All language subtitles for 1.11 I Hate These People+AK.ak

Thanks for the advice.

But I guess I won't
be needing this anymore.

What happened?

I told her...

Hi, this is Glenn Kessler,
one of the co-creators and executive producers.

I'm Todd A. Kessler, also one of the co-creator/
executive producers of Damages.

I'm Daniel Zelman, also one
of the co-creators and executive producers,

and we have here
with us for this episode

Zeljko Ivanek,
who plays Ray Fiske.

How are you?
I'm along for the ride. You'll see why.

So, this is episode 11,
'I Hate These People',

directed by Ed Bianchi.

It's about her and her mind games.

Yes.

And this kind
of opening for us became--

and probably the last
four to five episodes of the season--

kind of a trademark
of just starting in a calm manner

between two characters speaking,

and then leading into the bigger story.

As we will soon see,
we lead into Patty Hewes's journey.

So, these kind of environmental shots,

holding this park
and Ellen speaking with Nye,

who becomes a critical character
in the last few episodes,

just allows a moment
of the episode to breathe

before we slam
into much more excitement,

which is coming up momentarily.

There's something
very unsettling about that shot.

I remember when I first saw it,
the first time on TV,

there's something calm but really creepy,

'cause you get that sense
of the observer again

and wondering who's watching
and who's in on what.

Patty's journey,
which kind of started, I think,

in maybe the ninth episode
or eighth episode,

became a huge part of the story
of revealing the character of Patty Hewes

and what she did
heading to the beach house

and where she was going
after the beach house,

and we spent a lot of time
coming up with the sound design

to create a menace and an eeriness,

and not overfilling it
with horror or suspense.

But this sound
that you're hearing now

we refer to as a helicopter sound
and truck drive-bys outside,

and sounds that
we continued to dip into

as the series progressed
and as Patty's journey--

we got deeper and deeper into it.

And this blood on
the shoe is an important detail

which will be revealed
by the end of the episode.

The opening credit song
was written by Jason Rabe

and Ravi Subramanian
of the band The VLA,

who are currently in Los Angeles

and are long-time friends
of Glen and myself and Daniel.

And they wrote it
exclusively for Damages,

and we're honoured
to have it as our intro song.

And this opening credit sequence
was one where we spent a lot of time

figuring out what images
would capture New York,

but also would lead
to a sense of a thriller--

these statues
and striking images of New York.

More complicated than the bar exam.

Can I sit your cousin Jake...

This scene, this is a very--
the story is in a very new place right now,

because in the episode prior to this,

Ellen Parsons, played by Rose Byrne,
gets fired by Patty,

and so, for the first time since the pilot,

she's not working for Patty,
and the show opens with this scene

between her and her fiancé David,
played by Noah Bean,

sort of in this new place,
although they won't stay there for long.

Hello, David.

Here's a question, as I'm watching
this thinking about Ray Fiske--

Ray Fiske never had any
interaction with Ellen, did he?

I don't think so.
I can't remember any time--

In this episode, we tried to write
a scene between the two of them.

We always wanted that,
and I don't know that we ever got to.

But it was hard in this episode,
because she had been fired.

And it was very--
it would've been forced

to get them in the same room together,

but we realised that there wasn't
a lot of time left to get you two together.

We tried.

I think you were across the table from each other
at some deposition, but that's about it.

That's it, yeah.

And our history with Zeljko is one
that is kind of a writer/producer's dream,

in that we were casting the roles
for this pilot that we had called Damages,

and the actor that we were hoping
to find to play this role of Ray Fiske,

Arthur Frobisher's attorney,
was one that had to be--

have a lot of substance
and stature behind him,

because he needed to represent
this billionaire client.

And, we had been casting for
I don't remember exactly how long,

but truly, one of these moments
where an actor walks in--

and Zeljko--we had been
huge fans of his work,

in the theatre, in film and television,
prior to having him come in for us--

but the second he came in and read,
our decision was made.

Actually, there's a--
to put a finer point on it--

I believe it was the Wednesday
before Thanksgiving.

- Yeah, it was.
- It was going to be a long weekend.

And Zeljko came in and read Ray Fiske
and nailed it immediately.

And before he left--
I don't know if you remember this--

we're like, 'That was fantastic',
and it was like, "You know what?

My agents also gave me this other guy--'

and it was--at the time,
it was the Tom Shayes character,

but his name was Tom Kent,

and Zeljko's like, 'You know what?
I actually prepared this one, too.

"I know if I don't do it, I'm going to
beat myself up over the long weekend,

so, can l...?'

And so he read Tom Shayes as well,

and it was like, 'This is, you know,
he's nailed two different guys here.

What are we going to do?'

But, Ray Fiske was just so--

So, we brought him back in,
and he read for Katie Connor...

- Nailed that.
- And then he nailed that.

And the rest is--

And then it was a three-sided coin flip,
which way to go.

It was also a very long weekend for me,
'cause I was up--I'd just come from L.A,

and I was up for something else out there,
and wanted this show desperately.

And it--you know,
by Wednesday afternoon,

everybody was gone who was going to
be making any kind of decision at all,

and I had to sweat through
the next few days trying to sort it out,

because I wanted it so much to happen.

- People--
- Oh, go ahead. After you.

Well, people have asked us--
and I'm sure they asked you--

Ray Fiske, as written, was a Southerner,

and Zeljko brought a very specific accent

and take on who he was
and where he was from.

Was there anything...?

The first thing that
I remember when reading,

and I think it influenced
me more just at the audition,

was James Carville

even though he's got
a very different rhythm,

but that was like a hook,
somehow, in my ear,

and that kind of evolved later on.

People have asked me where the accent is from.
It's slightly geographically unidentifiable,

but it kind of evolved a little bit more--

I'd done a production of
The Glass Menagerie a few years ago,

and found a lot of recordings
of Tennessee Williams,

so, it's--in the end,
more Tennessee Williams than anybody else.

He's sort of got a little New Orleans-isms--
he says, like, 'woik' for 'work',

these odd little sounds, so...

Something that was important to us--
here Ray Fiske is,

for the first time in the episode--

but it was important to us
to have him be Southern

in this city, and hold onto his Southernness,

and kind of have that be
his identity and trademark

in a city that doesn't necessarily
have that many Southerners.

Well, he's a showman.

We always thought--
you find out at one point

he's been here since the late '70s,
and he has not dropped--

This accent should have faded
by now, if anything.

- Exactly.
- But it helps him in the courtroom.

It's very much part of not--
facade is the wrong word--

but just that way of presenting
yourself out in the world.

This scene was fun for us, too,
because it's the first time

we've ever seen Ray Fiske's wife.

There were some allusions
to her in the series before--

he has always worn a wedding ring.

At one point, Gregory Malina
shows up at the house,

and Fiske turns and a woman calls out,
you know, 'Who's there?'

and Fiske turns and says,
'Mallory, I'll handle it.'

You've heard Frobisher
mention Mallory before,

but this is the first time
an audience ever got to see Mallory.

Just one thing--that shot--
I never got to ask about.

It's actually her entrance run backwards.

Was there a reason?

I would say 80% of this show
is run backwards.

The opening credits, whenever we get lost,
we just run something backwards.

There was actually a technical reason,

which was that the shot
that we were intending to use there

as helping us into the transition,

for whatever reason, the angle
and the lighting was slightly different,

so it felt like there was much more
of a time jump than what we wanted,

and heading into this flashback here

it felt like we were in
three different places too quickly.

So, to the very astute eye of an observer,
you could see that it's run backwards,

but we were hoping that
it would just pull some grass over that.

Technically, the shot that was there made it look
like the lunch with your wife was a flashback.

- Oh, I see.
- So it got confusing.

Had to smooth that out.

Now, this sequence here
is very, very important, story-wise,

and the relationship
between Zeljko's character, Ray,

and...this actor's
name is Peter Facinelli.

His character, Gregory, is crucial
to the entire plot of this season,

and that first little flashback
is the first time they meet,

and this is really an extension of that moment
where they start to get to know each other.

I don't know how Peter did this,
and I told him this,

but he looks eight years younger in this scene
than he does in the rest of the series.

He only needed to look
five years younger,

but because of
the kind of actor he is,

he looks a full eight.

That's my wife.

I love, actually, just the structure of this.

The closer you get to the present day,

the more you kind of follow up
way to the beginning.

We've seen little bits
and pieces along the way,

and then to have this kind of first meeting
be so close to the culmination,

is, at least structurally,
was a really smart move.

There was a debate about that--
originally, some of these flashbacks

were written for the episode prior to this,
where Gregory is killed,

because there was a feeling that--
well, or two episodes ago, I think--

There was a feeling that
it would be more poignant

if Gregory had been killed
if we'd seen some of this.

But we really felt
it was more important to save it

for the episode.

There was a lot of debate,
because is it more affecting

when we know Fiske had to kill Gregory
when we had seen this already,

and we saw how much
Gregory meant to him,

or was it...
Yeah, so there was a big debate.

As an actor, how was it working
in these different time frames

within an episode

and what is the process
that allows you to make sense of it,

or do you throw caution to the wind,
and jumpin, or...?

I kind of just jump in.
I mean, I knew the general story,

but when you get
to the specific scene and find out

kind of really how it plays out,

and that feeling of that--
there's something really rich about it,

'cause you kind of know
where you've ended up.

Then you get to kind of
go back in time and set that up.

And especially just
the poignancy of it, to me--

the simpler and the sweeter
and the more unencumbered

those early scenes are
with what's going to happen,

makes what's going to happen seem
so much worse and so much more painful.

If anything, you're just trying
to strip away everything

so that the scene
can just happen on its own

and that first meeting
is just what it is.

One thing that was slightly atypical
about the first season of Damages

is that for 13 episodes,
we had 12 different directors.

Can you speak at all
about what that experience is like,

to every episode be
introduced to a new director,

as opposed to having
continuity of directors?

It's a tricky thing,
but that's just the way television is.

I think it's probably difficult
for directors to come in.

You've got actors who've established
characters and established storylines

and established
a kind of world and a mood,

and they've got to come in
and figure all that out and feed into it.

I think we were incredibly lucky
with this season and the directors we had,

because everybody seemed
to contribute in their own way,

but keep it in the same world.

People seem to have a very strong sense
of the style of the show and the feel of the show,

and were very, very open
to last-minute changes,

which came at times,

and to just us,
trying to sort out our characters

in the past and in the present.

It can feel like it's tossing
all over the place sometimes,

but I didn't feel it in this,
and this is the longest I've gone on a series.

What is your process with lines
that are being thrown at you the morning of?

Do you end up looking at the script
the night before the scenes

as it changes or evolves?

I was still looking at the script.

Naively, I still actually read and assumed
this is what I would be saying on the day.

Fool.

I think Ted Danson at one point figured out
that there was really no point to that.

I mean, I've done recurring on a show before--
this was the first time I've been regular--

and you reach a point in the seasons
remarkably fairly early on, I've found,

where the learning actually gets easier,

'cause somehow you've absorbed
most of what the character is

and most of what's going to happen,

and the words are kind of
just the last sort of piece of it.

And the stories were
pretty much most of the time the same.

The scene might have changed,
the lines might have changed,

a setting might have changed,

but you'd kind of known
for a few days at least

what the story of the scene was.

You weren't suddenly confronted
with something so out of the blue

that you had to get
your whole head around it.

In the end, it was a lot less of an issue
than I would have thought.

I think we had one time when there was
a 12-page deposition scene

that arrived at about 1.00 a.m.
the night before.

Luckily, I just had
to keep saying 'objection',

but Glenn and Ted--

Which, secretly,
you were saying to us, I think.

Was it when I was looking at the camera?
Was that the giveaway?

It was a little tough on them at the time,

but the extent to which,
you know, everybody just figured,

"That's what it is,
and we'll make the best of it on the day',

it really--the mood stayed
remarkably pleasant throughout.

And you also had an experience
that the other actors didn't really have,

which was we knew very early on--
I think maybe by the third episode--

where Ray Fiske was heading.

And so I remember we
had a late-night conversation

laying things out for you
so you knew where you were heading,

and you had maybe
seven episodes to get there.

Did that inform?

It did.

I mean, it was a surprise to me,
and kind of a pleasant surprise.

I thought, just from the pilot
and the first couple episodes,

I knew Ray had to be involved
in kind of the main story

and primarily with Frobisher

and some kind of--
as a go-between with Patty Hewes,

so the extent to which the story
was going to become personal

was a big surprise,
and a very pleasant surprise.

So, I had that kind of structure in mind,

where it was going to end up,

and it was just a matter
of finding out along the way

what the twists
and turns were going to be.

Yeah, it was a big help, actually.

Also, you know,
many of the characters, I think,

undergo pretty significant character arcs
in this first season.

Ray Fiske was huge
for us that way, as well,

because he started and,
you know, and he seemed like,

in quotes, 'the villain' in the pilot,

and he was the unlikable--
pompous, maybe--Southerner

who, you know, was the adversary for Glenn--
for Patty Hewes in the courtroom.

Slowly, he started to evolve
into much more than that.

Yeah, in the pilot especially

when he's sort of
Frobisher's mouthpiece,

very clearly, in function and in reality,

and the extent to which the story then
becomes driven by his own personal demons

was one of the biggest and best things,
for me, about the show.

And his moral centre,
was that something that--

Other people are on
all sides of the morality question,

but he seemed pretty tortured by it.

I mean, tortured...
He still signs off on getting Gregory killed,

so there's a limit to how much credit
somebody gets for being tortured,

but just to have a full season's worth
of episodes to flesh out...

what is going on with somebody
and what fears and passions are driving--

It's pretty remarkable, you know.

Usually you think, 'All right,
maybe my character will get one episode

and that'll be it, and that'll kind of be
my whole piece, showpiece',

but this was something that kind of
arched through the whole season,

and it just seemed
incredibly rich for that reason.

Had you known any
of the actors prior to...?

I knew Tate socially;
we'd never worked together.

I think that's it, pretty much.

Noah Bean and I had
been at Williamstown

at this summer theatre festival
one summer a few years before,

but that was it.

This is an interesting thing
because, you know,

Ray's a character
who doesn't get angry a lot,

but when it happens,
for us, it was always very satisfying

because he's a formidable guy,

he's spent his whole life
dealing with very powerful people,

he's very smart,
and he can unleash it when he needs to.

It really was. It was here,
and I think it was once with Frobisher,

when you find out that Frobisher wants
to pay off a mole--you were totally unleashed.

Gets very steely.

I think it's--to me, it was always
'cause getting angry is a sign of failure,

just to some extent.

You haven't finessed the situation

if you've gotten to the point
where you lose it.

And the places he
loses it are the places where

he's the most in danger, unfortunately.

Hard to say it's on behalf
of the people he's representing,

but it's the places
where suddenly his position is shaky.

Also, these scenes in this episode
between you and Gregory...

It was very important for us that we try
to ground this relationship as much as possible,

'cause there's something about the relationship
that had the danger of feeling like a device,

like we needed to create
some kind of backstory

that gave Ray a reason
why he needed to lie and...

And the two of you
just did an amazing job

of making it seem real,

like these are two real people
who get into this

sort of complicated,
ill-fated relationship with each other.

What I always liked
about it for that reason

is that it was so much more
about Ray's longing.

The fact that in the end
nothing actually happened

made it so much kind of
more poignant and painful for me,

that these are two people

who kind of sense
that there's a game going on here,

but it's better, in the moment,
left unexpressed,

because it could all crumble
if anyone takes a step too far,

and, in the end, that
that was powerful enough

to have driven this whole story.

There was something, to us,
very poignant about that for Ray.

Just the fact that he had
the possibility of something

was important enough
to keep in his life.

You know, there's something
very moving about that.

And there's also just
the thematic kind of throughline

of people making decisions in their lives
and being trapped by those decisions--

and whether it's Frobisher,
or Patty, and who she is,

and Ellen, on the brink of
making decisions that could trap her

for the rest of her life--that...

A constant refrain,
throughout this first season at least,

was the choices people make between
their professional and personal lives.

That's what was one of my
favourite things about the show

from the beginning,
because there was a plot there

and a structure there,
and how these pieces all fit in,

and then what you feed in constantly

is how people's personal stories
and foibles and fears and weaknesses

feed into it and affect it,
turn the story.

Because it's Patty
instead of another lawyer,

it's Ellen instead of another lawyer--
it's the extent to which they as people

push the story and undermine the story
at different times. I love that.

And we tried to create a world

where paranoia kind of
is present in people's lives,

and also projection
onto other people.

So, from the pilot,
when Fiske arrives at Katie's restaurant

and wants her
to sign these papers...

By the end of the series,
if you go back and--

end of the season,
if you go back and look at that scene,

now knowing what Fiske had at stake,

it's just made much more complicated

than just him having Katie
sign these papers for his boss.

One of the biggest story debates
of the season is coming up right here.

We debated forever
as to whether or not we should kill

the executive,
played by Peter Riegert, or not.

I mean, really, up until the last minute
we debated this.

I think that we were still
talking about it the day we shot it,

whether we should do it or not,
and, as you can see, we killed him.

And then-- Oh, go ahead.

He died in an earlier draft
of the previous episode, at one point.

Just kind of went in and went out.

And then, you know, story-wise,

Ellen rummaging through his cadaver--
what's the best way to handle that,

because this is so far out
of Ellen's experience...

And, style-wise, we decided
to play this scene very silently.

Just natural sounds.
There was the choice to be made

whether we wanted to score it
and make it very dramatic or just leave it,

and this door slam
taking us to commercial.

Time and time again, we realised that

the appeal of score
is one that's a slippery slope,

in that without it, you don't miss it,

and with it, you just need more
and more of it to help the scenes along,

but the actors just delivered
such tremendous performances

that we really felt as if we
wanted to get out of the way

and let them do their work
and let the story play out.

Also, if I remember, that scene was shot
at about 4.00 in the morning,

so you were also making
some pretty crucial decisions

not at the time when you think
you're at your best, necessarily.

And Zeljko is foreshadowing

another scene which was shot
at 4.00 in the morning,

which we'll get to soon.

But the schedule of television
is such that you move very, very quickly,

and shoot anywhere
between 12 and 15 hours a day,

and by the end of the week,
many scenes are shot in the wee hours.

This is our Willy Loman.

This is Ray Fiske as Willy Loman.
'My grandfather'.

I never asked about that, actually,

because I found an interesting thing

from going from the pilot,
and the way Ray is first presented--

he seems very powerful, a big attorney--

and then you actually find out
his name's not on the door.

There are several
senior partners above him,

and in this scene, very specifically,
you realise that he's answering--

among other things--
to a much younger man.

Right, whose grandfather's name
is on the door.

I always found that interesting,
but I wonder how that came about.

Well, Fiske was never
a partner, in our minds.

There was a much, much more--

In terms of setting up Patty's firm

in opposition to Fiske's firm
in opposition to Nye's firm,

we wanted three
very different kinds of firms.

So you got an understanding
of Patty out there on her own

where she's the captain of her own ship.

Denninger-Phillips, where Denninger, Phillips,
and probably four more names on the door

for where Ray Fiske works, is an older,
more established, more conservative firm.

We always kept that in the background
for moments like this

where pressure could start
to come down on Fiske from above--

that he wasn't in charge
the way that Patty was in charge.

When we say he wasn't a partner--technically,
he would've been a partner in the firm

in terms of sharing
in the economic fortunes of the firm,

but there's a difference between being a named
partner and a partner in a firm of this size,

and there is that slight tier difference.

This is the first time that
we've seen Ray Fiske's dog,

who was referenced in the pilot--a Doberman,
and here the Doberman is.

- Did we ever come up with a name for...?
- Nope.

We'll have to name him at some point.

I did not do my background work
on that, I have to admit.

Here the tables are turned,
and Patty, for the first time,

is coming to Ray in the dog park

and has this mysterious black folder.

Yeah, this is the beginning
of the unravelling.

A wealthy patron,

who paid Gregory Malina's
way down to Florida.

I'm guessing it was you, Ray.

Where'd you get these?

Does it matter?

Here's Patty, spinning her web
and improvising and manipulating,

and these two--it was always,
by design or in our minds,

that Patty and Ray
are terrific adversaries

and had gone up against
each other multiple times.

Really, you're only as good
as your opponent makes you,

and the two of them
brought out the best in each other.

I love the sense
that they had a history,

so that these
scenes are kind of fed

not just by the immediate
kind of story thing that's going on,

but that there's
a personal relationship there.

You know,
it's adversarial on the surface,

but you have
that much history with somebody,

and there's a very, very strong
personal component to it, as well.

Glenn was saying if you watch the pilot--

the dog park scene in
the pilot between you two--

with the sound off,
which we were when we were talking,

it looks like they're old friends,
like they're good, old friends.

There's a lot of laughter,
there's a lot of rhythm between them.

There's a lot of familiarity,
which means you know

your opponent's weaknesses
and their strengths,

and that's what I love about it,
that that feeds into the game.

I have to think
Ray doesn't like being weak.

He's suddenly on the other end of it.

Thank you.

You know, one of the things
that's really somewhat difficult, perhaps,

to follow this as the episodes progress,

but one of the thing's that's happening
with the quote, unquote, 'bad guys' in the story--

the trio of Frobisher, the executive
played by Peter Riegert, and Zeljko--

is that they're turning against each other
because the noose is tightening.

And really what's going on in this episode
is the executive's character--

he ends up selling Zeljko's character out

in an effort to get Frobisher to settle,
to protect himself.

And that's also just
keeping with the themes

of the whole series, really,

which is about
what Todd was saying earlier.

You get yourself in a certain position
or in a certain circumstance,

and you just need to protect
yourself at all costs,

and usually that is
at the expense of someone else.

Yeah, just the extent
to which people are driven by fear,

and that these three people,
who should be on the same side

and should have the same interests,

you know, their own fears and weaknesses

very quickly drive a wedge between them.

There's a movie called
The Treasure of Sierra Madre,

where people all start
turning against each other.

There's something about that
that's always been interesting,

because if they just stayed united

and had any modicum of trust
between the three of them,

they probably would've
been able to pull this off.

They made it though a government trial.

We wanted that.
It was important that they actually--

They held together.
But the trust is a big thing, yeah.

The more you start to lose that,

the more you don't
know who's going to stab you

before you should
maybe be stabbing them.

And one of Patty Hewes's great strengths
is knowing how and when to push the buttons

to get the other side to turn against itself.

This was shot in a room
right by our offices.

It was slapped together to make it
look like a room at David's hospital.

No kidding.

And Ray Fiske never
met Lila DiMeo, either.

I think you had
the good fortune to avoid her.

I did manage to avoid that.

Although at one point we were thinking

that in the season finale
that Lila maybe would be sitting on a bench,

and Martin Cutler would approach her

as the attorney from the pilot
who then had offered Tom a job.

This is Rose Byrne looking like
the girls from the Robert Palmer video.

It was very important to us to get that in.

We're done, Ellen.

There there's
the Statue of Liberty bookend, and...

all the details
that eventually come into play

as the season progresses here.

Zeljko, how did
your relationship with Ted

progress from the pilot
through the series?

That was also just one of
the big joys and bonuses for me,

'cause we just hit it off
so well from early on,

that it was just such a joy doing the scenes,

that I think what
I didn't necessarily think about

or see when I read the pilot
is just that friendship--

beyond being his advocate
and being his protector--

but the friendship that developed.

There's a scene that's not
in this episode, but is, I think,

in the previous episode
of the deposition,

where Ray Fiske
is tying Arthur Frobisher's tie...

That is one of my favourite
scenes in the whole series,

'cause it's a completely personal moment,

but also informs who these people are

and why they do what they do.

It's completely unexpected.

I was incredibly impressed
how much air you left in the scene--

that there's so much of it
that just plays out in silence,

and their awkwardness with each other,

and yet there's this
incredibly intimate moment

that neither of them can
quite sort of fully acknowledge,

but that they get as far
as they do is sort of amazing.

There's a great--we were
very excited about that scene,

because earlier, in your sleep--

in the episode where
you have sleeping problems,

you have a dream where he thanks you
for being such a good friend.

When it finally happens in real life,
you have already sold him out

and you can't even accept his gratitude.

There was a line
there where I thanked him

that was almost the same
as the line in that dream sequence,

and you guys took it out at the end,
and I thought that was great.

Because the character
couldn't accept it?

It seemed better
to have it end unresolved.

It made it too neat
when that line was in there.

Now it's just left hanging there.

So, here's a pivotal moment
in the Gregory-Fiske relationship,

and this is after Fiske
has helped Gregory get a job,

and they won't be able
to see each other again

because the government is filing
a case against Arthur Frobisher.

This was a crucial scene to me,
and when I first read it,

I was very grateful for it
because it was Fiske at his most vulnerable

and stepping out as much as
he ever thought himself capable--

or even didn't think
he could get to that point--

and then, when it turns back on him,
the kind of humiliation of that moment

I just found incredibly touching
and so painful

that I was very grateful
that that was included,

you know, that you saw him reach out.

- That's not who I am.
- I don't believe you.

I don't know.
I just find it very moving.

Jesus, Ray

I'm sorry.

And we were really fortunate
to have Peter Facinelli in this role,

and to have this kind of moment

where there's a real friendship
between these two characters

that goes beyond the advance
that Ray Fiske had just made,

and it's not the end of the friendship.

In previous episodes,
which took place after this

where Fiske is still trying to save Gregory,
there's still real emotion there and feeling.

And then Gregory's interest
is not just cynical

and is not just about getting along,

but, you know, he looks up
to the man in some sense.

I mean, I won't speak for him,

but that he was not
just exploiting what he saw

as what might have
been Ray's interest,

but has some genuine feeling

and genuinely feels bad
that he's kind of let the situation

play out the way it has.

And there's a phone call
that Gregory makes to Fiske

where he turns the advice
that Fiske gave to Gregory

and applies it back onto Fiske,

and really caring
and trying to help him.

Yeah, that's a very, very sweet moment,

'cause he's kind of
releasing him in some way.

Ray, what's over?

And here's the one person
in Frobisher's life

that he's had complete faith in,
telling him that it's over.

There's been some question about--
the editors were asking

whether Fiske had eaten and is coming in
with a towel here after having the salmon...

...having just killed the dog,
and he's getting the blood off his hands.

All I remember is somebody saying,
'You got to lift the towel higher in the shot.

We can't see what you're doing.'

One thing I was going to
mention in the earlier scene:

Mallory's played by Kathryn Meisle,
who I actually knew before.

I don't think we'd worked together,
but we've known each other

for several years,
so it was very nice--

given that these were their first scenes
that you got to see with them--

that there was
a kind of familiarity already there.

She was--we were
so excited to find her.

This was at atime in
our production schedule

where we had very little time for casting.

We actually didn't end up
calling her in, I don't believe--

or she had come in earlier, I think.

- She came in for another part, I think.
- Maybe for Frobisher's wife.

And we just looked at her audition--
we had it on tape--

and her quality
just seemed so right for this.

This could go a lot of ways,

because knowing
what we know about Ray,

who he married and who he's had
a life with for the last 15 years, whatever--

it really informs the character,

so it was important
to us to protect who he was

and make sense of who he was.

Make sense in that
that is a serious relationship

- and a serious friendship.
- Absolutely.

Regardless of his sexuality,
that that is a real anchor for him.

It was important to us that
they have a good relationship.

It's not that it's bad...

It may have been
settled for on some levels,

but that it really matters.

It's not that it didn't lack certain things,

it's just that what it had
was very solid and meaningful.

Production-wise,
we really tried to have these bars

in the entire shot of this walk.

It's kind of Fiske trapped.

- Fiske...anyway, behind bars...
- Right.

...for lack of a better cliché.

And if only Lila was in his life,
it could've all gone a different direction.

So much simpler.

First movie I saw in four months
where I actually stayed awake.

- Okay.
- Yeah.

I got about another hour here,
then I'll be home.

Okay, babe. I love you. Bye.

Love you.

Quite a nice shot.

Did you end up watching
the episodes as they aired?

Yeah, I did, because--

partly because of our schedule
and just the way things went,

you know, the episode that
I read a few weeks before

did not necessarily fully resemble
the episode as it aired a few weeks later,

so sometimes there're just story things
that hadn't happened before

or scenes would be 'to be written',
and you didn't see them play out--

moments like this, which I don't remember
if it was described this way or not

in the script as it was written.

I had to keep up--
and could be pleasantly surprised.

It wasn't just like going,
'Everything's going to happen.'

Very likely it wasn't. This was something
that we came up with at the last minute.

We had to keep the Lila story alive
for certain long-term goals that we had,

but we felt like we were
running out of beats for it,

so we just kind of invented
that at the last minute.

And here we are in the--

Talk us through this.

Yeah, please.
We'll just turn it over to you.

It started about 3.30 in the afternoon,
I think on a Friday,

as the first scene of the day
that we were supposed to shoot.

They'd gone very late the night before,
killing George Moore till 5.00 in the morning.

We came in to rehearse this scene,
and it evolved.

You'll see, it involved
a special effects person,

who, suddenly on the day,
didn't seem to be on the payroll.

So, we rehearsed through it,
but then could not shoot it

because just the logistics of how to shoot
through the end of the scene were unclear.

So, we just moved on to other scenes,

hoping to kind of figure out
what to do in the meantime,

and then the meantime became 12 hours later.

So we got back to shooting this
at about 2.00 or 3.00 in the morning,

which was scary, because it was
a crucial scene in the episode

and it's a crucial scene
for Ray Fiske's character.

The good part of it was that
yes, he is at his lowest ebb,

and at 4.00 in the morning,
you don't necessarily

have to act too much of that anymore.

The tricky part was that
it is such a delicate scene,

that at some point,
I was feeling a bit like I was imitating

what I was doing 12 hours before.

Frobisher is guilty, Ray.

Do you feel that in the end
the scene suffered because of that?

The only thing--
I'll tell you, when I first saw it,

I just wondered,
'Did I come in the door too defeated?'

'Cause I don't
remember that as a choice.

It's not something
I was thinking about.

I set up this meeting.

I called her to have this meeting,

so the question
of how I thought it would play out

or how l intended it to play out--
I had to think about that,

and I wondered
if the way I played it was

too low an ebb, in a sense.

I mean, the part that works about that
is that she offers this lifeline,

and it comes out of nowhere.

And I don't think
I even considered a possibility,

but she suddenly says,

'Down the line, there's a job for you here,
and there's a way out.'

So, I think it does feed that,

but it made it a little murky from my end,
whether I'd done enough homework

to figure out what am I walking
in the door to do.

Here's a can of worms.
You know, because people ask me--

- We can't reshoot it.
- I know. A little late.

I don't know how much time we have left,
but people have asked,

and we had conversations about this.

You tell your wife,
'Pack. We're leaving the country',

and then you show up here with a gun.

I could be asking you that question.

Exactly.

That was murky to me.

When we were shooting
the scene with the wife--

because there were some
last-minute changes there.

That was a completely different scene
from what it had initially been...

at the last minute.

So, we were shooting that before,
and trying to figure out

'Well, what's my intention, then?
What am I setting up?'

One of the things we wanted to do--

we didn't end up going in this direction--
but we wanted to preserve the possibility

that we would show you with a gun,

and that you may actually be
coming here to kill her.

That's possible.

We didn't actually
end up going in that direction,

but that was--I think--
and that could potentially help explain

what you were saying to Mallory
and connect those two to this.

When I was asking the question--

One of you just talked
about that the one thing

he's still trying to do is protect Frobisher.

So, if you want to talk
through this ending at all, or not...

I'm interested...

as a viewer.

The main thing that
I wanted to preserve

was just an element of surprise,

that you just don't see what's coming.

And I like the way
it was shot for that reason,

and that there's no music here,
there's no set up.

I just walk out of the shot
and walk back into the shot,

so that there's no announcement
of a big moment coming.

That being the big moment.

I almost slightly wish
that shot were a split second shorter,

so you don't even
have time to sort of react.

But we spent
a lot of time in the editing room

on the timing of all of this.

Which shot are you referring to?

Just the gun actually
going in the mouth.

Well, thank you
very much for joining us

for the pilot, for the season...

It was a pleasure
from beginning to end, believe me.

For everything,
and thank you for watching,

and we appreciate your time
and patience with this series.

It's been a true labour of love
for all of us involved.

I'll be back to haunt Patty, if need be.

- All right.
- Terrific.

I'm available.

- Thank you.
- Thanks for watching.

Thanks.