The intimacy of the epic
Director Jeremy Podeswa says ‘3 Body Problem’ is following in the footsteps of ‘Game of Thrones’
Canadian director Jeremy Podeswa knows there’s a lot of content out there, but he thinks the Netflix series “3 Body Problem” stands out “in this very cluttered streaming atmosphere.”
The fantasy drama, cocreated by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss of “Game of Thrones” alongside Alexander Woo (“The Terror”), is still on the streamer’s list of top 10 shows in Canada after debuting at number one at the end of March.
“There are not a lot of these very ambitious, big swing, world-building shows right now,” said Podeswa in an interview. “I think the other big shows that I can think of are really conventional sci-fi or conventional apocalyptic shows, but this is not like anything else.”
Toronto-born Podeswa is a seasoned director whose two decades of credits also include “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Boardwalk Empire,” “Station Eleven” and “Game of Thrones,” the latter earning him two Emmy nominations. So he was well aware of the world he was stepping into, having previously worked with showrunners Benioff and Weiss.
“3 Body Problem” is based on the Hugo Award-winning Chinese novel “The Three-Body Problem” by Liu Cixin. It follows Ye Wenjie, a young woman who makes a fateful decision in 1960s China that reverberates across space and time into the present day. A group of brilliant scientists joins forces with an unorthodox detective to confront the greatest threat in humanity’s history. The series stars Eiza González, Jovan Adepo, John Bradley, Rosalind Chao, Benedict Wong, Liam Cunningham, Alex Sharp and Jess Hong.
“I think people are getting hooked on the characters,” Podeswa said. “I think the Oxford five (the scientists) are interesting and there’s a compelling mystery …”
Podeswa said his favourite thing as a director is to make the intimate epic. “It has a big cinematic excitement about it, but … you never get lost in all the hoo-ha of all the big stuff,” he said of “3 Body Problem.”
Podeswa’s job was to make sure the intimate character-driven scenes landed with equal parts humour and pathos, without getting lost in the scope and scale of the story.
“I think that Benioff and Wise in particular are so good at that, like ‘Game of Thrones’ was a great testament to that, where it had huge spectacle, but you were really invested in the characters. I think if it was only a spectacle you would never have stuck with that show through all those seasons … So I think with ‘3 Body Problem,’ it’s a similar thing. If you’re not really invested in the Oxford five and you don’t really invest in Benedict Wong’s (detective) Da Shi and all these characters, you’d miss a huge thing.”
When the 62-year-old director first read the extremely complex first book, he too thought Benioff and Weiss would never be able to pull off certain scenes. But he credits them for not being afraid of a challenge.
The books are “very China-centric,” so the big question was: How do you retain that perspective but also make a universal show?
“I think they’ve done an amazing adaptation job in terms of opening up the locale, opening up the story to make it about a world event, not just an event that takes place in China,” Podeswa said.
He referred to a review he read recently that described Benioff and Weiss as “masters of the unadaptable”; the George R.R. Martin “A Song of Ice and Fire” books upon which “Game of Thrones” was based were also perceived to be unadaptable. Podeswa said he could “already see the great choices that were made in adapting” “3 Body Problem.”
For Podeswa, tone is everything. “Game of Thrones” was able to strike a tone where everything felt “so authoritative that you go with it when it’s funny, you go with it when it’s very dramatic, you go with it when it’s epic, you go with it when it’s intimate, and they’re able to kind of do these very complicated, big swing kind of shows and make them really appealing to a very wide audience.”
It’s a style he feels is embodied in “3 Body Problem” as well.
“The kind of challenge for me was, ‘Can I do it again? Can the tone of it be appealing and attractive to people in that huge wide range?’ And I think so far, it’s proven to be successful that way.”
Podeswa described “Game of Thrones” as “lightning in a bottle … a really unique experience in my lifetime, not just as a director, but as a viewer. I can’t remember shows that had that kind of water-cooler effect.
“People were talking about it in Congress and it was Barack Obama’s favourite, so you don’t expect that that’s going to happen. But this show, ‘3 Body Problem,’ has become the number one show on Netflix in the world, which is kind of amazing, and I did not expect that.”
“3 Body Problem” is now streaming on Netflix.