by Kenn Gold
Ryan Murphy, creator and showrunner for FX's nip/tuck, recently spoke with MediaBlvd Magazine about the changes in store for season 5 of the hit show. With a major move of locale from Miami to Hollywood, changes can be expected in every aspect of the show.
Question> For season five, they are announcing a 22 episode order, which is significantly more than we’ve seen for the other seasons. Are all 22 going to be a part of this season? Or are you getting a head start on season six?
Ryan Murphy> Well, I always look at it as season five because pretty much the arc when you begin a different seasonis about what is the overall theme? Where does it begin? Where does it end? So this year is a little funky because it’s almost like what I consider one season has kind of been broken up into three parts.
So the first part is going to be the first eight. And that will start in October and end with our Christmas episode and then we go down for a couple of weeks. And then we do the next six, which will air the early part of 2008. And then we take an even bigger break and then come back and we do the back eight or nine.
So, yes, it’s weird. I’ve never done that before, but the show does very well for FX, and they wanted a big order. And they asked me if I would do it and I said yes. I think it’s a challenge to sort of have one year broken up into those chunks. But I think it was very clear to me by moving the show to Hollywood, what that arc was.
So I do kind of know where it ends and I obviously knew where it began, so it’s been kind of fun and interesting that way. And it’s also been a challenge, though, because when you are doing TV, you get on the train. And the train leaves the station and you can’t not have something to shoot for that day.
We started writing this year in December. We didn’t go into production until June, so we had a pretty big head start. But I think that it is sort of being billed as either three mini seasons or one big season, if you want to look at that through 14. And then that story line will continue for the back eight.
Question> The show routinely follows some of the current medical oddities in the news. What can we expect in season five, anything that we’ll recognize?
Ryan> Well, you know, the cases are always funny and sometimes you luck out. Because I remember when we did the face transplant, I got a lot of heat when we were shooting it, like this has never happened. But I had been reading about it and I knew that they were kind of close to doing it. And then I think literally two weeks after it aired, they had the first face transplant. So I think it was on the cover of The New York Times newspaper, right on the front page.
I don’t know if we have anything this year that is plucked from the headlines. Some years that doesn’t happen. We continue to just sort of do very unusual, strange cases that we spend a lot of time researching. And sometimes they’re hidden in the very back of the Internet. We’re doing a lot of weird stuff this year, plastic surgery cases, cases that are really sort of forward thinking from Australia and Europe. So I don’t want to give too much away, but they are sort of cutting edge.
And, of course, everything we do is usually true. It sort of has to be because we work with medical advisors and they say “okay how is that procedure done? Let’s copy that for our show.” So, yes, I hope that answers your question.
Question> I wanted to ask you a little bit about the Hearts and Scalpels, the show within the show. Is this kind of a way for you to work out any old beefs you may have with various network execs? And also, how do you get into the mindset of writing hacky dialog for that show?
Ryan> You know, the thing that I was adamant about is that we’re not attacking any specific network or anything like that. It’s not really about that, it’s very insulated. The idea was basically just to sort of satirize our own show and the things that people have said about it over the years, which I think are always hilarious.
But the show, the Hearts and Scalpels show really is sort of an amalgamation between our show and ER and Grey’s Anatomy, where you have sometimes inappropriate romance scenes and these incredible scenes of carnage, which don’t really make sense, but are very funny to write.
But the Hearts and Scalpels stuff is really, sort of, a spoof of medical shows. It’s very, very, very kind of insane and frenetic and it’s shot really chaotic like ER. And it has insanely flamboyant characters like our show. And then it has bizarrely sort of romantic moments as they’re pulling people’s brains apart, like Grey’s Anatomy. So it’s all that stuff.
I don’t send anybody else up, but myself. Oliver Platt, who’s really brilliant, is kind of playing me, which is very, sort of, fun to watch. And it’s not like he is not me, but its sort of me plus other people I know who have gone through that job and the stress of that job. You know, the weird thing that happens to you when you sort of do something and then the show becomes really, really successful and your life changes. The show is about, and has always been about transformation, so I thought that would work.
And I also thought if the guys move out to Hollywood, how do we do the show biz thing without doing the Rodeo Drive angle? Because they have an office on Rodeo Drive now. But I didn’t want to do that socialite of the week thing, coming in for Botox. So I thought them getting the jobs as medical advisors on a Nip Tuck like show would be kind of great.
It’s really been fun. Everyone who has seen those episodes, that is by far their favorite thing so far this year, just because they’re so in your face. And the actors we got are great. We’ve got Bradley Cooper, and Oliver Platt and Paula Marshall and Jennifer Coolidge and we have Sharon Glass coming on. So I’m excited about it.
Question> Is it difficult to write bad dialog, or do you just get to have fun with it?
Ryan> Yes, we just purposefully make it insane. Like, we have a Latino softball player who’s possessed by Satan. It’s like, what a weird thing to say about someone who comes in. And then the doctor comes in with all of this sort of grandeur and gravity says we’re going to have you sliding into home plate by the end of the week, that kind of stuff. It’s fun to write that stuff.
And the purpose of that show is that it’s bad. Then Sean and Chris start trying to always say then that’s not how it’s done, but Oliver Platt doesn’t really want to hear it because he’s into the drama of it all. I, certainly, have had those fights with my medical advisors, so I really love it.
And it’s been so popular that we’ve gotten contacted by a couple of people, advertisers and such, who want to turn Hearts and Scalpels into its own online show. But I don’t know how to do that, because it would be so much work. But we really want to do a whole episode later in the year that is all Hearts and Scalpels, just because it’s so popular.
Question> Could talk a little bit about the decision to move the setting from Miami to Hollywood or Los Angeles and what drove that. Was it just the ease of filming the outside scenes or what was behind that?
Ryan> No, you know it was really nothing, but my own boredom. I had a choice after season four not to come back to the show because my contract had expired. And I sat down with John Landgraph, who’s really fantastic, who’s the head of FX. And we talked about, okay, what would it take for you to come back? What are you interested in doing? And I simply said, I just feel, the show is by nature, a soap opera and I felt I can’t keep telling the same story every time.
It’s four years, there’s no other way to sort of do a Julia/Sean scene. It has to be in the kitchen and I’m just tired of it. And he said, “Okay, well what are your ideas?” And I said, “I really want to move the show to a different city.” And I love the idea of them going from being big fishes in a small pond to the opposite. And John was very supportive, as was Peter Roth and gave me the money to do it, and that was really it. It was just about, okay if I’m going to come back and commit to two more seasons of this show, I need something to be interested in about.
And I almost felt the show was very L.A. anyways. And it’s what L.A. is, sort of the purveyor of trends and pain at the same time, and desperation. And I thought that I was interested in tackling those themes. And I was interested in kind of exploring the dark side of the Hollywood success, as well as the funny side. And so, everybody agreed. And that’s really why I did it. There was no other reason, other than okay if I’m going to keep doing it, I have to be sort of inventive because I felt the show was always reinventing itself every year.
And we keep joking that if it goes seven, eight seasons, where do we go? My dream is to set it in Belize or some tropical island or maybe Nip Tuck Paris where they have to let me shoot there. But it’s such a great opportunity for you to be able to say to somebody, “I want to do this.” And they say, “Okay, great, try it.” And that’s exactly what happened.
Question> Are you still running into problems with the PTC?
Ryan> I’m sure the show will always be a problem for them, but I don’t listen to it. I don’t read about it. I’m not interested in it. I don’t give it an ounce of brain power or oxygen. You know, I never really have. I’m not interested in what they have to say. I think they do have the right to say it, just as I think I have the right to do a show that’s about what it is that has warning labels on it and airs at 10:00 p.m. and is clearly not made for children.
So I’ve never understood the argument about you’re corrupting children when I don’t think, if I were a parent, I would not let my child watch this show unless they were a certain age. Everything I seem to have ever done has sort of ignited some sort of weird controversy. And I just sort of accepted early on that it’s always going to be that way, because I look at the world in a certain way.
I wasn’t interested in doing something for everybody. It’s a very specific audience that luckily keeps growing and I’m surprised by it. But I support their right to be able to say what they have to say. I really do, but I don’t listen to it.
Question> With the move to LA, does this show also become about fame, as well as about perception and transformation?
Ryan> Yes, you know it does. And that’s sort of a theme I think of the whole year, all 22 episodes, about the idea that I’ve always been obsessed with. Does fame corrupt? And I think it’s the exact same thing. They say it in the first episode, Sean says to Christian, “You getting famous is not going to fill up that hole that you felt, that you’ve had since you were a child.”
And I’ve always felt the same way about the beauty industry. People turn to plastic surgery for the same sort of panacea effect. They’re still looking to have something fixed. And I think that fame is the evil mirror of beauty. And I think I’m finding in the scripts that they’re really intertwined and they’re actually about the same thing. It’s about having somebody look at you, notice you, see you in a way that maybe you don’t even believe and maybe isn’t even the case, but gives you some quick hit of acceptance. So the dark side of fame is the sort of through line of the season. That’s very true.
Question> Can you talk a little bit about 4 Ounces? I saw that FX had just picked up the pilot order for that. Can you talk a little bit about that and how it contrasts Nip Tuck?
Ryan> Well, that’s just a working title, that will change. I was interested in doing a show that was completely the opposite of Nip Tuck. I think that Nip Tuck is very shocking and in your face, and bold and bloody and outrageous in its way. And I wanted to do something that was much quieter and more psychological. I keep making jokes that it’s kind of my version of a family show, which I think it really is.
I think that people when they hear about it, they think, “Oh, it seems so outrageous and it deals with the transsexual.” Well, the truth of the matter is, it doesn’t really deal with just being a transsexual. In fact, that’s not what the show is about at all. The show is really about a broad sort of canvas. And I’m speaking for myself, I think everybody has a side to them that they would like to get out there, another person they would like to become that they feel for whatever reasons they cannot. So the show has like seven or eight characters who are leads, and all of them are going through the exact same sort of inner battle in their lives.
But I think Nip Tuck is a very cynical show and a very satirical show. I think that the new show that I’m doing is much kinder and gentler. I think in that way, that to me is the next level of shock. It’s like, okay, what would be shocking for me? It’s to sort of figure out a way to do something that is gentler and not in your face, but is also sort of evocative and dramatic and powerful and says something about the world we live in.
So I wrote it and they loved it and they picked it up. I’m shooting it in a month. I’ve gone out to all of my first choices for the leads and every single one of them said yes, which has never happened to me before. But I think it’s because they all sort of got the power of that idea, that everybody has a secret life and a secret side.
Question> How will Christian being a grandfather affect him in the upcoming season.
Ryan> You know, not at all. It’s funny you say that. It’s a line that is thrown at him to sort of demoralize him and make him feel bad and sort of as a taunt, but he doesn’t accept it. He’s not interested in going there because he still feels like he’s 20. And he still acts like he’s that. So he kind of makes one or two retorts back, but it doesn’t land with that character. He would never think that, he would think, you know, screw that I look fantastic. I’m not a grandfather. And that’s exactly how Julian plays it.
Question> So he’ll continue to be a philanderer?
Ryan> Oh yes, until the end of time.
Question> You mentioned that you were very hands on about creating your vision and bringing it to life and you work with the sets and with all the other departments on the show. Have you ever sat down and worked with the actors to develop their characters and worked with them and had them help develop their characters and their relationships?
Ryan> Yes, of course, particularly with the leads early on, but after a couple of years, they kind of get it. You don’t really have to do that. But you know, for instance, Rosie O’Donnell is shooting right now. I really admire her and I like her take on the world, so we wrote an episode. She had some ideas and some suggestions, so, I listened to them and worked with her on it. You know, I think that’s important.
I also encourage a lot of adlibbing, if it’s appropriate. I like people to bring their own thing to the show. And then in editing, we can decide does it work or not, but that is important to me to do.
Question> Can you comment on the overall theme of season five?
Ryan> I think I said it, which is about the good and bad side of fame and how that can liberate and also corrupt. I think that is what the whole season is about, all 22 episodes.
