DGA Monthly

D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 5 I 1 5 Accuracy in Political Thrillers It's often been said that 'life imitates art.' In the case of episodic Directors working on political thrillers, that adage is reversed as they seek choices that reflect the accuracy of real world situations for their fictional settings. To reveal how they do this, we recently spoke with five Directors who have worked on prominent television series past and present regarding how to ensure believability in portraying situations that might have taken place in the halls of power from the FBI to the White House. — continued on page 17 Lesli Linka Glatter on Homeland: "It's absolutely a balancing act between being responsible to the reality and telling a story. And you want to keep that in balance and servicing the characters. We are storytellers, but I do feel a huge responsibility. I don't have that access in real life. I can't sit in a meeting in the room when they're discussing classified information. But I can have access to those people who have sat in that room in that circumstance and try to do it as if it's being portrayed in the most real way. One of the things that we did when I was on Homeland is every year we would all go to DC and meet with the heads of the CIA, NSA, DNI, State Department, investigative journalists, generals, and [Executive Producer] Alex Gansa would ask, 'What keeps you up at night? What are your deepest fears for America and the world?' And that's where the new season would come from. It was totally extraordinary to be part of that process. We didn't know from season to season what the story would be until after that session. I mean you have the bigger kind of macro world of politics and what's going on specifically in the world you're talking about. And then you have the interpersonal, you have the characters. And it has to have that balance. You have to be seeing it from a clear point of view. In the case of Homeland, it was Carrie Mathison, Claire Danes' character." Lesli Linka Glatter directing Homeland Eric Stoltz on Madam Secretary: "On Madam Secretary, the writers wisely engaged a company called The Glover Park Group, which was, at that time, a bipartisan group that worked with nonprofits and companies around the world. And they would point us towards a lot of growing stories that would soon burst into the headlines. Which allowed our writers to be ahead of the curve. And I would then contact them with specific questions about behavior and protocol, and how it functioned. So that I could then give the Actors the parameters of the playground and say, 'You can't get this close, but you can speak your mind from here and here's how you would behave in a situation historically.' And I found that always helped the Actors." Eric Stoltz directing Madam Secretary Alex Graves on The Diplomat: "The goal has really been to be as accurate as possible. Start with accuracy, and if there's something that's a little uninteresting or — like one example is that I was told that if there was an emergency behind the US Ambassador's house for the season finale of season two of The Diplomat that there'd be like eight agents running to [Vice President character] Grace Penn, and I was like, 'Well it should be more like 20,' so I did change it from eight to 20 because it wasn't visually dramatic. But that's like the biggest change I've made recently in anything I've done because normally you're interviewing people and you're trying to find out what happens because you're not only trying to get it right but what really happens is usually more interesting than anything anybody can write." Alex Graves directing The Diplomat CELEBRATING THE CRAFT

• Cover