The director & # 39; Homecoming & # 39 ;, Sam Esmail, on podcasts, paranoia and Julia Roberts

Back home, the latest prestigious television series to come on Amazon, is as subtle and mysterious as a thriller. According to the podcast of the same name, it is the surface of a group of soldiers returned from combat and installation – Homecoming – who seeks to treat their PTSD. However, as can be seen in the flash-forward and tiny cracks in the polish of each person's story, none of this is what it seems, and the motivations and the everyone's actions are suspicious.

If you know the work of Back home The showrunner Sam Esmail, this is not surprising. His last big blow, Mr. Robot, immisce in matters of mental health, paranoia and discomfort with the government. The similarities, however, end there. (Well, there is also surveillance, but we'll come back to this later.) Unlike Mr. Robot, with his futuristic steel hacker veneer, Back home has the worn-out edges of a mystery thriller from the 1970s, with just a bit of old-school gumshoe TV and Hitchcock thrown in.

It also has, in particular, a story resembling an onion that becomes a little more complex, a little more powerful, as each layer is removed. He focuses on therapist Heidi Bergman (Julia Roberts) and his efforts to treat returning soldiers, especially Walter Cruz (Stephan James), but as we have learned, she is often upset by her absent boss, Colin Belfast (Bobby Cannavale), and finally leaves Homecoming. with little or no memory of what she did there.

As you can imagine, it's a headache. In the best way. To learn more about the script of his latest TV thriller cleverly drawn, WIRED sits with Esmail to choose his brain (very deep, very meticulous) on creating a suspense, transforming television in audio and persuasion to make his episodic debut on television.

When you adapt a podcast, it's essential to do something audio

Sam Esmail loved the podcast from the moment his agent sent him – but it took him some time to figure out what he could do with the story that Gimlet had not yet done in their audio series. "I just remember thinking:" If it's good, why are we talking about adapting it? "It's already in the middle that it should be," he says. "I listened, back to back, I loved it, and then I listened again, when I started listening to it this time, I was I realized that there might be things in the visual medium that could really open up a lot so that I understood that this could be something really special. "

It's also an unexplored territory

The adaptation of podcasts, as opposed to books, plays or films previously released, is relatively new. What seems like a challenge, but Back home has an advantage: it was already scripted. (Esmail also worked with creators of the podcast, Eli Horowitz and Micah Bloomberg, to develop the series.) "I was a big fan of Serial and O-Townand it was the first time that, at least from my experience, it was purely scripted, from beginning to end. This is another avenue to find good stories to tell. "

Back home Always necessary to turn the conversation into a drama

It was not because it was written in scripts that Esmail still did not need to turn an audible story into a visual story. The most of Back home was like audio found, phone conversations heard or therapy sessions recorded. Before presenting his show to Amazon, Esmail had to find ways to complete this dialogue. "The limits of [of audio] I think it's really exciting to be able to translate that on TV, "he says. I'm going to give you an example. There is a story that one of the characters tells about an incident that has occurred and which, while listening to it, is really tense and suspenseful. But since the story is told to you, you know that the result is that it is obviously going well and that it is doing as it should. So for me it was an example like, well, if you could be with the characters as they go through this experience, there is suspense about the outcome. It was simply a way of saying, "OK, well, there is a barrier, there is a limit in the podcast that I think can really be broadcast more on TV."

If you want to sell a show to Amazon, it's helpful to have Julia Roberts

So, how did Esmail sell to Amazon the idea of ​​adapting a podcast already heard by many people? He brought a secret weapon. "We wrote the first script and we sort of revealed the meaning of the first season," he says. "So Julia [Roberts] became involved, which was like being on the cloud nine, it was crazy. Then we approached Amazon and they were obviously interested. "

But first, you have to look for it

Back home is the first episodic film of Julia Roberts. (One-offs on friends and Law and order does not count. So, how did Esmail get it? It turns out that it is an audio junkie like all of us. "She's a big fan of the podcast so she came to see us, we sent her the script and she was a fan of Mr. RobotEsmail says, "I'm a big fan and the fact that she looked at everything I did was totally flattering, so I think we just got lucky."

Meanwhile, Mr. Robot Always happens

When you're in demand, like Esmail, it's useful to be a multitasking, and it is. "Before you start shooting Back home we were in the writer's room for Mr. Robot, "he says. I also went up season 3 of Mr. Robot while I was getting ready for the Back home shoot. So yes, there are a lot of hats. "

Not that he's going to give something Robot tips

Try to ask questions about Mr. RobotSeason 4, however, and you'll be smashed. "Well, obviously I will not answer any of these questions," said Esmail smiling, "but here's what I've already said: the season will be beautiful."

If you wanted, you could live Back home& # 39; s Set

In preparation for his new series, Universal, which co-produced the show under the Universal Cable banner, was building a new sound stage on their series in Southern California. Esmail decided to take advantage. "Because I'm crazy, I wanted to build this two-story facility that is the centerpiece of the Back home A story about this sound stage and we were lucky that, by the end of the construction, we were able to move in, "he says, referring to the huge Homecoming transition facility where much of it takes place a spectacle." Anastasia White, my decorator, built this crazy, very detailed set up to the door knobs. The reason I wanted this was that I really wanted to control how we can place the camera, move it, because it becomes a huge character throughout the story. Most of the time, when you go in a sound stage or in a setting like this, you know, you take a turn and if nothing is there, you open the door, it's not a room, 'is empty. But we really went there. I remember thinking, I think the crew even said that, we could all crash into it because there are bedrooms and running water. "