cool. And then it was the entire writers room that pitched the story, seeing the character of Harriet at different ages, and all those different stories that interweave in a cool way. I basically compare it to the novel Winesburg, Ohio, which is a bunch of short stories and there’s characters and events that crop up in the different stories, and that was the structure that we wanted to try. I’d been pitching that we do that since season one so this was the perfect moment where we could do that structure with this silent act and we’ve gotta use Harriet now because we weren’t going to have her because of the actress’s availability. So it was a perfect storm. And then Sera was going to write the episode, but she was very very busy, so I completely lucked out in that I cared a lot about the story so I got to write it with her, which I was really glad to have that opportunity. 


CLARA: Well thank you for answering that. Thank you for being part of this very long interview. 


DAVID: I’ll talk faster the next time. 


CLARA: Oh no no. Like I said, we just had so many questions. Sergio and David, thank you so much for joining us. It’s been delightful talking to both of you. Yeah, thank you. 


SERGIO: Thank you for having us. 


DAVID: It was super fun. 


SERGIO: Yeah, yeah.


CLARA: Listeners, thank you for sticking with us for Season 3. I can’t believe we only have one episode left! If you like our podcast, please subscribe and rate us on iTunes. And as always, you can follow us on Twitter or Facebook @physicalkidspod. Bye!


DANI: Bye!