TV directors roundtable: ‘Accused,’ ‘Atlanta,’ ‘Late Night with Seth Meyers,’ ‘Mrs. Davis’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
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“I feel like what I wish I’d known was that I didn’t have to know everything,” says “Atlanta” director Hiro Murai about the wisdom he wished he had before stepping behind the camera for the first time. “I think you really get hung up when you’re coming in, feeling insecure about what you don’t know,” but “any work that’s been good has come out of exploration and discovery.” We talked to Murai as part of our “Meet the Experts” TV directors panel along with Marlee Matlin (“Accused”), Alex Vietmeier (“Late Night with Seth Meyers”) and Owen Harris (“Mrs. Davis”). Watch our roundtable chat above. Click each person’s name to watch an individual interview. Click the CC button on the video for closed captioning subtitles.
Vietmeier agrees that you don’t need to have all the answers. “You can ask questions. I wish I would’ve realized that a little sooner, that we’re the director, that’s our title, but it’s a team that puts these projects together,” he points out. So “if I don’t know the best way to handle something or if I can’t imagine, like, how can we get a camera there? Well, ask the person who knows how to get the camera there.”
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Harris echoes that sentiment, acknowledging that directing is really a team effort. “You feel like you’ve got to shoulder everything,” he admits. “And I think that what you learn, what you learn hopefully very quickly but certainly over time, is that that’s what you are: a team.” Though a director is often thought of as the leader of a production, “your biggest role, I suppose, is to communicate. And I think that if you can manage that, then you’ve already taken the right step.”
“Accused” is Matlin’s first project as a director, and “I mirror everything” that was said. Working on an anthology series was a helpful way to get her foot in the door “because I didn’t have to be so focused on the chain of what came before me and what goes after me.” But she still had to be prepared for the “400 questions a day” she’d be asked and then trust in her assembled team. “It’s like painting in a group of people together, creating a piece of art … You’re just a human who loves to create.”
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