Exclusive: Creator Barry L. Levy talks all about his new superhero show, Me

Every streamer is swamped with superhero content nowadays. Disney+ has the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Netflix has The Umbrella Academy. Prime Video has The Boys. The list goes ever on. Now, Apple TV+ has jumped on the bandwagon with Me, from creator Barry L. Levy (Vantage Point, Paranoia).

Me is a superhero show unlike any other. It follows Ben Visani (Lucien-River Chauchan), a boy who realizes that he has the ability to shape-shift. The 10-episode coming-of-age series chronicles Ben's early days with superpowers, coming to terms with who he is, and how he deals with his newfound powers.

We were able to talk with Barry L. Levy all about this new series! Read ahead for our exclusive interview:

WiC: Tell our readers a little about Me — What can everyone expect?

Barry L. Levy: Me is the coming-of-age story of Benjamin Visani. It just so happens that five years from now, Ben will be a superhero, but not today. Today he’s 12, living in a newly blended family, starting a new school and with unanswered questions about his life. In our pilot, Ben learns that he can be anyone in the world… the question becomes, who does he want to be? This captures the humor, the drama, the thrills and even the emotional pull of what it feels like to try and make sense out of the world when you don’t know who you are. 

There’s so many superhero and sci-fi shows out nowadays — What about Me do you think makes it stand out from the crowd?

I always considered Me to be the story of a “someday superhero.” We’ve all seen shows that explore child superheroes and we've seen others that delve into real world crises from the start. What I wanted to explore were the specific moments and the unique life experiences that would eventually shape our hero’s life. Our approach was always to focus on the head and the heart that would help develop him into the superhero he would one day become. When we meet him in the pilot, Ben's mother has just remarried and he's thrust into a new school alongside a new stepsister. It’s a lot for anyone to handle all at once, but what we tried to do was bring an authenticity and an emotional realism to Ben's day-to-day so that the audience could feel everything that he’s feeling and therefore understand how and why he reacts as he does. 

We rarely see shapeshifting portrayed the nuanced way we see it used in Me, where you dive into how Ben's powers affect him mentally as well as physically — What was your process of developing this superpower, and the challenges that Ben has to face with it? 

First of all, thank you for saying that. Central to Ben’s character (and his ability) was the idea that he was a deeply empathic person. Shapeshifting into others became a facet of his empathy and so I always saw this as something that would have to be deeply felt/experienced by him.

Me tells a very unique origin story. What were your influences for the series? And which superhero clichés did you try to avoid?

The biggest influence for me, personally, has always been my kids. My wife and I have identical twin daughters and then we had a son two years later. Our son, also named Ben (not a coincidence :)), was always tall for his age and so was often mistaken for a triplet. From a fairly young age, the conversation with him was often geared toward helping him figure out who he wanted to be on his own — separate from them. This conversation, became a bedtime story, which then sparked the idea for this character. I mention this here because inherently, the creation of this series was always grounded in telling a story that was authentic to our family’s experience. So much of Max’s larger-than -life personality can be connected back to my daughters and how they relate to their brother. All of which is to say, that I never consciously tried to avoid superhero cliches or tropes, but instead tried to find ways to ground everything in realism so that nothing would ever feel inauthentic or cliche.

Then when, I hired Michael Dowse to search as the director of all ten episodes as well as an Executive Producer, our influences were always character based. ET, Super 8, and Stand By Me were all examples. In each example, what stood out to us was the respect and deference paid to young characters. Those films were always about kids but you couldn't dismiss any of them as being simply a kids film. They were for everyone and they resonated with all audiences.

Do you have a favorite scene? If so, which one is it?

I certainly have a few, but my single favorite would probably be the dressing room scene in Episode 7. What makes it so special is how many people really stepped up and created something indelible. From Abby (Max), who had to perform a 4 page dramatic scene entirely on her own , to Mike who did an extraordinary job working with Abby to bring out such a special performance, to Bella Gonzales, our one-of-a-kind cinematographer who captured it all so beautiful, to Emma Rose Mead, our production designer who was faced with the challenge of creating such a small and yet expansive space in which to make this scene happen and countless others. I can think of very few moments that required so much from so many people to make them pop like this one.

Season 1 has a pretty open-ended finale. Do you have plans for more seasons? If so, what can fans expect to see next?

Some of this will depend on Season one’s performance but what I can say is this: when I first pitched Apple TV+ on the show, I explained my own personal connection to the material AS WELL AS how, in success we would be building the Apple Cinematic Universe in a wholly unique way. Instead of leaning upon source material as other universes had done, I wanted to allow audiences to grow up with each of the characters in the universe. In order to do so, we planted the seeds throughout the season, both in the storyline as well as dropping easter eggs in all ten episodes.  

What challenges did you face in making the series, and how did you overcome them?

Every production has their fair share of challenges. Every movie or series I’ve been a part of always has a handful of moments that you look back on in disbelief — how did we ever get out of this? What’s interesting to reflect on here is that it always felt like the challenges were never insurmountable. Was it hard to find actors to play Ben and Max? Sure, but our casting director, Josh Einsohn (This is Us, West Wing, Love Victor), scoured at least a half-dozen countries over the course of six months. The second we saw Lucien-River Chauchan, we just knew. Just like we knew the minute we watched his chem read with Abby Pnoiwsky, that these two were destined to be siblings. Similarly, until I met Michael Dowse, I wasn’t sure how we could bring this series to life in a truly special and cinematic way… but the second that I saw his vision, it all just seemed obvious. I suppose answering the question of how did we overcome challenges — it was by hiring great people and empowering them to do their best work. 

I was really impressed by how Me managed to captivate me.  What advice would you give to writers wanting to create new superhero stories?

I love this question because I think that the creation of any stories, superhero or otherwise, really starts with having a specific point of view. For me, this was always a love letter to my family, told with layers of in-jokes and references as well as out of sequence in the way that I love telling stories. I have no control over how others might receive all of this, but I know for me that it feels authentic and real and that is ultimately the thing I have to go by.

Have you got any more projects out this year? What's up next for you?

I have a couple of things currently in the works but probably the closest one to the finish line is an English language adaptation of a Korean movie,  which is being financed independently. 

Me is now streaming on AppleTV+. Thanks to Barry L. Levy for talking with us!

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