‘Mrs. Davis’ supervising sound editor Bryan Parker on the tricky balance of the Peacock limited series [Exclusive Video Interview]
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When seven-time Emmy Award nominee Bryan Parker heard he was nominated this year as part of the “Mrs. Davis” sound team Sound Editing For A Limited Or Anthology Series, Movie Or Special, even he was left a bit stunned.
“I’m very proud of the work that we’ve done,” the supervising sound editor tells Gold Derby in an exclusive video interview. “But it’s a very weird and wacky show and it has a lot of different things going on. I was definitely surprised that morning, when I got a couple of text messages from colleagues, like [‘Beef’ supervising sound editor] Christopher Gomez and [‘Beef’ re-recording mixer] Penny Harold. They texted me and said, ‘Congratulations.’ And I was like, ‘For what?’”
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SEEBetty Gilpin interview: ‘Mrs. Davis’
Co-created by Damon Lindelof and Tara Hernandez, “Mrs. Davis” is a limited series that defies easy classification. The Peacock show stars Betty Gilpin as Simone, a nun who is tasked with finding the Holy Grail – the actual Holy Grail – in an effort to help shut down an artificial intelligence named Mrs. Davis that has fundamentally altered society. Equal parts funny and dramatic, the cast and crew of “Mrs. Davis” have compared the show to everything from the works of William Shakespeare, the films of Joel and Ethan Coen, and the comedy stylings of Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote. For Parker, however, another touchstone was more personal: “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”
“In the first four minutes of the show, there’s an enormous crowd of people watching some Knights Templar get burned at the stake for heresy. And then there’s a 20-person swordfight,” Parker says. “I’ll have friends as they find the show, and pick up on it, they’ll text me and say, ‘Hey, oh, man, this really reminded me of ‘Monty Python.’”
That’s a reference that tickles Parker, who estimates he “literally” watched a VHS copy of the comedy classic every day between sophomore and junior year in high school. “I wore out a VHS tape in one summer,” he says. But unbeknownst to Parker, that familiarity with the material paid off in terms of nailing the “Mrs. Davis” tone – particularly with how seriously the men of Monty Python took their jokes.
“One of the things we found on ‘Mrs. Davis’ is that the funnier joke needs less,” he says. “If you want something to land a huge, cartoon laugh, you don’t use the cartoon sounds. The opening scene is much, much funnier if it’s horrifying. It’s really violent and the gore is cinematic and big as opposed to going for splatty, funny, and cartoony sounds. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some absolutely Wile E. Coyote stuff in the sound in this series. But for us to find the violence of this moment funny, it’s got to be through a real serious lens that takes itself seriously – like in a big overtop cinematic kind of way.”
SEEJake McDorman interview: ‘Mrs. Davis’
Parker says some of the sound team’s trickiest work involved how certain sequences in “Mrs. Davis” – including that opening setpiece with the Knights Templar – take on new meaning as the show moves along. Those key scenes often appear again in later episodes with a different context.
“I would encourage anybody who enjoyed the ride to go back to the top and watch it again,” Parker says of “Mrs. Davis,” which landed its lone nomination in the sound editing category. “Because some of the moments that feel funny and a little bit arbitrary and feel like Mad Libs or A.I.-generated or whatever – when you see how they do tie into the rest of the series [it changes the meaning]. I personally think that they wrote the hell out of the show and wherever possible the sound team tried to hold up our end of the bargain to support that storytelling and help be a primary storytelling driver whenever possible.”
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