‘One of the things that made it so special was that it wasn't for everyone': ‘The Leftovers' EPs and cast on the show's legacy

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2 days ago

Damon Lindelof is the first to admit that The Leftovers was a bit of a hard sell for mass audiences.
The critically acclaimed show, which ran for three seasons from 2014 to 2017 on HBO, attracted a devoted, passionate but relatively small fan base, who were drawn in by the haunting exploration of grief and its aftermath.
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Lindelof reunited with executive producers Tom Perrotta (whose novel inspired the series) and Mimi Leder and cast members Carrie Coon (Nora), Amy Brenneman (Laurie), and Ann Dowd (Patti) at the ATX TV Festival in Austin to "reheat" The Leftovers, sharing their first impressions of each other and the series, the most 'terrifying' scene, and the show's lasting legacy.
Lindelof revealed he was nervous before his first meeting with Perrotta. 'It was a job interview in a lot of ways, but you just completely and totally put me at ease, and by the end of the meeting, that was the beginning of the next five years of our lives,' said Lindelof.
As a fan of Lost, Perrotta said he felt like it was a 'blind date' — 'because what does he think of me?' he recalled wondering. 'And then what I remember feeling was, this guy has the quickest mind that I have encountered and I'm going to have to really be on my toes.' ('Somewhere my wife and son are laughing,' quipped Lindelof.)
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Dowd said she wasn't impressed when she first read the script. 'I thought it was ridiculous,' she said. 'And I can tell you I have never loved a character more. I thought, 'Well, what's gonna happen if I'm not talking?' I can't believe the power you have in your room when you're not speaking. Everybody is waiting for you to do what you're going to do. I loved her. It took me a minute but only a minute.'
Brenneman said she had 'whiplash' from the transition from her far more glamorous role on Private Practice. 'Damon said, 'Here are the reasons you shouldn't take this job: It shoots in New York, you can't wear any makeup, and you have no lines,' she recalled. laughing. But she said yes because 'I like new things. I don't think I've ever seen this, and you seem to be making it up on the fly.'
For Coon, she said it was her first 'real job,' having done mostly theater and some commercials at that point in her career. 'I had no idea what was going to happen and I remember learning several years after the show ended that because I come from the theater and you respect the writer, I was the only actor on the show who wasn't constantly emailing and asking questions,' she said. 'I would just get the script and then I would do it. I still don't do it.'
Joked Brenneman, 'That's why you work a lot.'
Leder was brought on for the fifth episode, which happened to be the stoning episode. 'How am I going to direct this and not kill the actor?' she worried. (The answer: CGI rocks.) From there, though, she came on board as an executive producer to pursue 'the meaning of life, miracle of life. And I'm still in search of it.'
'You can make a TV show or a movie and it can be really good. But this was making this big beautiful baby that touched everybody's soul,' she said. 'If there's a theme it's that there is so much loss and we continue on. And we live with our loss and our grief we have beautiful lives sometimes.'
Lindelof credited Perrotta with the idea of moving the show to Texas for the second season.
'Tom had the initial idea for a town where no one departed in Season 1,' he said. 'And when he pitched the idea, all the writers were like, that idea is so good, we can't burn out the four-week story. So it just sort of sat there in the back of our heads. And when the first season ended, we all sort of really good about this. This was the ending of the novel, we could just end it here. Let's not double down'
But then HBO ordered a second season, and the ideas that had been percolating came to the forefront, including Perrotta's pitch for a place that had been protected from the Departure.
'The show ended up dealing with so many different ideas, and it's ultimately, I think, about faith,' said Perrotta. 'But I think for me, it was about randomness and the way people make sense of a random universe. What meaning does Nora derive from what happened to her? What kind of meaning do they derive from their protected status as they perceive it? What does it mean for Nora and her family to show up there?'
For her part, Dowd was thrilled about Season 2 — because 'Patti got to talk,' she said. But when she asked Lindelof why, he gave an elliptical answer. 'I think ghosts are more interesting when they're annoyed,' he told her. (Dowd would go on to earn the show's lone Emmy nomination for guest actress in the show's third and final season.)
The second season also allowed more joy and warmth and humor to infiltrate the show, recalled Brenneman. 'What I always loved about this premise was something unexplained happens and people have all sorts of responses,' she said. 'Some people go to a faith place, some people go to a nihilistic place, some people crack jokes, some people weep. It gives you a range of things that I feel like we accessed more and more.'
Coon recalled her pivotal Season 2 episode, when she went face-to-face with Regina King, administrating the questionnaire.
'I've often said I've only been intimidated two times and that's Holly Hunter and David Thewlis,' she said. 'But that's not true because I was scared of Regina. I was scared of Regina because she's so uniformly excellent. But then you work with her and you realize that the work she has done to get there is in her bones. She's one of the best listeners I've ever worked with.'
The scene 'was extraordinary and it was terrifying,' said Coon. 'And it was really a scene that people call back to it a lot when they talk about the show. My makeup artist remembers just the eyelash on my face,' she said. 'But they didn't want to stop the scene.'
And the other famous scene that they all debated was Laurie's near-suicide. 'When Laurie went into the water, scuba diving, we as writers were absolutely and totally convinced at the time that we wrote that episode that she was dead,' recalled Lindelof. 'But then everybody was super depressed, and we couldn't generate ideas. 'Finally I walked into Tom's office and I said, 'I think Lori is still alive.' And he was like, 'Thank god, because we've all been talking about it.' That was a case of the show just out and out rejecting something that we were trying to force onto it.'
Finally, Lindelof grew emotional talking about the audience's response in the packed Paramount Theater in Austin. 'All I ever wanted to do for a living was tell stories because I was inspired by the stories that were told to me,' he said. 'As proud as I am of the collaborative efforts that remain on other things that I've worked on, this is the one that is the closest to my heart. And one of the things that made it so special was that it wasn't for everyone. So much of the work that we all do and are asked to do is to make it as accessible to as many people as possible. And that isn't to say that we were purposefully trying to exclude people, but what we were after was going to be challenging. The first season in many ways is like, 'Stop f--king watching. You have to lean in. This is going to be a show that's about suffering, and then it's going to be about what people need to do to overcome it or live with it.' And so the idea that there is a theater filled with human beings who understand that and tolerate that and appreciate that, it truly means the world to us.'
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