photo: usa
We had the chance to talk to Matt Corman and Chris Ord, the creators of the show Covert Affairs and ask them what we can expect from season 3. So far this has turned out to be their best season yet and it seems that the key is to keep it fast paced and full of action and drama.
They see the season as Annie’s teenage years… being it filled with more questions and more passion and with all that comes greater stakes. This year will involve long arch storytelling and most of it will be trying to resolve exactly what happened to Jai.
Let’s get started.
TheTwoCents: Are you taken by surprise by the degree of popularity of Auggie’s character
Matt Corman: We’re not surprised at all. Chris Gorham is a fantastic actor and from the very earliest moment of the show, we can see that he and Piper had this incredible chemistry that you just can’t fake.
TTC: How difficult is it to balance the audience demand for more Auggie but yet keeping it authentic with him as a blind character?
MC: We would never want to put him in a position or put the character in a position that seemed fake or where an audience member is saying, “Well, I’m not sure how a blind person could literally navigate that.” So it requires a far amount of thought to find seamless organic stories to tell that fit his skills and also his limitations.
CO: But it’s a fun challenge in the sense you get to create action set pieces and things that you wouldn’t otherwise get to create. You know, I think if you saw last week’s episode where Auggie and (Parker) were forced to jump from building to building, just has an inherent drama intention to it but came from character. It came from who Auggie is. And for us, it’s those situations that are unique to Auggie that we get to do for the series so we get really excited about.
TTC: How did Sendhil Ramamurthy feel or react to learning about his character’s fate?
MC: Well, it’s a very difficult conversation. We like Sendhil a lot as a person. We respect him as an actor. It was not easy for us to talk to him about this because we so enjoy working with him. But he’s a very classy guy. He was as gracious as a person can be but it’s hard because I think he enjoyed working on the show and we enjoy having him and, wasn’t an easy conversation but we owed it to him to be as direct as possible and to explain it as much as we could.
And I will say hopefully everybody sees this, we miss Jai but the concept of his death really propels the story and propels the season. So it wasn’t just this callous thing where he’s gone and forgotten but the presence of him and everything he represented is yielding through and will continue to do so throughout the season. So hopefully that is clear to our audience as well.
CO: And I would add that it was always our intention to have characters die and have the audience recognize that there are real stakes to this job. It’s a dangerous job and, as Matt said, we love Sendhil and we love – as a person, as an actor but in order for it really to convey the audience that there are stakes here, one of our main characters needed to be killed and so it wasn’t an easy decision but it was in part for this series going forward.
TTC: Over the last couple of episodes, you’ve really put Auggie through the ringer and not in a way that we might have expected since he was placed in charge of investigating Jai’s death by Arthur. So I’m wondering, when are we going to get back to that and how are we going to pull that into the rest of the season?
MC: Soon. It’s going to be very present and in the next three weeks or three episodes, I should say, there’s going to be a lot more clarity about that and a lot more questions as well. But it’s foremost in our mind and it was when we were breaking these episodes that the investigatory element of this would actually be the driver of the season. So if you look back when you’ve seen the first 10, you’re going to say, “Wow, this really was all about investigating Jai’s death and getting answers as to how he died and why and what the fallout from that will be.
CO: And I would add, Auggie is not done going through the ringer. There’s – even as early as next week, he’s got a lot to face.
TTC: Can you also tell me if we’ll ever meet Auggie’s family?
MC: You know, we’ve talked about that. I’m not sure necessarily if we’ll meet his family this season, but at a certain point, we would like to get into that. You know, he alluded to the fact that he had several brothers and it could be really interesting to meet them and to meet somebody that knew him before he was blind it might be a really interesting prism.
By the way…did you know that Matt and Chris also wrote the movie Deck the Halls with Danny DeVito and Matthew Broderick?
Thanks Matt and Chris for taking the time to answer the fans questions.
ps…thanks Ash for the question.
Tune in to Covert Affairs on Tuesday nights at 10pm on USA Network
Karen – Sr Staff Writer
Karen@thetwocentscorp.com
Thanks Karen for this (and especially for asking the questions I gave you). Really enjoyed reading it!