FX Networks Series Class of ’09 (which is available to stream on Hulu) is a limited thriller that follows a class of FBI agents in three points in time (past, present and future) who must find out where they fit in the Bureau, what kind of agents they are and who their friend is for friend. Life of Tayo MichaelsBrian Tyree Henry), Ashley Poet (Kate Mara), Nazarian Hour (Sepide Moafi) and Daniel Lennix (Brian J. Smith) are intertwined and their relationship is pushed to the limit as artificial intelligence begins to take on an increasing role in the U.S. criminal justice system, and they are forced to search within themselves for what it means to make the world a better place, or if it is even possible.
During this interview with Collider, the show’s creator Tom Rob Smithdirector Joe Robert Coleand executive producer Jessica Levin talked about how this series has evolved, telling a genre story with great character scenes, working and collaborating with actors, exploring the dynamics of these characters and the role that AI plays in the world.
Collider: Tom, what brought you to this? Did you want to tell a different story to the FBI? Did you want to explore AI/did you want to do something in different time periods? There are so many layers to this. Was there something that started it all?
TOM ROB SMITH: It all started with a class photo. It was probably the first. I just love cool photos. I think they are really interesting. It could be literally anyone’s cool photo. You could show me yours. You can see how people stand and their posture. I just feel that there is something unique about these photographs in the sense that each one is inspiring in their own way. They show what happens to people from school and college. So I thought, “I would really like to tell a story about a cool photo, in some way, and what happens to everyone. Especially in the States, because it’s such a big country, everyone is scattered, so we had to keep them together. I thought, “Well, they must be part of the institution.” And then I thought, “Oh, the FBI.” I was listening to a podcast by a retired FBI agent named Jerry Williams who is a consultant on the show and they are such interesting people. I wanted to try to capture this human complexity and combine the institute with cool photography. And then I realized that we are telling the story of not only people in time, but also institutions in time. This was the genesis for him, really.
In a story like this, did it start with one character from which you developed all the other characters, or did you think of that class at the same time?
SMITH: It all started with the central idea that this is a group of people who are not usually in this facility for some reason, and they have different reasons. This is the principle of the organization of the main characters. In a way it’s an outsider class and how they get inside. And then they evolved from that starting point. This was the core of the characters. It wasn’t one against the other. It was an outsider vibe, which, by the way, can be an energy that anyone can have. Anyone can feel like an outsider. It’s a sensitivity, like everything else.
Jessica, what drew you to this project?
JESSICA LEVIN: I was lucky enough to join the show after it had already been filmed, which is a bit unusual. I literally came across eight episodes of footage that needed refining. I looked at it in comparison to Tom’s excellent scripts. I have worked on many limited series. It’s a format that I’ve spent a lot of time with and I think it has unique challenges and benefits. It’s like a movie, in the sense that it contains rather than an ongoing procedure that will run for five seasons. It’s more than a movie, you have a pretty limited canvas in terms of where you’re going to start and where you’re going to end, and tracking those relationships in very clear ways that have a beginning, a middle, and an end. end. I could read them and believe them every step of the way, which was an exciting experience. What was filmed was amazing material. I just helped improve how the storylines were in dialogue with each other, which was pretty much in line with what Tom wrote. Often it was just finding small moments and lines of dialogue that echoed each other as you crossed between timelines. Often it was the very subtle nuances of the beats between the timelines that gave us the ability to move. And we made sure they told emotionally authentic, believable relationships during those three time frames.
Was it interesting to work in such a non-standard way?
Levin: Yes, absolutely. It was a luxury to be able to have it all in front of you and say, “It’s good that we have it, this is really our strongest material” and show it. The ability to focus not only on the power of ideas, but also on the unexpected things that happened during the shoot.
Joe, I first spoke to you when you did the first Black Panther movie. After a project like this, with so much attention and so much attention on you, what made you want to have a hand in telling this story? What attracted you as a director?
JOE ROBERT COLE: I read the first three or four of Tom’s scripts and found the characters and their dynamics very interesting. The idea of changing the institution from the inside, and how that institution changes you, and the human growth and genre-related dynamics of that, was really exciting. I’ve always been drawn to great characters, so it was very exciting to be a part of it and exciting to shoot. I wanted to be able to shoot genre stuff and also those great character scenes. It was truly the best of both. It was a privilege for me to jump in and be a part of it.
Were there any things you wanted to bring to it visually? When you do something that has three different timelines, how would you like to set it?
COLE: When I arrived, they had already removed the first block, so there was a sense of visual style. Cinematographer Taree Segal really set the look for the show. What I could do was say, “OK, how are we going to approach this sequence and that sequence?” and think, in a way, what the future might look like compared to some of these other timelines. I added a little to it, but they had an idea of what the show would look like before. It was really important to me that the scenes I shot felt dynamic, and also working with the actors to ground those scenes in character and the marriage between them.
What was it like working and collaborating with these actors as they figured out how to track their performances in different time frames? Has anything changed since they were thrown?
SMITH: It’s always changing. There is always a marriage of actor and role, and there is always instant alchemy. This is true for everyone, especially great actors, and we had a great cast. It’s just that there’s a very strong chemical reaction going on when they somehow bond and almost intertwine. It happens very early. Whatever it is, the magic happens. And then, there is another magic, this is their relationship with each other and how it manifests itself. The words are taken and they become a springboard, not a template. I am always amazed by this process. I can’t act. There is magic in a really great game and we have an incredible cast. Because we’ve always tied the show to the agents and not the crime, it’s always been very dependent on this cast being the people you wanted to spend time with emotionally. You are in love with them not necessarily because of the cliffhanger, but because you really like these people and want to spend hours with them. That was the energy behind it.
For me, as a viewer, the dynamics of the characters are always very interesting and important, especially in different time frames.
SMITH: They are wonderful people and wonderful actors. In particular, the shape opens up another love story. A love story where you meet someone and fall in love in one timeline, because a love story is when you meet someone and fall in love in one timeline, it’s very hard. You can make different variations on this. But when you have the possibility of three timelines, you have the possibility that the Poet and Lennix will miss each other in one timeline and find each other in another timeline, so you’re pitting the two. As far as Brian Tyree Henry’s character, he’s so lonely and a real loner, but then he finds love, which is pretty wonderful. If you find it in the same timeline, it’s not that much of a concern. You needed this sense of time to see how it develops and how it changes, and then how you can lose someone in that time frame. These options open it up and just make it more alive and closer to our own experience because we always see things in relation to the past and the future.
It’s so interesting that AI plays a role in this story while we’re trying to figure out how to accept it or deal with it now. Was it something that any or all of you even thought about a lot when you did it? What is it like to see him grow even since you made this series?
SMITH: It’s stunning. It was great. It’s heavy ups and downs. You can indicate interest. I recently watched a documentary about AlphaGo, which is a DeepMind program. The documentary is now three years old, and at the end, one AI expert said, “This system is pretty simple. A truly sophisticated AI will appear in 20 years.” It looks so dated now because all of a sudden we’re in a world where Microsoft isn’t sure. These chatbots have sparks of AGI and they can’t explain it. I heard an expert say that we can map the human mind better than we can map artificial intelligence. They just don’t quite understand what they’re doing. It’s a real sense of the unknown. We are lucky that we timed it to this point in time. When we looked at it, it was a little bit in the future, and now it’s now.
Joe, have you thought about this before?
COLE: It seems very relevant. As a writer, with ChatGPT and all the issues that are happening right now, this seems very relevant. I love earthy sci-fi so stuff like this is always a fun topic for me and my friends to chat and have fun with. It was exciting to join the show and be part of the story, but I had no idea where we would be today. We were just lucky that our timing landed where it did.
SMITH: When we talked about it, we were worried that it would seem a bit difficult to explain. Now, you just say that the FBI has ChatGPT, and you suddenly understand it immediately, although it would be a little more complicated, and we would have to do a little more work to explain it.
Class of ’09 available for streaming on Hulu.
Source: Collider
I have worked as a journalist for over 7 years and have written for many different publications. I currently work as an author at Daily News Hack, where I mostly cover entertainment news. I have a great deal of experience in the industry and am always looking to learn more. I am a highly motivated individual who is always looking to improve my skills. I am also a very friendly and personable person, which makes me easy to work with.
