Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1501110
he new FX show Class of '09 is a limited series/suspense thriller that follows a class of FBI agents set in three time periods (2009, 2023, 2034) who acclimate and grapple with im- mense changes as the US criminal justice system is altered by artificial intelligence. Spanning multiple decades and told across interweaving timelines, the series examines the nature of justice, humanity and the choices we make that ultimately define our lives and legacy. Starring Brian Tyree Henry and Kate Mara, and streaming on Hulu, Class of '09 was created by novelist Tom Rob Smith, who made his television debut with the acclaimed original show London Spy, which aired on BBC America. He followed that up by writing all the scripts for another hit show, FX's Golden Globe winner The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, which earned him an Emmy and a Writers Guild Award for Best Adapted Series. Here, in an exclusive interview with Post, I spoke with Smith about making this ambitious show, dealing with post and the challenges of showrunning. What sort of show did you set out to make? "There were two basic inspirations, and the first was my love of class photo- graphs, which I find really fascinating, partly because I like looking at them and imagining how each person dreamt of their future. They seem to be about their dreams, hopes and their future, and I was wondering, 'How do you bring all that into a TV show?' The second part was, I was listening to a podcast by a retired FBI agent, and I was initially interested in all the crimes, but then I became really interested in all the agents she inter- viewed. They're such good storytellers, and they were all so different from each other, and I felt that they've become secondary to the crime [on] TV now, so I wanted to do a show that puts them at the center, rather than the criminal." You're the creator, writer, executive producer and showrunner on this. Did you ever feel, "I've bitten off more than I can chew?" "Yes, in that we should have finished all the scripts before we began shooting. The energy of writing is very different to the energy of anything else in this process. Deadlines don't work the same way they do in production and post. One of the great aspects of post is that you're just focused on that the whole time, while in production, I was doing revisions and trying to work out the final episode, and dealing with any reshoots that had to be rewritten, so all that just splits your brain and it's all-consuming. While we shot in Atlanta, I was working seven days a week, partly because of COVID restrictions." This was your debut as a showrunner. How did you prepare and how steep a learning curve was it? "I don't think there's any way you can prepare for it. We had very experienced producers, so that was a huge help, and we all knew the lesson about finishing the scripts before shooting. But even on The Assassination of Gianni Versace, we didn't finish the scripts in time. We were still writing them during production, and there's this point where you feel the train bearing down on you, and you're still trying to lay the tracks ahead, and it just becomes extremely challenging to both write and shoot at the same time." As a successful novelist, do you like being a showrunner? "I do, and I love working with the crew and cast, and that feeling of something abstract becoming a reality. But it's so different from writing a novel. You realize that no one reads the scripts. There's a very niche group that loves to find them online and read them, but 99 percent of people don't care. They just see the show. So in production you're trying to capture as much as you can on the day, like an amazing sunset, or a location that suddenly speaks to you in some way and changes the scene." How was the shoot? "It was long and all-consuming. We prepped for a few months and shot from October till December of 2021, and then came back and shot till May last year, and that included two COVID shutdowns." Tell us about post. How steep a learning curve was it? "I had no experience working on post in the US except watching the cut of Versace, but in the UK. I was in the edit room for the TV shows I created and wrote, London Spy and MotherFatherSon, and working with the editors on those showed me how similar editors and writers are in some ways. So I really love the whole editing process, especially as you can try anything and there's not all the time pressure you feel in production. There's a real sense of intellectual freedom that's so much fun, and although post was a steep learning curve, it was a delight. I love post." Did you start integrating it all from the beginning or was it a more traditional TV post schedule? "I thought we'd be editing as we went along, but in the end, we didn't begin till we'd finished shooting, so it was more traditional and a hybrid post. Producer Jessica Levin was based in Brooklyn, and we did the sound and coloring in New York. Our colorist was Steve Bodner, and the DI was all remote. Our main editor Leo Trombetta was in LA, and our other editors included Stephen Philipson, who was in Toronto, Bjorn Myrholt and Bart Burcham, and all that was done on Zoom. And our composer, Will Bates, was also in LA." Talk about the editing. How did that work, as there were a few editors? "Leo worked on all the episodes and CLASS OF '09 — TOM ROB SMITH THIS NOVELIST- TURNED- SHOWRUNNER TAKES ON AI IN THIS NEW FX SERIES T DIRECTOR'S CHAIR www.postmagazine.com 10 POST MAY/JUNE 2023 BY IAIN BLAIR First-time showrunner Smith