Westworld creator Jonathan Nolan doesn’t “give a s*** about Twitter or Facebook”
The Hollywood Reporter recently gathered several powerful TV producers — including the people behind hit shows like Stranger Things, The Walking Dead and Jessica Jones — for a free-wheeling discussion about the industry. They’re calling it the Genre Roundtable, and it’s well worth a watch.
Among the attendees is Jonathan Nolan, the co-creator and showrunner of HBO’s Westworld. He sounds off on fan response to the show, which could be laudatory or deeply critical depending on where you looked.
“One of the things that was galvanizing about the first season was that Reddit community,” Nolan said, probably referring to the Westworld subreddit, where fans pick apart and debate every detail of the show. Nolan is less complimentary of the discourse on Facebook and Twitter:
"I’m not on social media. I don’t give a shit about Twitter or Facebook. I think they’re broken systems. The problem on Facebook or Twitter is that you can’t vote people down. You can only vote opinions up. And that sounds polite. It sounds more diplomatic; it actually means the conversation veers towards negativity. With Reddit, one of the things we liked about that community is that you can vote opinions up and down, so what that means is it actually winds up being a more civilized conversation. And that community rallied around the show out of the first season."
Yes, because Reddit is an entirely civilized place all of the time forever. We can’t help but read this and wonder if Nolan doesn’t prefer Reddit over Twitter and Facebook because the Westworld subreddit is made up of fans not apt to criticize the show, whereas it’s harder to avoid dissenting voices elsewhere. Plenty of fans had issues with the second season of Westworld, including us here at WiC, but we’re glad Nolan has found somewhere where he doesn’t feel threatened.
And the fans on the Westworld subreddit are passionate about the show, so we get that Nolan would feel grateful. Before the start of Westworld season 2, Nolan and wife Lisa Joy got playful with the community when they held a Reddit AMA and promised to reveal the entire plot of the new season ahead of time. It turned out to be a prank, but it was all in good fun. “It’s hard not to be charmed by a group of people who are putting as much thought into putting as much time into thinking about your show as you did when you put it together, so we have a special affinity for that community, and we felt like the best way to celebrate that was to fuck with them a little bit.”
Nolan also talked about his brother Christopher Nolan, best known for directing movies like The Dark Knight and Inception. The brothers wrote the screenplay for The Dark Knight together, and Jonathan remembered the decision to cast Heath Ledger as the Joker:
"Chris had a good meeting with Heath Ledger, and no one got it: I didn’t get it, the studio didn’t get it…everyone was coming at Chris and saying, ‘We don’t see it,’ and the fan community was fucking pilloried for it."
Good thing Christopher Nolan stuck to his guns; Ledger’s performance earned him a posthumous Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and is beloved by fans to this day.
“For me, casting — beyond writing — casting is the most dangerous moment in every project,” he continued. “And the fans have extremely strong feelings because they know these characters…they think they know these characters as well as you, and that’s totally justified, but you’ve kind of got to stick to your guns.”
You can watch the entire hour-long roundtable special below. In addition to Nolan, guests include Jason Blum (Sharp Objects, The First Purge), Simon Kinberg (X-Men, Deadpool, Legion), Shawn Levy (Stranger Things), Salim Akil (Black Lightning), Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead) and Melissa Rosenberg (‘Jessica Jones’):
Lotta talking.
Next: Evan Rachel Wood (Dolores) on Westworld season 2: “I had no idea what was happening”
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