Emmy-Nominated Showrunners Share Key Lessons from Their Hit Series at Variety TV Fest: The Nominees

variety.com:

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor The Emmy-nominated showrunners from “Fallout,” “Slow Horses,” “Shogun” and “3 Body Problem” shared the lessons learned working on their earlier shows and what they hope to take forward. “Shogun” co-creators, executive producers, and writers, Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks joined, “Slow Horses” writer and executive producer Will Smith,” “Fallout” showrunner, writer and executive producer Graham Wagner, and “3 Body Problem” showrunner, writer, executive producer, Alexander Woo for a lively conversation with artisans editor Jazz Tangcay celebrating their recent Emmy nominations and lifting the veil on the early starts in their career.

Smith is entering his fifth season working on “Slow Horses” with Gary Oldman, the spy thriller based on the novels by Mick Heron, and says he fell in love with how Heron had crafted multi-dimensional characters on the page.

And keeping that narrative was integral to the adaptation of the TV series. When asked how long he hoped to go on with the show, Smith answered “Gary has said that he will play the character to the end of his career, which I can’t quite process.” He continued, “As long as we find new things to do with it and there’s an audience for it, and it can keep building without repeating.

I think that’s the challenge we all grapple with returning series. It’s got to be the same but different. The audience wants to be satisfied with what they’re familiar with, but also you want to bring in new stuff, but you don’t want to jump that shark.