The Transformers
In May, after a months-long search, AMC named the team of James Harmon Brown and Barbara Esensten as its new co-head writers, succeeding Megan McTavish. The scribes, who officially reported for duty in early June, spoke to Digest about settling in to the show and their creative plans for Pine Valley.
Soap Opera Digest: Welcome!
James Harmon Brown: Thank you!
Barbara Esensten: Thank you!
Digest: How has the adjustment process gone for you?
Brown: It’s gone very well. Very well.
Esensten: We’ve worked with some of the writers before and some of the actors. Of course, we worked with Thorsten [Kaye, Zach] really closely on PORT CHARLES [where he played Ian] and love him, so when we arrived, it was wonderful to see and work with him again.
Brown: We also met a lot of people from LOVING and THE CITY, oddly enough, which we did all those years ago, who are working in Pine Valley now. So that was kind of fun, to meet some of them, the crew and directors. It was kind of like old home week.
Esensten: Julie [Hanan Carruthers, executive producer] gave us a little cocktail party so that we could sort of remeet the people who we’d worked with before and get acquainted with the new people we’d be working with, which was lovely.
Digest: I spoke to several of the attendees of that party, coming from different pockets of the show, and even people who’d been nervous about the change in head writer came away feeling really positive and very reassured.
Brown: We really like to create an atmosphere that’s fun. That includes all the writers. To make it the kind of environment that you’re not afraid to speak your mind in or have a silly idea or a crazy idea.
Esensten: Yesterday, when we were meeting with the writers, someone said, “Well, this is a really bad idea….” and we said, “Whoa! There are no bad ideas, only ideas that don’t work.”
Brown: And it applies to the actors, too. We like to keep an open door. They know these characters far better than we do, and if something isn’t working for them, as long as it’s not affecting long-term story, we want to make sure they know it’s okay to come in and see if we can fix it. That just adds, I think, to the idea that this is a team and that the team wants to go forward in a positive way.
Esensten: And of course, Julie, who we love working for [she was their boss at PC, as well], she’s very open to having the actors speak with us. So within reason, we really want to hear from them.
Digest: Let’s talk about your storytelling goals for AMC.
Brown: Our main goal is to make the stories a tree with many branches — the so-called umbrella stories. That’s always the goal when we come to a show, but the positive thing about this show is that there are so many great characters, rich history and family entanglements that it’s really not that difficult to make those branches grow.
Esensten: The stories that we have planned, as we sit down and talk about what’s going to be happening, it’s like, “Oh, my God, well, that’s really going to affect him because that’s his brother-in-law!” We play off that and the characters are so intertwined to begin with, it makes storytelling much easier — our type of storytelling. We just got off the phone with our scriptwriters and another thing we’ve been talking about is that you have to write the way that people talk today and make it conversational. You want the audience to believe that this really could be happening, and once you start doing so many stories that are so unrelatable, you get a little tune-out. So even if some of our stories appear to be larger than life, the goal is for the audience to think, “Wow, I’ve been there! I wonder what she’s going to do.” It may not be as operatic as the story we’re telling, but they’ve experienced the same kind of situation. I guess what we’re saying is that we’re trying to make our stories more real and our characters more relatable.
Digest: As you watch the show as it stands today, what areas of the canvas do you think need shoring up?
Esensten: You don’t go into a show and say, “Well, this isn’t working so well, so let’s change it.” You go in with your own ideas and say, “How can we make this show better because the show is working perfectly well? What would we emphasize?” One of the areas is that we need to have our teenagers really be teenagers and have a relatable place for them to gather and talk about some of the things that teenagers are going through today so that they’re not always talking about the same kinds of things their parents are talking about; they’re talking about their own lives. That’s an area we’re working on.
Brown: We think all the ingredients for this show to flourish are right there.
Esensten: We were very fortunate to be able to inherit this show with the actors and writers and, obviously, working with Julie … We feel very fortunate to be here and actually, we’re having a good time! The first month is usually, “Oh, my God,” turning things around a little bit, but we’re really having a good time. We have a lot of humor injected into the meetings, some of which we can’t repeat, but we’ve taken our writers our for dinner and drinks and stuff and just had a lot of fun with it.
Brown: You gotta make it fun. On-screen, too. The calamities that happen to these characters are difficult enough, but if there isn’t a balance of some lightness, it becomes a dirge.
Digest (sarcastically): Well, gee, I only wish you had some actors on the show who were gifted comedically!
Harmon: Oh, I know! It’s just amazing when you come in and see what they’re capable of.
Esensten: It truly is. If you look at Tad and Jack in a scene together, it almost writes itself!
Conversation
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