Sam and Jonathan had already worked together on the last two
series of Spooks with Kudos, along with the recent film, so
they were already known to the company. When the rights to the original Swedish
show, on which Humans is based, were obtained, the pair were
asked if they wanted to get involved. Thankfully for us, they accepted!
Here’s what they had to say.
How similar is your version of the show compared to the
original?
J: We took our cues from the first couple of episodes so
most of our characters are based on a counterpart in the original Swedish
series or amalgums thereof. Some of the storylines are inspired by the original
but we ended up taking our characters on completely different journeys by the
end of the series. It happened very organically. It wasn’t a conscious decision
to do that it’s just that these were the areas that we were interested in that
we wanted to follow.
What have been your favourite characters to write for?
J: That’s always a tough one to ask a writer. We’ve loved
writing them all. I don’t know. I’m not sure I could pick one. Sam, have you
got one?S: The thing is, with this show, the characters are so radically different. You have synths: you have ordinary synths, you have the synths that are very different and more human-like. And then you have a whole bunch of very, very human characters. In terms of dialogue, it was a lot of fun writing for Rebecca Front‘s character, Vera, and also, Gemma Chan – as Anita, rather than as Mia – because then you’re writing the extremely codified, formal, language that an ordinary synth uses. That’s quite good fun to come up with. It was fun writing for Max (Ivanno Jeremiah) as well because we always saw him as the innocent. You could write a character who was highly intelligent and, of course, not human – in the way we understand it – and yet completely innocent and full of wide-eyed wonder. So that was always a lovely character to write. Really, the format gives us such a broad range of characters – that is, you can’t really pick a firm favourite, they’re all so different. I mean, the family talk in this very naturalistic, slang-y, jokey way. Yeah, I think it’s particularly fun writing some of that formal, synth language – that was something you don’t get to do in any other script.
How much of the synths’ mannerisms and behaviours were
scripted vs. the actors being able to influence their specific characters?
S: In the script and in our discussions early on with the
producers about how we saw it, we gave some broad strokes really. We said that
their movement was not be stiff and jerky and robotic and it was more about
graceful, flowing movement of economy. When we sat down to really think it
through, we thought, well, if a synth makes a movement, they’re going to use
the least amount of power to conserve energy and they’ll also make their
movements slowly – as slowly as they can, in a sense, because that will
conserve power. There won’t be any wasted movement at all because they plan
their movements perfectly. They don’t shoot out an arm before they know what
mug they’re picking up off the shelf, like us. They have this incredible
precision and also this calm, flowing, economical movement. A thing we compared
it to was a Japanese tea ritual. That kind of incredibly serene, measured, like
flowing water – not a single wasted movement.
We also had the benefit of promising the threat to the
viewer, because we have moments where we show that, actually, synths are faster
and stronger than we are – and that again comes from the logic that we need
them to be faster and stronger than we are because if our five-year-old kid
stepped out in the road, you need your synth to be able to do something about
it. But they never use that extra strength and speed unless they have to. It’s
always there, under the surface. You know that they’re stronger and quicker
than you are and in a fight you couldn’t win!
Really, though, we give a lot of credit to Sam
Donovan, the director of episodes one and two, who worked with a guy
called Dan O’Neill, who’s a choreographer. Sam and Dan worked very
closely with the actors playing the synths and set up ‘Synth School’ to explore
the physicality of being these creatures. They carried on from there and
thought more about it. Gemma Chan, for example, came up with this thing that in
order to conserve power, if she was looking at something to her left, she’d
look with her eyes first, and then turn her head, and then turn her body. If
she didn’t need to fully turn, she wouldn’t. That’s something you see her doing
a lot, as Anita, and it’s very effective – it all builds up to this eerie,
other-worldly performance. And then all the other synths – they’re all slightly
different but they needed to find these points of uniformity where they could
create a group performance, because you don’t want them all moving very
differently. We had a huge amount of trust in the director and choreographer –
and the actors themselves – and we were happy to let them explore that and find
that themselves. What they came up with was absolutely brilliant in our eyes.
Do you have a favourite scene?
J: There are so many scenes that were just a joy to write. I
think, in more general terms, we really enjoyed putting together episode six
because there is so much going on – so many revelations, so many coming
togethers of different characters and exciting twists and plot points. That was
a real thrill because it was the first moment when all the threads start to
converge in the run-up to the end of the series.
S: We were able to actually answer a lot of the mystery that
we’d set up and sometimes you expect writers to drag the mysteries out for as
many seasons as possible – and possibly never resolve them – but we always
thought that we’d surprise people and pull a few curtains back, pull a few rugs
(to continue that metaphor!) in episode six. It was very satisfying to do that
and know that we’d be revealing some of those mysteries.
One of my favourite moments, actually, is in episode six,
and it’s a moment that’s barely scripted. In the scene where Matti [Lucy
Carless] and Leo [Colin Morgan] are attempting to bring Mia back,
there is this moment where Toby [Theo Stevenson] and Max share a look.
Toby looks nervously at Max turns and gives him this lovely big grin that
Ivanno does so beautifully. Then Theo, equally beautifully, does this shy,
slightly uncertain smile back. That, really, for me, is such a small, fleeting
moment – it’s nothing to do with big revelations or plot or story or anything
like that – but it is a moment of genuinely human connection where you feel the
connection between the synth and the human being, which is what the whole
series is about! It gets distilled down to that one moment of a perfectly,
brilliantly done look between two actors at the right time. It’s so beautifully
acted by both of them.
J: Ivanno’s use of his smile is masterful throughout the
whole series. There’s a moment when he gives George a little smile as he’s
leaving the house which is superb and the other smile that I love is in episode
seven – which was not scripted – when the SWAT team come in at the end of the
episode and one of them points a gun in Max’s face and he turns and smiles at
him. It just fits so perfectly with where the character is at that time.
So, without giving anything away, what can fans expect
from the series finale?
J: Er… Up to this point, we’ve answered most of the
questions. There’ll be a [pause] coming together of all our synths and the
other characters.
S: [After a long pause, trying to figure out what he can or
can’t say] You can expect thrills, spills, tears, laughs, danger, suspense and
… I think it’s better to not say any more.
Fair enough! On to series two then – congratulations on
getting the second series commissioned this week, by the way!
J: Thank you very much!
S: Thank you!
Did you have something in mind, even before it was
commissioned?
S: You can’t help, when you’re right in the middle of the
story, to continue telling it to yourself when you’re really involved in a
piece of writing so we always had ideas. You just couldn’t shut it off. You
couldn’t just get to the end of episode eight and say ‘well, that’s it’. We
were wondering what would happen after… Along the way, we had a lot of good
ideas that we couldn’t fit into series one and thought maybe this is something
we could do if we get to take the story forward. We always had ideas bubbling
under. Some of them we told our producing partners at Kudos about, some of them
we didn’t, but obviously now that we’ve had the go ahead, we are getting them
all down and very much already in the process of collecting them all together
and formalising them and beating out a shape for what it’s going to look like.
We loved it too much [to forget about it]. We wanted to
return to these people, these characters and this world.
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