Exclusive Interview: Revenge’s Mike Kelley

February 23, 2012 World Screen
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PREMIUM, February 23: ABC’s Revenge is one of the hot new dramas this season. Creator Mike Kelley talks to World Screen Newsflash about taking a classic theme and updating it with intertwining plot lines, love-to-hate characters, lavish lifestyles and high-octane drama.

 

WS: The show blends two stories: one that moves forward with the lead character, Emily, taking down, one by one, the people who framed her dad, and in parallel another story that moves backward and through flashbacks shows why she’s doing it. Where did that dual storyline idea come from?
KELLEY: In The Count of Montecristo there is a linear story that takes place over decades, and you don’t really have the luxury to begin the story at the beginning on television. So it was really important for me to give Emily proper motivation in an eye-for-an-eye sort of way. We really had to understand what was driving her and to get the audience on her side. It was really important to let them know exactly how damaged this little girl had been by what these people had done to her family. It started out as a way to dole out information so that people could understand but it’s become its own strain of story. We have a complete storyboard in the writers’ room about what we want to tell regarding Emily; regarding her father, David; regarding Victoria [who framed David although she had a relationship with him] and a few more secrets that we’re holding onto right now.
 
WS: Revenge has qualities of a soap opera, melodrama and a thriller.
KELLEY: It’s combination of things. You try to embrace what’s working. I try to [blend] what people are enjoying and the kind of stories that I like to tell. What is so fun for us in the writers’ room was to discover that this show can be all those things. I had a funny experience when I was getting my haircut and the guy who was cutting my hair said, “Oh, I’ve been watching your show. It’s such a guilty pleasure.” And I said, “Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying it.” And he said, “All those bitchy people doing all those nasty things to each other.” And then the girl who was getting her hair cut next to me said, “Are you talking about Revenge?” And he said, “Yeah.” And she said, “That isn’t just a guilty pleasure, it’s a total pleasure and I’ll tell you why.” They had this big argument. What I took away from it was, well this is awesome! Two people are getting two completely different experiences out of it and enjoying it at the same time. You can see it for whatever you want. If you want to tune in for nasty people doing awful things to each other, great; if you want to tune in for the more emotional aspects of the show, you can because they’re certainly there. We’re in the hands of a lot of really committed actors that are quite capable of going to a lot of different places. In the writers room we were surprised to learn that we could tell so many different kinds of stories, whether it’s a love story from the past between Victoria and David or whether it’s a really splashy take down of a very terrible person or whether it’s a slow burning arc of a guest star that reveals himself or herself to be a surprising character. Or whether or not it’s a romantic triangle between Emily and Jack and Daniel. The show lives in a lot of places, so we’re really lucky to have that broad canvas.

WS: Did you map out the episodes at the beginning, or are some of the story lines evolving as you’re going along?
KELLEY: I came with a long-term plan, a medium-term plan, and we also have some short-term solutions, but you never know whether or not you’re going to connect with an audience. And so, my initial plan was I had written and conceived what was going to happen on the beach for the engagement party, and if we only got 13-episode order, I would have concluded the series on that and sold it as a close-ended story. But then we did seem to connect with an audience and people are really embracing the show in a way that’s really gratifying and surprising. But I didn’t want to drag out or inject more filler story to take us all the way to the end of the season simply because we could. So I decided that we would wrap up the engagement party mystery in episode 15 and let our audience know that we’re respecting their time and their investment and that we want to deliver a lot of story. We want them to trust us to not drag them along, so we’re going to stick to the plan that we had of wrapping that story up in a timely manner and launching what we’re calling a new installment of the Revenge show—an exciting incident that will bring us to the conclusion of season one.

WS: Are the aerial views in the show actually of the Hamptons but the show itself is taped in Los Angeles?
KELLEY: Exactly. We went to the Hamptons early in the season and we took some aerials and we’re using them as our interstitials. But the show is about to do something that’s really kind of cool—we’re going to leap ahead into the future, into the winter. I always thought it would be really interesting to tell off season stories in a resort town, sort of like the Overlook Hotel in The Shining, that sense of ghosts and emptiness and there’s something dark and surprising around every corner. We’re going to spend a handful of episodes going into Thanksgiving and Christmas and the dark winter and we’ve sent a crew to shoot in the Hamptons in the winter with all the trees dead and the lawns brown or covered with snow and we’re going to use those coming up very shortly.

 
WS: Will there be any forgiveness or redemption in the series?
KELLEY: We’re finding that it’s a bit of a rollercoaster. There will be moments of redemption, there will be moments of clarity and forgiveness, but overall, we like the theme of revenge and what makes people go to that dark place, so a lot more people will be getting a lot more revenge; it’s not just Emily. We have a whole plan for a much larger mythology about the show and we’re holding back on it because we’re finding that what’s working on the show are the interpersonal relationships. So we’ve got a plan to draw this series out in a really good way for many seasons and hopefully the audience will continue to come along for the ride.
 
But to answer your question, I started the show with a quote from Confucius that says, “When you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” And the voiceover says, “This is not a story about forgiveness.” So there are two places we can end the show: one is with Emily having succeeded in destroying the people she set out to destroy, and destroying herself in the process, or there’s Victoria and Emily standing across the field of fallen bodies and forgiving one another. The only real way out of revenge is forgiveness but that’s a long way off for everyone on the show.