‘Blindspot’ Q&A: Creator Martin Gero On His Perfect Cast and All Those Tats
Let’s be clear: Blindspot is not your typical crime procedural. NBC’s buzzy new action-thriller is already making headlines for its coveted cast (headed by Jaimie Alexander and Sullivan Stapleton) and puzzle-centric plotline about an amnesiac Jane Doe who’s connected to an FBI agent by the tattoos on her body.
Ahead of the show’s Sept. 21 premiere, Yahoo TV caught up with creator/executive producer Martin Gero for some clues on one of this fall’s most highly anticipated new dramas.
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How did you come up with the idea for the show?
You know, I was trying to figure out how to do a puzzle mystery show for years, and I just never cracked it. I had a bunch of much worse ideas before this one, and at the same time, I had this really not great idea about a PI that loses her memory. And so the two kind of just started to swirl around each other a little bit, and then I had this image that we start the teaser with. I lived very close to Times Square when it was evacuated once because they thought there was a bomb there, and the image of it has always stuck with me. The idea that if you went to go investigate this bomb and there was a woman there instead, covered in tattoos — it just kind of came to me one morning, and I was just like, “Well, this is a show. Let’s figure that out. That sounds like a lot of things I like.”
Can you tell us how Jane lost her memory? Will that be addressed early in the series?
I can’t tell you. But it will be addressed over the course of the early part of the season.
Will we ever see Jane get her memory back?
I don’t think she’s ever going to get her memory back, it’s been permanently erased. I feel like the TV shows I love, they treat their seasons like novels in a series of books. So our first season certainly has a beginning, middle, and end. And the primary push is, “Who is Jane Doe, and what is her connection with [Stapleton’s FBI Agent] Kurt Weller?” We’re gonna answer all of those questions over the course of the first season.
Jaimie Alexander is completely covered in tattoos. How many tattoos does Jane have?
Hundreds. It’s been a pretty exhaustive design process that we started all the way back in August of last year. So there’s a lot of story there. Each episode we get a little bit more information about who she is, and what the tattoos are, what their meaning is. And we had to do an enormous amount of legwork in advance to put all of the story [together] from the get-go. It’s really hard to add tattoos. I think the audience will catch that. There’s a tremendous amount of story already on her body.
How long does it take to put them on her, and is it done every day?
They have to put them on her almost every day. The day-to-day look, which is just her arms, legs, neck, and clavicle, that’s about an hour and a half. But the full body is seven hours, and she’s got to do it standing, which is crazy. So, [it’s a] special kind of torture. But thank God we’ve got Jaimie for a lot of reasons. She’s an extraordinary actress, she’s incredibly physical, but she’s also the lowest maintenance person I’ve ever met in my life. And I think any other actor would have come up to me and been like, “Hey man, no more full body tattoos!” Crazy. But she just loved the imagery so much. She’s so excited about the show. She’s pushing us to really be like, “More tattoos! More tattoos!”
How complicated was it to decide on the meaning of each tattoo ahead of time? As you mentioned, that must have involved some serious planning to map them out.
Absolutely. I talked to treasure map specialists and map makers, and we’ve hired David Kwong, who’s a New York Times puzzle contributor, and a magician, and graphic designers, and tattoo artists. And on top of that, we just had to get really solid on what the story was. The thing with shows like this, that have a huge mythology aspect to it, the audiences can tell pretty quickly if somebody knows where they are going or not. So it was important for me, tattoos or not, to have it down pat before we started shooting even the pilot. And to be honest, in the climate that we’re in right now just in selling a TV show, networks have been burned by exciting pilots that don’t pay off. And so you really have to, even in your first initial pitch, pitch out what that whole season’s going to be. And what the second season could be, and the third season could be. And so it was work that we had done that just made the show better. It forced us to just commit to some great ideas, and so in a lot of ways, although it was a herculean effort to get it all ready in time to shoot the first day of the pilot, it actually helped us because this show is much more developed going forward then it would have been just getting picked up in May.
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Will each episode focus on one of the tattoos?
Sometimes multiple. I mean, the show’s about Jane and Weller’s relationship, and in every episode they hope to unlock a tattoo that will get them closer to knowing more. Every episode, the case, so to speak, has actual tremendous personal stakes for them, because not only is it life or death, of course, but it brings them a step closer to knowing more about why his name’s on her body, and why they chose her, who did this, and what is the ultimate plan and goal of this shadow organization that we know nothing about. So every tattoo gets us a step closer.
Tell us about the other main characters on the show.
First of all, to have Jaimie Alexander and Sullivan Stapleton — to have one of them on a TV show would be such a treat, but to have both is just like such an embarrassment of riches. When you do these shows, it’s so rare to get your first choice for anybody. Because A), they have to connect with the material in a way you know you’re excited about, too, and B), there’s a full lot of approvals that you have to get from both the studio and the network side. And so we are fortunate enough, and I don’t know if this has ever happened, to have the top seven actors on the call sheet all be our first choices. They’re an extraordinary group.
NBC Entertainment president Jennifer Salke with ‘Blindspot’ stars Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Sullivan Stapleton, Jaimie Alexander, Ashley Johnson, Rob Brown, and Audrey Esparza
So you obviously have Jaimie and Sullivan, you have Academy Award nominee Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who is just so powerful, brings so much strength to the character [of FBI boss Bethany Mayfair]. And you have Rob Brown [as fellow agent Edgar Reed], who I think people have been aware of for most of his life — he was extraordinary in Finding Forrester and Treme. Audrey Esparza is somebody that you might recognize, but was a revelation to me. She’s so, so extraordinary as [agent Tasha] Zapata. Ashley Johnson, who again has been kicking around for forever and is such an amazing pro. The show is pretty intense, so Ashley is kind of like the lead science person who actually brings a bit of levity to it in a way that’s really beautiful. And Ukweli Roach, who’s from the UK, is another find that plays Jane’s therapist, and [he is] just so warm and so great. I can’t say enough about the cast. Every show that I’ve ever worked on, there’s always someone in the cast that you kind of have to work around in the editing room or you realize that when you’re writing you’re like, “Let’s [just] write to what they’re good at.” And with this cast, we just don’t have that problem. You can cut to any of them at any point something’s happening and they’re all fantastic performers. It sounds like crazy hyperbole, but it’s a writer that’s just relieved to have such an amazing cast on a show like this.
Blindspot has a really sweet spot on NBC’s schedule: Mondays right after The Voice. Were you surprised when heard where you show landed on the schedule?
Yeah. You know we were elated. We felt really confident about what we were doing. We knew the show felt good to us. The thing that makes these shows hard is when you and the network are making a different show. I think what’s exciting is that we both want to make the same show. We’re both excited about the same things about the show. And so it’s been a really, dare I say, easy process. But that’s obviously the timeslot we wanted. It’s one of the best timeslots in television. Every time, even on the pilot, after a particularly great take, I would say under my breath, “Mondays at 10, Mondays at 10.” So I kind of just like willed it into being. When we heard we were actually going to be Mondays at 10, we were just stupefied.
Is there anything else you want to tell us about Blindspot?
I mean, you’re in for a wild ride, and I will say this: What’s exciting about the backstory that the writers and I, and [executive producer] Greg [Berlanti], have come up with is, it’s extraordinarily dense, so that allows us to turn a lot of cards. It’s not like every five episodes you get a crumb of what’s going on. Especially in these early episodes, we’re giving you huge pieces of the story. And I think it makes for some pretty exciting television.
Blindspot premieres Monday, Sept. 21 at 10 p.m. on NBC.
