Warning: Do not read ahead if you haven't seen The Leftovers' series finale. Full spoilers follow.
Now that The Leftovers has left us, and leveled us with a devastating and beautiful finale, here's my post-finale chat with executive producer/showrunner Damon Lindelof about what went down in the final chapter, "The Book of Nora."
What was behind the decision to, essentially, bring Laurie back from an assumed death? Was Nora telling the truth to Kevin when she spoke of an alternate world sparsely populated with everyone who departed? I asked Lindelof those questions and more.
Note: I also interviewed Leftovers creator and executive prouder Tom Perrotta about the finale, and you can read that here.
IGN: Obviously, you knew what shape the finale would take at the start of Season 3 because there was that flash-forward of Nora right at the end of the premiere. But how early on, during the making of the show, did you know that it would all come down, in the end, a love story that funneled down to Nora and Kevin?
Damon Lindelof: Have you read the book? Have you read [Tom] Perrotta's novel?
IGN: No, I haven't.
Lindelof: His novel really pushed the love story between Kevin and Nora. Certainly we have that element in Season 1. They meet, they have a flirtation, they start to hook up and then they break up and then she's basically about to blow out of town when she finds the baby on his porch then that's the beginning of their relationship. But in the novel, they have a much more involved romance, and in fact they go to Miami together and there's this whole thing. So I guess I would say from the moment I read Tom's book, before we even partnered to do the show together, the idea that the relationship, that the love story, between two broken people was a very significant part of the tapestry purely because the novel was making this broad declaration that what Nora lost was never going to be returned to her and she was going to be able to be with this guy who himself was broken in many ways.
I kind of had it in my head that if we were lucky enough to get two actors who had incredible chemistry together that it was something that I wanted to be chasing. I think in the second season of the show, Nora and Kevin are clearly still together but we went out of our way, in the early episodes when they decide to leave Mapleton and go to Jarden, with that scene when they're telling each other the truth about themselves -- where he tells her that he buried Patti and she tells him that she hires prostitutes to shoot her in the chest -- that this was the beginning of another level of their relationship. Then clearly when he tells her about Patti, which is very interesting way of admitting an affair actually -- "I'm seeing another woman except it's not sexual and she's dead" -- that Nora's response to that is to handcuff him to his bed and run away. This couple was very much on fragile ground. They're not exactly on terra firma. So we were interested in exploring that relationship.
When we came into the final season, we asked "What does it look like for these two characters to be okay at the end of this story?" We know at the end of Season 1 it's Nora standing on the porch holding the baby and at the end of Season 2 it was Nora connecting to him with tears streaming down their faces as he steps into the house and everyone from his family is there she says "You're home." We knew we'd get to do that one last time and I was going to feel like that circuit was complete. We want these people to be together. We don't want them to be apart. But how do we make it feel like it's not contrived or forced or corny or stupid or silly? But that there's a fair amount of suffering involved and that they've really earned each other because they've finally done the work on themselves in order to be together. That was the equation we were trying to solve this season and in the finale.
IGN: So then it seems like they had to be apart to work on themselves and figure things out. I mean, they were separated for so many years here. They almost needed this time in order to be able to come back together.
Lindelof: I think so, yeah. I don't know if that's a grandiose philosophical idea. Are you in a relationship? Are you married or seeing someone?
IGN: Actually, waiting for a divorce to be finalized.
Lindelof: Oh, my god. I'm sorry to hear that.
IGN:[laughs] That's okay.
Lindelof: But you know more than anyone then that there's stuff that you have to work on together, right? And then there's stuff that you have to work on yourself and they have to work on themselves. You can do all the work on Matt that you want to do. You can totally evolve as a human being and you can say "I have learned. Here's who I am." But if she hasn't done that, if your partner doesn't do the work on themselves, it doesn't matter. So I do think that people do have to take individual journeys in order to come back together. That's certainly the way that it's worked in my life, with friendships and in my marriage - and now that I'm a dad, also with my son. This idea of going off by yourself and having a think, and exploring your own internal process... Wouldn't it be nice if there was just some sort of version of AA you could go to where you're surrounded by like-minded individuals who could help you out with your own stuff? Sometimes you have to face your own demons by yourself.
IGN: In the second-to-last episode, Kevin comes to this realization at the end of his trek in the Underworld when he blows that whole spot up for himself and learns what he's done wrong and his propensity to want to flee, but then we learn by the end of the finale that he's gone back to Australia every year on his vacation to look for Nora. It's been so many years. Is this almost a penance that he's paying? There was a huge chance that he'd never find her but he was still willing put himself through this on the off chance that he would. Was this a form of self-inflicted punishment or was he just overly hopeful?
Lindelof: I feel like I have to talk articulately now for two minutes in order to satisfy what you just said. No, I'm being honest. I couldn't give a more articulate or insightful version of what you just said than you. As you were talking I was just nodding my head and going like "This is the writer's dream." When the observer, particularly someone like yourself who really watches this stuff on a much higher level, not to diminish any other member of the audience, but you are a professional for a reason. You just said everything that was our intention. So the answer is yes, to all of what you said. It's a self-imposed penance. I'll give you some commentary behind it though, which is that there was a scripted line that we had Justin [Theroux] say in the early takes when I was down there in Australia and he was shooting the scene where he was basically yelling at Nora when he comes to the house at the end and he's explaining what the intermediary years have been like for him. And he said the line in the first couple takes but he kept tripping up on it and the reason I think was because it felt very expository and very writer-y. It was coming off as forced.
So we we told Justin to just stop saying it. You don't have to say that part anymore. But the gist was every year I come out here on vacation and show your picture around and the line was "And I tell the people at home that going mountain climbing or fly fishing because I feel too pathetic to tell them what I'm actually doing." And the line was sort of important because it gave Laurie cover. Because then Laurie didn't even know Kevin was searching Australia for Nora so it made it feel less like she was keeping a huge secret from him. But also sometimes you over-write things and so when an actor is tripping up -- and Justin is totally game so it's happening for a reason -- we just had to ask, would he actually say that to her in that moment? I understand why the audience might want that information but why is he telling Nora that he was embarrassed to tell the people back home? Also that his excuse was mountain climbing or fly fishing? It just took you out of the moment, so we cut it. But just because you gave such an insightful restitution of what we did I feel like it was important to give you a little nugget of data on that end.
IGN: Thank you. It's a very interesting nugget too because I was wondering about Laurie. Not just the fact that she's alive but also that she'd keep that from Kevin. With the choice to have Laurie be alive though, how did you think viewers might react given that so many of us thought she'd died back in "Certified?" Essentially, we thought we'd said our goodbyes and here she was alive and with a child. How did you think her resurrection, as it were, might be received? And was she convinced not to kill herself because she heard her kids' voices on the phone or did she never intend to kill herself at all?
Lindelof: I'll speak to how I think others might absorb this piece of information, that Laurie is alive, and how that impacts the story of "Certified" and I'll also tell you a little bit about what was happening in the writers' room and on the set because I think it's very holistic and inter-twined, starting with the writers' room. When we broke that story, and then Patrick Somerville and Carly Wray wrote that script, we were pretty much committed to the idea that she killed herself. That she was dead. And Amy Brenneman emailed me, because I wasn't going to be down in Australia before the scene where she went overboard, but I was going to be there for the scene where she says goodbye to Kevin on the porch of Grace's ranch. She was like, "I kind of need to know." And I said, "Look, I'll always give you an absolute when it's an absolute and this is a very big question you're asking, but I'm 90% sure Laurie is not coming out of the water" and she was like, "Okay, I understand."
So all that being said, all the best things we've ever done on The Leftovers, even when they felt really risky or dangerous, there was a level of our guts telling us that it was the right thing to do. And even if the audience might reject it or thought we were crazy, we're into this. The fact that Laurie killed herself - it just wasn't sitting well. We were feeling really angry and uneasy about it. Then the dailies came in -- Carl Franklin directed that episode -- and there's this amazing shot of Laurie basically cutting across the water with the early morning light on her face and she looks brave and courageous. And my brain started asking, and my heart started asking, "Is this what someone looks like when they're about to go kill themselves?" Also, have we earned Laurie killing herself after all Laurie's gone through and been through, all the tragedies she's suffered and all the things that happened in this episode, is her solution to this to give up? Is there actually nobility in her suicide? And then we watched the scene where Tom and Jill call her and she puts on the mask and goes under and it was really upsetting to us. Maybe upsetting because we were saying goodbye to a beloved character but also maybe upsetting because it felt like it was the wrong choice.
The more important part of the narrative here is that the writers' room kind of shut down after this, emotionally. Normally we were unanimous, and there were intense and passionate conversations about the show, but we would always land on something that we agreed on and felt good about. The first time this didn't happen was during this part. And we couldn't break episode seven or eight. Was it separation anxiety? Was it the difficulty that the end was coming? We'd already talked so much about what the ending was going to be and what [episode] seven was going to be, and that it should be exciting that we were going back to this "International Assassin" space, but the morale was super low. And I went to each writer in their office, one by one, to basically ask what was going on and they all answered "Laurie." They couldn't shake it. And so if the audience was going to be feeling this way after the episode airs, I didn't want them to be feeling this way. I didn't think we should change the ending of six and it's still going to strongly imply that she's not coming up - but what would happen if she did? What would happen if she decided not to kill herself?
Then we started asking some of the questions you were asking, which is "Well, when did she decide to not kill herself?" Was it when she was going out on that boat? Was that already a declaration of life? Was it a "F*** You" to suicide? "Oh Nora, you pitched me this scuba diving idea? Well, I'm going scuba diving as an affirmation of life. Kevin talks about being drowned? I'm going under the water with a scuba tank on and I'm going to be under there breathing. I'm going to come up." And then, the major thing that happened was when she speaks to Tom and Jill she doesn't tell them she's in Australia. She doesn't tell them she's about to scuba dive. So were she to kill herself they would go, "Wait, mom died in a scuba accident five minutes after we talked to her? And when we asked her where she was and what she was up to she didn't say she was even in Australia?" It was too suspicious and it would totally negate the idea of the selfless faked accident. All signs were just pointing to the fact that Laurie was coming out of the water.
Then the next dailies that came in were of the scene on the bluffs where Nora talked about the beach ball and when Nora asks why anyone would want that job, of squeezing the air out of the ball, I was like "Yeah, I don't want to squeeze the air out of the ball" and that's what it felt like by killing Laurie. And then Laurie agrees to be Nora's shrink and I though, "What if she's still Nora's shrink fifteen years from now? What if Laurie is her one connection to the real world? Does that feel right?" And it did. So she was Schrödinger's Laurie. She was both alive and dead for a certain period of time. And then she was alive. So that was all the thinking behind the choice. As for the other part of your question, asking will the audience have that experience that we would have when you kill a character off at the end of one movie and then suddenly... "Ripley's alive again?" You know, "They built a new Terminator? It feels like a cop-out. I went through the emotional experience of letting go of this person and now it feels like a cheat." I can't speak to that. I don't know what people are going to feel about Laurie still being alive but I think the way we re-introduce Laurie in the world, in service of Nora -- and it's almost a comedic scene, like in a rom-com when someone tells their best friend "the guy asked me to the dance" and the friend says "maybe you should go" -- I hope that people go with it. But more importantly, I don't think that we earned Laurie's suicide. And maybe the reason for that is that suicide is never really earned. There's always a level of confusion surrounding it. Unless someone is dying from an illness that's going to cause a lot of pain for them, does suicide ever make quote unquote sense? Probably not. But making the decision I made freed up the writers' room to do the work they needed to do for seven and eight, so I'll never regret making that decision.
IGN: Some of the most fun I've ever had watching and reviewing a show came with this show, and this season in particular, because of the dialogue I've had with other critics and reviewers. You know, we have the privilege of seeing these episodes ahead of time so there were many moments throughout this final run where we'd email or message back and forth about what we'd seen. We'd ask questions and have little debates too. One notable one had to do with Laurie and if she'd decided to kill herself. The other big one came with this finale and the question of whether or not Nora was telling the truth with her story. I'm not looking for a definitive answer, but there's definitely an ambiguity there in place because we're never shown the world. We don't catch glimpses of it. It's just all her words. Is her speech meant to be an answer and a non-answer at the same time?
Lindelof: Absolutely, but then I also feel like it's a cop-out to say "It's whatever you want it to be." I certainly get frustrated when people say that it can be read both ways. And while it is true here, that it can be read both ways, I'll say that we had to have a very defined intention in our writing and I am very clear on what our intention was. All of the writers would unanimously agree that when we broke the story and the script that our intention was rock solid, at least when it came to "Is Nora's story true?" By the metrics of truth. Did that happen? There's version A where she didn't go through -- either the machine didn't work or she stopped them from sending her through -- and she basically went into self-imposed exile and has been living this whole time off the grid. The other version is that she did go through and everything she says to Kevin quite literally happened. Those are the two fundamental possibilities and we had a very clear intention was writers as which one happened.
Now here's something that's interesting. Mimi Leder and I, she directed the episode, and Carrie Coon and I, never had the conversation you and I are having now. Which is what is true? Carrie never asked and Mimi never asked. And as we talked about it we sort of all tip-toed around things and just said "You've read the material and there it is." The reason The Leftovers turned out the way it did is because I trust Mimi more than anyone. And certainly the actors too, I'm not going to tell you what our intention was. Let's see what you get out of it. And then when we were standing there down in Australia and Perrotta and I were in video village with Mimi as Carrie played the scene with Justin for the first time, and Kevin says "I believe you" and Nora seems surprised and says "You do?" and he says "Of course, why wouldn't I believe you? You're here." As I was standing there, I'm not telling you what my intention was or wasn't, but I was like "I kind of believe her too," you know? Is that because I want to believe her? Has Carrie's intention now trumped my intention or confirmed my intention? Does that matter? What is the fundamental nature of truth? Oh my god, I need to go have a cup of coffee! [Laughs] I guess that my answer is that I think that it's amazing that you guys are all talking about that, and that some people are even saying that it doesn't matter to me if it's not literally true. What matters to me is that the story enables Kevin and Nora to be together. And other people will say that it absolutely 1000% matters to me. I need to know whether or not it's true so now let's go through Nora's story beat by beat and determine the legitimacy of it. There's space for that too. I do think that others have asked me over the past couple days, about the finale, "Where are you, Damon, on whether or not Nora's story is true?" and again I think the one thing that's unfair to describe here is my intention. But what I will say that now that I'm watching it alongside everyone else is that I want to believe it. And we'll leave it at that.
IGN: Yeah, I feel that within the dialogue about whether she's telling the truth comes the end of the speech where Kevin is just happy and overtaken with emotion in the moment and that on one side, if anyone's going to believe a story like that it's someone we've see go through pretty miraculous things in other worlds. So he's going buy it. The flip side of it is that even if he didn't buy it, it doesn't matter because the story is the toll. It's the toll to pay for being with her again and being able to give the relationship another shot. He'll pay whatever it takes. He's just happy to be sitting across from her. So yeah, there are two sides because he, out of anyone else on the show, would believe this other world exists, but also because of the circumstances he'd would buy into it no matter what, even if he didn't believe it.
Lindelof: You just did it again, Matt.
IGN: [laughs] Sorry...
Lindelof: No, don't say you're sorry. You just said a better version of anything I could say. But I would just add that - let's say this show has defined three theoretical places that can be defined as "here." One of those places is the real world in which the majority of the show takes place and we're very clear on what that place is. And then the other here is what you defined as the Underworld. The place Kevin goes to when he dies or loses consciousness where he's an international assassin and/or the president, that's another here. Then the third here now, which is a theoretical space which Nora describes, is where all the departed people live. What's really important is that at the end of the show, both Kevin and Nora are making an open declaration that the here they are now going to be in is the real here -- the here where the show has taken place -- and that they no longer need to go to those other heres. That should be the takeaway.
Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association (TCA). Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at http://ift.tt/2aJ67FB.
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