The TV Chick

Starz officially won me over with Party Down, so I was excited to see what else the network had to offer. Gravity is a new series starring Krysten Ritter (of “Breaking Bad” and “Gilmore Girls” fame) about a suicide support group. Each member of the group tried to kill themselves in some way — some hilarious ways, others heartbreaking, and some we are just beginning to discover. The third episode is tonight and already it’s off to a great start. When I first heard about this series, I wasn’t sure what to think. However, I think death is a topic that isn’t addressed enough on TV. Gravity injects humor where necessary and serious moments as well, and I think the balance is just right. I recently had the chance to chat with the lovely creator, Jill Franklyn, who talked about the casting process, her inspiration for the show and why she had to change the name to Gravity.

What was your inspiration behind creating Gravity?
I was having a bad day. I don’t mean to make light of it. I’m not going to give you the laundry list of what was going on, but it was during the writers strike in ’07 when I came up with it. And just my dog, and there was just all this stuff, so I went to this dark place which I sometimes do–which for me, creatively is really good. And so I also was thinking about, because it was the writers strike and I knew coming back from the writers strike, that it was going to be really hard to sell something, and you really had to come up with something different. So I was trying to think of territories that no one had ever approached and so I started thinking about death, as I do, because I’ve written a lot of stories about people that are in comas, and I made them humorous. So I just started thinking about crazy ways of people trying to off themselves and it started to come alive. I started to see the faces of the characters, they had names, I had a title for the show. And then what happened was I called up my agent and I was already going out with three shows. And I called up my agent and said I have one more show I want to go out with, and they said “Okay, what is it?” and I said “I call it ‘Suicide for Dummies’” and it’s going to be a comedy about suicide, and there was dead silence on the phone.

(laughs)
“Are you guys there?” and they said “Yeah…but no. We cannot make that call. We cannot call up producers and say you have a show about suicide.” So because I already had three shows I was going out with, I put it aside. I put it aside and Eric [Schaeffer] had called me one day, we had worked together once before. He wasn’t doing anything and he asked what I was doing, and I said I had some projects I was going out with. And he asked if I had anything laying around, and I said “Yeah, I do have this idea that I really want to do but my agents doesn’t want me to go out with it. So I told him, and he said “I love that!” I’ll get my agents to go out with it. So, we talked it about it for a little bit and I said go off and think about it and I’ll go think about it because we need more than that. And he called me the next day and after I hung up with him, I was thinking about what could be the love story. And I had written this movie, I actually wrote it in a weekend after a yoga class, and sold it the next week. It was about this girl who — well there’s this big sixth sense twist to it — but I’ll just say that in the afterlife she finds her love…I’ll  say that just in case it gets made, hopefully.

Yeah, you don’t want to give it away!
No, especially that big twist. So I had this character, and I already know her name is Lily, and I’m thinking why does she do it and who is she and what happens when she dies? And the whole story just came to me really in a few minutes. So I wrote everything down and I wrote it as if I was her telling her story. And I think just a few days later, we started going out to the networks and it was really funny because we would get these reactions where people would just look at us completely dumbfounded. Fortunately, we found Starz. They were really great. And so we wrote the pilot — we actually Skype wrote the pilot — because he’s there, I’m here. [She's in LA and he's in NY] We wrote the pilot and then we had to wait a really long time. I’m going to say that it felt like it could have been like 8 months. I could be exaggerating but it was a really long time and I remember so well because my dog was so sick and my dog had died and I remember I was at Trader Joe’s and Eric called me and said “Guess what, our show got picked up.” And I said “Oh that’s really great.” And he said “You don’t sound excited.” And I said “Well, my dog died.” And he said “But you don’t sound excited!” And I said “But my dog died…”

You were like how am I supposed to sound excited after this happened?
I know, it was awful. It was awful and bittersweet. And ultimately it was great, and I will tell you right now I have my new dog laying on my lap.

Aww. I’m a huge dog lover.

[We then proceeded to talk about dogs -- I grew up with golden retrievers. We are both surprised at how many dogs live in New York City.]

So then we got the call, and then we just wrote the nine episodes and it was pretty quick. We turned them around really fast and it was really exciting. I think the biggest thing for me was just knowing that if somebody says no, it really has no more meaning to me (laughs). And so I love that. I feel much more freedom than I did before.

Yeah. And how did the name change to Gravity?
Well, I knew we were going to have a problem with Suicide For Dummies because of all the For Dummies books. So we changed it first to Suicide Dummies so it didn’t have the for in it, so it didn’t seem like it was a manual. And Starz legal they just didn’t want suicide in the title. So they threw around a lot of other names. We had Failure to Fly which I just hated. Failure to Fly is the actual term if you’re in the hospital and you try to commit suicide and you fail, they call that Failure to Fly.

Oh! I had no idea!
I had no idea either, but I still hated it. And I don’t remember exactly how we had Gravity. I think Gravity was in a list of maybe three names and it just, at first I wasn’t crazy about it and then it grew on me, and now I love it.

So talk a little bit about the casting process for the show. Especially the choice of Krysten Ritter for the lead. I’m a big fan of hers but she has mostly been in supporting roles. How did you choose her for Lily?
When she was in “Breaking Bad” she was so brilliant, so what I do in my life is everybody thinks I’m so distracted, but I’m really not. I’m just storing information. I store things in my brain all the time. And when I saw her in “Breaking Bad,” there I went, compartmentalizing. And I stored her in my brain and I knew that I was going to work with her. I just thought she was brilliant and I felt this connection to her. And because my female characters are so personal to me, as soon as I knew we were going into casting, I knew she was the girl. And so I had even told some of the executives at Starz, I said “I want Krysten Ritter.” And of course, we had to go through the typical casting process and Eric being in New York and me being here, that was great because he had his casting there and I had my casting here. So I remember the day because I had one of the Starz executives [with me] I called him and said you might want to come in today because Krysten’s coming in today. So he came in and I remember her pulling into the parking lot and she’s walking across the parking lot — and I looked at her and she looked at me and we had big mutual smiles like we’d known each other forever and I knew that she was Lily. Even before she read, she was Lily. And when she read, once she was on tape, she was Lily. Now, not everyone felt that way. But I did, and my executive felt that way and so there was a lot of fight to get her, I will say that. And then we narrowed it down to three girls so we had three girls and we had three guys. Even though I did know also that Ivan was Robert. So then we had the producer audition and then they came in and we put them on tape. I just always knew. I never had a doubt that it would be Krysten. And then I never had a doubt that it would be Krysten and Ivan. And they’re so wonderful, I’m really happy. And with everybody else — everybody had different feelings and then there was sort of a “Okay well I like this person a little bit better.” So there was that evening out of a strong voice. As long as I had Krysten and Ivan, I was going to be happy. But ultimately, I’m happy with everybody that came in.

That’s good. I think she’s great. And the show has very dark moments and very funny moments. How do you strike a balance between the two?
That’s always just come very natural to me in everything that I’ve ever written. Right now, I’m writing a scary drama. And that’s the whole thing about the subject matter is and in life, even with my situation with my dog, is you have to — in order to exist so that you don’t go to that really dark place, you have to find humor somewhere, always. It’s the most important thing in life.

I agree.
So in writing anything that’s serious — I don’t know if you ever saw the movie that I did, where Albert Brooks is dying, and there’s even humor in the last moments of his life. You know LeLe Sobieski?

Yes, I know of her.
She’s so wonderful in the movie. She found humor in just the darkest places. She was great. Before we started shooting, I told Krysten to watch my movie, because LeLe’s character is sort of the next generation of that character. She’s a few years older than that character, because they’re very similar. They both come from a very dark place for the same reasons, and they both find their way out. Without humor, I couldn’t write any other way.

I agree, it’s just interesting the mix of the two.
I will say this, there’s a lot more that we shot that was humorous that didn’t get in, that I wish had. You’re not always in control of everything, unfortunately being the control freak that I am. The script is a lot funnier than the first episode, but you win some and you lose some.

And has there been any backlash from people offended by the topic?
I haven’t seen a lot. I’ve read a lot of the reviews, and I would say we’ve gotten two bad reviews to six good reviews.

Well, that’s good.
Yeah, that’s really good. I’ve always experienced that you never get all great reviews. No one ever really does. I really thought that we would get a lot more than we got. We really didn’t. It was more of praise of being courageous than anything else. And if there were little emails or texts of people being a little bit sensitive, other people that were in the audience would be writing back to them and they would sort of soften up their logic. And so it’s been really good.

And on the alternate side, I wanted to know if there’s been any fans who have spoken out that this show may have helped them in a way.
If you look at the Gravity fan page, you’ll see how many people have written in and said that they were in a dark place and/or that they knew somebody and they wished that that person could have seen the show and it’s really so heartwarming. And I just hope that continues.

And you shoot in New York City, and I think it serves as such a great backdrop for the show because it’s tough for anyone. Why did you choose New York City? When you wrote it was it in the back of your mind that that is where it would take place?
It wasn’t in my mind, because I live in Los Angeles. Of course, I love to be close to home. And my parents are from back east so I have relatives there. And I’m a huge Woody Allen fan so I love New York as a character itself. And so I was happy it was in New York, I got to go to New York.

Absolutely. I love Starz programming in general, but why do you think Gravity was such a good fit with Starz?
I think because they are new and experimental that they were willing to take a chance. And so much praise to them because a lot of other people were afraid of the subject matter. Although I don’t really understand why because Dexter’s a serial killer that we love.

Right.
And Mary Louise Parker sells pot for her family.

And Jackie is a drug addict. The list goes on.
And I love her. I love that show. So I think that that’s why. And I’m very excited to see what else they do. In fact, I’m writing some new specs now, I’m going in to talk to them about other shows that I’m doing.

Oh awesome. And I think I already know the answer to this, but who’s your favorite character to write for?
Yes, you do already know what character (laughs) is my favorite character. It’s so easy. And it’s so easy because all my friends and family, they look at me and they’re like “Oh my God, it’s embarrassing, she’s so you.”

(laughs)
Especially that moment when she walks in and she’s about to see her dad — that whole thing with her dad. Of course, my dad calls me up. He always calls me every time that I write something and [says] “Are you sure that you love me?” (laughs) “I do! I just take poetic license.”

Right. Of course. I know you said you put a lot of personal experiences into the show and into Lily’s character. Are there any specific examples of things that happened to you that you put in the show?
Well definitely the scene with her and her father and trying to strike up a conversation with her father. Because growing up — I mean now, I could talk to my dad for hours upon hours — but when I was growing up it was much more difficult and you had to be very clever about the path that you chose to get his attention. So I very much related to that. And also, I’ve always, always wanted to open up a vintage store. So I am living vicariously through Lily. And what I plan to do next season is have her design her own clothing line, because that’s what I’ve always wanted to do. And it was so funny because in New York when I wrote the scene and I had her designing clothes and she was adding black lace to some clothes, that was my view that I had. And I remember when I wrote it was like eight months before we actually shot it, but I remember being in New York, and my girlfriend dragging me to Barneys and on every floor they had all these clothes and everything had black lace sticking out of it. And I said “okay, I am way ahead of my time.” So I’m very excited for next season. I have all these ideas of what she’s going to do. Not just Lily of course, I love all the characters.

The first two episodes have aired at this point. Can you give us a little teaser of what’s coming up in the rest of the season?
I don’t know if you know I’m writing these little blogs. Starz has asked me to do that.

I have seen them, yes!
I’ve never done that before, and I have to tell you, it’s really hard to do because it’s hard to write without giving away information, and especially in episode 3 because I so want to. (laughs) So episode 3, because each episode we learn a little bit more about each of the characters, episode 3 is about Jorge and we had to cut a lot because it’s such an outrageous storyline, but it was very fun. So I tapped into the male side of me for that one, for sure. And Starz did have to reign us back for where we wanted to go with this storyline. It’s so outrageous that I don’t think anyone has ever seen anything like it on TV.

Well I definitely look forward to it.
It’s really shocking. And I will say so far it’s also the funniest episode I think.

Very good. You’re a creator of this show, but what are you watching? What are your favorite shows on TV right now?
Well, like I said I love, love, love “Nurse Jackie.” I love “Breaking Bad.” I’m so diverse in my taste. I love “Modern Family,” it makes me laugh. It’s hysterical. And “The Office,” and “Parenthood.” I will tell you that I am — I will admit this — there are some reality shows that I cannot tear myself away from, especially because I get fodder from them. Like “America’s Next Top Model.” Her poses — she kills me. When they are in the house and they’re fighting. Like I said to you before, I store stuff all the time, so I’m always storing. And of course, Project Runway. I still love it, and when they give them the assignments, in my head, I design what my outfit’s going to be.

Ooh, you should get to sketching so you can have them appear on the show for Lily.
(laughs) I know. Wait until you see what Lily’s going to be wearing, it’s going to be so much fun. It’s just so funny, when she was in New York, because she did wear some of her own clothes on the show. And she would send me pictures of herself in the hotel room in different outfits, it was very funny.

Oh wow.
I don’t know if she would want you to know that.

Gravity airs at 10:30 pm on Starz. Be sure to check out tonight’s episode!

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