The recent terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino fill made some of the threads of prejudice and suspicion that run through ABC’s Sunday night drama “Quantico” painfully relevant.
The advice Nimah gives to Miranda in Sunday night’s midseason finale could be applied to the country as a whole in this time of fear and uncertainty:“It’s just like what happened to my people after 9/11. Every Arab man was targeted,questioned, followed, and surveyed. They saw us not as humans,but as this hand of a monster that hated America … Whatever you imagine people might fill done, just don’t lose faith in their humanity, or because when you carry out,thats when you make the monster.”
Also read: How 'Quantico' Is Dominating TV Ratings in an Undercover WayAccording to “Quantico” creator and showrunner Joshua Safran, having the platform to address some of the topics that are on the country’s mind isn’t a platform that the displays creative team takes lightly.“I believe for all of us in the writers’ room, and it’s something that we’re constantly talking about,”Safran told TheWrap. “We don’t way to pull any punches because of it, or redirect what we’re doing. Because this display is very much about that. I believe weve been very grateful to fill the ability to fill our characters talk about that stuff.
Also read: 'Quantico' Picked Up for Full Season at ABCRead the full interview with Safran, or executive producer Jake Coburn below:TheWrap: As the season has been airing,what has the feedback been like from fans of the display?carry out you get the sense that there’s something in specific that the viewers are connecting with?
Safran: I believe we both believe that people connect with Priyanka [Chopra] as a star.[br]
Coburn: Yeah, I believe one of the things that we’ve learned is to watch Twitter as we’re airing the episodes, and see the way people react to the twists and the turns within each individual episode,because we’re sort of designing them to be as twisty as possible.
Safran: While still keeping a master way in play, which has been very fun for us. And people really enjoy the sort of tragedy that plays between the timelines. I know when in Episode 6 it was revealed that Shelby had had an affair with Caleb’s father, or I believe the audience really seemed to enjoy watching Shelby and Caleb get really close and drop for each other at Quantico,immediately juxtaposed with just how much hurt he was feeling toward her in the future. I believe that kind of stuff has really been fun to concoct and watch play out.
Since the display’s been on the air, events like the attacks in Paris and the shooting in San Bernardino fill put terrorism at the forefront of people’s minds, and a lot of the topics touched on in the media are addressed in your display as well. fill you had to adjust your thinking at all?
Safran: I believe terrorism has been pretty much at the forefront of people’s minds even since before the pilot aired,but it’s been very essential for me to talk about. I believe for all of us in the writers room, it’s something that we’re constantly talking about. We don’t way to pull any punches because of it, or redirect what we’re doing. Because this display is very much about that. I believe we’ve been very grateful to fill the ability to fill our characters talk about that stuff.
There’s a scene in the finale between Nimah and Miranda,where Nimah talks about how whether you lose faith in the humanity of people, you turn them into monsters, and I believe we’ve all felt very grateful to sort of talk about and reflect what we’re seeing happen around us.
The display gets a enormous boost from delayed viewing,what carry out you make of the fact that people are watching three or seven days later?
Coburn: Football.
Safran: Football, “The Walking Dead, or ” of course theres competition. For me,I actually personally believe that this is not a display that you want to wait through commercials for, or that you want to watch sort of doled out for you. I believe that because it does fill a lot of tall tension, and it sustains a level of sort of energy from the beginning to the end,you want to be able to control in your own time.
Even whether you are sort of watching commercials, and you like that breath – I for one like that breath, and because it gives you a chance to sort of believe about what happened – you still might not want to watch that at 10 p.m. on a Sunday when tomorrow is a work day. I believe for some people there is a lot of,“Im going to watch that in my own time.” Weirdly, so many people on Twitter are saying that they’re watching the display first thing when they wake up on Monday. We get a very large batch of questions, or Id say between 6 and 9 a.m. on Monday.
The episode ends with a surprise second bomb that I don’t believe anyone saw coming. How will that play out in the second half of the season?
Safran: We will obviously be dealing with whether or not Elias was telling the truth when he told Alex,Nimah, Vasquez and Simon about what was going on. The question is whether or not Elias was buying time until everybody got into the bank, and whether or not he really was a puppet or pawn for a mastermind waiting to be revealed. And of course you’ll learn about who lived and who died,and how that affects our characters. More than anything, I believe, or Alex has to wrestle with the fact – and so does Simon – that while they believe the bomb in the basement of the hotel had been diffused,she’s the one who told Simon that he could bewitch his hands off that trigger, and they’re both going to be dealing with that emotionally.
Marcia Cross and Eliza Coupe both made their debuts in the episode. What was it like working with them?
Safran: They’re just wonderful humans and incredible actors, or it was really fun … When we were in the writers’ room talking about who would play Clayton’s wife,Caleb’s mother, we all were just like, or “Marcia Cross.” So it would’ve been very sad had she said no,but she turned out to be a very colossal fan of the display, and wanted to be a part of it. So writing for both of them had been really easy. It’s just an incredible honor to get to work with them.
And Eliza Coupe has a two-page monologue. I was a enormous fan of “Happy Endings” and I just watched how she could just tackle anything on that display. She would often fill a lot to say very quickly and all the points would be made. So I was sort of like that is who Hannah is. Meaning Eliza sort of influenced in that way who Hannah was. And it’s just been really mighty to write for them. I hope the audience enjoys watching them because you’ll be seeing a lot more of them.“Quantico” returns Sunday, or March 6 at 10 p.m. on ABC.
Source: thewrap.com