Searching for the Series: The Cast and Crew of "Hemlock Grove" Discuss Revamping the Show for Season Two

Image via Complex Original

The famed horror director took his first major leap into television with Hemlock Grove. Here, he discusses shifting focus of season two, what influences helped form his vision of the series, and how that vision has expanded as the show has continued.

On season two's sharp focus on Olivia Godfrey, played by Famke Jannsen:

"In the first season we were really matching the episodes to fit the book. We took 13 episodes and you could feel in certain episodes we were stretching it a little bit to try and get it to end where the book ends. And now in season two we could take the story in any direction we wanted and we could write for Famke in a way that we couldn't before...When you have an actor of Famke's caliber, you can start to think, 'Okay, in season two, what kind of wild arcs and character turns can we write for her?'"

On the developing relationship between Olivia and her son Roman (Bil Skarsgård):

"We love the relationship between Roman and his mother. I remember in the kitchen, directing the first episode, and they are talking about going to Bluebell's service. The refrigerator is open. She's right there. Then he passes her and you think, 'Oh my God are they going to kiss?' It's kind of like an aloof teenager who doesn't want to engage in a conversation with his mom. Just in that kitchen, in that house, the way she's dressed, what she's doing there that time of day, there's just something off. It's great.

"What makes it work on a basic level is you have a parent trying to force a kid to be something that they don't necessarily want to be, but they don't have a choice. You see the teenager rebel against it in this very strange Oedipal way, ripping the tongue out, going 'Shut up.' Teenagers watching the show relate to that moment of the son ripping his mother's tongue out. It's something that hits you on a primal level. I think it's fun to watch the boy become a man and not know how to handle his power. Realizing against his own will that they need each other."

On Hemlock Grove's Influences:

"Douglas Sirk is an amazing reference and one I haven't been talking about. Before I saw Written on the Wind, I wasn't aware of the joy of melodrama. In my mind I had categorized it as bad writing and bad directing. I hadn't understood its style in the way that you can read a romance novel to fulfill different emotional needs. Obviously, David Lynch took a Douglas Sirk approach withTwin Peaks. You have the heightened colors, everything was very very stylized."

On his approach to season two and working with Charles Eglee:

"Season one was about adapting the book it's based on. It wasn't about recreating the book. It was about taking the elements we loved about the book and creating a 13-hour movie. How are we going to bring Olivia to life? How are we going to actualize Shelley? What does the logo of Hemlock High School look like? Specifying the details.

Now that that universe is established, it's about going deeper with the characters. We felt in season one we were trying to fit the book to 13 episodes. There were times that we felt it dragged a little bit. We cut it to 10 episodes. Lots more story, many more events. Chic came on as a fan of the show. He wasn't there at the creation of it. He was watching as a fan. He came and said, 'As a fan, here's where I want to see it go.' Chic dove in and took the story to places we never thought of because we were too close to the story."

Hemlock Grove star and ageless beauty Famke Janssen talked with us about the growth of and intensified focus on her character, Olivia Godfrey, in the show's sophomore season.

On the development of Olivia Godfrey in season two:

"Mellowing out isn't a term I would use for Olivia ever...She is back in a more compromised position, stripped of the control she had. An interesting thing happens when you take the control away from a control freak. I don't think that you mellow out, but I do think that you see different emotions that have never surfaced before. She is more vulnerable. It's not an ice queen personification of a character. There are different layers and we've peeled them back through the different episodes of the season."

On her charcter's relationship with her son Roman:

"It always felt to me a bit Shakespearean. Is the mother going to kill the son? Is the son going to kill the mother? I think contentious is the right word. But underneath that is 'Please love me.' And both of them are too proud to go there, to say it out loud. But the tremendous struggle for power is very much a part of that. Constantly underneath that. [Laughs.] I love that they cast a Swede and a Dutch to play it."

On violence against women in the horror genre:

"I think Olivia defies that. I find [violence against women] upsetting. I don't play victimized parts that much. I think our show strikes a good balance, off-setting the violence against women in the genre. This season we have Madeline Brewer and Madeleine Martin and they play strong female parts. I think that adds to a strong female take on the genre. I don't think we're a traditional horror genre. I think there are a lot of differences here from the rest of the horror universe."

Charles "Chic" Eglee might be the most prolific television producer you've never heard of. His resume reads like a laundry list of Hall of Fame shows. The man worked on Moonlighting, NYPD Blue, The Shield, Dexter, The Walking Dead, and more. He comes across as one-part college professor, one-part no-nonsense street philosopher, and one-part grizzled industry veteran. He's the kind of guy you want to buy a beer just to hear him talk for hours.

Mr. Eglee sat down with us to talk signing onto Hemlock Grove in the middle of the series and the craft of TV writing.

On what attracted him to Hemlock Grove:

"The show that I saw produced last year was so beautiful and inviting. So beautifully rendered. Such a wonderful group of actors. Such talented people. I think Brian McGreevy set a table that I was more than happy to be a dinner guest at. And, I think the opportunity to do work with Netflix factored into my calculus. I began my television era in broadcast television, moved into basic cable, and then into premium TV. It's exciting to be part of this new wave of media. I'm interested in seeing how new media is going to impact the content, how we tell our stories. We told stories in a certain way for broadcast television. That morphed and became a certain way for basic cable. I think we're only now discovering what new media story telling is going to be like. I'm fascinated to see what the third act of my career is going to be like."

On what Hemlock Grove is really about:

"At the end of the day this is a family show. There are two families: Peter's family and Roman's family. It's about these boys becoming men and taking their place in the world. It's examining all the pathologies of family. Anybody who's been to a Thanksgiving dinner knows just how horrible and challenging it can be, yet in a time of need or struggle, that's who you go to. It's a dichotomy of attraction and revulsion to their genetic kindred."

On joining a show mid-run:

"It might be construed that I wait until it's well-established that there's no sharks in the water until I go on. [Laughs.] That would be wrong. It cuts both ways. On the one hand, you come into something that is underway and you understand that they sort of cleared the land and leveled the field so that you can pitch your tent. The other side of that is, you are coming into something that there is an awful lot to live up to. Some of these shows have set the bar pretty high. You have to come in and honor that. You come in with a great deal of humility because there is nothing harder than writing a pilot and selling a pilot. It is starting with an absolutely blank page and getting everyone to see the same thing. It is an entirely different process than actually producing a show. You come in with a sense of humility about what's been done before and you want to add to it, embellish it, expand it, take it further."

"I have not read Brian's book. I look forward to reading it after I'm done with the show. I didn't read any of the Dexter books. While I was doing The Shield I never watched The Wire. I wanted to have a pure experience. For me, on Dexter when we got out of the book – writer's weren't worried about this, but everyone else was – the sense was, 'what are we going to do?' We're going to think shit up.

On writing "genre" shows versus writing "realistic" shows:

"It's really the same process. I don't think of any of these shows because their genre. James Cameron taught me that. We sat down to talk about Dark Angel. What I wanted to do was an urban youth ensemble. I wanted to work with Chuck D. I wanted to work with Public Enemy. And James said, 'That's cool. What if the girl was genetically engineered? He just did a full Jim Cameron.' I said, 'I don't know anything about science fiction. I don't write science fiction.' He said, 'Don't you understand? That's the beauty of it.' You say science fiction to the production designer and they go get giant aluminum balls that shoot Tesla beams. It's just writing people in dramatic situations whatever the 'genre' is you're telling an emotional truth about where people are, whether they're being attacked by zombies or they're wrestling with their own pathology. What is it to be a human being."

On "when the light came on" for him as a writer:

"I was approaching writing as this task, as this job. It's very serious. We sit at our desks. The right pencils. The right tie. Work. And that was a really limiting thing. Then I went to work on Moonlinghting. It was this wacky fucking show about whatever you could think up. I remember one producer telling the art director 'I want a nine-foot tall piece of broccoli that has to be able to fly by Bruce Willis.' Whatever you could think of that was relevant to the story. We had fun. We were telling a love story and the vessel for the love story was a detective show. But it wasn't a detective story. It was a love story about two people who loved each other but couldn't find the words to say it.

Once I tapped into the notion that writing was play and writing is fun—not that it isn't hard, it's extremely difficult. But I had a phase shift about what the process of writing was and that's when I started learning how to write."

We spoke with a number of actors on the show who contributed thoughts on their characters' roles in the show's growth. Madeleine Martin (Shelley) and Madeline Brewer (Miranda) are new to the cast, while Bill Skarsgard and Landon Liboiron are reprising their roles as Roman and Peter, respectively.

Bill Skarsgård (Roman) on the show's increased maturity:

"The first season was about two boys. The second season is about two men who have grown up a bit. There's no more high school locker drama. They've gotten older. They're trying to adjust to an adult life."

Skarsgård on his character's struggle with darkness:

"Season one was so much about Roman trying to suppress all of these urges that he has. Even though they were not obvious to him at that point, there was still this lurking darkness he hated himself for. When he saw his best friend betray him, he decided he was going to indulge it. It's a self-destructive thing. You see that in season two. He hates every part of himself when he's not contained."

Landon Liboiron (Peter) on the evolution of Peter and Roman's relationship:

"In season two, it's a far older relationship, a much more mature understanding of each other. It's not them so much needing each other anymore, it's understanding being there for each other. It's less needy and more mature."

Madeleine Martin (Shelley) on joining the show in its second season:

"It was helpful because Shelley feels alienated from everyone. So coming in with all these prosthetics on my face was helpful. Everyone is staring at you for the first couple of days as they're getting used to you."

Martin on the more active women of season two:

"In season two, Shelley comes into her own and learns not to be a victim. How to fight for herself."

Joel de la Fuente (Dr. Pryce) on the "leap of faith" the cast took in season two:

"Season one was based so much on the book. Season two was not. Season one had a different writing team than season two. It was exciting to come back to play the character, and there was a huge question as to who the character would become. The writers were very concerned with taking it in their own direction. It was sort of like a great leap of faith for everybody."