I loved the wedding dress. I think it’s super special and custom. I think Alan and I love to play with gender. It’s so cool that on a network show like this, we can have him show up in a traditional men’s suit but then add a wedding dress on the bottom, the red flower details, and his crazy finger wave hairs. I just love how that came out.
It’s a cat and mouse for our episodes, and they never meet. We tried to make sure that whenever we were cross-cutting, we would increase the feeling of cross-cutting between them, so one was coming outta one room, and the other was coming into a room. Quite often, one would go that way, and then the other would begin the other way, which must be cut between them.
The interior of MI6 was difficult because there’s no reference for it whatsoever. The Jackals villa was difficult because we couldn’t go to Spain. We had to do that in Croatia, which is a driving distance from Budapest. One of the complicated things was the fact that we were stretched geographically. Production in the UK, Croatia, Budapest… As the production continued, more directors started getting involved, more directors of photography. It snowballed a lot. Logistically, it was a big job.
It’s good to be sparse, like when the Jackal is setting up and you see the police coming after him. You hear a bit of piano, and it helps build the tension. You can also use frequency-driven sounds like low drones and low bass drums. I’m in love with bass drums. I could do a full score only based on bass drums because they fill the space so much.
The Day Of The Jackal is more of a hybrid mentality, where we’re voyeuristic when we need to feel paranoid. Regardless of the motive behind the assassination, the audience has to side with the Jackal. So, the audience must pull the trigger alongside the Jackal to be motivated to watch episodes two and three.
I am proud that we updated a classic story without feeling like a rehash. It felt like we were in a time in the world ripe for retelling this story. There’s been a collapse of trust in the idea of truth, and Ronan’s script felt like a post-truth thriller. We wanted to retell the story in a way that felt appropriate and illuminating for our time. The way audiences have responded to it at multiple levels indicates that we’ve achieved what we wanted.
“There is always red tape around songs. Part of it is I do a lot of projects that are hip hop based, so always, you’re finding a writer who has 2%. You’re like, where are they? And you’re on Instagram and you’re trying Twitter, you’re really trying to do that. Even now with pop music being so many writers, producers contributing, and samples, all this stuff is complicated.”
“The reason why there are two DPs on it is because there’s so much to shoot every day. So you couldn’t physically be in two places at the same time. It’s in real-time, so when they get up in the morning right through to when they go to sleep at night, filming them essentially.”
Taraji P. Henson, Don Cheadle, Kevin Hart, and Samuel L. Jackson lead the new crime story, based on an iHeart true-crime podcast.
Beloved shows such as Baby Reindeer, Fallout, Shōgun, and Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans are few of the many shows nominated.
