Scott Z. Burns must get this one a lot: How did the writer of the 2011 Steven Soderburgh-directed drama "Contagion" experience the onset of the novel coronavirus pandemic?
"We all were told by the scientists we worked with that it wasn't a matter of if there would be another pandemic; it was a matter of when," says Burns, during a recent video interview to promote his new Apple TV+ limited series, "Extrapolations." "Nobody told us that it was going to be six or seven years after the movie, obviously.
"But people need to remember Ian Lipkin, the scientist who I worked with on the movie was the person who sort of discovered the origins of SARS," Burns continues. "There have been more and more viruses emerging. And so it is something we need to be aware of, and, unfortunately, we tend to only focus on pandemics after they happen, rather than looking at what we're doing here on the planet beforehand to try and prevent them from jumping into the human population."
Before being known for writing credits that also include "The Bourne Ultimatum" (2007), Soderbergh films "The Informant!" (2009) and "Side Effects" (2013) and 2019's "The Report," Burns was a producer on the impactful 2006 climate change documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."
He's returning to the topic of the planet's changing climate with "Extrapolations," an eight-episode series that imagines an increasingly unsettling future beginning in 2037 and running into 2070.
It is a star-studded affair, the cast including Daveed Diggs, Sienna Miller, Tahar Rahim, Mattew Rhys, David Schwimmer, Diane Lane, Edward Nortion, Indira Varma, Keri Russell, Gemma Chan, Marion Cotillard, Eiza Gonzalez, Tobey Maguire, Forest Whitaker and, last but not least, Meryl Streep. (She voices a whale, but it's ... more complicated than that.)
While a few of the actors appear in two episodes, "Game of Thrones" alum Kit Harington appears in three, including the first and last, as Micholas Bilton, the CEO of tech giant Alpha, which could be seen as an amalgamation of various companies of today.
Burns talks about the series in a conversation that has been edited for length and clarity:
Q: What is the genesis of "Extrapolations"? Is this something you conceived during lockdown or had it been in your mind for a lot longer?
A: It's been in my mind for a lot longer. After "An Inconvenient Truth," I realized the power of a documentary and who we could reach. But as someone who had really spent most of their career doing scripted entertainment, I thought, "How can I use storytelling to give people a different path into this?" And when you look at the science (and what may happen in the future), what I wanted to do was look at a timeline of when those things might be happening and then consider the impact that they'd have on human lives. And that became sort of its own story generator.
Q: How much of a priority was it to balance being, for a lack of a better word, "preachy" and being entertaining? In the production notes for the series, you call it a thriller.
A: I don't think there is a line. Entertainment is really the path to people. And that's something that Steven Soderbergh and I talked about when we were doing "Contagion," and even before, back to "The Informant!." If you're going to move people or give them a story that's going to follow them around in the world, the first thing you have to do is entertain them. That's your obligation. That's the contract I have to the audience: If you give me an hour of your time, I'm going to tell you a story that hopefully will stay with you and give you a different perspective on something that you maybe hadn't thought about.
Q: Could you ever have imagined working with a cast like this one a single project, albeit one with multiple installments, and how much of this cast coming together has to do with actors believing in the subject and how much can be attributed to Apple's vast resources?
A: I know you're not gonna believe this, but it really is true, so I hope you will take it to heart. Nobody did this as a money job. It really wasn't about Apple's resources. People did it, I think, for two reasons. One, a lot of these people care deeply about this issue. And we're thrilled to go and do work on it. But I think more importantly, for me, and for the people who worked on the show, they wanted to inhabit these characters. Tahar Rahim, who's a brilliant actor, really loved playing Ezra. When I sent Meryl the script for Episode 2, she called me and we talked about whales for a bit and she said, "OK, when are we doing this?" I'm grateful that so many people showed up for us — but I hope they did it because we created characters that were exciting for them to play because that's what the audience is going to respond to.
Q: Without going too much into his character, what interested you in Kit Harington for the significant character he portrays?
A: Kit and I hit it off very well, and I said, "You know, this is really an opportunity for you to play the spine of the show." Because I needed someone to track across time. I needed to take somebody who is both, you know, good and bad and represents the hope that we may have in tech — but also some of the very justifiable fears we have around tech — and see what happens to this person across time, see what happens about the opportunities that will arise as the planet changes. That was a lot of fun for both of us. I mean, he really dug in with me on building an arc for his character. And I think for him, it was a very welcomed departure from some of the work he'd previously done.
Q: Let's turn to another big aspect of "Extrapolations": the visual effects. Can you talk about the work to imagine not only a more technologically advanced future but also a world further affected by climate change?
A: Ashley Bernes, who was our (effects) supervisor, was spectacular for me to work with and really dug in with our production designer, Phil Messina, who is brilliant and has done some great films.
When we started, I said, "Look, I don't want a flying car in an episode because a flying car is permission for the audience to say, 'Oh, that's way in the future.'" That's not something I have to worry about. There are no flying cars in my world. And when you think about a show that begins 15 years in the future, and now go 15 years in the past ... we're talking about when I was writing this. It was the same distance from "An Inconvenient Truth" to the beginning of our show, and I wanted to put the event horizon far enough in the future so that change could happen, but not so far in the future that you could dismiss the show.
When you walk around Cleveland or I walk around where I am, here in New York, there are things that are 100 years old, and that's what the planet is like. "The Hangover" is the same distance in the past as we are from our pilot, and you don't watch "The Hangover" and go, "Oh, that's a period piece." It's a world you can relate to. And that was the line we had to walk: What tech could we introduce that seems believable but that doesn't give you permission to dismiss the show as being so futuristic, that the things we're talking about aren't going to happen?
Q: You mentioned working with a scientist on "Contagion." You also worked with scientists on this show. Describe that collaboration, which was designed to lead to plausible future outcomes for the planet and its inhabitants.
A: We spent a fair amount of time really building a timeline between now and the end of the century about a host of things, some of them as small as ... pinot noir grapes going extinct in the middle of the century. There were things as small as the extinction of a grape and as big as sea level change — or what would happen if one of these major ice sheets breaks off. And so the first thing we did was build a timeline of when we thought those things might happen. And the storytelling is really looking at one of those phenomena and going, "How would that impact a very small, individual human life?" I think that the ride that the show offers is instead of it always being a big global issue, it's how do you take the big global issue and make it very personal?
How do you (craft) a story about something as important as geoengineering and make it a story between a father and son (played by) Edward Norton and Michael Gandolfini?
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The first three episodes of "Extrapolations" debut on Apple TV+ Friday, with new episodes released weekly through April 21.
