RINGER Nestor Carbonell & Jay Faerber Interviews

Nestor Carbonell dishes secrets on Ringer‘s Victor Machado and reflects on his time on LOST, while writer Jay Faerber discusses how he made the move from comic books to the CW serial.

Assigment X grabbed a chat with Nestor Carbonell to get his thoughts on his Ringer character, Agent Machado, and his time on LOST.

On how he made his way from LOST to Ringer:

I always look around for just good material. TV, now more than ever, is obviously great writing, great storytelling. There’s so much of it in TV now. I picked up the script, I fell in love with the story. I loved the thriller element of it, I loved the serialized element of it and I was drawn to it. But for me, it’s not about what medium it’s in, it’s really about the script.

His take on LOST’s Richard Alpert (before his backstory was revealed):

I thought [Richard’s connection to Mittelos Bioscience] was real. When I’m introduced in Juliet’s [Elizabeth Mitchell] back story as a man recruiting her, I thought for the longest time, “Yeah, I’m part of this corporation and I’m involved in bioscience.” I had no idea that I was going to be [virtually immortal]. I mean, the stakes were enormously high on LOST and the parameters were incredible. It remains to be seen what the parameters on this one will be. I think it’s safe to say we’re not going into paranormal territory – at least not yet [laughs]. But I wouldn’t be surprised if this man has some really dark stuff in his past. I think that it’s any actor’s dream to get to play the stakes that we got to play on LOST. Having said that, yeah, there’s something to be said for getting to play something in a really grounded, gritty way.

On Machado’s Ringer arc in comparison to Alpert’s journey on LOST:

I think maybe [they're] in the same trajectory. He’s a bit unflappable initially, we think. But he’s pretty driven. So I imagine if he doesn’t get what he wants pretty soon that maybe his wheels will go pop. I don’t think that he knows the obvious, which is that [Bridget is] just hiding in plain sight as her sister. I think he knows that she’s full of it, but she is certainly a match for him, and I think he’s enjoying that whole cat and mouse process.

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Jay Faerber

Spinoff caught up with Faerber, the writer of comics books like Near Death, Noble Causes and Dynamo 5, to find out about his Ringer experience.

On how he ended up writing on Ringer:

Last year I got accepted into the Warner Bros. TV Writers Workshop, a kind of training ground for TV writers. A lot of studios and networks have them, and Warner Bros.’ program is one of the most well-regarded. Each year thousands apply, and they take around 10 people. The program lasts about seven months, and once you successfully complete it, the head of the workshop arranges meetings for you with various Warner Bros. showrunners in the hopes of getting you staffed. I met on a few shows — mostly pilots that didn’t end up getting picked up — and ended up getting an offer to join the Ringer staff. And I’ve been a staff writer since we started the show.

On how writing for TV differs from working on comics:

There are similarities, of course — both mediums require you to think visually, and tell a story with more than just words. But as collaborative as comics is, TV is 10 times more collaborative. Instead of just talking with an artist about how you envision a scene looking, you have a meeting with half a dozen department heads.
The writing itself is much more collaborative, as well. At any given time, our writers room has as many as eight writers, plus a writers’ assistant. We all work together to break an episode, then the writer assigned to that episode goes off and writes the outline, and then the script. So the actual writing is fairly solitary component, but we talk out each episode in great detail; it takes a week, on average, to break an episode.

On how the Ringer writer’s room keeps track of all the serialized arcs and plot twists:

Our writers room has white boards on three of its four walls. Two walls continue a kind of chart that tracks what happens to each character in each episode. As the season has progressed, of course, those boards got more and more crammed with information. The other wall is where we break a new episode, hammering out beats for each storyline and then finally blending all the beats together into a cohesive episode.

Source: Assignment X | SpinOff

Ringer returns from lowatus with “It Just Got Normal,” Jan 31 on the CW

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Tagged as: comics, interviews, Jay Faerber, Lost, nestor carbonell, ringer