Melissa Rosenberg, who wrote on Dexter for the first four years and went on to pen the Twilight film franchise, has taken on her first series as a creator/showrunner with ABC's Red Widow. The series, set to premiere this Sunday, follows the story of Marta Walraven (Radha Mitchell), a woman who must take over her husband's drug smuggling business when he is brutally murdered; which brings her into constant contact with the man who may have killed him, Christian Schiller (E.R.'s Goran Visnjic).
We sat down with Roseberg recently to talk about her approach to creating a show and character that both a male and female audience can relate to, translating the series for an American audience, the endurance test of being a showrunner and creating antiheroes on television.
(Read our previous interview with her about the planned AKA Jessica Jones television series.)
IGN TV: One of the things that struck me at ABC's executive session at the TCAs (Television Critics Association) press tour was the portion of the conversation that dealt with how Last Resort failed to tap into the female audience, and how important that is for this network. How important is that for you working with ABC? Is that a conscious part of the conversations you've had with the network about Red Widow?
Melissa Rosenberg: You know, our show is actually testing equally with men and women, which is interesting. I didn’t set out to create a show for a female audience necessarily. I did set out to create a complex female character, and that that would draw a female audience makes sense. But the other elements are drawing in a male audience as well.
IGN: That’s an interesting question. How do you convince a male audience to watch this female character in their world?
Rosenberg: Well, I think that’s going land with ABC Marketing and Publicity, to get the word out and show them enough of it to draw them in. It is a lead female at its center, and she is a mother, but it’s also an ensemble cast. She has to enter into a very male world, so that’s what’s sort of fascinating about it.
IGN: Are there certain elements in terms of the tone and other aspects of the show and making the adaptation [from the Dutch series that it is based on] that you consciously changed to appeal to an American audience?
Rosenberg: The pacing, yeah. The European version is more languid in its storytelling. I actually condensed their first three episodes into the pilot, and that of course leaves me with a lot of holes to fill. [Laughs] Many hours to fill before I reach a similar conclusion. But it’s really about pacing -- and incident. There’s more incident.
IGN: My sense is that there’s going to be a somewhat romantic storyline between these two antagonistic characters, Marta and Christian. Is that a delicate balance?
Rosenberg: No, what you’re sensing is a real chemistry between the two of them. I think over the course of the series it’ll become more and more obvious. But you’re talking about hurdles in terms of keeping these two characters apart. This is the ultimate taboo for both of them. Neither one of them wants to feel anything for the other, and I think that they do. That’s going to be disturbing for both of them.
IGN: Is there a certain amount of action that you want to include?
Rosenberg: You know, the story dictates the amount, and each episode is different. Episode three is a bullet train in terms of its action. From beginning to end, you’re on this mission. Then you get into something more like episode four, and it’s much more about this complex family dynamic, of this world. Each episode has its certain elements. I didn’t set out to do a certain amount of violence or action or romance. We as writers just sort of let the characters inform it -- and we want things to happen.
IGN: In terms of feedback about how it's testing, are you hearing things like, “Okay, the men/women are responding to this and that.” And if so, how does that inform things creatively, or not?
Rosenberg: I’m hearing that they’re really responding equally. Of course, women do tend to respond more to the emotional moments, and men tend to respond more to the action moments. But they both seem to be embracing it. We just have to get their eyeballs on the screen.
IGN: Goran Visnjic boarded the project after the pilot was already shot. Was there a timing conflict in terms of when you shot the pilot?
Rosenberg: No, I met with him. We had an incredible meeting and talked for two hours about the character. In the conversation, he actually gave me all these ideas for the character that I’m using -- and he turned me down. Because, you have the pilot, he read the last three pages of it -- he had no idea what this character was going to be and what he was going to be playing. So we shot the pilot with another actor, who was very strong, but I had written it for Goran. So after the pilot shot, he would see at least the tone of the voice and the gravity in which the story is told. We went back and had another fantastic two-hour meeting, and we talked even more about the character and story. Finally, he accepted.
Source : ign[dot]com
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