Relative of HBO show creator built Lambeau
Somerville’s grandfather was stadium architect
This time, the Green Bay Packers will have Patrick Somerville’s full attention.
Though he now lives in Los Angeles, the Green Bay native and showrunner behind HBO Max’s critically adored miniseries “Station Eleven” insists he’s “as insane a Packer fan as anyone who’s reading (this) article right now,” but while filming the pandemicthemed drama in early 2020, he forgot about an important Packers occasion.
“My job at the time got so crazy that you’re shedding everything you care about, left and right,” he said. “There was a moment, really, where I looked down . ... We were outside and I had forgotten it was the NFC Championship. It’s unthinkable that I could have. I’m glad that’s the one where I sort of lost track, because they (the Packers) got housed by the 49ers (37-20). I just didn’t have it in me that season.”
Last year while quarantining in Canada, Somerville, 42, was able to watch Green Bay battle Tampa Bay in the subsequent NFC title game, where his bad feeling about the contest was confirmed. The Packers lost, 31-26.
This year, he’ll be watching from the 45-yard line in section 118, but the plum location doesn’t have anything to do with Hollywood connections. They’re the same six seats where he’s watched roughly 100 Packers games, dating to age 6. They’re “the kind of seats an architect would pick.”
His grandfather, after all, was an architect. And he built the place.
John E. Somerville owned Somerville Associates, the architecture firm to which city leaders turned in the 1950s when they needed a new venue for the Packers. City Stadium (eventu
ally renamed Lambeau Field) opened in 1957. John died in the late 1990s, but the firm has continued to oversee stadium updates.
“I have an amazing memory of sitting in our backyard with my grandpa, my dad, uncle Jack, and they were talking about (a previous renovation),” Patrick said. “It was a big thing for a local firm to get it. I remember the conversation my grandpa was having with my uncle, about how the critical thing about the renovation, was no matter what, was that the place still be called Lambeau Field. The naming rights couldn’t become entangled in the deal. To be a 14year-old fly on the wall was really fascinating.”
Patrick’s father and uncles attended the Ice Bowl with John, and through the years Patrick has seen some memorable games, including the NFC Championship win over Carolina, the “snow globe” win over Seattle after the 2007 season.
“There’s nothing better than the playoffs in the NFL,” Patrick said.
A pandemic show is halted by a real pandemic
Patrick’s attention to architecture takes a different form as the person responsible for a show like “Station Eleven.” Not only was he in charge of creative decisions, he’s also in charge of the practical ones, not to mention promotional pursuits like hosting the show’s official podcast.
“The scale is gigantic, but this is what the job is,” Somerville said. “It’s kind of like being a parent, it’s nurturing in the early stages, hiring hundreds of people, keeping them safe — not just actors, grips, PAs — having human relationships on a big scale and then executing. We wrapped in July but I didn’t wrap post-production process until after Thanksgiving, so it’s another five months of working sound design, working with the composer on the score, the mix, the edit, introducing this to the world. We’re really lucky to find our audience. There’s different chapters to it and different roles you have to play.”
Somerville made the decision to relocate early “Station Eleven” scenes from the setting in the source material, a 2014 book by Emily St. John Mandel, using the familiar Midwestern terrain of Chicago in lieu of Toronto. Oddly enough, when the real-life pandemic shut down operations in 2020, scenes were moved from location in Chicago ... to Toronto.
The story follows a traveling troupe of Shakespeare performers 20 years after a deadly flu has wiped out all but roughly 1% of the world’s population, showcasing their pursuit of beauty and meaning in a virus-decimated landscape. At the center of the journey is a rare surrealist comic book, also called “Station Eleven,” which serves to inspire and inform key characters’ decisions.
It was the cruelest twist of fate when an actual pandemic descended to interfere with production, and also perhaps a potential barrier of entry for viewers who would just assume not spend more time thinking about killer viruses.
As a host of positive reviews from places like Rolling Stone, New York Times, NPR, RogerEbert.com, Slate, Vox and Indiewire point out, the joyful heart of the story made it an uplifting experience perfect for the times instead of a cold reminder of them. Somerville figures if two episodes hadn’t already mostly completed filming before the pandemic, including the few scenes that introduce the start of the pandemic, the show wouldn’t have been made at all.
“As the show was coming out, it was unclear if people wanted to watch a show about a virus, especially a virus that did more harm than ours did,” Somerville said. “Luckily for us, the idea of the show is about joy and not pain; it’s about rebuilding and not the destruction time, (and that) made it safe and OK, and people came to it. I don’t see (HBO) ordering the show after a pandemic.
“The first scene is a shot of a crowd, hundreds of people in a theater, and we can’t do that anymore; we can’t have that many extras (on set) based on new COVID protocols that our industry has. It would have had to be a CGI crowd or something.”
Somerville, who previously served as showrunner for Netflix show “Maniac” starring Jonah Hill and Emma Stone, also wrote for another HBO show, “The Leftovers,” which chronicled the trauma of an inexplicable cosmic event in which 2% of the world’s population vanished.
“Station Eleven and The Leftovers are unusual takes on the genre,” Somerville said. “It’s a story that’s very close to the humans, the survivors, and really talks about them and doesn’t zoom out or create excitement out of mass death. That’s the thing I’m not interested in, the wide-angle lens of a city being leveled and a lot of people dying.”
Did you notice the Wisconsin references in ‘Station Eleven?’
“Station Eleven” isn’t without Wisconsin references, aside from the troupe’s travels around Lake Michigan. In the seventh episode, keep an eye out for a major character wearing an ugly Christmas sweater with University of Wisconsin insignia, a shout-out to Somerville’s time as a student in Madison. In the ninth episode, a woman who has just given birth is wearing a Packers shirt. “I grew up in Green Bay with a very literate family, big readers, a lot of music, very much into the arts, but I didn’t know a working artist until I was 20,” said Somerville, who attended Green Bay Southwest High School. “There are practical, paying, good careers in the arts, and it’s sometimes harder to see (in the Midwest). There are a lot of jobs in this industry and it’s a time of great expansion.”
And if the Packers win, there’s a chance they’d face a team from Somerville’s new home base, the Los Angeles Rams, with a Super Bowl berth on the line.
“L.A., just as a town, isn’t built to care about sports in the same way that we do in Wisconsin,” he said. “They still show up, though. I went to a Rams game and there were a lot of people on their phones, but it was great football.”