Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1262492
55 S U M M E R Q 2 I S S U E F E A T U R E sharp in the storytelling. "We didn't want one character to seem like they were rep- resentative of their whole native country or ethnic group, and yet the anthology format of the show could inadvertently lend itself to that interpretation," she said. "That was an ongoing concern." "I'm an immigrant--or I became an immigrant," said Brisson, a native of France, who cut "The Baker" and "The Jaguar" episodes. "That feels more accu- rate. In that sense, I think I would identify to the feeling of being an outsider and yet feel at home. I thought a lot about my attachment to the United States, why I had come here, and how important it had become for me to live in a place where you could meet and get close to people with such different backgrounds. "During my job interview, Lee, Siân, and I discussed the challenge of telling a stor y based on actual people, and about how important it was that each story felt personal," recalled Brisson. "We also talked about tone and the line between drama and comedy. We didn't have any set rules like you might have on some series, where they would have been established in the pilot episode. We approached an episode like its own short film. My directors, Aurora Guerrero and Chioke Nassor, both had strong, personal, and different points of view for their respective episodes. "The Jaguar" was about squash and was conceived like a sports movie, for instance. But after Au- rora and I played with having the name of our character on screen at the beginning of "The Jaguar," we ended up using that idea for the other episodes." Because each episode includes a dif- ferent culture, language, and sometimes country, each editor relied heavily on the expertise of his or her collaborators. For "The Manager," about a 12-year old boy, Kabir, who must learn to run his family's Utah motel after his parents are deported back to India,Weinberg referenced the work of the episode's director, Deepa Mehta, and cultural expertise of execu- tive producer Kumail Nanjiani and star Suraj Sharma. "In addition to informing much of the episode with her cultural perspective," Weinberg said, "Deepa designed some fun, traditional Bollywood transitions that jump the characters forward in time. For example, 11-year-old Kabir lowers his head to the sink to wash off tears, and when he raises his head he is 17-year-old Kabir, now the grown manager of the mo- tel. Kumail noted a scene that he felt was so untypical of an Indian family, that ul- timately it was lifted, and Suraj brought his own improvised, Bollywood dancing to a hallucinogenic party scene." "Because 'Little America' is an an- thology," said Brisson, "the sense of the whole maybe wasn't as significant as Adam Ali and Haaz Sleiman in "Little America." P H O T O : U N I V E R S A L T E L E V I S I O N