RE-RUN: Co-Creator Joshua Brand Shares the Secrets Behind Northern Exposure's Magic

Summary

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Northern Disclosure – RE-RUN: Co-Creator Joshua Brand Shares the Secrets Behind Northern Exposure's Magic

Original Air Date: March 31, 2026
Hosts: Rob Morrow, Jeanine Turner
Guest: Joshua Brand (Co-Creator of Northern Exposure)
Podcast: Evergreen Podcasts

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Episode Overview

In this landmark re-run episode, Rob Morrow and Jeanine Turner—stars of the beloved dramedy Northern Exposure—welcome co-creator Joshua Brand for a deep exploration of the series’s origins, enduring magic, and its distinctive blend of humanity, humor, and literary resonance. The trio revisits the influential second episode, “Brains, Know-How and Native Intelligence,” delving into themes of human fallibility, pride, and forgiveness, while lifting the veil on behind-the-scenes creation, casting, writing, and the unique atmosphere that made Cicely, Alaska, an enduring touchstone in television history.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Revisiting “Brains, Know-How and Native Intelligence” (00:48–10:12)

• Emotional Resonance & Humanity

  • Jeanine Turner is profoundly moved while rewatching the episode, highlighting the way the show captures “the poignancy of humanity… how it points out the fallibilities of humans,” particularly the theme of pride (03:13).
  • Themes of forgiveness and amends are explored: “There was forgiveness and mercy, and I think that’s one of the things that moved me so much.” (03:36)

• Character Arcs and Introduction

  • Rob reflects on Barry Corbin’s (Maurice) episode as a “debut” for his character, emphasizing how each episode is designed to introduce a new facet of Cicely’s inhabitants (04:48).
  • John Corbett’s (Chris) emergence as a central, poetic, philosophical presence is discussed, with Turner admiring how the Whitmanesque quality brings poetic depth and intellectual flair (06:09).

• Notable Quote

  • Rob Morrow: “I’m amazed how it doesn’t feel dated… The themes of the show are universal and eternal.” (02:01)

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2. The Benevolent Universe & Show Philosophy (04:48–10:12)

• Humanity’s Imperfections
  • The writers’ intentional presentation of deeply flawed, real people as a counterpoint to sanitized TV heroes is a cornerstone of the show’s lasting appeal. Turner: “The arc of watching someone having their spontaneous, fallible human reaction and then coming to terms with it… that’s one of the things that moved me so much.” (03:13)
  • Morrow calls the setting a “benevolent universe,” noting, “It’s not Pollyanna…there’s something about all these characters finding their humanity that is timeless.” (04:48)

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3. Bringing Joshua Brand Into the Conversation (10:12–11:06)

• Turner’s Gratitude

  • Jeanine expresses deep gratitude to Brand: “You will always be a special person in my life for believing in me—to portray Maggie O’Connell.” (08:54)

• The Show’s Literary DNA

  • Brand’s background in English literature is a strong undercurrent in the series. “I always believed good readers make good writers, and I was a big reader. So that’s kind of where I came from.” (11:06)

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4. The Origins & Creation of Northern Exposure (10:43–19:48)

• Unconventional Development

  • Explains how a request for a “medical show” (of which Brand had no interest after St. Elsewhere) became a fish-out-of-water story inspired by the films Local Hero and Never Cry Wolf (15:03–16:34).
  • The show’s modest $867,000 pilot budget directly inspired the town’s population of 867 (15:22).
    • Quote, Joshua Brand: “That’s why we made the population of the town 867, because they gave us $867,000 to make it.” (15:22)

• Creative Risks Thanks to “Under the Radar” Status

  • Northern Exposure’s status as a summer series meant low network oversight, allowing for more literary, philosophical, and aesthetic risks (18:31–19:48).

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5. Native American Representation & Advisor Stories (21:55–24:18)

• On Representation, Authenticity, and Language
  • Brand discusses the importance of authenticity, and a memorable conversation with their Native American advisor, Jerry:
    • Quote, Joshua Brand: “18 million of us have been killed because we were Indians. We have earned the right to be called Indians.” (26:50)
  • The evolution of language and respect for people’s chosen identities—Brand underscores the tension between past and present nomenclature (28:43–30:04).

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6. Writing and Directing: The Arc, Casting Process, and Character Complexity (24:18–36:15)

• Ownership and Directorial Determination

  • Brand fought to direct the pilot, viewing the show as extremely personal: “It was very proprietary to me, the show. It was the most personal thing I had done.” (24:18)

• Casting Reflections

  • Brand, Morrow, and Turner recall the unique casting process and how literature and poetic references (Freud, Jung, Whitman) wove into character dialogue.

• Forgiveness, Flaws, and Antiheroes

  • Brand explains the writing ethos:
    • “Saints make bad role models because they’re perfect… The most interesting characters are flawed. And the most interesting characters say the wrong things at times.” (33:24)
    • “Everything is forgivable except for malice… The only thing that would be unforgivable… is intent to hurt.” (36:15)

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7. The Writer’s Room, Collaboration, and Episode Two’s Construction (38:32–49:11)

• Showrunner’s Task

  • Brand clarifies his main role: “I spent all of my time, most of my time on story rewriting and editing, and I spent a lot of my time on music because I loved it.” (39:05)
  • He explains the showrunner norm of rewriting freelance scripts and details how “Brains, Know-How and Native Intelligence” was shaped, with novelist-turned-writer Stuart Stevens assigned the episode (41:55–45:29).

• Character Insights

  • Brand values complex, idiosyncratic characters, and the freedom given to actors. Chris Stevens, notably, was a nod to Stevens the writer’s own last name (49:01).

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8. Why Northern Exposure Endures: Timelessness & Relevance (53:10–59:16)

• Timeless Appeal

  • Young fans continue to discover Northern Exposure on streaming platforms. Brand reflects:
    • Quote, Rob Morrow: “Why do you think the show is still relevant and still captures [new fans]… It’s a bit of a phenomenon, I think.” (53:10)
    • Brand’s Response: “At the core, what makes things timeless [is]…what it means to be human and to be alive and to be flawed… Death, pain, love, anger, conflict. Those are things that…when you watch the show…remain.” (54:06)

• Musical Choices & Visual Pace

  • The show avoided contemporary music and fast editing to maintain a timeless quality and let “the camera resonate on a face… or a three shot,” giving audiences space to feel the environment and emotion (64:28).

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9. Closing Reflections: Character Complexity & Legacy (59:16–68:45)

• Character Complexity and Realism

  • Brand credits actors and storytellers for embracing characters’ contradictions: “Let actors act… You don’t want the audience to be ahead of the story… Sometimes they think they’re ahead, but you don’t let them be. That’s what gives pleasure.” (59:16)
  • On casting, even risky relationships (e.g., Holling and Shelly): “You knew that he loved her. And so the audience will forgive you, the audience will give you latitude.” (61:36)

• Gratitude and Legacy

  • Rob and Jeanine express heartfelt thanks to Joshua Brand:
    • Rob: “You gave us this life, you know, you gave both of us a life that I don’t know how we would have had had you not said, yeah, you’re the guy.” (65:21)
    • Jeanine: “How many shows sit back and quote Walt Whitman or Jung or Freud… You’re a genius, Josh, and I thank you for the show that you created.” (66:30)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Living in Cicely:
  “People wanted to live in Cicely. Yeah, that’s a good ending point.” – Rob Morrow (65:21)

• On Creative Freedom:
  “If somebody’s going to pay you money to do something you want to do, you’re a fool not to do it.” – Joshua Brand (15:22)

• On Embracing Flaws:
  “Saints make bad role models because they’re perfect, and so nobody can be perfect… So once you accept that we’re all flawed, then the only thing that sort of… is forgivable except for malice.” – Joshua Brand (33:24–36:15)

• On Timelessness:
  “At the core, what makes things timeless… is what it means to be human and to be alive and to be flawed and to be conflicted and to have opposing thoughts at the same time in one person.” – Joshua Brand (54:06)

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Selected Timestamps for Key Segments

• Opening reflections & episode 2’s power: 00:48–07:27
• Poetry, literary influence, Walt Whitman arc: 06:09–07:27
• Joshua Brand introduction & show creation: 10:12–19:48
• On Native American portrayal and language: 21:55–30:04
• Writing philosophy & the role of flaws and forgiveness: 33:24–36:15
• How episode 2 was written and collaborative process: 41:55–49:11
• Why Northern Exposure endures: 53:10–59:16
• Character complexity and the show's legacy: 59:16–68:45

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Final Note

The episode is a treasure trove for fans—rich in thoughtful analysis, nostalgia, and unguarded conversation about creativity, artistry, and the universal challenge of being an imperfect human. The warmth, respect, and affection among the hosts and guest is palpable, leaving listeners with a renewed appreciation for Cicely’s “benevolent universe” and the legacy of Northern Exposure.

Next episode preview: John Corbett joins to discuss bringing Chris Stevens to life.

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Transcript

[Jeanine Turner]

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[Joshua Brand]

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[Rob Morrow]

the world moves fast. Your workday even faster. Pitching products, drafting reports, analyzing data. Microsoft 365 Copilot is your AI assistant for work built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other Microsoft 300 apps you use, helping you quickly write, analyze, create and summarize so you can cut through clutter and clear a path to your best work. Learn [e-mail] M365Copilot hello listeners, it's Janine Turner.

[Jeanine Turner]

We took a break, but we will be back with new episodes of Northern Disclosures soon. In the meantime, we're bringing back one of our favorite episodes from the archive. Enjoy and we'll see you soon. Hi. Welcome to Northern Disclosure, our Watch podcast about the famous and brilliant Northern Exposure with Rob Morrow and Jeanine Turner. I am Jeanine Turner. So welcome to the show. We're thrilled to have you here. Our special guest today is our we've been joking with him off camera, our king, our creator, our God, our father, Joshua Brand, who is the creator of our show and the genius behind the show, along with John Falzi, who is no longer with us, but Josh is, and we're thrilled to have him with us today. And Rob, I'm going to just, we can talk about a little bit about the second episode, Brains Know how and Native Intelligence. I watched it this morning and I literally cried. And in a minute I'll tell you why. But welcome to the show, Rob.

[Rob Morrow]

Thanks, Janine. You look beautiful. And I have to tell you, I watched that episode last night again to remind myself. And you know, it's funny what objectivity does in distance because when I was I, I have memories of doing it, but I also have this distance. And, and I, I've just now watched a couple perform the first two episodes and I, I'm falling in love with Maggie. I'm falling in love with your performance. You know, I'm seeing things that I didn't really clock. I just wasn't clocking because I was, you know, narcissistic or whatever. But, you know, it's, it's really lovely to go back. And that episode, you know, we were also innocent, right? I mean, it was eventually we became aware of our, of our success and that informed the show for good and bad ways. But at that moment, we were we were all kind of thrown into this adventure together, you know, led by Josh and John and watching the show and all the different elements of it, the mysticism, the. The. The. The literary qualities, the. You know, and. And as I was saying before, the. I'm. I'm amazed how it doesn't feel dated, you know, it's just. It's amazing to me.

[Jeanine Turner]

I think you've hit on all the. All the points. I. When I watched the show this morning, I literally teared up and cried because it's just what. What I can't wait to talk to Josh about is the poignancy of humanity, how it. It points out the fallibilities of humans. And I think that the main thrust of episode two was about pride, you know, and about how pride keeps us from fulfilling our true destinies and just the humanity and how all the characters have an arc. And also in each episode, each character kind of had its debut. And I think that in this episode, too, it was Barry Corbin's who just rises, I mean, to the challenge. He was so good. I mean, but Barry Corbin's episode. And Rob, you're always, always solid. Just so solid. And Darren Burrows was so vulnerable. But just the humanity of the episode and the arc of watching someone having their spontaneous, fallible human reaction and then coming to terms with it and resolving it at the end and kind of making an amends and how people resolved their issues and how there was forgiveness and mercy, and I think that that's one of the things that moved me so much. What about you, Rob?

[Rob Morrow]

I remember Josh describing the show as, you know, it was a benevolent universe, and it's so clear, and it's not like a saccharine, you know, universe. It's not like. It's not Pollyanna. But there's something. There's something that. That about all these characters. Yeah. As you say, finding their humanity, that is timeless. Which I guess is part of the reason, you know, aside from the fact that people are still wearing plaid and still driving pickup trucks, you know, it. The themes of the show are universal and eternal, and. And that becomes clear. And I think, as you said, what I guess is happening as we're seeing the series roll out and as we do, each episode is. Each episode introduces the world to the character. And this was Barry's. And Barry, you know, rose to it, you see why he was cast. And, you know, and again, I saw, you know, John Corbett, I forgot how great. I mean, I knew how great he was, but like, even in the. He had. As we Said in our first podcast, Corbett didn't have one line in the pilot, but then he comes. This, you know, beautiful Whitman, you know, poetry, and, and, and. And this philos. This philosophy that's so fascinating. So it's interesting watching each character get introduced.

[Jeanine Turner]

It is. And you mentioned Walt Whitman. I'm a poet, so. And you are, too, because you're a songwriter. You know, we're both songwriters now, later in life. And. And I'm a poet. And you wrote the, you know, one. An endorsement for my book. Thank you very much. But, but the poetry of Walt Whitman and the fallibility of Walt Whitman and how Maurice talks about. He just wants a hero. Right. That a lot of times we don't need to know all that went on. We just need to have a hero. And then at the end, Barry Corbin, also, Maurice says, I would defend him. I would defend him if he were standing here. I would fight for him, and he would fight for him. No matter what his preferences were in any personal regard. He would fight for him because he cared for him as a human being. And that's when I started to cry because. And Josh. We'll bring Josh on in a minute. But I mean, that. That arc of Barry's where he was like, I can't believe he's talking about this, but really he was saying that because he. He didn't want Walt Whitman. He wanted Walt Whitman just to stand on his art alone and not to bring his personal life into it. But he said, I will stand up for him no matter what his personal life is. And I think that that was the, the arc that was so moving. It's when I started to cry.

[Rob Morrow]

Yeah. Yeah, it's. And, you know, we can talk about the writers with Josh. Stuart Stevens wrote or is. Is credited with writing the episode. And Peter o', Fallon, who I fell in love with when he showed up, he hadn't done. I don't know if he did any except commercials. He was a big commercial director, and he just had such a great. I don't know how you felt about him, but he had such a great vibe. And, and, and, and, and as you know, I think Josh and John's goal was to try to make the shows like little movies, independent movies. And Peter had a very cinema, you know, disposition. And so the show looked beautiful. I mean, it was. And, you know, you know, we haven't spoken about Jimmy Heyman, who we have to get as a guest at some point. Who. The lighting, it just. It was, you know, beautifully lit.

[Jeanine Turner]

Well. And the environment was so incredibly Gorgeous. I mean, just when you went to talk to Chris in the morning, you know, out there with the water and how you had to jump in the water. And I think that, that the, the, the environment of which we, which was actually the, you know, Roslyn, Washington, out in the Cascade Mountains, which is where we really were to sub as, as Alaska, but Alaska was a star of the show for sure. Well, perhaps now's a good time to bring Joshua Brand in. What do you say, Rob? Shall we bring in our creator?

[Rob Morrow]

I'm excited. I'm excited to have him here. Yeah.

[Jeanine Turner]

Okay. Well, now we're going to bring in Joshua Brand, who always have a special part, special place in my heart for Joshua Brand because he believed in me and he hired me for this role. And I have vivid memories of the audition process, but he will always be a special, special person in my life for believing in me. To portray Maggie o' Connell and Joshua Brand, we want to bring in Joshua Brand, our creator, along with John Falzi, who is no longer with us. But Joshua Brand, I want to bring you on, and as we bring you into the room, I just want to say Joshua Brand, Brand, the show that you created. And I know all the fans want to hear all the behind the scenes, your sense of poetry and humanity and depth of artistic and cultural and just, just intellectual depth made the show what it was. And I was looking it up this morning, and Northern Exposure was nominated for 116 awards. And I found awards, by the way, that Rob, I didn't even know I was Nomin nominated for. I'm like, I didn't know I was nominated for that award. And 116 awards and two Peabody. Pulse pulsar. Peabody. Peabody. I think they're Peabody's, right?

[Rob Morrow]

I was Peabody.

[Jeanine Turner]

Yeah, Peabody, Two Peabody Awards. But, Josh, you believed in Rob Morrow. You believed in me. And I will forever love you for that and for creating these amazing, wonderful characters. To everybody, welcome Joshua Brand, our like father, our God. Yay. Welcome, Josh.

[Joshua Brand]

Thanks. Yeah, Grandfather. Actually not the father anymore, but yeah. Well, thanks for inviting me.

[Rob Morrow]

Yeah, we are thrilled you're here. I'd love maybe to get the ball rolling, you know. Can you talk a little bit about how this came about? First of all, how you became a TV writer and then how. And when you hooked up with John Falzi and, and then how this, what the genesis of the show was.

[Joshua Brand]

Well, I'll, I'll try to give you a very abridged version because it would take up all your time and then we wouldn't even have time to say goodbye. But my background was in literature. I was an English major, and then I went to graduate school in English literature. So I didn't go to film school. And I wasn't a. You know, a guy who knew all the great movies and stuff like that. And I didn't really know people who had done that. But my background was in books. I knew books and plays and poems, and so that's kind of where I came from. And I always believed that good readers make good writers. And I was a big reader. I read all kinds of things. I still do. And in terms of John and I, we both were story editors on a show called the White Shadow. We weren't a team, and we were the only two people who wrote. All the producers weren't writers, and so we basically had to do all the episodes. We had to do all the stories and farm out the scripts. And back in the day, there were no writers rooms. I mean, the people.

[Rob Morrow]

What does that mean, story editor? Just. Can you just tell us about it?

[Joshua Brand]

Well, it was just a title. It's not a producer. You know, it was. It was. I had to write six episodes of the show before they made me a story editor, which today, if you write an episode or two, you're a consulting producer. So it was a very different time. And. But we learned how to work quickly because this was when. And Northern Exposure as well, when we did full seasons, it was 22 episodes. And. And so after that, we both worked on St. Elsewhere, and after that, I left, and then John chose to leave, and then people wanted to hire us together, and we did a couple of other things. And then we had a deal at Universal, and somebody came to us at Universal and said that there was a. Universal had a. I forgot what the word was, but they had a deal with CBS and for a summer series. And at that point, they didn't do summer series. There were no summer series. Now the season is 12 months a year. But then there was a fall season, and that ran, and then it stopped in the summer. And there also weren't shows on distant locations. Now, of course, you know, I'm in New York, Jeanine's in Texas, Rob is in Los Angeles. You can live anywhere. And we all have zooms. But back in the day, everything was coming out of Los Angeles for the most part. And so you had to be in Los Angeles. I know. Jeannine, when we cast you, you were in New York, I believe. And so when you were put on tape, we never actually got to see you in person, before casting you and Rob, you were in Los Angeles, even though you might have lived in New York.

[Rob Morrow]

No, I met you in New York. I met you at Universal. Yeah, I read for you and John.

[Joshua Brand]

Oh, there you go. So essentially, what we were told was they wanted to do a medical show, and I had zero interest in doing a medical show because I had done St. Elsewhere, and I was just done with that. And I don't like repeating myself. I'm not one of those guys who, you know, will just do a legal show or a cop show. And I generally haven't repeated myself, and intentionally, because I'm much more interested in the world than I am in myself. I like myself well enough, but I'm much more outwardly directed. I like people who are not like me. I like seeing things that I don't see every day. And it's interesting.

[Rob Morrow]

You pay homage to Saint Elsewhere in the pilot, though. You remember that?

[Joshua Brand]

I did, yeah. I mean, because, you know, it was like, you know, first of all, I have to tell you that when I, John and I decided to do it, everyone told us not to do it. Our lawyer, our agent. It was like, not to do.

[Jeanine Turner]

Not to do what? Not to do Saint Elsewhere or Northern Exposure.

[Joshua Brand]

Northern Exposure, they said it's a summer series. No one's going to watch it. They're not giving you enough money. That's why we made the population of the town 867, because they gave us $867,000 to make it. Well, now, you know, pilots, they give you $10 million or $15 million or $20 million per episode of Severance or something I read somewhere. I mean, so it was. Yeah, and so people said, don't do it. You're just wasting your time. But for me, my feeling has been and always has been and still is that if somebody's going to pay you money to do something you want to do, you're a fool not to do it. You know, if it's something you want to do, it's kind of because, you know, you don't know what the future is going to hold. And it was something I very much wanted to do. And I was influenced by two movies in particular. Movie Local Hero, made by a guy named Bill Forsyth, who was a Scottish director, and he made some. Three beautiful movies and a movie called Never Cry Wolf. Both were fish out of water stories. And Never Cry Wolf was about a guy who goes to, I don't know, northern Canada to study wolves.

[Rob Morrow]

Was that a book? Was that a book? First Never Cry.

[Joshua Brand]

Yes, it was. It was a book and it was made by Carol Ballard, who was a cinematographer. So it's extraordinarily beautiful to look at. And there's one scene in that that. I mean, I forgot the actor's name, but he falls asleep in the middle of nowhere and he hears a sound and he wakes up and it's like 10,000 reindeer run by him as he stands there naked in it. And there were two people who were Native Americans and. And I just had never seen people like that anywhere ever depicted on screen in anything. And I thought they were, like, so real and so different.

[Jeanine Turner]

And which. Which project was this? Which project was this?

[Joshua Brand]

Well, it was in the movie Never Cry Wolf. And so when. So then when we make Northern Exposure and we wrote the pilot and we. We went looking for. We knew we couldn't shoot it in Alaska because it didn't have the infrastructure and we only had 800 some odd thousand dollars to make it. And Universal was doing it as non union. So you may not remember this, Rob, but the crew, they would say, well, who wants to be the key grip? You know, and it would be like, oh, you're the key grip, you know, and, you know, Jim Hyman, who we hired, he had done one independent movie that I had seen that was based on. It was about an American teacher who was studying karate in Japan or something, or China. And so we were hiring people and it was non union. And Universal didn't even put its logo on there. We have this guy, Bob Scotus, and it says whatever it says, Bob Scotus Productions or something like that. Then, of course, when the show became successful, then Universal said, wait a second, Union, we'll put our name up on it. And, you know, but for that first go round, nobody thought anybody was gonna see it. And it was.

[Jeanine Turner]

Do you remember our reading when we all sat around a table and read the show in that little old, you know, office. It'd been an office complex. And we sat around that table and you and Josh were there and all the cast, and we read through the, you know, the pilot for the first time. And I remember that you. You looked over and we talked about this last week, but you said, you know, we're thinking about having a moose go through the opening credits. You know, you could just take so many chances, I believe, because it was a summer series, right? And just to stick with your poetic literature aspect, I think that the intellectualism of the show and the way that you always, you know, talked about Freud or Young or Walt Whitman or Whatever it might be, you could use Chris in the Morning to do that. That was what really was unique about the show. And was it not because it was a summer series where you could take all those risks for eight episodes? I believe that if you had told people what you were going to do in a regular season, the networks and studios would have said, absolutely not. But because it was a summer series, you guys were like, free for all. It's like, we can do whatever we want. And then the public loved it and responded to it. That gave you the creative power then to continue with that kind of trajectory. What are your thoughts about that?

[Joshua Brand]

Yeah, I think that's true. I think we were flying under the radar, and it was difficult in a lot of ways because there wasn't money. But at the same token, I mean, the natural beauty that, you know, now we see shows done all over the world and, you know, it's not unusual, but at that time, you know, you were watching. There were three networks and you were watching shows that were shot in Los Angeles. I mean, and, you know, in rooms where Universal was known, they would just change the, you know, the background and that you would be in a different room. I mean, nobody cared about the visual aspects of the show, but we were in this natural beauty. It was like wherever you put the camera, it was just the audience and me, the director and the writers and the actors. It was like, look what we're seeing. And so, yeah, we were flying under the radar. They were just writing off of a commitment. I mean, the studio.

[Rob Morrow]

But it's funny. It's funny, you know, as you were talking about how, you know, I remember the SCOTUS of it all. I'll leave it at that. But the. When the show started to show promise, we were shooting in warehouses, not proper sound stages, and they sent up all these engineers to shore up the ceiling because they thought our fly, you know, our things were going to fall on our heads. And I just remember thinking, well, where were they last year? We were working all under this last year. But I just want to ask you one. One thing about. You know, I'm so touched by what you said about. I mean, it's such a great quality as a writer, obviously, but that you were. That you're so interested in other people that's, you know, other people's stories and that that's how you kind of created this. I always have found it fascinating that I believe you and John had never been to Alaska before you wrote the show. But more specifically, the capturing of Native American sensibilities is so specific and beautifully rendered. And I don't remember. There was no one on the staff that was Native American. But how did you go about that? And how did you. Or how do you inhabit those? Like Anku in the. You know, Ed's uncle. Like, he's. So the cadences and the philosophies and all that. Where did you get all that?

[Jeanine Turner]

And I just want to interject, Josh, real quick, that that was before the Internet, right? So it's not like you could just look something up on the Internet. But Rob is right. I mean, the whole Native American element, especially that was really prevalent in the second episode was just beautiful. So where was that Genesis?

[Joshua Brand]

Well, we did have a Native American advisor now. I mean, I've told this story and I will run into trouble or people always. Because, you know, back in the 70s, it was very common that, you know, did black people want to be called black? Did they want to be called African American? Was it okay to call them Negro? The same thing was with Native Americans. And I would go to our. And his name was Jerry, and he was a guy who was sort of a respected guy in the Native American community. Although. And I asked him, I said, I have a couple of stupid questions to ask you. And I said, one is, why do you all have long hair? And he said, well, you know, we believe that when you go on to the next world, the next life, you have to bring your hair with you. Okay, makes sense. I said, why do you all have such great teeth?

[Rob Morrow]

What are you going to do?

[Joshua Brand]

I got to get a wig. I don't have to bring it to the next level. That's. But. And I said, well, how about you all have such great teeth? And he said, bridge work. They were fake, you know. And actually, if you see Never Cry Wolf, it's called Never Cry Wolf because it's about these two Native Americans, and they kill these wolves and they use the money from the dead wolves to get bridge work. And then I said, what do I call you now? I was directing the first episode, and of course, Universal didn't want me to direct it. And I guess it was because they thought I was going to have too much control or something. I don't know what they thought.

[Jeanine Turner]

That was one of my questions.

[Joshua Brand]

Or I'm not doing it. And they said, well, we're not going to pay you for. You know. And I said, pay me whatever. You're going to pay me whatever the minimum was. Pay me. But I'm directing it or I'm not doing it. And they said, so they let, so they had to let me do it.

[Rob Morrow]

And is that because you just felt that you, you clearly knew what the show needed to be and you didn't want to have to have an intermediary?

[Joshua Brand]

Well, I think it was a couple of things. First of all, it was very proprietary to me, the show. I, I, I, I just felt that it was very personal. It was the most personal thing I had done. As I said, I'm not a guy who writes autobiographically. I don't write about being a Jewish kid whose parents were immigrants growing up in Queens. But by the same token, whatever I write about comes out of me, right? So I don't, you know, I could write science fiction, and I don't know what it's like to live on another planet and to be an alien, you know, and nobody does, but people write it. And so they.

[Rob Morrow]

Yeah, it's funny you say that though, because, because the, when you describe the person, you don't write about you. That's exactly what Joel Fleischman is.

[Joshua Brand]

Well, but, but it is. Well, I mean, he, Joel Fleischman is in certain ways like me, but he's not, I mean, I'm not, I'm not an upper middle class Jewish kid. My father was a tile setter. He was an immigrant. I didn't come from that world of the Upper east side, and, and I didn't come from that. But he was like me and he was Jewish, and he was from New York, and that's the fish out of water. And you put him in Alaska.

[Rob Morrow]

You know, he was from Queens.

[Joshua Brand]

He was from Queens, you know, and Queens is an interesting place or uninteresting place. You can listen to Matthew Malcolm Gladwell does a podcast with Paul Simons, and Paul Simon's from Queens as well. And it's interesting what it means to be from Queens in New York. But in any case, that's not really the point. So I asked Jerry and I said, well, what do I call you? And he said, let me tell you a story and I'll try to make this very brief. But he said he went to a Native American convocation, or whatever it was called. There were hundreds or thousands of different tribes. And they said, what are we going to be called? This was in the 90s, and people said, oh, we should be called Native Americans. We should be called this. And he said one guy got up, an elder, very respected guy, and he said, 18 million of us have been killed because we were Indians. We have earned the right to be called Indians. And I said, whoa, that's heavy. And I said, so can I call you Indians? He said, absolutely.

[Jeanine Turner]

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[Joshua Brand]

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[Rob Morrow]

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[Joshua Brand]

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[Jeanine Turner]

But that brings up a really interesting point. You were really willing in this episode to not be politically correct in the series. To not be politically correct. Right?

[Joshua Brand]

I was directing the pilot and there would be a point where I needed a couple of extras. I said, I need a couple of Indians down here. And all the white people went, whoa, there he goes with Indians again. And now I know people would say, well, now it's not okay too. But you know, I've thought about it as, as a Jewish person because, you know, when I die, I want to be cremated. And Jews aren't supposed to be cremated, they're supposed to be buried. And I spoke to a rabbi and I said, Listen, 6 million Jews were cremated because they were Jews. Haven't Jews earned the right to be cremated? And he said, I know how you feel emotionally, it makes sense, but I can't go that far. So my point is, the words change, the nomenclature changes over time. And of course, I'll call anybody what they want to be called. I mean, you know, if you tell me you want to be called something, I'll call you that. What do I care? I mean, it's not sweat off my back, but it was really. It was a very powerful thing to say. 18 million people were killed because they were Indians. They were called Indians.

[Jeanine Turner]

You know, Joshua, I want to.

[Joshua Brand]

Not as an insult. They used it as. Now, of course, time has changed. This was 35 years ago. And so now people are. It's different. But at that moment in time, it was. So it's. And I've said it at the time, people I know when I say it, they get, you know, they bridle. It's kind of like saying, you know, I don't know, other words that are not necessarily intended to be, you know, insulting. I mean, I didn't do it with a lot of people.

[Jeanine Turner]

Josh, you said you said something to me along the. I don't know when it was first season. Perhaps if you were to read the dialogue that we write for Maggie o', Connell, right. People would just say, I can't believe you're writing that. I can't believe she would say that. I can't believe she would do that. But it was the way that as the inherent aspects of your writing and the arc of the episode, A, but B, what we brought to it as actors, that we brought this kind of level of humanity to it that was accepted. It was accepted. I mean, you know, the crazy things that Rob comes out of Rob's, you know, Fleischman's mouth and comes out of my mouth and comes out of Barry's mouth, right? And all the things that Barry says that we do, you go, oh, my God, listen to what he just said. And he just said this, this, and this. But at the end, there's an arc where you just go. And I think it's a lesson for today's society where you just go. You just go deeper into the. The aspects of their humanity, right, that they aren't bad people. They're just struggling with their own sort of life lessons. And at the end of the episode, they had this kind of forgiveness and mercy and grace and life lesson that redeemed the character. And so it wasn't so much about a word he said or a description. He said, you found out what was going on behind it. And I think that's what made me cry in the second episode. When Barry Corbin says, you know, I would stand up for Walt Whitman any day of the week, no matter what kind of person he was. If someone says negative things about Walt Whitman, I'm there to protect Walt Whitman. It doesn't matter what his sexual preferences were. I'm there to defend him. And I just started to cry. You know that. That's the sense of humanity, where we're fallible and we make mistakes. And I think you're touching on something. There were, like, words thrown out that today people would go, oh, my gosh, I can't believe you would say that. But the way y' all took it with the arc of humanity. Can you talk about that a little bit? There's the juxtaposition of the characters. And I just want to say this one last thing. You know, Maggie o' Connell was from Grosse Pointe, Michigan, where she was really rich, but now she's in, you know, Alaska, and she's Fixes her own plane, you know, fixes her own plane and her plumbing and kills her own deer and chops her own wood. And Barry Corbin was this astronaut, you know, Maurice was this astronaut, but he was a deeply, deeply sensitive person that ironed his girlfriend's underwear. You know what I mean? And then you had Ed, who, like, loved. Who was just so Native American in his spirit, but he loved Woody Allen movies. And I think it was this kind of juxtaposition of the struggle within our own humanity that you touched on that makes the show so evergreen, in a way. And what are your thoughts about that?

[Joshua Brand]

Well, I think a few things. I think saints make bad role models because they're perfect, and so nobody can be perfect. They're not a good role model to have a saint. If you were a saint, wonderful. They'll make a statue for you. You're Catholic, and that's great. But they're bad role models because human beings are flawed. We're all flawed, every single one of us. To think you're not flawed is to not know yourself or not understand yourself. So since we're all flawed and we're not saints, no one is a saint except saints. And they're bad role models because they're not like us, the rest of us. They're just different than us, but all of us are flawed. So once you accept that we're all flawed, then the only thing that sort of. And people. Northern Exposure, it's not really a feel good show. There's a lot of death in Northern Exposure. Animals, people. Death is a part of life, and it's not, you know, there's a gravitas to that and people understand it. In the show, Howling People hunt, they do all of that stuff. I think that when you understand that all human beings are flawed, you can. There's a difference between liking characters and characters being nice. Tony Soprano is not a nice guy. But you like them. So you can like characters who are not nice when they're nice. You don't necessarily like them because they're just nice. Maybe.

[Rob Morrow]

And why do. Why do you like them? Like someone like Tony Soprano or, you know, what is it. What is it that allows us to like them even though they're doing. They're killing people?

[Joshua Brand]

That's a more interesting question. I mean, I think. And there are. It's not just Tony Soprano. I mean, all of anti heroes are. And there's a whole movie for 30 years were all anti heroes. You couldn't do heroes. Everybody was an anti hero. You know, Dog Day Afternoon or all the Dustin Hoffman movies. I mean, there. You know, there's. There's an. I think what there is, is part of it is the actor. Just like there are certain actors who are inherently funny, and then there are actors who are smart and can figure out where the funny is. You know, I work with Billy Crystal, who's really funny. And, you know, and I would say, billy, not everything has to. Basically, you don't have to fall off your chair laughing. He goes, oh, you mean the other funny. You know,

[Jeanine Turner]

so.

[Joshua Brand]

So when you're saying what makes us like us like them? And there's certain actors you like, you know them, and then there's certain actors you don't really like, and they play big great bad guys, you know, I don't know.

[Rob Morrow]

So it's why casting is so important. But there's something more. I think what you were. What you're alluding to, there's something more to.

[Joshua Brand]

There is something to it. But what I'm really saying is part of it is that it's what I can. What I can say is that we're all. All flawed. So essentially the most interesting characters are flawed. And the most interesting characters say the wrong things at times. And nobody ever says the right thing all the time, unless they're a Stepford wife. I mean, who goes through life always saying the right things. And if they are just saying the right things all the time, you think they're programmed. It doesn't feel human. And so I think it's a different. It's not a way that sort of. Certainly back in the day, network Television, you know, they had all these rules about, I mean, you couldn't even have, I mean, for you guys, you couldn't have two dark haired people, a man and a woman, star in the show together. I mean, they had rules, really. You're going to be too ethnic. So that went out of the way and then there's different things that come in and replace it, but they're all kind of nonsensical. And for me, the key to Northern Exposure is the everything is forgivable except for malice. What is malice? It's intent to hurt, Intent to harm. We hurt people, we get hurt, we harm people, we are harmed, but it's not intent. The only thing that would be unforgivable to the people in that town is not that you hurt people, not that you kill somebody, not that anything, you know, manslaughter, but if you intended to do it. And that's something. But I think, you know, I mean, you know, David Chase never understood about the show. I agree, I agree. I agree completely with that universe. Well, it doesn't mean that you don't have different opinions about people. It means that if you say you're in love with a. You as Maggie did that great story, you know, with the dog, where she falls in love, you know, and she's in love with the dog. And we saw them, you know, love is love. I have a dog. You can love animals the same way you love people. I mean, it's not. You can love them as much as you can have a horse. I know people who love their horse. I know people who love people of the different. A different sex. The same sex. Love is love. It's a feeling that you can have for things. So. So some people don't understand that.

[Rob Morrow]

Can I ask you something? I'm curious about how the responsibilities were split up like between you and John. And I always sense that somehow, percentage wise, more of the show was on your shoulders. I don't know if that's true or not, but I'm also interested in like, you know, Stuart Stevens is credited with this episode, but my guess is by, on episode two, you guys, your hands were all over every word of it. So how did you and John break it up?

[Joshua Brand]

Well, we. Most of the time that I spent on the show, again, this was. I had John and I both did. We were the only writers on, when we worked together on the White Shadow and then on St. Elis where we did all the stories and took all the story credit because I felt something was being taken away from me. I was very young. I was 32, but I didn't do it on Northern Exposure. I spent all of my time, most of my time on story rewriting and editing, and I spent a lot of my time on music because I loved it. But the other things is real. And I didn't take credit on anything unless I wrote it. John and I. First of all, you know, the idea of the moose was John's idea. And thank God, because we couldn't find. You can't train a moose. And we couldn't get a moose. And I was ready to give up on a moose. And, you know, and he said, no, we got to get a moose. We got to get a moose. We got to get a moose. And we got a moose. And. And I shot that moose. I directed that. And we only had him for, like, four hours. And it made it look like he was walking through town.

[Rob Morrow]

I've never seen a better performance from a moose.

[Joshua Brand]

Just want to tell you two mooses on that moose. The truth is, like, when I left the show, people say, oh, you left the show? Rob Morrow, he had some thing with. I don't know, his contract had nothing to do with that. I left the show because I had done 66 episodes, and I was kind of burnt out. I felt I was repeating myself. And John.

[Rob Morrow]

That's why I left, by the way. Well, and it's funny, all the. All the contractual stuff gets conflated into

[Joshua Brand]

so many different stories to, you know, reduce my batteries. I wouldn't have left. I just felt, I'm just doing this. I. I have to pull away. And John, you know, we were. We were partners. But you know, truthfully, with the. What John loved is he loved I'll Fly Away, and he loved A Year in the Life. He loved writing about a family. And I, by then, was bored with that. I didn't want to do that. And so the most important part.

[Jeanine Turner]

What was it? So, Josh, what was A Day in the Life like? Because we were in Seattle, you know, filming every day. And just so the listeners understand, you know, y' all were in Los Angeles, and we never knew even what was happening. So when you walked into this, the kind of, I guess, office that y' all had. I mean. And to Rob's question, Stuart wrote the script, but how much did you tweak that script? And how did you know Stuart? Because Stuart wrote the second. I think these things are interesting for the listeners. How did you know Stuart? How did you know the director? And then what did you change in it?

[Joshua Brand]

Well, a lot of it is rewritten. But essentially that's what your job is as a showrunner. I mean, so I was talking with, you know, someone last night, a writer, and he said when he worked on a show and he did an episode, and he gave it to the showrunner and said, boy, thank you. You made it so much better. And the showrunner said, well, that's what we do. That's the job is to rewrite it. Stuart Stevens is a, you know. You know, he's a famous guy, but not because of television. He ran Mitt Romney's campaign. He ran George Bush's. He was a Republican operative. He also.

[Jeanine Turner]

Much later. That was much later. That was much later. I mean, but in 1990. How did you meet him?

[Joshua Brand]

I met him at CBS and he was a very interesting guy. He was a novelist, and one of his books I had him adapt as a screenplay. And he'd gone to afi and I liked him and I thought he was really smart. He had been a Marlborough man on the commercials on big billboards. Very handsome guy. And he also.

[Rob Morrow]

Wait. Oh, I didn't know that. Wait. He was a model in those ads.

[Joshua Brand]

He also. National Geographic did a documentary about him. He set the world record for skiing, downhill skiing on the seven largest mountains in the world.

[Rob Morrow]

He was an amazing, interesting guy.

[Joshua Brand]

Oh, he's a fascinating guy.

[Jeanine Turner]

You hired him. Did you hire him? And you knew him before and said, do you want to come in and write episode two?

[Joshua Brand]

Yeah. Because essentially my job was I knew what the story was. Brains Know how and native intelligence. It's bas. Basically, it was sort of perfect for the second episode of the show because it's a New Yorker. I'm from New York. What does it mean to be a New Yorker? As a generalization, New Yorkers think that they're the most sophisticated people on the planet. They know the best restaurant and they know the best place to shop for clothes, but they're the most provincial people. Nobody knows how to do anything in the city because you have supers. You don't. If your electricity goes away off. So the notion of intelligence is graduate degrees. Why I love the Chris character because an intellectual is not an academic. An intellectual is a person to whom ideas are real interesting. You could have had a high school education or not even have gone to high school and be an intellectual, not an academic academic. You have to have a PhD. It's different than an intellectual. So Chris was an intellectual. So. So the idea is, if you live in New York, what people care about is what firm you work for, what your Law firm where you went to Harvard or Yale or Princeton. And that's true for also the east coast and it's also true for the west coast as well. But Stewart wrote novels. He wrote about eight novels and I read a couple of his novels. He was from Mississippi, grew up in a small town. He was a fascinating guy. He was an editor for Outside magazine. He once, you know, I could never understand the conversations he had with Mitt Romney because here he was, he wrote for outside magazine for 30 days. He took every drug you could possibly take for performance enhancement, you know, and he did that. He would ride 100 miles a day on his bicycle. And he was just a fascinating guy. And I, so I said, well, I'm going to do this episode about three different kinds of intelligence. You know, did you give him a

[Rob Morrow]

beat sheet or an outline or you just say, here's the broad strokes?

[Joshua Brand]

Well, well, I don't really remember. I remember back in the day when I worked and it wasn't just me, it was my friends Marcel Hershkovitz, who did 30 something. We didn't have writers rooms. We had writers. I worked on the White Shadow. There was no writer's room. I mean, nobody had writers rooms. Now they did it in comedies. I once wrote John and I wrote a three camera comedy and, and it was a sitcom. And there we had the, you know, the comic writers sitting around the table. It was the weirdest experience I ever had in my life. But we didn't have rooms, we had writers. And I would say, I want to do an episode about this. You've worked, you know, you guys like each other. You come back to me and let me know, this is what I want to have in it, and this is what I want to have in it. Make sure the audience isn't ahead of the story and it isn't schmaltzy, you know, and make it real, you know,

[Rob Morrow]

and then you rewrite.

[Joshua Brand]

Yeah, I'd be right

[Jeanine Turner]

if I can interject for two seconds. So you went to Stuart, because this is really fascinating for me, actually. I'm sure the listeners are interested as well. You went to Stuart and said, this is the outline of the kind of show I want for episode two. Three kinds of intelligence. Go write it. Is that what happened? And then he brought it to you? And then talk to us about the tweaks. Talk to us about the tweaks that you did after that. Because what I always heard behind the scenes, and this is a compliment to you, Jim. Josh. Is that Josh. You were in every room right you were in the music room, you were in the editing room, you were in the looping room, you were in the writing room, and that you were the one that oversaw the general. And I'm sure John was there, too. But the actual overarching aspect of pulling this show together. So I'm really curious if you said, go write a show about three kinds of native intelligence, and he brought it to you, and then what happened then? What did you do with the script?

[Joshua Brand]

Well, again, it's hard for me to remember that specific episode, but in general. Well, because Stuart really, you know, he hadn't worked in television, so I knew that, but I knew he had gone to afi, so he did screenplays. I had hired him to do a screenplay from his book. You know, I knew he knew how to write. And essentially what I did, because it was the second episode, I was directing the pilot, you know, so it had to be written while I'm working or before then, or, you know, with John or whatever. But it wasn't like saying, go write it here. It's about these three things. It was much more specific than that. But I don't. It wasn't specific in, like, a formulaic. It was saying, I want to have this in it. You know, I remember John saying, Dan Rather. I want to have Dan Rather. Have. In this little town, be watching Dan Rather on the news. You know, it was like you would get all the things that you wanted to see in it. You know, Leaves of Grass, you know, Walt Whitman. I mean, I knew about that. I knew about. I knew, you know, I knew the character of Chris by then. I knew that Chris had been. I knew that John Corbett was from West Virginia, and that's why we made him from West Virginia. And I knew that he had been in prison. And he talks about being. And I knew that he was an intellect.

[Rob Morrow]

Wait, not Corbett.

[Joshua Brand]

John Corbett. I'm sorry.

[Rob Morrow]

No, no, no, he would not. Corbett wasn't in prison.

[Jeanine Turner]

Not the character.

[Joshua Brand]

I mean, the character.

[Jeanine Turner]

We want to clarify that. Yeah. And.

[Joshua Brand]

And by the way, he's Chris Stevens, you know, so it was Stuart Stevens. I mean, he gave him the last name.

[Rob Morrow]

Oh, interesting.

[Joshua Brand]

Oh, that's funny.

[Jeanine Turner]

Interesting. See, that's really cool.

[Joshua Brand]

And so, you know, so it was much more involved, but it wasn't involved in a formulaic way. And then, of course, when he writes it, then you take it over, and then you. And I don't. Honestly, at this point, I don't remember how much or how little work was done on it. I just know that, you know, There were a lot of things that we did in the beginning of the show that, you know, I know when I would work with you guys as actors and we'd be looping a lot of times, we were looping a lot and I was a lot of. Because we only had. We were a dialogue oriented show, you know, we didn't really kill people. We didn't, we didn't, you know. And so to keep things moving along, I would basically sort of loop a lot of extra stuff. And then over time became to sort of trust that the audience was going to allow there to be gaps and let it be more filmic. But in the beginning it was kind of like. Because we weren't telling jokes, you know, it wasn't the Billy Crystal where you're gonna fall out of your chair laughing. There's a lot of humor, clearly. I mean, and then they, you know, we were, we won the award for being Emmys for being a drama, but it really was a comedy. What does that mean? There's only dramas and comedy? I mean, you know.

[Jeanine Turner]

Well, if I can give a little behind the scenes. I know, I know that we wanted, y' all wanted the show to be on Monday night after Murphy Brown Brown. That it was really important that the show was after Murphy Brown. Correct me if I'm wrong, but, but. And so I remember John Falzi calling me and because I was always this sort of actress that wanted to bring 13,000 million, you know, layers of emotions behind what I was doing. You know what I mean? And John Falz, he called me and he said, we're a comedy. Write it down. He wanted me to remember because we were trying to get into that after Murphy Brown time slot. You remember that?

[Joshua Brand]

That's more John than me. I mean, he was. John was. And he also, he went to the Iowa Writers Workshop and he was a serious writer, but he loved television. And I didn't really know that much about television. I didn't. I watched television, but I wasn't a TV watcher and he was more of a TV watcher and he knew more about where the show should go. I didn't really care about any of them.

[Jeanine Turner]

K Pop Demon Hunters Saja Boys Breakfast

[Joshua Brand]

Meal and Hunt Tricks Meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans. What do you say to that, Rumi? It's not a battle.

[Jeanine Turner]

So glad the Saja boys could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day.

[Rob Morrow]

It is an honor to share.

[Jeanine Turner]

No, it's our honor.

[Rob Morrow]

It is Our largest.

[Joshua Brand]

No, really stop.

[Jeanine Turner]

You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side

[Rob Morrow]

and participate in McDonald's while supplies last.

[Jeanine Turner]

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[Joshua Brand]

MGLIS Lebricizumab LBKZ a 250mg 2ml injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema, also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. Epglis can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to ebglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with ebglis. Before starting evglis, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection.

[Jeanine Turner]

Ask your doctor about ebglis and visit eglis.lily.com or call 1-800-lilyrx or 1-800-545-5979.

[Rob Morrow]

Let me just. I know we're coming up on the hour, which I feel like we could talk to you for five hours, but I just want to speak a little bit or have you speak a little bit about about before in the preamble, before the show started, we were talking about you were in a film festival in Majorca and you were amazed how the audience, how A that there was such a large audience but B that it was filled with young people. I'd love for you to speak a little bit about why you think the show is still. Because it's extraordinary to me that. Because I get a lot of social media people from, with their, their kids, they're watching it, they're 10 year olds, they're 15 year olds. And why, why do you think the show is still relevant and still captures and is having this kind of. It's a bit of a phenomenon. I mean I think on it's. It's one of the top rated streamers on Amazon, right? And it's 30 plus years old. Like, what is that?

[Joshua Brand]

Well, I think Janine hit on it. I think that just, like, language changes, you know, cool became hip, became rad. Whatever it is, language changes. We don't have cell phones. Technology changes. You know, we didn't have cell phones back then, but then there aren't cell phones. And so then everybody has cell phones. So you could say those things are dated. But at the core, what makes things timeless, it's why people still go to see Shakespeare plays. It's why people still go to see, you know, Buster Keaton comedies. I mean, it's that at the core, what it means to be human and to be alive and to be flawed and to be conflicted and to have opposing thoughts at the same time in one person. You like this, but you like this. You're torn between this. You're torn between that. Things are not black and white. 90% of things are gray. And then there's some things that are black and some things that are white. And I think the core of the show was not about technology, and the core of the show was not about, are you saying, oh, you're cool, or, oh, you're far out? And we avoided those things. And by the way, it's what we avoided in music as well. I mean, it's why for years, they would say, oh, you know, the show couldn't stream because of the music. That's nonsense. I mean, I would go to Hawaii and I would hire a guy playing the ukulele. I would see those, you know, people playing the flutes on the subways or drummers, you know, and we hired them for a dream sequence. You know, it was. They were. We didn't use hit tunes from the moment. Yes. We used, you know, you know, songs that had been famous from the 30s and the 40s and the 50s, even, but we weren't trying to be topical. And so if you avoid topicality, yeah, those things change over time. But what remains is death, pain, love, anger, conflict. And those are things that I think that the. That when you watch the show, yes, people can say, oh, it didn't make any sense. Why the character, you know, didn't call up on the telephone or something. I don't know. But I never really was concerned about that. I didn't really, you know, and I think.

[Rob Morrow]

But you're. You're amazed that it's. You seem amazed, too, that it is still a phenomenon.

[Joshua Brand]

Well, I'm not.

[Jeanine Turner]

I'm not really amazed because. Because I think, Josh, what you're talking about you deal with the. The complexity of life. And now that I'm 62, right, and I've had a daughter that I've had to raise, nothing will make you feel more, you know, like, off your rocker. Are you failed than a child? You know what I mean? And so it's like the complexity of humanity and the core of. I keep saying it, but just the way that. And I would love to kind of end talking a little bit about the complexity of the characters, because. And also, there was always movement in the scene. You know, there was always the nature or action or movement. It moved. But just the complexity and the emotional quality of what people. People were dealing with their own faults, but inherently they were trying to be good. And ultimately they came back around it. But just the complexity of human beings. And I will juxtaposition that with today's society, because today's society is like, you have to be perfect, and you can't possibly say anything that's wrong, and you have to be perfect. Or if someone's not perfect in your life, you need to leave them. Right. It's just this kind of, like, craziness. But here is a kind of. As Rob talks about, and you talk about the benevolent universe. Universe, this kind of. It's not even a utopia, because it's realism. We're fallible. So can you talk about that complexity of the characters? Because that's one of the things I love so much. I get so many scripts where it's just, this is the character and she's one note, right. And every time we got a script from you, Josh. Right. It was always a short story. It was always a joy. It was so exciting. Exciting to see what sort of adventure we would be on. Whether I was suddenly in an igloo or speaking Russian or whatever. I was doing the kind of fantasy world that you took it in. But there was still always that root of human complexity, kind of like a Dostoevsky novel. And I think that's why it. To go to Rob's point, why it's still so. People gravitate to it today because you go, I realize that I might not be perfect, but I'm trying to be good. You know what I mean? So talk about that complexity, that juxtaposition of. Of the. Of the. All the characters of Maurice and Darren and Josh or, you know, Ed and Ed and Barry, Maurice in all the different characters and their kind of complexities.

[Joshua Brand]

Well, I mean, a lot of that I don't know. I mean, that's another big question. I don't know that I can answer it, you know, in a nutshell. But I do think that, listen, a lot of that is what the actors bring to it. I mean, you know, it's let actors act. I mean, you know, you don't have to write the subtext. I mean, let them act. And you guys did that very well. And everybody, for the most part, did that really well. And so we trusted that. And the other thing is, I think from a writer's point of view, it's. You don't want the audience to be ahead of the story. So you don't want to, basically, because it's boring if you're ahead of the story. You know, if you're watching something, you know what's going to happen. You go, I know this is going to happen. That's going to happen. So it's important to let the audience think sometimes they're ahead of the story, but then not to let them be ahead of the story because then the audience gets pleasure out of it. So, you know, it's related to characters being complex. It means that, you know, one of the things I learned about, you know, when I directed the pilot and when I directed is I always felt, and I still feel this, that the camera can tell when an actor is thinking. The camera can't tell what the actor is thinking. Thinking. You know, like you could say to the actor, think about where you're going to eat lunch today. The camera can see if you're thinking, but it can't see what you're thinking about. And so if you think that's what

[Rob Morrow]

David, David Lean said, that's what makes a movie star, is an actor who you can. It's not, as you say, not read specific thoughts, but read thoughts.

[Joshua Brand]

Well, yeah. So essentially, what you want to do is when you see somebody blank and you go, you got to think about something, think about who you think is going to win the World Series. I don't care what you think about because the camera can't discern what you're thinking about. It can just see if you're thinking. And by the way, babies are the same way. I have a grandson. He's like four months old. I see that baby looking at my dog and he's thinking something. I have no idea what he's thinking. But when that baby is tired and he's looking at you with glassy eyes, he's not thinking about anything. And I can tell he just wants to go to sleep. So the point is, you want good actors, and we were very fortunate. And Listen, one of the things we did, I mean, know, it's like, you know, and people are. We had a 60 year old guy with an 18 year old girl. I mean, how, how unpc was that?

[Rob Morrow]

Yeah, good luck doing that.

[Joshua Brand]

Now, you knew that he loved her. You knew John Colum was a great actor, great stage. You knew that he loved her. And you could not like it or be mad at it or he shouldn't like that or, or it's wrong. But the bottom line is you knew that he loved her. And so I'm a man with his head on the bar, Shelly. You know, I mean, John Falzy's line, you know, it's like he was. And so the audience will forgive you, the audience will give you latitude. And I think, you know, I think that all of those things are related to why it's successful. And yes, I am, first of all, I'm gratified more than amazed. But I will say the thing is, that is surprising to me. And it was the interviewer who was interviewing in Spanish, somebody whispering my ear, translating Catalan, you know, into English. But the bottom line, she said, she said a whole new generation is discovering. And then I had dinner with my friend Stu and you know, a couple of writers, and Stu said, I'm watching it with my 8 year old son, you know, and it's like. And it was, was. It isn't just people revisiting it for nostalgia purposes. And I think it's because, well, because they don't, you know, in American television we don't really do things like that. I mean, it's a European tradition. I mentioned those two movies. I mean, Calibal, I think he's Canadian, but maybe not. But Bill Forsyth, those character driven, idiosyncratic movies, we don't do them. And when we do them, we take those movies and we turn them into something that's real instead of three dimensional, two dimensional. It's a broad comedy. The laughs gotta be big laughs, you know, and because we were flying under the radar and because, you know, you know, again, here's the thing. My parents were immigrants. Immigrants. My parents didn't speak English. Well, how do you learn when your parents were immigrants? Now my parents came from Eastern Europe and now immigrants come from all over West Africa, East Africa. You learn by observing. You're an outsider. You watch people. Nobody taught me about table manners. Nobody taught me about the right way to. And all immigrants are like that. And so I was a first generation and so I learned by observing. And I think that that's sort of what the success is that we weren't trying to mimic an experience that people have in America. We were mimicking an experience about something that had. That was universal.

[Jeanine Turner]

Well, I'll just say one of the things I love about the show, which is missing in today's work, is to allow the camera to just resonate on a face, right? Or a three shot or whatever it may be. Let's. Let's let humanity play out here. And this kind of saturation of the thinking of the words, of the beautiful environment today, everything's edited really fast. It's like two seconds. Scenes are maybe literally like 30 seconds and they're out. And I think that that's part of the success of the show is it's still a show where you are able to kind of go into that. That environment and sort of feel like you were imbuing yourself into that utopia, that environment where you. Well, I think that's one of the. In closing here, and Rob and Josh, you can talk on this. People wanted to live in Sicily.

[Rob Morrow]

Yeah, that's a good. I think that's a good ending point. People want to live in Sicily. I think they still do. So, Josh, thank you so much, man. It's absolute pleasure to hear you talk about the show and see you looking so well and healthy and with your grandkids and, you know, I always get emotional when I think about those times, like, Jeanine, because you did. You gave us this life, you know, you gave both of us a life that I don't know how we would have had had you not said, yeah, you're the guy. And that said, you know, then the experience, the adventure of making Northern Exposure is always going to be a highlight in my life, you know, not just the success of it, but the adventure of it. And what I learned. What I learned, you know, not just as a man, you know, in terms of the world, but in terms of what I learned about art and literature and philosophy and spirituality and culture. You know, it opened my eyes. And so I'm grateful to you. And I'll let Jeanine sign off, and vice versa.

[Joshua Brand]

You guys, you know, listen, it takes a village.

[Jeanine Turner]

I'll always love you in my heart because you believed in me. And to play Maggie o', Connell, this fierce, tough, sensitive woman who's all of her boyfriends died, you know what I mean? And then how Rob comes and dances with me anyway, you know, and believe it was just this level of acceptance, but the fact that you believed in me and Josh, you know, and John. John in heaven, you Know, just your. Your creativity and your genius and the entire team. I mean, this show was just how many shows sit back and quote Walt Whitman or Young or Freud or whatever, all these intricacies of different levels of humanity. So you're a genius, Josh, and I thank you for the show that you created, and I hope you'll come back to our show because I know everyone's hanging on every word that you have to say.

[Joshua Brand]

Well, thanks for having me. And it's great seeing both of you. You look great. And listen, back at you. I mean, you guys were great. I mean, you know, we. It was like I said, it was proprietary for me. It was a thing that I. I was most connected to. And it was heartbreaking for me to leave, but I was really. I needed a break. And really, when I did. The thing is, John, I was willing to do another 13. I said, John, if you'll do nine. And he didn't really feel that he could do it. That was not his thing. That being said, it was our thing, and we both did it, but he was drawn in other directions. And I, you know, I'm, you know, so gratified that I had the opportunity to do it. So thanks.

[Rob Morrow]

Okay, well, thanks for watching everyone out there.

[Jeanine Turner]

Yes, thank you. Next week, John Corbett is our. As our guest and we're going to talk about his. The character that he created. That was created. You know, I'll just hearken back to Josh about everything. Josh was the God that birthed, like, the Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, but Josh did such a beautiful job with the character, so I. John Corbett. So we have John Corbett next next week. And Josh, I hope you'll come back and it's just great to see you. I'm so glad we had this excuse to say hi.

[Joshua Brand]

Yeah, well, I'm. I'm thrilled. It's great seeing both your faces, too. You still look fantastic. I don't know.

[Jeanine Turner]

Well, so do you, Josh.

[Joshua Brand]

So do you. But. Okay, well, anyway, all right, thanks. Northern Disclosure is a production with Evergreen Podcasts and executive produced by Paul Anderson and Scott McCarthy for Workhouse Media.

[Wil Wheaton]

This episode is brought to you by Athletic Brewing Company. No matter how you do game day,

[Joshua Brand]

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[Wil Wheaton]

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[Joshua Brand]

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[Wil Wheaton]

at athleticbrewing.com near Beer Fit for. Hi, I'm Wil Wheaton and I am so excited to tell you about my new podcast series, It's Story Time with Wil Whedon. You may recognize my name from my acting work in television shows like the Big Bang Theory, Leverage and Star the Next Generation, or from a movie called Stand By Me. You may recognize my voice from one of the hundreds of audiobooks I've narrated, including number one New York Times bestseller Ready Player One, John Scalzi's award winning Collapsing Empire trilogy, or even my own best selling memoir, Still Just a Geek. When I'm not reading stories, I am listening to stories. And I was a massive fan of my friend and mentor LeVar Burton's podcast, LeVar Burton Reads. When he finished his final season, I realized how much I missed it, so I asked him if I could take a shot at picking up where he left left off and to my delight he gave me his blessing and I got started. It's been a long time, a lot of work, and absolutely worth it to bring you incredible stories that I love pulled from the pages of Uncanny Magazine, Lightspeed on Spec, and others. You're going to meet authors you don't yet know you love, including some who are being narrated for the very first time. I will take you with me as we travel together through time. I will take you to meet some gods. We will watch people fall in and out of love and more. It's Story Time with Wil Wheaton is available wherever you get your podcasts. I hope you'll join me.