0:13

Hey, this is solo director and producer Jenni

0:15

Curtis. Writer Chris Porter. And I

0:17

got to sit down with Aniello and talk

0:19

through the intricacies of her character, Jessup.

0:22

Here are a few excerpts of what she had

0:24

to say. Like

0:28

you said, you were in these development workshops

0:30

with us, so you kind of saw the

0:32

show change and grow.

0:34

Mm hmm. Was there a difference for you

0:36

in just from the first time we

0:39

worked on her in the workshop to what we ended

0:41

up bringing into the studio?

0:42

I think it just got refined for Jess. I

0:44

felt like in the workshop Jessie was already kind

0:47

of fully formed, and I think

0:49

we just, like, made little refinements to like exactly

0:51

how she approached the different crew

0:53

members.

0:54

How did you find Jess's voice physically?

0:57

I felt like Jessa, just

0:59

like who lives fully

1:01

in my chest, if that makes sense. Like,

1:03

if you think about, like, where a character lives in your body,

1:05

she's like, rock solid. So, like, if I

1:08

kept thinking of Jessa as just being, like, the

1:10

most. The most

1:12

confident and assured that I could

1:14

ever be about who I am and

1:16

what I do like, that feels like Jessa

1:18

to me. And that's not to say that just doesn't

1:20

have, like, her own worries and questions

1:23

about herself. But she's

1:25

that rock for the crew. And

1:27

I wanted to, like, feel

1:30

that whenever I was in a scene. So

1:32

that's kind of like the mental image I had in

1:34

my brain to.

1:35

Talk about being in the booth. We recorded

1:37

this in the height of the pandemic.

1:39

Vaccine.

1:39

Pre vaccine. So we were in

1:42

a recording studio, which

1:44

I don't know about for you, but for me that was like a godsend,

1:46

being able to be in a studio with other people.

1:48

Obviously you were on the other side of the glass, so we never

1:50

got to interact like face to face. But

1:52

I saw you.

1:54

It was nice. It was one of the first

1:56

projects I got to work on in a studio

1:58

in the pandemic, because like the pandemic

2:01

happened and everything went remote

2:03

and I had to learn how to record remotely.

2:05

And then this came up and you're like, We're in a recording

2:07

studio. And I was like, Can we is this a thing we can

2:09

do yet? And

2:12

it was and it worked out great. And like all the

2:14

safety protocols were in place, like everything

2:16

felt safe and above board

2:18

and it was lovely people to see your

2:20

face through the glass while we were doing this.

2:22

Just to bring it back to Jessa. Yeah,

2:25

we obviously very much

2:27

love Jessa as a character, all of us,

2:29

but we tried very hard to make

2:31

sure that they were all very human characters.

2:34

So from your perspective, what is something

2:36

that you love about Jessa and what are some

2:38

flaws that you feel are worth

2:40

acknowledging?

2:41

I love that Jessa is just

2:44

enough of a chameleon to be able to like, connect

2:46

with everyone in the crew because

2:49

they're all very different. And the way

2:51

you have to approach each of those people in

2:53

order to draw them out, in order to get them to tell

2:55

you vulnerable things, in order to get them to become

2:57

vulnerable for you. Like that's a different tactic

3:00

for each person, right? One of the tactics

3:02

being her big monologue in

3:04

episode three, kind of baring it all

3:06

herself in kind. And I think

3:08

that's so, so valuable,

3:11

just trying to relate to people out

3:13

there in the world. So many people

3:15

are un willing to

3:18

try different avenues to be able to connect

3:20

with people that they normally wouldn't. And I feel like

3:22

just as the kind of person who would be able to do,

3:25

you know, how I lost my arm?

3:27

A drunk driver.

3:29

That's right. One

3:31

year before self-driving cars became mandatory.

3:34

I was driving home with my fiancee

3:37

and we just had dinner with her parents. They

3:40

thought we didn't need her something, so they gave us all

3:42

their leftovers. I'm

3:44

sitting there in the passenger seat with four

3:46

boxes piled on my lap, and I

3:49

see these headlights coming

3:51

real fast toward the driver's side window.

3:54

And I think to myself, these

3:57

leftovers are going to go everywhere. And

4:01

that's where my memory just ends.

4:04

This monologue that we've been talking about in episode

4:06

three, I swear, like Jessa became a friend

4:08

of mine and a cheerleader of mine, and I would go

4:10

back and listen to this monologue when

4:12

I was having, you know, stress

4:14

about the show and stress about life

4:16

and her perspective, like,

4:19

helped me as a person. And

4:21

I guess I kind of want to throw it over to Chris

4:24

who wrote the thing.

4:27

What is it you were trying to

4:29

say with the monologue? Where did it stand

4:31

in the story and how did you come

4:34

to the words of

4:36

it?

4:36

Definitely functionally, with this moment

4:39

in this story, what was important

4:41

is communicating who Jessa was

4:43

and how she works just like and was explaining.

4:45

She kind of has to be a chameleon

4:47

and find a way that she fits with these other

4:49

crew members because she's

4:52

not only there to stitch up fools, as

4:54

Jessa says, she's actually there for

4:56

their mental health as well. And she knows

4:59

in this moment Jamal is spinning out. And

5:01

we know that in the more present

5:03

timeline, which is the most future timeline of

5:05

Jamal facing what

5:07

could be his imminent death, he's

5:10

also spinning out and he needs to hear these

5:12

words again that Jessa has relayed

5:14

to him. So story wise, I

5:16

knew that that had to be the mission of

5:18

it. Part of her back story, I

5:20

knew that she had to have a bionic arm that was

5:22

caused by this thing. Her story

5:25

about the leftovers going everywhere is

5:27

actually somewhat inspired by a true story,

5:29

where I was leaving a friend's house on Thanksgiving

5:32

and his family had given us multiple

5:34

pies. I had them in my passenger

5:36

seats, about three different pies because

5:38

they were like, Here, thank you for coming to our Thanksgiving.

5:41

Here's a whole bunch of extra pies. And thank

5:43

God it was not a drunk driver. It

5:45

was not a situation where I lost

5:47

a significant other. It was not a situation where I lost

5:49

a limb of my body, but I definitely slammed

5:51

on my brakes, reached over to the pies and thought to

5:53

myself, These pies are going to go everywhere.

5:56

And that is where my memory stops, right?

5:58

Then it does not kick back in for 3

6:01

hours until a cop is questioning me, asking

6:03

what year it is and who the president was. And

6:05

sure enough, when I found my car and it was totaled,

6:07

the pies had indeed gone everywhere. But

6:09

there is always something about that. Like I told

6:11

that to the insurance people

6:13

when they were taking my statement, I was like, I thought,

6:15

these pies are going to go everywhere. And I remember

6:18

looking back on that and thinking, What a stupid

6:20

thing to think, what a stupid thing to spend

6:22

that fraction of a second on. And so

6:24

that became sort of what happened to Jessa.

6:27

And I wrote it into the story that way

6:29

because it just resonated in my brain of,

6:31

Wow, this is the way that humans think.

6:33

Yeah, that hit me when I

6:35

was like reading it and working on it because yeah,

6:37

we do think about really weird stuff at

6:39

the worst possible moment and

6:41

that is just human nature and

6:44

it's so easy to beat yourself up about

6:46

that kind of a thing, but you really literally

6:49

couldn't help it. That was all you

6:51

were going to think about at that moment. And

6:53

having to sit with that is is hard.

6:55

And it's very human. And I think that's what's

6:57

powerful about the script is there are so,

6:59

so many human moments in this and

7:01

everybody has their own truly

7:04

human flaws. Jessa gets

7:06

to see all of them. Yes, because

7:08

everybody spills their guts to her. So

7:11

what is just a view of all of

7:13

the other crew members, all these

7:15

people, you know, so deeply? And

7:17

let's start with the first two, Jamal and Ren, you

7:19

become close to both of them.

7:21

For Ren, I think Jessa

7:24

sees like kind of a kinship

7:26

with her. Like I think she she sees

7:28

Ren kind of respond

7:31

to the world in a way that Jessa has in the

7:33

past like. And I think that resonates

7:35

with her. So I get the sense

7:37

that Jessa reaches

7:39

out to her first because

7:41

she can see her coming down that same path

7:43

that just some might have. But also,

7:46

I think that makes them closer

7:48

friends than probably anyone else in the crew. Not

7:51

that Ren is the most outgoing

7:55

or easy to form relationships with,

7:57

but I think Jessa is able to

8:00

crack the shell a little bit more

8:02

with Ren, and part

8:04

of it is probably occupational

8:07

by nature, but some of it is like

8:10

just genuinely she appreciates

8:12

her presence and wants to wants

8:14

to help her out.

8:15

I love that you said Ren

8:18

responds to the world in a way that Jessa has in

8:20

the past, because we definitely didn't give

8:22

you that. That was something you created

8:24

as Jessa on your own. Yeah. And

8:26

I didn't know that. I didn't

8:28

know that.

8:29

I guess I get this. Feeling that Jessa

8:31

was a lot like that because

8:33

she has this I approach it like just had

8:35

this life before the incident

8:38

that she talks about in episode three and then a life

8:40

afterward. And she talks about having to

8:42

change her whole outlook

8:44

on life and having to change her whole way of approaching

8:48

approaching this new world. So I feel

8:50

like before she

8:52

was different and I get the sense

8:54

because she was she was going to be a marine,

8:56

she was ambitious and all this kind of stuff. And

8:59

I think she might have been a little more of a closed

9:01

off person like like

9:03

Ren with the exception of her fiancee,

9:05

you know?

9:06

I love.

9:07

It. Yeah, me too. Well,

9:11

that's a taste of our behind the scenes with Anadarko.

9:14

If you'd like to hear the whole discussion, you can

9:16

find it on the solar panel on Apple Premium.