[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Narrator] "On Story" is brought to you in part by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, a Texas family providing innovative funding since 1979.

"On Story" is also brought to you in part by the Bogle Family Vineyards, six generation farmers and third generation winemakers based in Clarksburg, California.

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[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is "On Story," a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators and filmmakers.

This week on "On Story," we explore finding the source material for a period piece, making decisions about historical accuracy versus creative liberties, and successfully marrying a modern audience with a bygone era with Alison Eakle, executive producer on "Bridgerton," and Evan Romansky, co-creator of "Ratched."

- I do think like, "Mad Men" always comes to mind.

I started that show being like, yeah, yeah, I get it.

Pregnant ladies smoked at bars.

Established, I know.

And by the end, I was like, I understand my parents and my grandparents.

Like, there is a way to understand your lineage, your ancestors, or other people's lineage and ancestors that you've not been exposed to that some people only learn by watching, and this is fine and great, like really come to understand through fiction the truth of the historical past.

[paper crumples] [typing] [carriage returns, ding] - So will you guys start us off just by letting us know a little bit about how you got into these projects that are period pieces?

- I was just an exec at Shondaland.

Shonda had recently discovered all the Julia Quinn books, like truly like in a hotel drawer, there's "The Duke and I" and she reads it and she's like, this is great.

Had not been like a huge romance novelist, you know, aficionado, if you will.

But she tore through them, in her head, she's like, this is a series, this is a series.

And I'll admit, when she first brought them to me, I was like, romance novels, like I don't, I've never read them.

And I read "The Duke and I" on a plane ride and I was like, I'm in.

Like I will, yes, I blushed around page 85, I was like, oh, I didn't see this coming, but I should have.

That got just as addicted and realized there is something so fun and freeing about doing a period piece that is not based on exact historical fact.

- So with "Ratched," I had always loved "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," the book and the movie.

And I saw a real opportunity in the Nurse Ratched character because she was such a dynamic character, but she didn't have any kind of backstory.

And so I knew I didn't wanna do something that was just retelling, I wanted to create my own.

A couple months out of film school, I was meeting with Ryan, and he was like, I wanna do this.

And it took about a year to secure the rights and then took about another year until we really got going in the writer's room.

[typewriter ding] - Will you guys tell us a little bit about research?

It sounds like for both of you, it wasn't like you were specifically passionate about the time period, you were passionate about the story and then researched the time periods.

- I come from a journalism background, which I really think helped in my research habits.

And we knew going in that a lot of the horror in our show was gonna be based in reality, based in how they used to treat mental illness at the time, based on how they used to treat especially homosexuality, 'cause it was a diagnosed mental illness until I think 1972.

And honestly, some of the worst stuff that we encountered in our research of what they used to do with patients, we didn't even put in the show 'cause it was just, it was honestly too intense.

And I think the strongest thing with period that I am always looking for is how am I relating past to present?

- Just to touch on that too, I feel like that was vital to "Bridgerton" and "Queen Charlotte," of course, but especially at the beginning with "Bridgerton," it was even less about like, okay, what are, there was so much to touch on from that period where getting married was a job and you could not be openly gay, obviously, and that there was so much erased in the actual historical telling of who lived in Mayfair society in 1813 in terms of people of color.

I was at first like, oh, I don't know this field at all, but it's often written off as like women's literature and just kind of pushed to the side, as so many things historically and even present day are.

That kind of felt powerful, to be like, oh, that's part of the why.

There's this huge rabid fan base that never gets to see their favorite books adapted.

I'm a Jane Austen fan, so I like did love the period, and I had a very specific impression in my mind of what adapting that time period looked like.

And when we stepped into the "Bridgerton" creative process with Chris Van Dusen and Shonda and like every single production department head who came on board, it just blew that wide open because Jane Austen is so pastoral.

Obviously, if you've seen the show, we've taken some liberties in terms of what, there are some people online who are mad at our costumes, but we were like, let's make this a box of macaron, let's make this this colorful explosion because that, again, there was always this germ of truth, right?

Like there were Black people in society in Mayfair in that time period, and there were like obviously people who were homosexual, and we wanted to shine a light on the fact they existed, not that we are inventing their existence, both in "Bridgerton" and "Queen Charlotte."

And then there's other more technical things of like you see these historical paintings of women in their dresses from that time period, it seems very like subdued, but in what research has shown is like no, no, they, in Mayfair, they showed up, they showed off.

Like these were extravagant, luxurious outfits and bright, popping colors that's just over time, things fade and the impression that would be left, and like a painting would change.

And so we really just embraced that.

So it was this great thing where it'd be like heavy research on one hand with historians and everything from like how would Violet Bridgerton, you know, at an advanced stage, be giving birth to her eighth child and what might happen in that situation, and what did people think was wrong with King George medically, what were the assessments at the time, how did people treat that?

But then this other hand of like, and we're also going to take these liberties and pick and choose what we wanna kind of reimagine as the rules of our world, essentially.

- Dealing with a character like Mildred Ratchet who, the main genesis of the idea was that I wanted to explore this woman who was undergoing kind of a sexual revolution within herself, because I had really thought that it was McMurphy's overt sexuality in the book and film that was her biggest weakness, and so I wanted to really break down her character and understand why that was.

And I thought, well, if the worst things in her life happened to her when she left herself sexually vulnerable and fallen in love for the first time, that that made a lot of sense.

And so I really, we really wanted to, you know, show kind of what repressed sexuality was at the time and how it was dealt with.

- It's fascinating how somehow, this entire genre, I feel like, just got missed, and you guys filled that gap.

- When it's happening in real time, you're never thinking about the holistic process and like the journey that's brought you to that moment, you're just like in production.

But in 2016, I'll never forget, a book had come out from an African American professor in the States that was drawing the lineage of Queen Charlotte back to potentially Moorish ancestors and to make the claim that she was in part Black, and that had even been acknowledged at the time.

And I remember reading this book and talking about it with Shonda and Betsy Beers, and I think it had always been percolating for Shonda and always been in the back of her mind.

And then when we got to "Bridgerton," obviously, if you've read the books, Queen Charlotte doesn't factor in like a fully fleshed out character in the books, but right from the jump, Shonda and Chris were like, she has to be a part of this.

It added this different layer to the show to also kind of explore like the loneliness of her marriage.

Like the thing about "Bridgerton" is that it shows that there wasn't, like we think, so I think often in the past, there's one kind of this or there's one, there wasn't one kind of marriage, right?

It was incredibly rare to marry for love.

And I think you also get the example of Lady Danbury, which we got to explore in "Queen Charlotte" more too, which is like, sometimes, when your husband died, you were free and you could live the life you'd always wanted to live, and sorry dude, again, things will percolate, especially for Shonda, so early on in the process.

But then in terms of like the actual, okay, we're ramping up, it's very much what Evan said, I think Chris just came in hot and was like, we got the books, we got the characters, let's write this first script, get a room going.

And once the room got going, we had a historian that they could talk to, and then in production, it's a whole another layer of research, it keeps going on.

- The research didn't just, you know, contain us writers and director, like it was the production designers, it was the costume designers, like everybody is doing their own research and we, you know, come to concept meetings and be like, oh, well, I found this, like that I found this look and this look and things like we didn't even find as writers.

So like it really is a massive team effort.

And with writing, I mean, it's just like, you get to a point where you feel comfortable enough with the research that you feel like you have a grasp on, you know, on what you're talking about, but you're also discovering in the pages, there'd be times even after we'd write scripts where, you know, we would kinda get flagged for a couple things like okay, actually, this didn't exist yet or like this line like oh, like yeah, that movie hadn't come out yet.

So you really have a team behind you that's making sure everything is factually correct but, you know, at the same time, you are making a television show and you are taking creative liberties and slinging lobotomies in episode two even though she's never done it before.

- As writers, I feel like you have to have the freedom to like write the, you should be writing modern-feeling characters in some regards and like just writing it what feels right to you because someone can always come through and do a dialogue pass, like Jess Brownell, who's now our current "Bridgerton" showrunner, always talks about this, they would write it like, not worrying so much of like, is this the perfect cadence, speech, lingo that they would've used because there's a historian whose whole job is to come through and do that clean up pass.

But it's more visceral if you write it like it feels real to you.

- You have your story, you're finding research to support it, and then in your research process, do you ever find any nuggets that then spur on story?

And you kind of mentioned that with "Queen Charlotte," but would you guys share a little bit about that, moments when you found something in the research that then shifted the direction or added an element that became a big part of the story?

- I think one of the most fun things that happened that I, I don't know if this like changed the whole trajectory of everything, but I think a detail that right from the jump in the first episode like made everyone understand there, like you were saying, Evan, that there's more that's the same than different in some ways was the fact that there were these things called miniatures, which were these tiny little portraits that all the girls would have to like learn the eligible gentleman off of.

And we're all looking at it, we're like, oh my God, it's Tinder.

You're like going through and you're like, I don't want that guy, no, [mumbles], this guy maybe.

And all of a sudden, we used that to like think about every single piece of how courting worked.

We're always like, okay, what's the modern example, what's the modern example, what's that like now?

And it really infused some fun into it for sure.

- Once we started understanding like the drug evolution that was going on at the time, like post World War II before the 1950s, of like all this experimentation with like LSD and everything and giving that to Dr. Hanover, that like he is, you know, he's trying out all these different methods to treat mental illness, and he himself is testing out all these different methods of drugs on, because he is such an unhappy guy and is kind of a crank head and having a lot of fun with all the different ways he was trying to get high at the time.

Like that was like something that was definitely not in there in the beginning that we kind of discovered and we're like, oh, this is a really fun aspect of this character and a great way to have him eventually really lose control, which we knew he was always going to.

[dramatic music] - Okay, Henry, I'm gonna ask you some questions, okay?

And I would like you to answer as best you can.

[tense music] Huh.

I knew right away something was wrong.

He poured the whole thing into my drink... 4,000 micrograms, about 200 times the therapeutic dose.

♪ ♪ What happened from there I, yeah, I can only describe as a, a sort of a dream.

- And Allison, you mentioned this a moment ago as well, about the tone of "Bridgerton," and it's interesting because obviously, there's research to help you be accurate and then there's deliberate decisions you made to be contemporary, like the music or elements like that that are intentionally out of place.

Were you guys nervous about how that would translate?

What was that conversation like?

- If you feel the confidence on the page, it's gonna translate, like everyone's gonna be like, let's just keep taking more risks, not fewer, if it feels like what you're doing on the page is bold and fun and modern.

The minute the idea to just do contemporary needle drops came, we're like, yeah, absolute.

'Cause these had already existed too, like the quartet that does so many for the show and they're, I've heard orchestras redo like the Super Mario Brothers theme and been like, that's genius.

And we just ran with it, we're like, what if you take pop hits, because the songs that the orchestras were playing in the ballroom at the time were like the pop hits, and so let's do "Wrecking Ball."

- Do you want to stop?

[instrumental music "Wrecking Ball"] - Just keep looking a me.

♪ ♪ No one else matters.

♪ ♪ - I think the only thing that, again, we knew audiences, they wouldn't know the extent to which it was accurate, was the color-conscious casting.

If you have Adjoa Andoh playing Lady Danbury, she's playing a Black woman in this world, we're not pretending she is anything other than that.

And so that was the very kind of careful imagining of like the what if of "Queen Charlotte," like what if people had recognized this and that had, you know, bolstered the ranks of, you know, Black nobility in that time and they had been gifted even more land than the real cases that we knew did exist and it allowed us to be like, and there's probably other people from other parts of the world, from India, from Asia, who are going to populate this world, it just really opened the door.

And the fact that Shonda then got to go back and play out that origin story felt full circle and incredible, but that was the one where I was like, I know some people are just never gonna accept this, and that's for them.

But I think we all really trusted that the audience, because you can see yourself in any romance novel, you don't read a romance novel, and think it's not you.

Like there's a part of you that's kind of putting yourself into that moment and, because the book's allowed everyone, no matter what you look like, to see themselves in it, we're like, that's what the show should feel like, ideally.

The one thing, and Shonda was like, I'm laying the law down right now.

All of the rules of the marriage mart and how courting worked and how like the patriarchy infused every process of the world of "Bridgerton," we stayed fully, fully accurate to because that is what would drive the conflict and creates all the problems and the chaos and all of that, the misunderstandings.

And the heat, right, it's like, you can't even touch hands without gloves on, you can't be unchaperoned on a date.

Like all of that sexy longing would be impossible if you like played fast and loose with the actual rules of the world.

And Shonda would have such a strong opinion 'cause she knew it so well, she'd be like, "No, no, no, there is no riding astride for a lady in a dress."

Like, there'd be these things that she would push and I'd be like, you're right, because every single decision made about, is accuracy there, fully, that is the whole premise of the show.

That's what's gonna drive every character decision in terms of these romances.

[typewriter ding] - I wanna talk about some themes that you guys have in both of your shows.

The first theme I kind of wanna dive into is sexuality and female sexuality.

For both of you guys, the time period and the rules around female sexuality play a huge role in the story.

Can you talk a little bit about what challenges you found with how female sexuality was viewed at the time period and what opportunities it gave you?

- It was mostly opportunities for storytelling because, like I'll, a great example and the first one comes to my mind is Daphne in season one obviously has no idea how a baby is made.

And if you've see in season one, we really played that out.

We're like, let's really kind of show you how much these women were not taught about their own bodies, sex, any of that, where babies come from, any of it.

But also the idea that like, I think it's episode three where she does masturbate and think about Simon, and I don't think she even totally understands like what is happening to her and why she's doing it and why she feels this way, and he has like taught her, quote unquote, he has whispered in her ear that this is something she could do.

[gentle music] And it was this kind of way to really let people understand what it might feel like to live in that world, even in terms of like how Julie Anne Robinson shot the first episodes, it was all about the female gaze.

So many, you know, sexy, romantic things are shot from the male gaze, but everything wanted to be like, what if you're intimately in that point of view with that woman and kind of let, it's not about Simon having sex that night at the end of episode five, it's about the magic of a first night for Daphne, essentially, so that was very intentional as well.

- Yeah, I saw nothing but opportunity, especially because of how tied in sexuality is to identity, which we knew we were telling a story about Mildred Ratchet and her quest to find her identity.

That was the whole genesis of the idea, was her sexuality, and as somebody who is kind of confronting her sexuality, you know, at a later age than most, and specifically how it paralleled with how she portrayed herself to everyone else, as this machine-like character who is so in control, so calculated, is seemingly thinking five moves ahead.

Yet inside, she is really struggling to understand who she is, and I think it's really highlighted when she is, first off, having sex with Corey Stoll, and she keeps getting interrupted in her head of these images of her kissing Gwen.

[tense music] And you can see how much she is trying to fight it.

Because again, at that time, it was all about repressed sexuality.

- And you guys coupled these elements that are very time-bound about sexuality with very contemporary ideas of love and female empowerment.

But can you talk a little bit about how you played with that, both keeping authentic to the time period, but also developing these characters that echo the themes that you would want to have today?

- As you were talking, Evan, too, I thought, I don't know if you came across this in casting, but a lot of casting for the young women in the show was difficult because we have come so far that I don't, I think it was harder for young actresses in their 20s to check at the door the confidence and the openness they feel about their sexuality, their place in the world.

It infuses and infects like everything you, affects everything you do and how you carry yourself.

So auditioning, you'd be like, no, I have to believe that you truly are a virgin and don't even know what your period is.

And the worldliness or the casualness that some actors would bring to these auditions, I'd be like, oh, wow, that's a challenge, like, and what a great thing.

- When we found Alice Englert to play Dolly, like she was just a home run because we knew she was gonna portray this character who, as a complete, you know, opposite of Mildred who really embraces her sexuality and is very open about it and something that Mildred actually is a little bit jealous of, that this character is so open with her sexuality.

That, yeah, I mean, she was, once we kind of found Alice, like we knew we could kind of take it even further 'cause she really kind of embodied that and just how she carried herself, and she was just so much fun and willing to just go as far as possible.

[typewriter ding] - Other theme that I really wanna dive into is mental health, for both of you guys in "Queen Charlotte" and "Ratched," there's this theme around the treatment, the stigmatization of mental health.

- There were some treatments that we just, we were like, this is too much, that we don't want to put in the show, like there was one where they used to douse patients in water and then strap them to a bed in the middle of winter and open all the windows and essentially get them to nearly freeze to death before kind of resurrecting them, thinking that it would shed their illness.

It was very intense, and we really ended up revolving most of the treatments that we would put in the show, like it was, they had to relate back to theme somehow which, you know, every episode, it was a new theme of what we're trying to explore, like is it, you know, is a patient under restraints because it's an episode where Mildred's trying to restrain these feelings that she's starting to have for Gwen, like that kind of stuff.

- What you don't wanna do is be irresponsible in your presentation of mental health and say, that's what this looked like at the time when you just don't know.

When we got to episode four, which if you've not seen the show, episodes one through three, you really are more in Charlotte's POV, if you will, or it's a little more even-handed, she's been brought from Austria to marry this man that no one else wants to marry.

And that yet, when she meets him, like, wow, what a handsome, charming dude, and then of course, it turns.

Come episode four, you get to play out everything that you've seen unfold episodes one through three about him being put into this marriage from his point of view and see him trying to get better, quote unquote, for her.

And the lengths he's willing to go to are incredibly intense, and again, rooted in research.

[tense music] [chair creaking] - That is the origin of your fits.

This is the cure.

Submission.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ If you cannot govern yourself, you're not fit to govern others.

Until then, I shall govern you.

(yelling) Do you understand me, boy?

Don't give a damn who your father was, how many titles you have, or whether you are God's own representative on Earth.

In here, you are just another animal in a cage, and just like an animal, I will break you.

♪ ♪ - Some of it's positively medieval, even though it's the 1790s, and there would be these people who would come in and say, "I am the doctor and the God and the cure," right, and come in and use that as freedom to do whatever they wanted to these people, even the King of England, even he was subjected to this kind of torture.

But it was, it's tonally such a departure, so you're watching one through three and then you get to four and you're like, oh my God, this is incredibly tough to watch.

And yet it's so necessary to understand what made it a lasting love marriage at the end of the day, because she does show up for him when she understands like the demons he's battling and everything he's going through.

But it's, I agree that you're like, how much is the right balance to ask an audience to bear witness to?

- How did you guys walk that line of like villainizing versus, I don't know, capturing that?

- That was the challenge and honestly, the excitement with Dr. Hanover's characters, because yes, he is doing, I mean, what seemed like very, like right now, medieval treatments, but at the time, like he truly believes in what he's doing.

And that's how a lot of the doctors were back then, they thought what they were doing was right.

Those were the medical advances of the time and, you know, we wanted to root his character in someone who truly does want to help people and change the world and does eventually get in his own way.

You know, I mean, obviously, we know now how horrible that was, but yeah, it was a totally different time, and you have to think of what the mindset was then.

- We did the same thing with the doctors treating King George, it's like that guy has to be high on his own supply, that guy isn't like a mustache-twirling villain.

He's an egotistical chief of surgery somewhere, you know what I mean?

That guy thought he had it exactly figured out and was like destined by God to like cure people.

[typewriter ding] - Why do you think period pieces resonate with an audience?

- I do think, like "Mad Men" always comes to mind.

I always was like, I started that show being like, yeah, yeah, I get it.

Pregnant ladies smoked at bars.

Established, I know.

And by the end, I was like, I understand my parents and my grandparents.

Like there, I was like, my favorite realization with "Mad Men" was that I was like, oh, yeah, I'm Peggy, I'm Peggy.

And by the end I'm like, I'm Sally.

Like I, but like it is to, I think, and I think that there is a way like to understand your lineage, your ancestors, or other people's lineage and ancestors that you've not been exposed to that some people only learn by watching, and this is fine and great, like really come to understand through fiction the truth of the historical past, but I think that's powerful.

- It's like how everything I write, it's like an exploration of why we become who we are.

And so that's exactly what period pieces are.

It's like you said, understanding, it's understanding how we've gotten to where we are today, 'cause it's all relevant and has all been this ascension.

[typewriter ding] [Narrator] You've been watching Making a Period Piece on "OnStory."

"On Story" is part of a growing number of programs in Austin Film Festival's On Story Project that also includes the "On Story" radio program, podcast, book series, and the On Story archive accessible through the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.

To find out more about "On Story" and Austin Film Festival, visit onstory.tv or austinfilmfestival.com.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [projector clicking] [typing] [typewriter ding] [projector dies]