TV Hot Spot: Episode Info

Brothers & Sisters: Interview with Exec Producer!

Post by: Sal


Source: EW

Interview with Exec Producer:


A condensed season means a full supply of fall story lines for exec producer Greg Berlanti

Sally Field got all the writers a big coffee truck the first day. We called her up to thank her, and she said, ''Now, get cracking!''

We knew what we had to do. We'll have our first script into the hands of production by Feb. 28. That's two weeks. It's been totally nuts. We've accelerated our production schedule so much that I haven't even contemplated how it feels. There are too many other things to worry about. I think that in TV, working really fast can be a cause for creativity and a launchpad for more innovative thinking.

Usually we don't have time to dwell on our choices, but [during the strike] we had 100 days to dwell on the directions we were going in. What felt nice is that a lot of the decisions we had made prior to the strike looked good on second viewing. For Brothers & Sisters, we're squeezing what we thought were going to be eight episodes of stories into four episodes, and saving some stuff for next year. Under those circumstances, the best stuff rises. The writers have all been through something that was really difficult but really unifying. I think that's so much the theme of what the Walkers tend to go through, that it works to draw on the emotions of the last three months.

We have a lot of explosive [story lines]. You can't have something horrible or amazing happen to somebody in every episode because that would just seem too extraordinary. But you can in sweeps! So we do have a lot of big stuff coming up. Expect a lot of deck chairs [to be] rearranged in the Walker house. We're trying to generate [more] episodes in part because of the potential SAG strike in June. That's the other part about this. There is a sense that the other shoe hasn't fallen yet.

But I was saying to someone the other day, ''It's like nothing's changed: Lunch was a half an hour late again.''


Take Care,

Sal