How
would you describe Wonderfalls?
It’s a really quirky, smart, feel-good show about a pathological
narcissist who wakes up one day to discover the universe has sort-of
forced her to become fate’s bitch.
Sounds
a bit like Buffy the Vampire Slayer
without the vampires...
Buffy really opened up the door for new types of female
characters on TV, and for melding genres; it gave you a little
more freedom in the types of stories you can tell.
What
was your inspiration for Wonderfalls?
Todd (Holland) had read Dead Like Me and was very interested
in working with me. I of course was a fan of his from Twin
Peaks, Larry Sanders, and Malcolm in the Middle;
the guy’s done a slew of great television. He called me
when I was working on the remake of Carrie for NBC and
said “We’re in the thick of development season, I
want to commit to you to develop a project, do you want to commit
to me?” I was like “Hell yeah!”
He
had a thing for the Joan of Arc legend, and we started talking
about what it would mean to have someone called who really didn’t
want to be called, and who might be the last person you would
want to be called, and who was calling them, and all of the elements
of that legend and how they might be reinvented today. We were
in his kitchen talking about this, and he had a couple of salt
and pepper shakers with a cow head and a bull head, and we thought
“wouldn’t it be interesting if the higher power was
speaking through these?”
How
do you respond to the inevitable comparisons to Joan of Arcadia,
besides the fact that in Wonderfalls Jaye it isn’t
explicitly talking to God?
I think we have a considerably different tone to our show—we
skew much more comedic. The three of us are very well versed in
genre storytelling, and there’s a different quality to the
way we tell stories on Wonderfalls than the way they
tell stories on Joan of Arcadia. One’s not better
or worse, they’re just really different in spirit.
How
would you describe Jaye's lesbian sister Sharon?
She’s
a very conflicted character, one of those Log Cabin Republicans.
We have a line in one of the episodes where she’s a part
of the Conservative Ladies of America and her sister accuses her
of using the Republican Party as a lesbian dating service. It’s
a different angle that will give us a richer context and help
you understand why someone who is so politically conservative
might still be in the closet.
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