Prime-Video - Homecoming Season 2 : Interview co-showrunners Eli Horowitz & Micah Bloomberg

By Mulder, Los Angeles, 18 may 2020

The critically-acclaimed series Homecoming returns for its second season with a fresh new mystery and an exciting new star, Janelle Monáe. Her character wakes in a rowboat adrift a lake, with no memory of how she got there — or even who she is. Her ensuing search for identity will lead her into the heart of the Geist Group, the unconventional wellness company behind the Homecoming Initiative.

Q: Do you think when you created the podcast Homecoming that it would one day become such great series ?

Micah Bloomberg : Definitely not when we were doing the podcast we're really just trying to figure out how to do a podcast mapped out challenging enough and so it's really important to us than to be really focusing on the audio form as the final results and I think hopefully that's what I was doing a good job with that and then so everything since then has been a very strange surprise.

Q: Did the Homecoming Season 2 may you want to do more podcast ?

Eli Horowitz & Micah Bloomberg : it Is an interesting question. I think we always were interested in the way that. With the material that we took in the podcast and how we needed to change it in order to get it right for television and yes sometimes when we were going through the process of production meeting to like secure stats or dealing with like the huge enormous things that happen when you're doing a big television production we would joke about how much easier it is to just get the actors and have them stand around a microphone but I think, we probably was more in a in a humorous way but then yeah I mean like in the future moving forward it's such a great way to get a story out quickly and it's such a great way to get to the heart of your of what you're trying to say I think when you do a narrative podcast so it's something in the future I think I'd be interested in doing.

Q: Congratulations. Which lesson did you learn on the season one that you applied the on season two when he came to working on season two ?

Eli Horowitz & Micah Bloomberg : A little different than the lessons it was that season one we wrote as the podcast and tried to move over into this form and take advantage of the form but in a lot of ways it was still shaped by its original audio group and so with season two we had a totally open campus and it was exciting to really imagine the full possibility in the story so there's a lot more running around there's a lot more outdoors you know season one or so contains find these two people in the room. So, it was exciting to sometimes take lessons but sometimes not be free to forget certain lessons too.

Q : I listen a little bit to your podcast about you're talking about. Transitioning from the podcast of the screen and how you just said you have the open campus at campus this time I was I'm interested in you know. I think I'm away and am interested in Challenges you bet just going from just the you know writing just straight for screen I wore some of the biggest challenges that you know did they are some of the things you can expect.

Eli Horowitz & Micah Bloomberg : You mean between writing a podcast and writing a TV show?

Q : Right yeah

Eli Horowitz & Micah Bloomberg : I mean I think we just we learned a lot writing season one we when you do a podcast. You're just dealing with at most two or three voices in a room at a time and you're dealing with props and setting so you use some sound effects do setting so it's like a very educated very specific form and everything sort of has to carry a ton of weight if you introduce an interesting because things can get confusing and I think with T. V. that thing that we really learned is how do you use visuals just sort of speed along the storytelling because I think and between season one and season two I think this becomes apparent like TV is a faster paced medium in general I would say then and podcast or radio so when we got into season two I think we're excited about doing is dropping viewers into a mysterious strange world that we are establishing less through dialogue and we were through visuals and crops in and use like that and so we're in season two starts and you guys may be seen. You see a character that we've never seen before losing a place you've never been and we were excited to sort of just. Have the viewers start this experience and be like wow I wonder how this connects back to the world I know from season one and then we followed you nominate character as she leads us back in that direction.

Q: So, my question to you what it is but you know this show has been a business drama and then there's also this dystopian peeling. How did you guys decide on that ?

Eli Horowitz & Micah Bloomberg : It's really, you know it's something that I think we're happy with it but it's not something that we really ever discuss I don't think right it's just sort of The weird way their minds work when there's so much together so we like having sort of some kind of propulsive thriller element to carry you through and then of course sort of at the core we want to focus on these relations the two characters and that's the way that the podcast legacy I think really helps us is keeping it always very grounded in conversation character and then we also just like music ourselves so we trying sort of ridiculous things so. I think it just what happens when you don't maybe try and label it from the start and you free yourself to do whatever and then hopefully these weird combinations happen.

Q: So, your podcast featured Oscar Isaac, Catherine Keener and David Schwimmer. Do you believe there is room for them to appear in the series as other characters ?

Eli Horowitz & Micah Bloomberg : Right now, I mean that's interesting what you think. I would say yeah I mean they were so incredible in the podcast each of them and each of their takes on the characters was so different and fascinating and cool in its own way so obviously we wouldn't want to do like maybe not obviously I don't think we'd be interested in doing like a bad thing where they show up as different versions of the same person but having those actors back in in different forms would be incredible and I think we you know like we'd be very lucky to have any of them I would just be a question of finding the right role. Sure maybe in season nine you're making a podcast you know that advances. Yeah like Seinfeld they make a podcast about season one. Robin in eight short years all that could be yours.

Q: So Amazon order and both seasons right at the beginning how different is second season from the initial vision how does it evolve ?

Eli Horowitz & Micah Bloomberg : We were pretty loose on the second season even though it was really important to us to focus on things one season a time with sort of a sense that there's something to come and knock avenues well we don't want to be in a situation of holding a lot of things back or dropping a lot of frustrating clues that we tell you will be that will resolve five years after. So, we always knew about this. Some of the links between the seasons and that Audrey Temple would rise at the end of the first in the second but a lot of the outline to personally very their eyes to some extents so we can really focus on the job at hand and then now focus fully on this new job.

Q: Do you think you have enough story for a third season ?

Eli Horowitz & Micah Bloomberg : Yeah I mean yeah. One thing that is like we don't have a really intricate you know seven season Bible that way are like stuck to and some amazing incredible and you know I probably shouldn't say this but like seven crazy you know crazy fifth season twist that we need to hold off on and kind of killed time until so because like you I was saying we started to take each season has its own story and then find ways to connect them as we go along and as we're discovering any new characters that were interested in. So that's what makes us pretty flexible and then at the same time and as we're going we're building toward bigger and bigger you know when we started doing the podcast we just basically had three characters and since then and as you'll see in season two we've you know built up a world of guys stand and who's there and also discovered this whole New World with some denominators character so I can just see its continuing out and sort of finding new places and new people to discover and the new interesting ways to type back. Yeah and an exciting thing is each season we do we kind of get more little Characters and references and settings. We can you know as we're trying to sketch out season three it's fun to imagine how things come back together and it's always going to be could take him out of the dryer and combine it so it gets wider and wider and as Michael said. You know some shows get themselves into a bind because it's going to end with like a final battle between the works in the whatever you know and then you're just having to. It can be effective but I also feel sympathy for those show runners can you just have to kind of draw it out as long as possible and then make everyone mad when it finally happens so.

Q: Can I ask the question? I have a question. I like to ask of you talked about how you just kind of go with the season but is there like some idea in your head about how this potentially could ?Do you have like some kind of you know maybe season number out there you know some showrunners like we're going to do a buzz at the seven season or this whatever .Do you guys have that kind idea are you just kind of dealing with it ?

Eli Horowitz & Micah Bloomberg : I know yeah I know this might be hard to believe but like we don't have.. It has never been like a saying or like it really feels like five seasons to tell the story you know like and as we've gone along, we've discovered that there's all these different approaches to how to look at your TV show. I had a look at your series and for some people I think it an entire story kind of occurred to them and then they went about the process of breaking it up into parts and you lie. Sort of are more this is not the right word but we're kind of more improvisers a little bit and I think we like to be stuck in corners in a way and kind of have to fight our way out in so yeah I mean I think about the show deadwood a lax in in kind of comparison I don't know everything about how that was put together but my understanding is it was a little bit more as they went then it was sketched out entirely which might be totally wrong but I sort of really admire that showing the way that it felt so we sort of have that's kind of our goal is to have always things feel unexpected to have. Things happen in people appear in world appear that you weren't like okay right yeah this is the next target started since what I would've expected we I think it's starting to feel like that we'd be. I mean we had planned out season we try to plan season two years ago we never would have come up with the season two, a sort of an interesting chart turn that we landed on. I think it helps us basic pricing Oakley the viewer you stay surprise too.

Q: And can I ask you how you develop your taste enough stories to fans and television? How did you develop and what influenced you ?

Eli Horowitz & Micah Bloomberg : Yeah I mean that's a well that's a very broad question really interesting. I mean, I grew up in America in the nineties so I was watching a bunch. I was watching like Tarantino movies you know movies and like independent movies at the same time and that was really huge and influential for me and then. I kind of from there and I was watching you know growing up was acting like Nightwalker and Airwolf and sort of like classic American TV and then I don't know I was just obsessed with it I was obsessed with getting over into the other world that I saw on the screen because that seems like to me the real world. Yeah that's about as far as I can take that right now at eight o'clock in the morning. Yeah I mean I think it's interesting I would say maybe for both of us certainly for me there's like the movies and shows that we loved that excited us but damn its pretty indirect how bad I witness in these trying to connection from that to this show we've made that time you're making something you're just like trying to find any way to make it work and it's almost like something beyond my control it just like. The way my mind works for my kids networks or what happens when those collide it's not like we ever set out and try to make something in a certain genre or with a certain feel maybe a little less but it's more just like you've got all these problems that you're trying to solve them one by one and it's just it's almost more unconscious like the tone of your voice why is this my voice it's not because I like this voice is just what comes out of it when I try and talk so. Yeah in the morning and. Yeah and then what's interesting is like when you're in a writers room or when you're talking to people you're sort of desperate for any kind of common ground to use you can't explain to somebody what you mean so you're in the same conversation you like we'll take that part of the hall and then by the end of the conversation you'll be talking about midnight run or something like that so it's helpful to have that don't calculate but it's like you I said where you're just desperate sometimes for a way to get. What you're feeling is shaped so often in. Our references are just to sort of. Give someone an idea of what we see in our heads. And he's just like basically its always midnight run for me. Every conversation. I recommend that Midnight Run with Robert De Niro is like nineteen movies with him. I said it can only understand any other thing in the context of Midnight Run. It Is a such problem.

Q: I wonder what you've made the decision to not have Heidi in the second season and you have a Walter in the second season. How did you made that decision and what was the difficulty you face by writing the second season ?

Eli Horowitz & Micah Bloomberg : Well we don't to Heidi central character what was that what were the difficulties you faced in writing this . Sure, I could take back in that I mean so we always knew that Heidi would just be in season one and that was because we kind of wanted each season to have this central character arc could really see in a lot of ways. Season one was Heidi's story and season two you know Janelle story of course all the other characters too but we don't have that that single character back one for each season semi bad a very easy way to think about it I'm. The challenges. I think we're the same as the exciting thing was like how do we Make something that starts to the bank feels totally new it has its own identity character and plot but also rewards season one and beyond that even how do we make those connections between the two seasons unfurl in a way that's actually surprising rather than short hindrance like we have to do a lot of housekeeping take to update it with season one so. You know and you guys have seen how many episodes. You're going to start even into you start to see it join up right and then as it goes along it more and more surprising ways there is two seasons connect so that was something that was a challenge but also gave us a lot of the pleasure.

Synopsis :
The critically-acclaimed series Homecoming returns for its second season with a fresh new mystery and an exciting new star, Janelle Monáe. Her character wakes in a rowboat adrift a lake with no memory of how she got there -- or even who she is.

Homecoming Season 2
Created by Eli Horowitz, Micah Bloomberg
Based on Homecoming by Eli Horowitz, Micah Bloomberg
Directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez
Producers : Eric Simonson, Marc Bienstock
Starring Janelle Monáe, Chris Cooper, Stephan James, Hong Chau, Chelsea Wallace, Monica Zhang, Chip Chinery, Jake Sidney Cohen, Nicole Alicia Xavier, Johann Carchidi Abreu, Albert Bensabat, Ari Frenkel, Timothy E. Goodwin, Michelle Haro, Anna Jaller Jeni Jones, Mary Anne McGarry, Bilal Mir, Milo Stein and Audrey Wasilewski
Cinematography : Jas Shelton
Editor : Matthew Ramsey
Production companies : Esmail Corp, Gimlet Pictures, Crocodile, We Here At, Red Om Films, Anonymous Content, Universal Cable Productions, Amazon Studios

We would like to thank :
Amandine Rouhaut (Serieously) (France), Jonita Davis (USA), Lorenzo Ormando (Angleterre) and Ravi Bansal (PIT) (Inde) who were present with us during this great press roundtable
Our San Diego editor and photographer Felipe Acevedo for his reread and help
Hugo De Luca and Amazon Prime Video for this great press roundtable

Photos : Copyright Amazon Prime Video