Are you thinking the whole series is all the obstacles that keep them from El Rey?
To a degree. To a degree, yeah, but there are different turns. I don’t think they’re going to be specifically on the road to El Rey every season. It’s fun. Everybody loves the movie and it’s such a fun property. I gotta tell you, [El Rey Vice Chairman] Scott Sassa talked about how the network is programmed from Robert’s brain. It really is, I gotta say, programmed from his soul. That’s what sold me.
When I sat down with him, I finished “Nikita” and I got sort of put into the network mill and there were a bunch of established shows that wanted to hire me and put me on their staff and just keep going. I just keep working, right? But I sat down with Robert and he pitched me this vision for this network and for this show, embracing both sides of the Latin-American hyphen and just really going for it.
The fact that we’re sitting here using Mesoamerican mythology to pump our show full of life is so hugely satisfying to me as a Latin-American, as a Cuban-American. It’s just awesome. That’s what’s really cool about this. I think people feel that when they watch the promos for the network and the show itself. He’s a soulful person and he puts it out there.
Who is directing the episodes?
[Robert] directed one and two. The third one is Eduardo Sanchez. The fourth one is [Robert] again. Fifth is a guy named Joe Menendez who has done a couple features and a bunch of different work. The others we’re still lining up. [Robert is] going to direct the finale.
I didn’t realize Robert was so involved to direct four episodes.
Yeah, he’s very hands on and he just gets in there and does it, man. He’s a shooter. He’s like every great director I’ve worked with in television. He’s a shooter. He gets it done, he lets the process happen. He trusts all his people who he’s hired who are great. He’s a great collaborator.
Is “From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series” more like his old down and dirty movies that he shot on the fly?
Yeah. We don’t shoot on the fly. As I said there’s a super high amount of planning but it’s very gritty and he’s very much in his groove, man. He’s in his groove.
How big was the file of development material Robert brought you from what he planned on the first movie?
What we did was he had a bunch of ideas and we had a retreat in Austin where we sat down and just went through all his ideas. Then I went and spun out a bunch of different stuff as well. We just spent a long weekend delving into it, no rules. When you start out on a show, you don’t want to restrict yourself with any rules so it was basically just, “How about this? And how about that?” Really throwing everything at the wall and see what sticks.
He had a lot of stuff. He had been keeping notes for 20 years and he had the original script, so we were working from all of his stuff but it was about, again, getting into his soul and pulling all the pieces together and really mining it and respecting it. For me it was always about respecting it because I know how much people love this movie. I really want to honor it because it’s a fun, fun movie so I want the show to be as fun of a ride as the movie was.
Is there a lot of action on “From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series?”
Yeah. We want it to be, again, a ride. It’s not an action show but there’s action.
We’ve talked about a bank heist, we know there’s a convenience store hold up and then a lot happens at The Titty Twister.
There’s some stuff before that too that I don’t want to spoil that’s good. There’s the border thing I talked about which is also very tense and cool. So yeah, basically it really is the movie’s the short story and this is the novel. We can expand story and action and characters.
Was there ever a version of “From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series” in development that started from scratch and didn’t use the movie?
Not that I saw. I don’t think so. From what I’ve heard no.
Who is Wilmer Valderrama playing?
Carlos, who’s played by Cheech Marin in the movie, who’s his contact on the other side, the guy who’s going to get him to El Rey. He’s fantastic. He just does this great turn as a villain.
Cheech played three characters in the movie. Wilmer is not doing that, is he?
No, he’s not doing that. Something like that. I don’t want to spoil, but we’re playing with that.
Is Wilmer in every episode?
Yeah, there’s one that he’s not in just by virtue of the story we probably won’t get to him, but yeah, he’s in all of them.
So that’s become a much bigger part then. He only shows up at the end in the movie.
That’s what I was saying about how there’s a point of view that the series affords you that the movie did not have. The universe is expanded so we get to see all sides of the story.
How did you feel about the end of “Nikita?”
We did those last six, it was great. It was great for us. We really got to say goodbye in the right way and just crammed them with all this great stuff. We really said goodbye in a good way. “Nikita”’s a show that never found a huge audience, but is going to find a huge audience on streaming and DVDs because it’s a good show. We did a good job. I’m proud of that show. Craig Silverstein really ran that place great and really did a good job with it. I have friends who are not in the business who watch TV and of all the shows I’ve worked on, they watch that and they’re hooked into it and responded and loved it.
More than “24?”
No, “24” obviously big time, big time. It was a good run.
So you won’t be on “Live Another Day” while you’re doing “From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series?”
My brother will be. My brother’s co-running that show, Manny Coto. He and Evan [Katz] are running it.
