On Jan. 19, 2017, everything that you knew went to hell.
(Damn, indeed!)
MIKE SCHUR: There were many dimensions to it.
Credit: NBC
You’re a devil."
For the rest of the actors, I really struggled with it.
If I were Ted, I would want to know the whole picture.
Vivian Zink/NBC
They gave the most honest and real performance they could give, simply because they didn’t know.
There’s a bunch of philosophical writing about the ethics of secret-keeping.
The very general rule of thumb is that it’s okay to keep a secret.
Evans Vestal Ward/NBC
That was the rule of thumb that I went by in the first season.
It proved to be involuntary method acting, in a way.
How small was the circle of people who knew the secret?
You talked with [Lostco-creator] Damon Lindelof when you were developing the show.
The writers obviously had to know, but how about producers and down the line?
The main producers knew.
I didn’t tell any of the directors, except for the in-house directors that we had.
Most of the directors who came for a week didn’t know.
Most of the department heads also did not know, because I just wanted to keep the circle closed.
The head of costumes department, props department, most of those people didn’t know.
It really was limited to writers, a couple key producers, a couple in-house directors.
As far as other people, I pitched the show to Damon before I pitched it to NBC.
I had a couple other close friends that I told.
I would say the total number of people on Earth who knew was probably fewer than 20.
What about people at the connection?
I told the online grid a little bit later.
Word gets out to a lot more people.
I told them somewhere around the middle of the season.
They were like, “Okay, great.
Kristen took the secret-keeping a little more seriously than Ted.
You don’t understand.
Here’s the crazy twist.”
Did you know that Ted had loose lips and was telling everyone?
That’s exactly what happened.
He would pitch the show to people and say, “I play the architect of heaven.”
People go, “Yeah, that sounds fine.”
He would go, “No, you don’t understand!”
Then, he would just spill the beans to literally everyone.
I believe he told me that he had told Larry David.
He told, like, a million people.
Kristen took it very seriously.
I believe she didn’t even tell Dax [Shepard, her husband].
Were there moments where the cast was close to figuring it out?
Did you ever almost slip or did someone else around you?
I don’t know if anybody else did, but I never almost slipped.
Darcy [Carden, a.k.a.
Janet] told me that she and Jameela [Jamil, a.k.a.
Tahani] and Will [Jackson Harper, a.k.a.
Chidi] and Manny [Jacinto, a.k.a.
Jason] would have conversations during shooting days: “What do you think is going to happen?”
I believe they never got anywhere close to the truth.
and she was pretty confident that we were.
What was it like to finally reveal the twist that you had been holding onto for so long?
It was super fun.
I get nervous before a read-through that has a big story move in it.
This is a good sign.
That means this is a big deal.
It was very fun.
It was also very fun to see their reactions.
This is going to work."
The real fun of it was the aftermath when I grilled them.
Do you feel it’s unearned?
Will makes the funniest face.
It’s a very Chidi face of being truly shocked by something.
When I was like, “Hey.
And they were going to get fired.
I don’t know how in the world that got into his head.
So, I remember his reaction in the debrief being more like reliefalmost like, “Oh.
You don’t have a problem with our performances.
You’re just telling us what the actual plot is.”
Did you always know it was going to be a meeting where you told them?
How much thought did you put into the actual reveal to the cast?
We put a lot of thought into it.
I wanted to tell them directly.
We’re rowing in the same boat.”
And then Kristen, in classic Kristen fashion, was like, “This is going to be hilarious.
I have to film this.”
And then she slowly turns around and faces Michael and there’s zero sound.
And I was like, “All right, I’m going to steal from the Coen brothers.”
It felt weird and ominous, and they were confused and scared.
Did you initially have more clues laid into the series, but you pulled back a few?
That was obviously the reason the writers had to know, because we were constantly laying in things.
We would go, “Ahh!
So let’s make a run at lay in something in this episode that really explains that.”
Chidi’s got a terrible stomach ache and he’s miserable because he’s keeping this secret.
Because at the point, nine minutes into the premiere, he is just happy about everything.
Between us, are you keeping another huge secret from the cast right now?
No, just you.
I decided in season 2 that there would be no more subterfuge.
And they know all know everything that’s going to happen in season 4.
So, now the cast all knows everything that’s going to happen.
