On Thursday, December 4th, I had the opportunity to sit down with Gina Bellman (BBC’s Coupling) and executive producer & director Dean Devlin (The Librarian, Independence Day) to talk about their new series Leverage premiering tonight on TNT.
I was able to ask a total of 13 questions in the just over 25 minutes I got to spend with them at the beautiful Fairmont Olympic Hotel in downtown Seattle. There were five directed to each and three were for both. We talked about:
- How the series came about
- How Gina came to the role of grifter Sophie Devereaux
- What it has been like to work with Timothy Hutton
- Differences between British and US television
- Why Dean wanted to direct this project himself
- How consistency is maintained from episode to episode with different directors and writers
- What they like most about the show
- How difficult it is to act badly on purpose
- How hard it is to keep playing multiple characters in one episode
- Having to speak many different accents
- How close the first episode is to the original vision for the show
- Dean having acted, produced, written and now directed
- Why each of them thinks you should watch Leverage
Since transcribing is one of my least favorite things and the interview recording came out so well, I thought I would just put the audio out so you could listen for yourself. I’ll be really interested to hear what you all think, since this was my first exclusive in-person interview. Also, read my review of the first episode and check out some photos of the cast.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:10 — 24.9MB)
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