“Tears on My Pillow Were Just Part of the Price”: Mark Mylod, Karyn Kusama and the THR Director Roundtable

“That which scares me ultimately will be the thing I’m drawn to,” observed Mark Mylod, director and executive producer of HBO/Max’s Succession, not necessarily intending to get philosophical during The Hollywood Reporter‘s Director Emmy Roundtable. But fear, it turns out, is a major motivator for six of the top TV helmers working right now. Meeting over Zoom in May, the filmmakers behind the past year’s most acclaimed episodes — including Mylod, Paris Barclay (Netflix’s Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story), Liz Garbus (Showtime’s Yellowjackets), Peter Hoar (HBO/Max’s The Last of Us), Karyn Kusama (Prime Video’s Dead Ringers and Yellowjackets) and Jake Schreier (Netflix’s Beef) — kept returning to the career choices that scared (and inspired) them during their hour together. They also got frank about stints in director jail, why artificial intelligence isn’t just a threat to writers and, speaking before the DGA’s tentative deal with the studios, the “existential cliff” of Hollywood’s standoff with labor.

In television, unless it’s a pilot, your jobs often mean going into other people’s workplaces and telling them what to do. Who has a party trick for getting them to trust you or, at the very least, kind of like you?

PETER HOAR I’m nice to them. (Laughs.) Yeah, I smile. I ask people questions and then I listen to the answers. That seems to go down quite well, particularly with actors. It’s so strange how many times people say, “Oh, the last director didn’t talk to me at all.” I love my job, by the way, but it can be ridiculous. It should be fun. Make it more fun.

PARIS BARCLAY I have a party trick. It started during COVID. Because of the masks, I wanted to meet via Zoom with every principal actor beforehand. Now I’ll do it forever, for every show. I’ll say it’s 20 minutes, but sometimes they go as long as an hour and a half — with, say, Evan Peters. I want to tell them who I am and hear how they like to be directed. I just ask. By the first day on set, I’m already preloaded with information, which helps me to do what I have to do.

Can I get a show of hands of everyone here who’s ever found themselves in director jail? (Mylod and Kusama raise their hands.) How did you find yourself there — and, just as important, how did you claw your way out?

HOAR What’s “director jail”?

MARK MYLOD It’s when you can’t get a gig! I made a horrible pilot when I first came to the States. I’d come over to do one episode of Entourage, and ended up staying and jumping into that producer-director role. Toward the end of that run, I took on a pilot, which I won’t name and never should have done. The script wasn’t ready to go. I was bland and vanilla in my choices, and consequently, so was the pilot. It quite rightly didn’t go forward. I found it difficult to get a job afterward, and was in a tricky situation financially. That and a terrible movie I’d made the same year forced me to reexamine my choices and completely change direction away from straight comedy. Like you, Paris, that which scares me ultimately will be the thing I’m drawn to. But it took me a while to get there. I got out of [the rut] by just pitching the heck out of doing the American version of Shameless and then, when I got that pilot, making sure it was as extraordinary as I could possibly make it. I was really hungry by then. I’ve remained hungry.

KARYN KUSAMA I started in features. After my first indie film that was very much mine [Girl Fight], I made a big studio sci-fi love story at 60 times the budget and then another studio film called Jennifer’s Body. Both those films were considered failures at the time, and I hadn’t really even considered the concept of how failure, as much as I think it’s a crucial part of the creative process, affects a career or slows a career down. And so it took me several years to actually get work in television. And it was the ability to start working on a small show at AMC called Halt and Catch Fire. I feel like television ended up helping me reframe the joy of making things.

I believe the first studio film you referenced is Aeon Flux. After you were fired during postproduction, an executive apparently asked you to come back and fix their cut by saying, “I really hated your version of the movie. But believe it or not, I hate the new version even more.” Where does that rank among the backhanded compliments that you have gotten in your Hollywood career?

KUSAMA It’s definitely up there! It brings up the elemental tension between what we all do, which is just try to make something that has an emotional narrative and visual stylistic coherence versus the “throw something at the wall and see what sticks” attitude that we’re often dealing with. It was great to get such lacerating feedback so early in my career. It helped me understand what we’re all up against and what we’re all trying to defend and preserve in these careers of ours.

Does anyone else have any memorably appalling or helpful feedback that they received earlier in their career and would like to share?

MYLOD I shot the first episode of this thing called Shooting Stars, which was a deconstructed game show. Because it was so cheap, I said, “If I do all the production stuff, can I also direct it?” This was obviously in England. And a week before we shot, we were set around the production meeting, and the producer said, “Yeah, great, Mark. The boys” — meaning Vic and Bob, the two very funny comedians who were running the show — “they thought maybe you do the other stuff but maybe you shouldn’t direct.” There were about 14 people around the table, and I could feel tears swelling up in my eyes and was going to pieces with embarrassment. I just looked down at the piece of paper I was drawing on and said, “No, no. I think I should direct. Anyway, item 12!” I just phased them out, carried on and directed it. It won lots of awards, so that was good.

JAKE SCHREIER I showed Frank Langella the first cut of [my film] Robot & Frank backstage at a play he was doing with Adam Driver in New York. He took me to Sardi’s, like, “Let me show you what the old theater world is about.” When we got there, he [as the film’s star] gave me this long list of notes about how nothing in the film worked at all. He eventually came around to loving the thing, so that was nice, but I have the paper somewhere of the list of things that were just absolutely failing.

Mark, Steven Spielberg wrote you a letter of praise for an early Succession episode in which he said, “Directing a dinner party is like fighting a bear — and you won.” Gatherings like a dinner party were baked into almost every episode, and a dinner party is also the premise of your recent film, The Menu. What does it say about you that you keep picking fights with bears?

MYLOD I really get excited about big groups of people, because there’s an entanglement of tensions. I suppose I feel a bit naked sometimes if the screen is bereft of humans. I’m always a bit insecure about that. If you asked me to direct Cast Away, I would just have a panic attack. Really.

Who else among you has had a sort of pinch-me version of a Spielberg letter?

HOAR Well, I didn’t get it directly, but [an actual Spielberg letter] came to Craig Mazin, the writer of my episode on The Last of Us — the writer of all the episodes. He shared it with myself, Nick Offerman, Murray Bartlett and [cinematographer] Eben Bolter. Basically, a whole group of middle-aged men started squealing because their idol had realized who they were. I think he probably knew who everyone else was, but he didn’t know who I was. And now he’s probably forgotten.

MYLOD It’s the most extraordinary tonal switch in a series that I think I’ve ever seen in my life, Peter. I remember watching with the rest of the country, just jaw on the floor.

For anyone who hasn’t seen it, we’re talking about Peter’s standalone episode of The Last of Us in which Offerman and Bartlett play a gay couple living relatively happily through two decades of the zombie apocalypse.

BARCLAY As a gay man who’s been with the same person for 25 years, imagine watching this episode and just feeling completely emotionally devastated. I thought it was one of the most moving things I’d seen in my entire life. You and Craig managed to make it connect to all sorts of people. I could do a whole hour and a half just asking you questions, because it really is a moment in history for television, for representation and broadening the tent.

MYLOD I always think that time jumps are the enemy of connecting with the characters, aren’t they? Every time you take any kind of time jump, it’s like you’ve got to recapture the audience. I’ve no idea how you did that.

HOAR Well, let’s not talk about it anymore, but I hope we’re recording, because I’m going to put this on the wall.

Paris, you said that there were days on the Dahmer set that were so heavy and dark that you cried when you got home. How do you rally to be a leader on set when you’re in such really heavy material?

BARCLAY I’m just a super sensitive guy. One of the reasons why I ended up with this job is that I have tentacles that absorb vibrations from everyone. In things like this, if we’re talking about a lunatic dismembering these gay men, there’s no way that I can’t feel all the reactions of everyone on the set. And Evan Peters, who went through a lot, I feel for him, too. So I just become a wreck. I meditate to try to get out of those feelings, but when I’m in that process, I’m going to be open to everybody. Tears on my pillow were just part of the price I had to pay. I originally told Ryan [Murphy] no, but he convinced me because this was the point where the series turns its focus on the victims, society’s failings, the failings of the police. It seems like the things that I’ve [initially] said no to have been the most successful in my career. I originally said no to Jimmy Smits’ final episode of NYPD Blue.

When you have a performer like an Evan Peters or Jeremy Strong staying in character or using varying degrees of Method acting, how does a director navigate that?

BARCLAY That’s not really true of Evan. He is intense, and he does largely stay in character, but he’s not crazy. And that’s out there — like he’s suddenly become Dahmer and actually eating people for lunch. (Laughs.) It’s not that. You can talk to him, you can direct him. But in order to perform, he needs to be in his earphone cocoon to focus. I just respect that. But he’s also hilarious and fun.

SCHREIER I’ve worked with Jeremy Strong [on the feature Robot & Frank], who’s definitely not a lunatic, and with Jim Carrey for six episodes [of Kidding]. He is not Method, but he certainly is extremely committed. I think one of the fun parts about the job, especially in TV, is working with so many different sets of actors and so many different processes. That’s really none of my business how Jeremy gets there, versus how Jim gets there, versus how Ali [Wong] gets there.

Karyn, how did you find yourself engaging with Rachel Weisz on the Dead Ringers set, given that she was playing twins and sharing scenes with herself? Did you treat her differently depending on the character she was playing at the time?

KUSAMA Rachel is this wonder of a human. She’s so relaxed, so prepared, and I don’t know how anyone can drink as many cups of tea as she does and not completely have some kind of cardiac event. She’s not either of the two psychopathic twin gynecologists, Beverly and Elliot — and yet she must have had some kind of internal playbook. I never felt like I was dealing with an actor. I was dealing with Beverly. Then, Rachel would go away and do a costume and a hair and makeup change, and I’d be working with Elliot. She made it easy.

What was the time in everybody’s career where you felt like you were taking your biggest risk?

LIZ GARBUS It’s like what Paris said, the things you initially say no to are the ones that end up being the most rewarding. When we’re out on that limb, we can feel the most anxious and most inspired. I have a long history in documentary. After I made my first scripted film with Netflix [Lost Girls], my first television job was on The Handmaid’s Tale. I was learning the rules of TV and who I could be as a director while tackling this dark material. But when I step out of my comfort zone, I’m just super dialed in. It can bring out the best of me.

BARCLAY I had the opposite experience of Liz. After Dahmer, I started doing a feature documentary on Billy Preston. I realize how dependent I’ve been on brilliant writers when it’s interviews, archival footage and music, and it has to be put into some semblance of a story. I thought of you, Liz. I thought this was a lot easier. (Laughs.)

GARBUS But there’s also so much that’s analogous. In the documentary edit room, you’re taking this messy clay and trying to make something beautiful out of it. With the script, you already have this beautiful thing. You get all the clay on set, and try to put it back together.

Jake, you just signed on to direct a giant Marvel movie, Thunderbolts, about superheroes in a world without Avengers. What is that call like, and what is the mental calculation that gets you to a yes?

SCHREIER Jon Watts, who did the latest Spider-Man movies, and I were roommates in college, and I did second unit on the L.A. portion of the first one [Spider-Man: Homecoming]. So I know those guys a little bit and had talked to them about a few movies in the past. Where I’m at, it’s the experience of getting to work on something that large. Obviously, it happened to be a very good idea for a film that I was drawn to. But the experience of getting to work on something at that scale and trying different things becomes attractive at some point. It’s less about “This is the narrative that I’m writing of my career,” and more about what experiences I’d like to have. What would be interesting to work on? Who would I like to work with? That’s what did it.

Mark, Brian Cox says he continued to show up on the Succession set after his character’s death. What was it like having him there after he was no longer really fulfilling a job?

MYLOD When we told him that the character was dying relatively early in the season, we felt bad. And, obviously, he did too. I think his expectation — well, I know it was — was that his character would pop his clogs much later. So he was a little bit discombobulated. I’m sure he’d psyched himself up for a seven-month shoot, and suddenly it wasn’t that. We were all obviously sad to leave him, and, on a work level, insecure about carrying on without him — without that centrifugal force at the heart of the tension and the dynamic. So there was something reassuring about having him around. It was slightly surreal when he turned up at his funeral, but mostly it was just lovely.

Peter, you mentioned that your episode of The Last of Us was considered a big risk among the creative team. As a gay man shooting a script that’s essentially a two-hander play about two gay men, written by a straight man, was there anything in that original script that you pushed to shift or change?

HOAR Craig may be straight, but he’s got the warmest heart. I think that’s partly why it is so universal, because his attention was on the love rather than the gender. I’ve had many conversations about the character of Bill [Offerman]. Everyone goes, “Well, Bill’s a gay man.” I was like, “Well, is he? He could be. But he hasn’t really defined himself in those words.” Craig wrote from what he knew, as he’d been in a marriage for some number of years. He knew the things that categorized the success or failure of a relationship, and that’s what went in. They’re universal. I didn’t want it to feel that it was only one group of people’s story. I think if it had been, it wouldn’t have been as successful. It would’ve felt niche.

We’re obviously speaking during the WGA strike, and the directors have their own contract with the studios up for negotiation. Paris, you previously served as DGA president for years. What’s a priority that you’d like to see resolved this go-around?

BARCLAY I can’t speak for the DGA, but I can talk for me personally. I’m a member of the Writers Guild, the Directors Guild and the Screen Actors Guild. Now is the time that all of us really have to stick together to get what we deserve. That’s why you’re hearing this unprecedented solidarity. It’s not just money at stake, although money is at stake — wages and streaming residuals. But the way we are treated in this new ecosystem is not working — at least not for the creatives. If there’s one thing the WGA member in me is super concerned about, it’s AI. I just don’t know where that ends, and I don’t like it. We have lots of provisions in the Directors Guild that say a director has to be a person, for instance, and a director has be a member of the Directors Guild. And I don’t think computers are going to get into the Directors Guild soon — but they can produce a lot of written shit using AI. I’m ready to say that I’m not doing that. The writer in me has a real fear that this will start to be the way many scripts are developed, that they’ll take that whole season of Full House and turn it into the Full House reboot and ask a writer to polish it, and then put it out there and then ask me as a director, or some other director, to direct it. My answer, and I hope to encourage my fellow directors, is no.

GARBUS I do worry about the director’s piece of AI. I know that Paris, you’re saying there’s no robots allowed into the DGA, but I still think it’s something directors need to be thinking about. Is there going to be a moment where AI’s going to be spitting out shot lists? There are things for the directors to be thinking about pretty seriously.

BARCLAY An AI shot list? What would you do with it? If anyone presents you a shot list, you’d say, “Shove it up your ass” is what you would do with it.

GARBUS I would cross a lot of things out, but I think that the danger is people who won’t. The studios’ response to the very reasonable AI [restriction] demands of the Writers Guild is a concern, so I think that as directors, we need to be aware of that.

Karyn, you’re married to a writer and showrunner. What are the conversations like at the dinner table these days?

KUSAMA I don’t want to say grim, but there’s a lot at stake right now. We just watched Disney essentially flush most of their produced shows off of their own platform. We understand the reasons why they want to do that in the short term, but the long-term implications of this kind of decision-making is clearly not in the best interest of storytelling. It’s not in the best interest of the audiences who love those stories. And it’s definitely not in the best interest of the people who make those stories, the writers, the directors, the actors, the crews. It’s a very consequential moment. We talk a lot about a kind of existential cliff that we’re all standing on, and we’re very fortunate to feel like we traveled a long way to get here. I’m really concerned for the people who’ve just gotten up on their feet, who are trying to build careers right now. For many of us in multiple guilds, what we are fighting for is not just our here and now and our paycheck today — but for everyone in this industry and the art form in the future.

In the interest of ending on a more optimistic note …

KUSAMA You hit us on a dark day!

Even after the strike — or strikes — and all this contraction, the sandbox is still going to be big. Who is someone you’d like to collaborate with, or what show do you want to immerse yourself in for a couple of weeks?

KUSAMA Succession! Too late for that.

HOAR I was just going to say that.

BARCLAY That would be on my list, too. I also love Industry, which not many people are watching except me, I guess.

MYLOD I’d love to work with Craig Mazin. I think he’s a genius. Maybe Phoebe Waller-Bridge as well — just writers, brilliant writers who have such a humanity and unique voice.

GARBUS I’m dying to work with Steven Yeun. So, Jake, someday he’s going to be like, “When will this woman leave me alone?”

SCHREIER I can tell you that it will not disappoint.

BARCLAY But I would say that there’s a lot of optimism to be had. Not only are more stories being told, but more stories that matter are being told. And despite the fact that they may be upset that there’s a transgender person holding a beer, we’re not going down that road. We’re putting all sorts of people in front of the camera, we’re telling their stories, and we’re saying, “This is the world that we want to see and we’re helping to create it.” So I think there’s a lot to be proud of in this industry.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.