ryan pt 2 feature

Colony: More with Producer Ryan Condal, Part 2

Here’s Part 2 of the fascinating conversation with Ryan Condal, creator, producer and showrunner for Colony.

Your background is in accounting and economics. How did you get into sci-fi writing?

Ryan: Yes. I have a sort of weird background. I think I was one of those weird kids that always wanted to be a writer. And I envisioned myself, when I was 12 and I was trying to read Tolkien for the first time, as one of these authors in front of a typewriter with a tweed jacket with a pipe. It’s just always something that I wanted to do. I’ve just always been obsessed with and drawn to storytelling kind of in all of its forms.

But when you grow up in suburban New Jersey to a schoolteacher mother and a software engineer father, you grow up in a very practical household. And when they’re about to graciously pay for you to go to a very expensive university like Villanova, they also expect you to get a real degree while you’re there. And I don’t think that getting a literature or a film degree at the time would’ve been very appealing to them in the mid-’90s. So I chose business because I knew I needed to go and get a real job so I could go out and earn a living when I got out of school and work on my screenplays in the intervening times. And I sort of just stumbled my way into accounting, which is probably the antithesis of the writer. Actually the only thing those two professions share is the desire to sit alone at a desk and not talk to anybody all day. So, I think you can tell that there’s some similarity there and that’s probably where the Venn diagram crosses over. But other than that, they could not be a more different pursuit.

You mentioned The Americans before, and one of the key elements of that show is how the parents being spies have an impact on the rest of their family. And of course, the family dynamic is essential to your theories. When will we hear more or see more about how the relationship that the parents have on the kids?

COLONY -- "Pilot" Episode 101 -- Pictured: (l-r) Alex Neustaedter as Bram Bowman, Isabella Crovetti-Cramp as Grace Sullivan, Sarah Wayne Callies as Katie Bowman, Josh Holloway as Will Bowman -- (Photo by: Paul Drinkwater/USA Network)

COLONY — “Pilot” Episode 101 — Pictured: (l-r) Alex Neustaedter as Bram Bowman, Isabella Crovetti-Cramp as Grace Sullivan, Sarah Wayne Callies as Katie Bowman, Josh Holloway as Will Bowman — (Photo by: Paul Drinkwater/USA Network)

Ryan: You’ll see a lot more of that in the coming episodes. You know, at its core, Colony started as a family drama. We really wanted to tell the story of this occupation from the point of the view of one family that, although this is an extraordinary family in the sense that they find themselves on opposite sides of the occupation and they have this kind of mysterious and hidden backgrounds about them – with Will with his military and law enforcement experience.

I mean, other than that this is a typical family in Los Angeles, and we wanted to tell the story through their eyes of what it’s like to live in this occupied world. So how their kids react to all of that is an important part of it. And Charlie, their middle child – the one who’s missing – is kind of what catalyzed this whole story and what set it. And in the early part of the pilot, Will desperately needs to get reunited with him.

So as broad as the show will get in terms of the storytelling and seeing different corners of this world and the universe and all the different ideologies and loyalties that are involved with it, it does always come back to the Bowman family and their kids and Isabella and Alex, who plays Bram, are terrific actors. We got a lot of great work out of them and I think you’ll continue to see that through the last six episodes.

The other question, Ryan, is you’re the latest example of this scripted television where we’re seeing first time people who have never done television, where they come from — in your case, advertising and doing film – the script for Hercules – whether it’s been people doing plays, people doing independent movies or major feature films, getting involved not just in creating television shows, but running television shows. What’s it been like to be the show runner and what kind of impact has Colony had on the way you do it?

Ryan: Well, it’s you know, it’s an incredibly – I’m very fortunate to have the experience. It’s terrifying at times, I will tell you – less so now I’ve done it once. But, you know, when I got – when season one got picked up and I got dropped into the room, it was not only the first time I’d ever been a show runner. It was the first time I’d ever been in a writer’s room. And to immediately make the transition from not just being there but to running it, it’s kind of crazy.

But, first and foremost you’re a storyteller and I think that’s something that doesn’t really change, regardless of what role you’re in, whether you’re the staff writer or you’re the executive producer reporting to the showrunner, or you’re the showrunner him or herself, I think you’re a storyteller.

And the benefit that I had in this situation is not only having a show that started as a pilot that we had talked about I think for almost a year and a half before we even got into the writer’s room on season one – just because of the nature of the development of this thing — we had a very clear perspective on what the show was. And I had a clear perspective of what the show was and what it wanted to be and what it was going to be. So I had the confidence to go in and say look, I know the show that I want to make. And I think that’s really the first and primary hurdle for all showrunners and all creators is just if you know what the show is, then you can lead that charge. And a lot of shows unfortunately I think just because of the way this crazy competitive environment don’t have that. So I think we were very fortunate to have that going into Colony.

And the other thing I was fortunate to have was Mr. Cuse who has not only been a tremendous mentor and partner for me for going on three and a half years now, because we started working together in the summer of 2012 when I was brought into meet with him to write the script for The Sixth Gun, which was another show that he was executive producing at the time for NBC and was based on a comic book – much different show.

But that’s how we met, and then we made that pilot and the pilot didn’t work out with NBC but we had this really good working relationship where we really inspired by each other creatively. And that all sort of led to Colony happening.

So I’ve been kind of with Carlton now for 3-1/2 years, and our relationship has grown and matured over that time. But I’ve always had him to turn to and say like what did you do when this happened and how does this all work. And he’s got something like 500 episodes of television produced, so he sort of knows what he’s talking about. So it’s great.

We’re going to be at the halfway mark tomorrow night. So I’m wondering if you can tease what viewers should expect from the episode, named Geronimo, which is obviously important to the overall scheme of things since we’ve been hearing about him a lot. And then maybe also tease the tone of the back half of the first season and talk about what you’ve started attacking with regards to season two. No pressure.

Ryan: Well, we’re very excited about Geronimo (last week’s episode). This is the episode scripted by Carlton Cuse himself, so we were very lucky to get a solo episode out of him for our first season, because of his crazy busy schedule. But we did and it’s a great one I think. And this episode will I think diffuse a lot of theories and assumptions about what the show is and what is going on in the Los Angeles block.

You know, we will address in a big way the “who is Geronimo” question, which I think fans are eager to find out. And then I think the big thing that we do as the sort of midpoint episode, this episode does really transition us and set us up for the final run of the season, the last five episodes, which where we will see in our continuing breakneck pace narrative the paths of Will as the forced, unwilling collaborator and Katie, his resistance sympathizing wife be put on a collision course together.

And you’re really going to see the narratives crash together in this single line that tells Will and Katie’s stories in this opposing line of the conflict in a big way that’ll take us to I think a satisfying end point at the end of the season that hopefully nobody will see coming that really upends the show in a big way and sets the stage for season two in such a way where well, I know what this world is but I don’t really know where it’s going to come back next year but I know it’s going to be in a different place and that’s the hope.

Thora Birch

Thora Birch

Can you preview any guests or cast additions coming up for this season that we can look forward to?

Ryan: Yes. We’re very excited about – most of our guest cast has been introduced, but in the latter third of the season we will introduce a couple of new characters that play on more of the resistance side of the equation. One of whom is Thora Birch, the tremendous and talented Thora Birch of American Beauty and Ghost World fame, who is just an absolutely wonderful actor, a terrific person, and a great get for us on Colony. And we’re very excited to introduce her character, Morgan, to the show and have everybody see into a little bit of a different corner of the world.

A couple of questions if I may. First of all, what were your main sort of science fiction inspirations growing up and leading into becoming a writer of sci-fi TV shows? And the follow up question would be why do you think it is that science fiction seems to be enjoying something of a resurgence on television?

Ryan: I was very inspired by sci-fi growing up, I think more movies than literature. I think I found the literature a little bit later in life. I mean, I was always reading but I think strictly with science fiction it was the movies that drew me in, just because of the really immersive visual world. Stories like Alien and Terminator were definitely and Aliens and Terminator Two were huge influences on me – anything really by James Cameron I would consider as a major influence on me.

blade runner

And then, you know, something that’s become really my favorite film, you know, later in life because I was able to wrap my head around it a little bit more was Blade Runner. That’s a movie that I just revisit once a year and just really fascinated by it and it’s the kind of thing that rewards multiple viewings. And I always take something new away from it. I think it’s just this beautifully told and visualized world that centered around this amazing human question, which is what does it mean to be alive and what does it mean to be real. And that is pure science fiction to me, and I love it.

Dune_HerbertLiterature-wise, I think Dune was probably the big one for me. I mean, my dad was a huge Dune fan growing up and passed that love onto me and I’ve read that book countless times. I’m just obsessed with it. So I’ve always really liked those things.

The sci-fi renaissance that we’re in, I’m really enjoying. And as a creator, it means that the genre is more palatable and more mainstream than it ever was before, which I think is a great thing for fans, for storytelling, just for TV viewing in general, because we live in a time where you can visualize pretty much anything — even on a television budget, and that means that these wonderful genre stories are being told that mean that you can explore stories like Blade Runner without – in a context that makes it interesting and absorbing to the audience because you’ve created a world and there’s this visual palate that you can draw from.

And with Colony, it’s like probably no one wants to make a show about Parisians living under Nazi occupation in Paris. I mean, it’s not really practical for the US market. Maybe a procedure show on like Netflix or HBO. But retelling that story of occupation and colonization in a sci-fi context in modern day Los Angeles with walls and drones, that makes it palatable and interesting to buyers and to audiences and lets us explore similar themes in a kind of brand new world.

TIBS: I have a 20-year-old son who would like to be you. He is working his way – he’s a freshman in college with the idea that he would like to be a screenwriter of some sort. And we run across a lot of people, whether they’re 16, 18, 20, 35, or in my case 56 who would like to write and kind of get their stuff out there. Any advice or any suggestions of where people should go, what they should be looking for, what they should be doing to work toward that kind of a job?

Ryan: I think the sort of simple but frustrating answer is that you just have to write. I mean, its pursuit that – there’s a lot of –  I started, I think I wrote my first screenplay when I was 20 of my first feature, so I started right at your son’s age. But it took me eight years before anybody cared, and it was eight years of a lot of writing along the way and I really just applied myself to it.

And having a business background helped because I had a good day job and I worked in marketing and advertising and I was able to kind of be Bruce Wayne – advertising executive during the day and Batman screenwriter at night. And it really helped me work and live and commit myself to the long term plan, which is this is going to take a long time and I’m going to need to write a lot of screenplays for free that nobody is going to care about or read or even like at the beginning. But all of that will pay off as I get more experience and kind of find my voice and find my way. And you know, eventually I moved to LA. But when I did, before I ever went on the representation search or anything like that, I’d written a lot of screenplays. And I was really experienced.

And I think the best advice that I can give is that like it doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from, what language you speak, what color you are, what sex you are, if you write a great screenplay in either features or in television, people will read it, people will want it, and people will want to hire you. And that’s what you should dedicate yourself to is becoming a great craftsman. And that means putting in the 10,000 hours, you know, as often Malcolm Gladwell would tell us. And then everything else will, you know, if it’s meant to be and if you have it in you and it’s in your bones, you know, the rest will follow.

In the second episode, we saw Carlos getting sent to the factory. Will we see Carlos again, and will we learn more about what the factory is or does?

Ryan: I will say stay tuned. I think fans who are asking those two questions will be satisfied in some way before the end of the season. Thank you. Thank you everybody. This was great fun. Thanks for covering the show and being interested. I really appreciate it. Take care.

Part 1 of our Interview

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