SDCC Entertainment Weekly

Legion Press | San Diego Comic Con 2017

July 20, 2017

That memorable silent movie 'Bolero' sequence in Legion‘s seventh episode wasn’t supposed to be a silent movie sequence.

“Sometimes huge things are done in the editing room,” Noah Hawley told EW’s Dalton Ross at the Comic-Con studio Thursday. “So episode 7 has the silent movie with the cards — that was all added later. When you guys were filming it, you had no idea that I was going to take all the sound out and put the silent movie cards in. That wasn’t in the script.”

And Hawley didn’t know, either; it wasn’t until post-production that he realized taking the sound out of the scene worked well with what was happening in it. “It’s fun, it’s a playful show,” he explained. “I like that about it, that there’s a certain amount of just whimsy to it. … We don’t take ourselves too seriously.”

The interview, above, also features stars Dan Stevens, Rachel Keller, Jean Smart, Aubrey Plaza, Bill Irwin, Jeremie Harris, Amber Midthunder, and executive producers John Cameron and Lauren Shuler Donner joking about how confusing the show can be and remembering their favorite scenes from season 1.

[Archived Copy]

## Transcript

Dalton Ross:  Welcome back to Entertainment Weekly’s coverage of comic con here in San Diego.  I’m Dalton Ross joined by the cast and producer Noah Hawley of Legion.  What’s going on guys?

Dan Stevens:  Hi.

Dalton Ross:  Dan, I talked to you right before the show started at EW radio and I said, like, I love the show so much.  I only understand, like, 38% of it.

Dan Stevens:  That’s a lot!

Dalton Ross:  And I love it, but the 62% I don;t understand, I think I actually love even more, in a way.  Like, I don't…

Dan Stevens:  We can change those odds.  38 is a lot.  That’s high. (unintelligible)  That’s maybe even higher than mine.

Dalton Ross:  Yeah, Yeah.  It goes episode to episode sometimes.  It goes up and down.

Dan Stevens:  There’s a meter (gestures high and low)

Dalton Ross:  But do you guys have people asking you, like, can you explain this show to me?  Like, I love it, but I don’t really understand it.

Dan Stevens:  Do you know?  I don’t actually.  It’s, It’s one of those shows where people are actually enjoying the confusion.  Like I’m four episodes in, I have no idea what’s happening, I  love it.  So actually there’s not a huge amount of demand for an explanation, and I can’t get one, so…

Aubrey Plaza:  (in a mocking voice) except for my mother.

Dan Stevens:  She knows everything?

Aubrey Plaza:  No

Dan Stevens:  Oh.  She understands 100%?

Aubrey Plaza:  No, she doesn’t know what’s going on.

Dan Stevens:  Okay.

Dalton Ross:  Were you guys saying you don’t ask him for explanation, like, when you get

Noah Hawley:  They’re not allowed.

Bill Irwin:  It’s a fool’s errand

Dalton Ross:  he’s not giving it up?

Noah Hawley:  There’s an iron curtain

Dan Stevens:  He’s an elegant locked box of information.

Aubrey Plaza:  We’re only allowed to talk ot Mr. Hawley on Wednesdays.

-everyone laughs-

Noah Hawley:  Exactly

Dalton Ross:  It’s like in (untelligible) caddy day, un, 10 am to 10:15 am

Dan Stevens:  Right.  That’s, that's your window.

Dalton Ross:  That’s it.

Dan Stevens:  You don’t get the questions in there.

Aubrey Plaza:  And we can only ask the questions with our eyes.

Dan Stevens:  Season, season two.

Noah Hawley:  I did find though that, that, you know, toward the end of the season where everything started to add up, people were a little disappointed by the clarity that came and they liked the sense of being at sea which, which I thought was interesting.

Dan Stevens:  Right.

Noah Hawley:  So season two nothing will make sense.

Dan Stevens:  Less than 38%.

Noah Hawley:  Yeah.

Dalton Ross:  I thought that, like, chapters 4 and 7 were seriously my two favorite hours of television all year.  I loved those episodes so much.  I kind-of was thinking about you guys and like, in terms of when you’re..do you need to…what’s it like, the experience when you actually get to see it all put together?  Because so much of it has to be done in post, i'm sure.  When you see the music plays a big role…what’s that like for you guys?  And not just reading it and filming it, but then seeing it?

Jean Smart:  It’s a thrill.

Dan Stevens:  Yeah.

Jean Smart:  Because I mean it…and especially like Noah was saying.  Those parts of it that you’re not in, you know, that you didn’t see be filmed.

Dan Stevens:  They didn’t tell you about those when you were making it, did they?

Jean Smart:  There was going to be others?

Dan Stevens:  There were other scenes.

Jean Smart:  That there were other storylines, other people?  No.  I got over that.Yeah.

Dan Stevens:  No.  No.  But the music makes a huge…it’s a very musical show.  And the way music is used.

Jean Smart:  It’s cinematicly, I mean, it’s just…

Dan Stevens: It’s cut to some extraordinary stuff.

Noah Hawley:  And sometimes, you know, huge things are done in the editing room so episode 7 that you talked about has the silent movie with the cards.  That was all added later, so when you guys were filming it you had no idea that that, like, I was going to take all the sound out and put the silent movie card in.

Dalton Ross:  Well that wasn’t even in the…

Noah Hawley:  That wasn’t even in the script, so…

Bill Irwin:  No.

Jean Smart:  That was so cool.

Noah Hawley:  It was fun.  It’s, it’s a playful show.  I like that about it, that there’s a certain amount of just whimsy to it.

Dalton Ross:  Did you know at the time you were going to do that and just decide on something?  Or was it later during post, you were like ‘you know what would be pretty cool?’

Noah Hawley:  Yeah it was in post.  It was the way everything was coming together, all the different elements and the kind-of heightened nature of, you know, Lenny showing up to kill people, and it just sort-of felt like, you know, that the silent movie and that sort-of level of genre, you know, felt like it really played well together.  It, you know, we don’t take ourselves too seriously.

Dalton Ross:  I’m curious if you guys each could tell me, like, just a favorite sort of or audacious scene that you guys got to do in the first season because there are just so many memorable ones.  Aubrey Ill start with you.  Is there a favorite scene you had from season one?

Aubrey Plaza:  Uhh, I’m so bad a picking favorites.  Umm, I don’t know.  I had a lot of fun with dan shooting the, kind-of like flashback Lenny and David on drugs scene, like running around the dirty streets, and, umm, those were really fun.

Dan Stevens:  Shopping cart.

Aubrey Plaza:  Yeah.

Dan Stevens:  Aubrey plaza races a good shopping cart.  That much I can say.  Um, yeah.  Another scene?

Jean Smart:  It’s your turn.

Dan Stevens:  The scene, okay, so where we’re all frozen in time and there are bullets coming towards us and Oliver has to help…

Jean Smart:  That was your favorite scene?  That went on FOREVER!

Dan Stevens:  Well, this is why.  It was the scene that never died.

Jean Smart:  We were going to set fire to those costumes and that room.

Dan Stevens:  That spanned about three episodes?  Am I right?  Three or four.

Noah Hawley:  We just kept shooting.

Dan Stevens:  And we just kept coming back to it, so whatever else we were shooting, we’d be like, ‘oh, and you’re back in the room frozen in the thing’ and I'd be like ‘hi guys, and you’re like, assume the position’.  I’d be, like, hugging Rachel and these guys would be like (Dan makes slow motion running pose).  But it was months, months that we were doing that scene.

Jeremy Harris:  You’re welcome.

Jean Smart:  The scene where we were suddenly, we are the mental patients was kind-of interesting.  That was fun.

Dan Stevens:  That was so cool.

Dalton Ross:  How about the rest of you guys?

Bill Irwin:  I’m a great fan of episode 8 I have to say.  The knowledge that a lot depends on getting the virus, the parasite out of his brain.

Dan Stevens:  I really felt that for a moment.

Bill Irwin:  Did you?

Dan Stevens:  Yeah.

Jeremy Harris:  You felt the powers.

Amber Midthunder:  Maybe he’s the monster (looks at Bill Irwin).

Dalton Ross:  Amber?

Amber Midthunder:  Umm, I liked the, I have the, for, like, just me, my favorite scene that I got to do was the monster sequence in episode 8.  That was a lot of fun.

Bill Irwin:  Yeah.

Amber Midthunder:  (looks at Bill Irwin)  But you and I had that dance, too and that was…

Bill Irwin:  Yes, we have joint tenants, tenancy questions that, throughout, we assume season two, as well, but throughout season one we had to figure out what it was to share the same body.

Amber Midthunder:  Yeah.

Dalton Ross:  Are you guys, like, simpatico off set now too?  Is that something that sorta carries over?

Amber Midthunder:  I mean, I get a lot of separation anxiety all the time from him, so yeah.

Bill Irwin:  Fortunately we are,

Dalton Ross:  Alright (gestures to Rachel Keller)

Rachel Keller:  Mmm, I like the white room stuff.

-everyone looks at her say says “oooooooooh”-

Jean Smart:  Sure.

Dan Stevens:  It’s a very difficult set to keep clean. I mean, yeah, It looks great, but it’s a nightmare to live with that stuff.  Yeah.

Dalton Ross:  (gestures to Jeremy Harris) Alright.  Don’t think I’m letting you off the hook.  Nice try.  You just tried to get out of it.

Jeremy Harris:  I like when we went back to the hospital scenes when we had to sit with the drooling dude.

Jean Smart:  Yeah  You talked about your family, about your mom.  You had that great speech about your mother.

Dan:  Yes.  And you got to play that scene from the same…

Jeremy Harris:  Yeah, that was great.  That speech scene, too.  WIth the fam.

Amber Midthunder:  That was beautiful.

Dan Stevens:  Everything gets flipped on it’s head.  It’s fun.  So…

Dalton Ross:  We actually, Noah let you gave us a great script page to run in entertainment weekly from season two.  And that gets me wondering, Aubrey, about Lenny and umm, Oliver.  Where they are at.

Jean Smart:  That’s what I’d like to know.

Dalton Ross:  Mentally and I guess, uhh, physically both.  Where we saw them going off in the car.  Where the hell are they?

Aubrey Plaza:  Umm…

Dalton Ross:  She looks to Noah ‘what can I say, what can I say?’

Aubrey Plaza:  I don’t know Noah.  You want to take that one?

Noah Hawley:  Well, they're by a pool.  That’s for certain.  And there are two of them.

Dan Stevens:  Two pools?

Noah Hawley:  Uh, yes, there are two pools.  Oh hot and cold.  Uh, well it’s interesting.

Aubrey Plaza:  And then it pulls back and you see that we’re on, like, a planet.

Noah Hawley:  Yeah.

Aubrey Plaza:  Floating.

Noah Hawley:  In bubble gum, bubble bath, yeah.

Aubrey Plaza:  It’s a bubble gum wrapper.

Noah Hawley:  Yeah.  No, it’s uh, you know, if you think about that Farouk, the Shadow King was in David’s mind and then he moved into Oliver’s mind and then Lenny’s trapped in there somewhere, that there’s a sense, there’s a lot of spaces, mental spaces that don’t necessarily physically exist that, umm, that we’re going to play around with this yeas as we did last year.

Aubrey Plaza:  We use the color purple a lot.

Noah Hawley:  Yes, we’ll be starting today (gestures at Aubrey’s purple shirt)

Dalton Ross:  Well I have to out myself.  I’m one of those people that didn’t see the tag scene at first.  So people started talking about the cliffhanger and I’m like ‘what are you talking about?  Are you talking about them driving off?’  and they said no.  So I had to go back and watch it and was like, uh, I guess I’ll ask you how soon are we going to get a resolution to where David is.

Noah Hawley:  Pretty quickly.  I mean you get it in the first hour, yeah.  You’ll know, uh, you’ll know something about that.

Dan Stevens:  You might (looks up sarcastically and everyone laughs)

Noah Hawley:  Yeah, I used you..him...not you.

Dan Stevens:  One, one.

Noah Hawley:  So, yeah.  All the answers are forthcoming eventually.

Dalton Ross:  And the Shadow King obviously still playing a big role in season two?

Noah Hawley:  Yeah I think so.  I think it’s interesting that, you know, we played it, we did this sleight of hand where you thought ‘oh, it’s the plucky band of rebels against the empire and we’re just gonna…while we’re waiting to go fight division 3 we’re just going to help you with you memories’ and then we realize that, no, the whole story is about what’s in your mind and the enemy within.  But now the enemy’s out and that changes the dynamic of the story.

Dalton Ross:  Whenver you have a show and a story like this thats, sort-of so out there, uh, fans online or coming up with their theories and what’’s going to happen.  Do you guys read any of that stuff or look at any of that or not?

Noah Hawley:  Anyone, anyone?

Everyone murmurs “no.”

Dalton Ross:  No?  You don’t do any of that at all?

Noah Hawley:  Don’t tell them that.

Jeremy Harris:  Yes, yes!  Yeah, there was one theory and I emailed Noah about it because I was just so intrigued.

Noah Hawley:  It was about his beard.

Jean Smart:  You did?  Really?

Jeremy Harris:  Oh, no.

Noah Hawley:  Yeah, it’s interesting to see what people pick up on and then, of course, you know.  There’s whole theories that people come up with that you never even thought about, but that are really interesting, as well.  You know, so much of watching any film medium is a passive experience.  Right?  Unlike reading where you have to do half the work yourself.  So I always like to try to create something that engages people’s imagination even as they’re watching it.  You know, you’re watching something and there’s room for you to have thoughts theories or to have images that aren’t necessarily on the screen.  I think that’s interesting

Dan Stevens:  And there’s the fan art for the show.  It’s been really awesome.  And I’m a huge, I’m a big fan of fan art and I think any piece of art that makes other people want to go and make other art is good.  I think it has a place and it’s really fun and there’s some really good stuff out there.

Noah Hawley:  Should we give them your address so they can send it to you? (everyone laughs)

Dalton Ross:  Umm, it’s such a great show.  It’s stretching the boundaries of television in a really cool way, even if I don’t know what the hell is going on.  I’m in for the ride.  Guys thanks so much for coming in and I cannot wait to see season two.  The cast and creator of Legion.  We’ll be back with more from Entertainment Weekly’s Comic Con studio.