Steven Soderbergh on the Real Heroes of ‘Full Circle,’ Why He Didn’t Use Flashbacks and What’s Next for Characters
[This story contains spoilers from Max’s Full Circle.]
Max’s Full Circle garnered interest even before it premiered due to its star-studded cast. But while viewers may have originally tuned in to see Claire Danes, Dennis Quaid, Timothy Olyphant, Zazie Beetz and Jim Gaffigan, those who stayed with the limited series saw a story take center stage of two Guyanese teenagers stuck in New York and desperately trying to get home.
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This “bait-and-switch aspect” is part of what appealed to director Steven Soderbergh when writer Ed Solomon presented the project to him. Soderbergh helmed all six episodes of the series, about the fallout from a botched kidnapping.
“You think it’s about this group of well-off white people being victimized. And then over the course of the show, the whole thing starts to tilt,” Soderbergh told a group of reporters in a June roundtable discussion. “By the end of it, we’re in a very different place than where we started. So it was this melodrama that had this very interesting subterranean thematic thread bubbling along that eventually comes up and takes primacy in the last two episodes.”
Soderbergh called brother and sister, Louis (Gerald Jones) and Natalia (Adia) the “real heart of the story.” After disrupting the kidnapping, they are able to return to Guyana thanks to some unexpected help. The siblings “are the only people who managed to get out of this,” Soderbergh told reporters. “Although at the end of it, they’re sort of back to where they started. I guess they’ve learned something, but it’s not a happy conclusion. It’s good; they survived. But that was a very difficult ride for them to get back to where they started.”
The series ends with Louis and Natalia walking around the unfinished Colony at Essequibo, the ill-fated development that connected the series’ Guyanese characters with Danes’ character’s family, and a pan over to a billboard advertising that the aborted project is “coming in 2003.”
“From the very, very beginning of the script, it was all engineered to that one last shot,” he said.
But while the final image was set from the beginning, many things changed from when Solomon and Soderbergh first started working on the project. One of the first shifts took place before filming began, when the collaborators scrapped their plan to do a branching narrative to accompany the linear series, reminiscent of their work on the 2018 HBO murder-mystery series Mosaic, which also had an app version where people could follow the story from different perspectives.
While filming Magic Mike’s Last Dance, Soderbergh told Solomon that for Full Circle he couldn’t do both the linear series and the app version.
“On Mosaic, we were able to do that, because that was repurposing the footage to use in both ways. I was using the same footage for the linear version that I was using for the app. That’s why that was not a problem,” Soderbergh explained on the roundtable. “My vision for the app version of Full Circle was completely different imagery, completely different approach directorially, different cameras, different everything.”
The Full Circle script was 400 pages, Soderbergh said, with the app version consisting of an additional 170 pages “in which there’s no overlap.”
“I told him, ‘I can’t do it.’ I go, ‘I can shoot fast, but I cannot shoot that fast. And we have to throw all of that away.’ Some of that 170 pages leaked its way back into the linear version. “It’s not like we just never looked at it again,” the director recalled. “But I wasn’t looking forward to that lunch where I was gonna sit down and tell him, ‘Yeah, all that work you did, I’m throwing it out.'”
Other changes included fleshing out a storyline between Phaldut Sharma’s Garmen and Sheyi Cole’s Xavier, and even reconceiving the break-in in the finale from a violent bedroom fight to the confrontation that ended up in the final cut, where Danes’ Sam Browne realizes what she’s done.
“The scene in which Louis comes to the apartment to try and steal the painting was rethought on set,” Soderbergh explained in a second roundtable discussion with reporters that took place in July. “In the original script, it turned into like a fight in the bedroom and the gun was under the bed and the mattress flipped over and pushed [Sam] against the window, and it looked like the window was gonna crack. There was no exchange between the two of them. What I said to Ed was, ‘That doesn’t feel like what we’re making now. And we need to look at this differently.'”
He continued, “And we sat there on set with the cast and rebuilt the second half of that scene, which began when he moves from her to go try and pull the painting off the wall. And we spent an hour and a half talking through, writing and rehearsing what you see in the show now, which is he can’t get the painting off the wall. He runs back to find [Sam]. She’s got the gun; she confronts him; and he explains how he got there and why he’s there. And you see her realize: ‘This is all my fucking fault. This whole thing. This kid is in this apartment because of the shit I did 20 years ago.’ And the show needed that moment. And it just, it didn’t exist.”
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter over the course of the two roundtables, Soderbergh talks below about entrusting key moments to the series’ relatively unknown actors; why he wanted to reveal key information through conversations instead of flashbacks, like with the talk Sam (Danes) and Beetz’s Melody have at the hospital in the finale; what’s next for these characters and how he feels about returning to a branching narrative format.
A lot of the narrative, especially in the later episodes, centers around the Guyanese characters, particularly young brother and sister Natalia and Louis. We’ve heard about so many of the big-name actors attached to this. But in terms of finding those young characters for the Guyanese storylines, what were you looking for? And did you have any concerns about entrusting so much of the narrative to those kids?
This is where having casting director Carmen Cuba is crucial. We, or Ed [Solomon], especially, spent a lot of time trying to make sure that those characters were were given the kind of treatment that all of the characters were given. The short version of it was, I want to shoot everybody like they are movie stars, like they are the leads in this thing. And that’s not just a directorial approach, that has to be reflected in the writing as well. The whole thing was designed that Louis and Natalia are the heroes of this. They’re the only people in the entire show who are unsullied by making bad choices. They found themselves in a bad circumstance, but they’re good people, and they’ve been trying to do the right thing. And they’re the only ones that kind of emerge morally unscathed.
Something we talked about a lot was making sure that this process of giving them that kind of primacy is gradual. It was a fairly intensive search that Carmen did. One of the things that I decided from the get-go was, I’m not going to ask where they’re based. I don’t want to make decisions that are only driven by: Well, do they live in New York? So Carmen would send me a lot of people to look at, and I would start to narrow it down. I’d say, “OK, it’s this person, this person, this person,” and then Carmen would go, “OK, well, Sheyi Cole lives in London, as does Phaldut Sharma. Jharrel [Jerome] lives in Los Angeles.” And I said, “Well, we’re just gonna have to figure this out.”
So, fortunately, we got all of our first choices and figured out budgetarily how to make that all work. And as the show was being shot, and we were looking at the footage, Ed and I were both looking for ways to expand the storyline of the kids, particularly, Louis and Natalia and Xavier and Garmen. That relationship in the original script was was different. It was the same up to a point. And then during shooting, we decided to go with something a little bit different. I was enamored of this idea that Garmen views Xavier as a) being the only person in that group that really knows what he’s doing and b) as a potential partner in an escape plan. And so that was something that was really developed while we were shooting. Because in the original script that idea didn’t exist.
As we were watching the episodes fill out, I was saying to Ed, “I really like this relationship.” It used to end like at episode four. And I said, “I don’t want it to end; I think we should keep going with this.” And so we start building out this idea that Garmen sees him as as part of his plan to get away from Mrs. Mahabir (CCH Pounder), who he feels has completely lost touch with reality, can’t be trusted. And so all of these issues about loyalty were developed while we were shooting.
So many of the secrets and revelations, particularly with the Colony at Essequibo and the bribery allegations, come out through conversations between the characters. Did you consider doing flashbacks to reveal some of that information that way?
Yeah, we did. And I think we determined that it was more organic with the style of the storytelling to have us learn that as the characters learned. We really wanted to save those final pieces of the puzzle for that that big dialogue scene between Claire and Zazie in the hospital. I’m the first person to tell you: Let’s figure out a way to show something and not tell it. When people say, “What’s the biggest difference between movies and television?” I go, “Oh, I can tell you that right now. In a movie, people don’t talk for long periods of time. That’s the difference between movies and television.” However, having said that, I am not afraid of two people in a room. I built my whole career on two people in a room.
So in this case, I felt that was justified. Because the audience at this point is desperate to know what the fuck actually happened. And I felt there was something satisfying about knowing. It’s a critical plot point for Claire to finally have all of this in focus, because she’s now going to turn and make a really big decision about her life. My attitude about the end of this is: She’s going to jail, and she’s made that choice. She’s the character of all the people who we see that actually has the biggest arc and the biggest shift. But, in a sense, she has to be convinced in the same way that the audience is convinced that there is no way out. That you have to, once you understand what happened, accept responsibility.
Could you elaborate on what from the branching narrative you integrated into the series? And on a related note, would a project like Mosaic, with the branching narrative, be something you would like to do again?
Most of the stuff that came from the branching version had to do with Garmen and Xavier, what was going on in the motel with the kids. It was character stuff that I felt was interesting and I wanted to retain.
As far as whether or not to do another branching narrative, I think there are two issues here: One is that if I were going to do it again, I’d pick a completely different kind of story to tell. I think I’d want to do a comedy. I think a comedy provides really interesting potential for a multiple point of view story. The second is, it’s not clear to me that this form of storytelling is needed or even wanted by audiences.
I think we learned a lot during Mosaic, and I did want to try and do a better job of making it more engaging and having it move faster. But it’s clear from from the way we watch things typically that people don’t feel like there’s something missing if they don’t have the option of a branching narrative. If that were true, we’d be seeing a lot more of them. So I’m not entirely convinced that as a format, it won’t always just be viewed as a kind of novelty and isn’t something that we really need; and by that I mean in a primal sense, around the campfire, or let’s say around a dinner table. If somebody pulls the attention of the group to tell a story, the people in that group are expecting and wanting to hear a story that resolves itself and is self-contained. They don’t want to hear somebody tell a story in which they go, “Or it could go off this way.” And they talk about that, and then they back up and go, “Or it could go this way.” That’s not what you want.
I think there’s a very strong impulse for people to want to be told a story like, “You’re the storyteller, telling me a story. Don’t make me do the work that is your work.” Even though we’re not making people work by having them make a binary choice, I still think, psychologically, for a person experiencing a story, they’re like, “I don’t want to be in that mode. I want to be in the listening, tell-me-a-story mode. Don’t make me engaged like that.” That’s what I’m beginning to think. And so it’s a real question whether or not I would want to return to that format without an idea that I feel can only be executed properly in that format.
Have you given much thought to what happens to these characters after the series ends? Where do you see their future taking them?
If you’re going to continue the story, Melody and Xavier seem to be the two people with the most potential for an interesting trajectory — especially Xavier. I mean, he’s alone; he’s in this city that he doesn’t know that well. My theory is he absolutely went back and picked up that painting. So he can probably convert that into some amount of cash. But he’s kind of he’s kind of loose. Especially since that little syndicate has been [disrupted], so there’s a huge power vacuum. And he’s a bright, resourceful kid. So I think Xavier is the one that when we got to the end of it, I was like, “Oh, his future is going to be fascinating.” But every man, woman and child in the country would have to watch this show, I think, for Max to want to revisit this.
You mentioned in another interview that the building that stands in for the Colony at Essequibo was a real place. Could you share any more about what that was and how you found that?
All that we could really find out about it is, it was one of those projects that ran out of resources before it was completed and so it’s just sitting there. I’m not sure how old it is. I think it’s more than a decade. Ed would know all of this. It is really such an odd thing. It’s just kind of sitting there in the middle of this field. And the design of it is really odd, like it has no connection to anything around it aesthetically. There’s no acknowledgment of the fact that you’re in Guyana. It’s just a weird sort of construction and was kind of a perfect visual symbol of a doomed idea, that was never going to work. I don’t know enough about the details about how it got to the stage that it got, like where the initial money came from. But one of the aspects of the story that I like is identifying business endeavors, in which money is being made on the making of the thing, as opposed to money being made from the thing being done and people experiencing it. Like the deals are structured in such a way that if the thing just gets built, then certain people are going to make a lot of money.
You recently released Command Z on your website. Obviously Full Circle is on Max. How much do you think about, when you’re working on projects, what would be a series for a streamer or a theatrical film or something for your website, in terms of the different distribution methods?
There’s a process that I go through. As an idea begins to emerge, one of the first questions that you’re asking yourself is: Is it a movie idea? Or, is it a series or a show? And then, what kind of resources do we need to execute this properly? And given what the piece itself is, who’s the most likely buyer?
And then you have to make a decision about, in order to make it attractive to a buyer, what state does it need to be in? Do they hear two sentences and they know the way you do things, then they go, “Got it. We like that”? Or, do you need to really develop it out? Ed wrote Full Circle on spec, the whole thing. So that makes my life easier, because we just turn in the scripts and go, “This is what we want to do. And this is the number.” So that makes everything a little more aerodynamic. But you’ve got to make a decision about how much of it you’re going to you need to put down on paper or in a file before you take it out: Do you need to get more elements attached? Does it help if it’s a piece with a very strong lead or leads? Is it worth trying to get somebody attached before you take it out to a buyer? You have a list of questions that you ask yourself that need to be answered before you start taking something out. So it’s making sure you’ve gone through that checklist. Every project is different.
The timing, the culture makes a difference. If you’re going out with a show or a movie about a certain subject, what’s happening in the culture has a huge impact on whether or not people are excited by that or not. I mean, everybody’s had the experience of developing a project on their own without telling a lot of people and you take it out, and everybody you go to is like, “Yeah, we’re actually shooting something just like that right now.” That happens a lot. So you have to be sensitive to that as well. And I watch stuff, so I have my own sense. Somebody may pitch me an idea. And I may feel like, “Yeah, I think a year from now, nobody’s gonna care about that. That’s an interesting idea if you could drop it tomorrow, but I think a year from now, I don’t know, I think people may be tired of that.” So you’re trying to prognosticate a little bit, just based on your sense of how the culture cycles ideas through, but you never know. I’ve had stuff work better than I thought and I’ve had stuff work worse than I thought.
What else do you want people to know about Ed Solomon’s work on this?
He really spent a lot of time talking to people and researching every tributary that the show explores. Ed was chasing that down and was very, very adamant that whatever was in the show — if we were questioned about it, Ed specifically — that he could do the math for you of how this came about, how this idea was developed, who he talked to to flesh it out. [There was a] huge amount of interaction with the cast to make sure they felt their characters were three dimensional and incorporating their ideas.
Interview edited for length and clarity.
Full Circle is now streaming on Max.
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