"Noah Hawley"

Summary

SmartLess Podcast – "Noah Hawley"

Hosts: Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, Will Arnett
Guest: Noah Hawley
Date: December 1, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this lively, in-depth conversation, the SmartLess trio welcomes prolific writer, director, and producer Noah Hawley, best known for showrunning and adapting Fargo for TV, helming Legion, and—most recently—developing the highly anticipated series Alien: Earth. The discussion spans Hawley’s unique approach to adaptation, writing process, experiences in television and film, and personal perspectives on family and creativity, all laced with the show's trademark humor and banter.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Noah Hawley’s Background & Move to Austin

• [07:35 – 08:18]

  • Hawley introduces himself—born in NYC, lived in San Francisco and L.A., but now resides in Austin, TX, after marrying a seventh-generation Texan.
  • “I married a seventh generation Texan. I didn’t read the fine print.” (Noah, 07:43)

• Transition to the industry:

  • Hawley’s transition from novelist and paralegal in family court (helping abused/neglected children) into film and TV writing.
  • “Writing fiction was a way to process and escape… in a band, you’re tied to these three filthy, penniless men…fiction writing was a way to…I could just do it myself.” (Noah, 28:33)

2. Family, Children, and Work-Life Balance

• [11:12 – 13:13]

  • Discusses how his kids relate to his work—son is more outgoing and interested in set visits, while his daughter is more reserved.
  • Shares a moving story about improvising a scene with his son on Alien: Earth:
    • “We had a good time, and it comes across [on screen].” (Noah, 13:13)

• Incorporating parenthood into his work:

  • “I can’t separate my identity as a parent from the stories I’m telling.” (Noah, 29:53)
  • Notes parenting themes across Fargo S4 and Alien: Earth.

3. Alien: Earth – Adapting a Sci-Fi Icon

• [13:24 – 20:11]
  • Hawley discusses the approach to adapting Alien for television.
    • Did not rewatch the movies, but tried to access how the film lives in his imagination and what feelings it evokes.
  • “You have to invest in dozens of hours about characters who don’t die…so what is it if it’s not a two hour survival story?” (Noah, 14:33)
  • Describes themes as: “Humanity is trapped between nature and technology—and they’re both trying to kill us. That feels like the moment we’re living in.” (Noah, 15:00)
  • Creature design process explained: function follows story; conceptual discussions turn to collaborations with Weta.
  • “We go into a design process with the folks at Weta…” (Noah, 19:36)

4. The Writer’s Room & Creative Process

• [17:44 – 18:27]

  • Hawley explains his leadership style:
    • Uses the room to “help me think out loud” rather than cede storytelling.
  • Delegates thematic explorations, then integrates discoveries.

• On ideas and time management:

  • “Where does my brain want to go today?” (Noah, 31:07)
  • Treats new ideas gently—avoids looking at them directly at first: “When an idea is new, you don’t want to look at it directly, you want to side-eye it. You’re like, it’s fragile.” (Noah, 31:55)

5. Fargo – Taking on Iconic Adaptation

• [33:15 – 38:41]
  • Recaps how Fargo TV adaptation originated as an incoming call from FX, with the Coens agreeing to back it if they liked the script.
  • Asks: “If you’re adapting the movie without actually any of the characters, then what are you doing?” (Noah, 34:43)
  • Defines Fargo as a “state of mind” more than a place—enabling the anthology.
  • Describes finding the show's visual tone—inspired by Coen brothers—by eliminating “half the edits,” using long takes:
    • “Nothing makes something feel like television more than cutting to dialogue every time someone talks.” (Noah, 38:54)

6. Influences, Comedy, and Style

• [39:51 – 40:49]
  • British comedy shaped his sensibility—Goon Show, Monty Python, Hitchhiker’s Guide, Alan Arkin and Peter Falk in The In-Laws.
  • “That explains everything about me.” (Noah, 40:41)

7. Directorial Growth & Challenges

• [43:36 – 47:42]
  • Progression from editing and recutting others’ work to directing, focusing on finding the emotional tone and being comfortable improvising on set.
  • “You’re on set, and they go: what’s next, boss? And you don’t know…” (Noah, 46:10)

8. On Film vs. TV, and Mediums

• [53:05 – 56:09]
  • Discusses writing and directing Lucy in the Sky. Recognizes differences in creative structure between film and TV.
  • On project selection: “Some of it is how long you want to live with it…Is there enough there for me to live with for that length of time and do I have enough to say.” (Noah, 55:36)

9. Pitching in Hollywood

• [61:08 – 63:38]
  • Hawley describes the art of pitching—making execs feel the tone of the show through charismatic storytelling and creative sizzle reels.
  • “If I’m charismatic and I’ve got good timing, you’ll go, ‘Oh my God, that’s amazing, I want to see that!’” (Noah, 61:24)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On adaptation:
  • “It’s about thinking about how that film lives in my imagination, and how can I create those same feelings in an audience by telling them a different story?”
    — Noah Hawley, [14:33]
• On leading a writer’s room:
  • “I don’t tend to let the room tell the story. I tend to go in there and say, ‘Here’s where we are.’”
    — Noah Hawley, [17:44]
• On parenting and storytelling:
  • “I can’t separate my identity as a parent from the stories I’m telling.”
    — Noah Hawley, [29:53]
• On creative inspiration:
  • “When an idea is new, you don’t want to look at it directly. You want to side-eye it. It’s fragile… and after a few days or a couple of weeks, you go, ‘Okay, now I see a little more clearly.’”
    — Noah Hawley, [31:55]
• On pitching:
  • “It’s fascinating that this visual medium is still rooted in the oral storytelling tradition.”
    — Noah Hawley, [61:24]

Lighthearted Banter

• Will’s quip about Jon Hamm’s TV omnipresence:
  • “This month it’s a new goddamn Ham vehicle.” — Will Arnett, [36:29]
• On Will playing the lead in a “white trash Dynasty” show:
  • “I see you as the lead on that, Willie.” — Jason Bateman, [42:52]
• Golf jokes & aging:
  • “The audience is aware that the three of us are not in our 20s, okay? …I get a little tie-tie right now at 3.” — Jason Bateman, [04:15]
  • “How many golf games do you have scheduled this week, including yesterday?” — Will Arnett, [68:49]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |-----------------------------------------------|-----------------| | Intro of Noah Hawley | [07:31] | | Discussing Alien: Earth adaptation | [13:24 – 20:11] | | Parenting, family & influence on work | [11:12 – 13:13], [29:46 – 30:31] | | Writer’s room philosophy/process | [17:44 – 18:27] | | Fargo adaptation process & Coen brothers | [33:15 – 38:41] | | Directing & transition from writing | [43:36 – 47:42] | | Pitching & sizzle reels for execs | [61:08 – 63:38] | | Star Trek Movie That Never Happened | [64:32 – 66:43] | | Reflections on age, success, creative drive | [67:23 – 68:21] |

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Additional Highlights

• Star Trek film “What Might Have Been”

  • Hawley almost wrote/directed a Star Trek film with an original concept, but studio regime changes ended the project.
  • “I was gonna move to Australia…And the first thing they did was kill the original Star Trek movie.” (Noah, [65:30])

• On working with family

  • Detailed his son’s cameo on Alien: Earth and how including him made for a special day and authentic performance.

• Creative Versatility

  • Novel writing, songwriting, and TV showrunning all inform each other.

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Tone

The episode was warm, funny, and intellectual, with the hosts engaging Hawley in thoughtful yet relaxed conversation, often flipping between insightful industry discussion and playful teasing typical of SmartLess.

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Summary

This SmartLess installment offers both a masterclass in creative adaptation and a portrait of Noah Hawley as a family man, genre-bending storyteller, and unpretentious creative force. His reflections on the craft—balancing structure and play, honoring legacy while pushing boundaries, processing the world through story—make for a conversation as thoughtful, surprising, and layered as Hawley’s work itself.

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For fans of smart TV, filmmaking, or simply great creative conversations, this episode is can’t-miss, encapsulating both the wit of the SmartLess trio and the vision of a true modern auteur.

Transcript

[Sean Hayes]

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[Jason Bateman]

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[Sean Hayes]

Hey, I'm Sean and I'm willing to. And I'm Jason.

[Jason Bateman]

Hey, Will, do you like golf?

[Will Arnett]

Oh, I love golf.

[Sean Hayes]

Let's talk about golf. I hit a Ford. I hit it out of the park today on my niner. Well, that's awesome. That's better than I. You guys, it's time to talk. Do we have to do a smartless episode? Ah, Sean, shut the fuck up.

[Noah Hawley]

Ah, yeah.

[Sean Hayes]

What do you know? Welcome to Smartless Smart lettuce.

[Noah Hawley]

Smart.

[Will Arnett]

Smart glass. Shawnee, are those glasses new?

[Sean Hayes]

Yeah. What do you think?

[Will Arnett]

Yeah, well, not. They're not bad. I mean, hi.

[Jason Bateman]

Let's go.

[Noah Hawley]

Really?

[Sean Hayes]

No, you don't like higher? Well, do you not like them? Seriously? I just put them on like five minutes ago.

[Jason Bateman]

Lean closer to your camera.

[Sean Hayes]

Do you like them?

[Jason Bateman]

Oh, not. Not that close. Yeah.

[Sean Hayes]

What do you think? Honestly?

[Jason Bateman]

You look great in everything. You know, I was noticing you on Kimmel last night. Me too.

[Will Arnett]

You look great. God, I was thinking the same thing.

[Noah Hawley]

All right.

[Jason Bateman]

Are you working with a new stylist or something?

[Noah Hawley]

I am, actually.

[Sean Hayes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I can't dress myself like that.

[Will Arnett]

Shawnee, you look really good.

[Sean Hayes]

Thanks, you guys. That's so nice.

[Will Arnett]

For real. It's true.

[Sean Hayes]

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I. It's, it's.

[Jason Bateman]

And you're a great guest.

[Sean Hayes]

Like building a boat.

[Jason Bateman]

Very good guest.

[Sean Hayes]

You know, I don't know how you guys feel about talk shows and stuff. Like, I get so nervous, I. I talk fast.

[Jason Bateman]

Well, that's, that's, you know what's bad? A guest that talks slow isn't nervous.

[Will Arnett]

Yeah.

[Sean Hayes]

So wait, Will, are you still in New York?

[Will Arnett]

I am, yeah. Wow.

[Sean Hayes]

And it's still pressed for the movie?

[Will Arnett]

Still doing press for the movie? Yeah, still, like just kind of getting going, really, and.

[Sean Hayes]

Yeah.

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah. Busy.

[Jason Bateman]

Yeah, because it comes out.

[Sean Hayes]

It.

[Jason Bateman]

Does it? Well, I don't know when this episode.

[Will Arnett]

December 19th is when.

[Sean Hayes]

December 19th? Yeah. Is this thing on? I can't wait for everybody to see you in it. It's so exciting.

[Jason Bateman]

And what about you? You're in it too, Mr. Sean.

[Will Arnett]

You're in it.

[Sean Hayes]

Sure.

[Jason Bateman]

Shawnie was doing press for it last night.

[Sean Hayes]

My favorite line I had in the movie is, does anybody want to play bananagrams?

[Will Arnett]

Yeah.

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah.

[Sean Hayes]

That'S it.

[Will Arnett]

What I loved about it was your line with the way you read it was. Is if you had said that a million times.

[Sean Hayes]

Yeah. By the way, totally.

[Will Arnett]

I know.

[Jason Bateman]

You know, we don't often do these records here in the mid afternoon. Here it is, 3pm here on the. On the West Coast, 6pm there in the East. And you know, listen, I think the audience is aware that the three of us are not in our 20s, okay? What? Well, what I want to say to yourself. I get a little tie. Tie right now at 3. This is not an ideal time for us to be doing.

[Sean Hayes]

Well, you gotta find it.

[Jason Bateman]

Well, hey, listen, save it, okay, Nappy poo. How do you guys get through the late afternoon? Okay, Sean, I've already explained your strategy. Will. How do you do it?

[Will Arnett]

You know, I just. I just do stuff, you know, whatever and schnitzel.

[Jason Bateman]

Do you. Or do you. Or do you guys go to like an espresso at a certain time?

[Sean Hayes]

No, I do. I do. I do not. What are you waving at? There's a gnat.

[Jason Bateman]

There's a fly in here. A doc on it.

[Sean Hayes]

Like an old gramp, like the optic guy from.

[Will Arnett]

He's an Old Man. He's. He's. He's grumbling about the time. He's waving at a fly.

[Jason Bateman]

I've had a Real high protein shake with spirulina and everything in it. I should be vibrating right now. But no, I'm supplementing it with the ice green tea. And I'm still, you know, sluggish, but if I don't.

[Sean Hayes]

If I don't have anything going on, I'll feel sluggish about this time and I will listen to my body and I'll lay down for sure.

[Will Arnett]

Wait a second.

[Jason Bateman]

There's an if there. Often you have going on at three in the afternoon.

[Sean Hayes]

But I mean, like, if I keep. If I keep.

[Noah Hawley]

If I'm.

[Sean Hayes]

If I'm busy enough, I'll keep. It'll keep me awake. You know what I mean? Like, if I have a meeting or something or whatever, I'm coming off of.

[Jason Bateman]

Four consecutive zooms right into this thing. So I've been. I've been up and at it, but it's.

[Sean Hayes]

Did you work out?

[Jason Bateman]

I did work out. That's the. That's my problem, jb.

[Will Arnett]

It's not the problem. It's the zooms. They suck. They suck the energy out staring at the screen for those meetings.

[Jason Bateman]

I'm telling you, it's in person meetings. We should all get back to the office, right?

[Will Arnett]

Well, yeah, absolutely.

[Jason Bateman]

We hear that, America.

[Will Arnett]

Well, you know what? You know what's funny? I will say, because I have been on the east coast more this. This fall and summer is because being in the city, I feel like kind of just more energized in general.

[Sean Hayes]

Yeah, well, that's. New York City never sleeps. Never sleeps.

[Will Arnett]

Yeah.

[Jason Bateman]

Yeah. So it's got a heartbeat.

[Will Arnett]

It really does have a heartbeat.

[Sean Hayes]

Do you have a T shirt that says I Heart ny?

[Jason Bateman]

It's a thong.

[Sean Hayes]

That doubles into a T shirt.

[Will Arnett]

Yeah, go ahead. Jason, do you have something today?

[Jason Bateman]

We got a big brain. Okay? He's not one of your fancy dancy celebs that are gonna clue you into the life of the rich and famous, okay? No, Sean will this. Today we've got someone who's given you some of the best television available over the last 20 years. This is a writer, producer, director, and often all three on the projects that he gives us, giving us the kind of specific and singular experience that we look for on television nowadays. He's got the nominations, the awards. He's got the education, the credentials. He's also got the looks, the taste, the kids, the wife, the wind at his back. And he's gonna tell us how he keeps it all together while bringing us top entertainment with shows like Bones, Legion, and the massive hit Fargo and the New and spectacular alien Earth folks, Noah Hawley. Take it easy, Sean. Don't attack him just yet. This is good, exciting for me. Afternoon, Noah.

[Noah Hawley]

Good afternoon. I'm not nervous. And I'm gonna speak very slowly.

[Jason Bateman]

Good, good, good. Okay, now you're right in the middle of the country there. Aren't you in Texas?

[Noah Hawley]

I am. I'm in Austin. Texas. Yes.

[Jason Bateman]

So you're.

[Noah Hawley]

I married a seventh generation Texan. I didn't read the fine print.

[Jason Bateman]

So she said, we're going back to the motherland.

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah. That's good. I'm happy. I like it. It's my kind of place.

[Jason Bateman]

You're not missing. Where. Where'd you come?

[Noah Hawley]

Where? Where.

[Jason Bateman]

Where'd you move from?

[Noah Hawley]

Well, I'm a New York City kid originally. And then there was a little San Francisco, there was some la. And yeah, now I'm here.

[Jason Bateman]

You're not missing those places. You're into Austin.

[Noah Hawley]

I mean, I was in New York last week. It's. You know, you reach a certain point where you're rarely home anyway, so.

[Jason Bateman]

Word?

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jason Bateman]

It's Werd. Sean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Welcome to the show, Noah. This is a long time coming.

[Noah Hawley]

Thank you.

[Jason Bateman]

We know each other a bit. Do you guys know him at all?

[Will Arnett]

You guys know each other?

[Jason Bateman]

Just through mixers, you know, get togethers. Mixers, yeah. Someone set us up once.

[Will Arnett]

Jason described you and how did it feel? Jason's like not one of your celebrity like he was. If that felt like a real shot across your bow. No, if I'm being honest, it's good.

[Jason Bateman]

I mean, he's not one of these, like these, you know, tabloid celebs, you know, that, you know, sometimes we're lucky enough to look on this show.

[Will Arnett]

That's you.

[Jason Bateman]

I've never been on a tablet unless I'm caught in the background and want to shots, you know, I will say.

[Noah Hawley]

You know, living in Austin, you know, I'll go to LA sometimes and I'll think, oh, right, I'm somebody, sure. But yeah, at the same time, the.

[Sean Hayes]

Second you leave, you're nobody.

[Noah Hawley]

Right. Well. But no, sometimes there I. I feel like it's the only place I've ever been where you can feel like nobody also. Right. It has that status game that is very specific.

[Jason Bateman]

But talk about that though, like you are for. For a lot of the people listening to this. And maybe only Tracy will will be like, well, this Noah, Holly, you know, who is this fella? I'm gonna. For most people, they know exactly who you are and you're enormously well known and very, very powerful in this industry. But is there a part. Let's put it this way. I've got a. I've got a. I've got a writer friend of mine who likes to also act.

[Noah Hawley]

And.

[Will Arnett]

Is this you?

[Sean Hayes]

No.

[Will Arnett]

Okay.

[Jason Bateman]

He's an enormous writer, but couldn't give a shit about the writing, just wants to act.

[Noah Hawley]

Oh, really?

[Jason Bateman]

Do you see the kind of weight and power in the writing that you should and deserve? Because he doesn't, like, he doesn't get that he's already got the gold medal there by being an incredibly successful writer. That's so hard to do.

[Noah Hawley]

No, I'm very. Look, I love all the parts of the job. I like to sit in a room and write a novel and the phone doesn't ring and I like the writers room element of it. I love to get on set and direct and the team sport of it all. You know, I think what makes me happiest is the fact that I don't have to do just one of those things that I can get my isolation and recharge, and then I can go out and be in public, you know, and sort of command the ship and, you know, try to elevate everyone to do their best work.

[Jason Bateman]

And you're creating these projects, you're creating these jobs, you're creating all these many, many, many people with employment. And, like, that's not something that often an actor or a star can do. I mean, they can generate heat for a project, but you're literally filling up blank pages and, like, creating a story and a world and a project. And I just think it's just incredible. So.

[Noah Hawley]

Well, than.

[Will Arnett]

Jason's not unlike our current president. He's just enamored with men of power, you know what I mean? Like, he's, he's. And so he's just in awe of your power.

[Jason Bateman]

You see the aura.

[Noah Hawley]

I appreciate that he can come over and tell my wife how powerful I am.

[Jason Bateman]

Yeah. Now, what about that, right? What about, like, how old are your kids?

[Noah Hawley]

13 and 18.

[Jason Bateman]

Okay, now, so they're old enough to give it up. That's exactly the same age as mine. Do your kids give it up? Like, do they get what you do? Do they like what you do?

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah, I think so. You know, I don't know how it is with you, but probably one more than the other, you know, I think, you know, my son loves to. He's the 13 year old, he loves to come to set. Give me a headset. I'm gonna sit on the camera rig, you know.

[Sean Hayes]

Oh, that's cool.

[Noah Hawley]

He's, you know, I call him the mayor of childhood, you know, and then, and then my daughter's a little more retiring, a little, you know, less. I don't know. I mean, she appreciates it in a different way, I think. You know, and he, I think he's like, you know, where's my director's chair?

[Jason Bateman]

Right, right, right.

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah.

[Jason Bateman]

Is she, Is either one of them interested in the industry early?

[Noah Hawley]

Too early to tell. I feel like, yeah. I mean, my son did ask me on, On Alien Earth. He's like, is there any role? Like, could I do anything in there? And so I did put him in the, in the show, just in a sort of improv. He plays the young Alex Lothar character. And, you know, I wasn't going to write a scene, but I wanted that kind of feeling of that, the kind of Malachi feeling of the childhood thing. And I was like, I can't hire a day player to be his dad. And then I got. He's never acted before. And so, you know, I'm always the guy who's like, maximum creativity, maximum efficiency. I was like, the easiest thing to do is if I just get down on the floor and I play the dad and I'm there with him. And you did that? I did, I did. It was a really kind of special day, certainly, and, and it did. I loosened him up. We, you know, we had a good time and it comes across.

[Will Arnett]

Were you at the end of that.

[Sean Hayes]

I've seen every episode at the end.

[Will Arnett]

Of that day, were you like, hey, hey, the dad character might need a spin off.

[Noah Hawley]

Exactly.

[Will Arnett]

You know, this guy's really got.

[Noah Hawley]

Exactly.

[Sean Hayes]

But can you tell me, like, because I'm a massive, massive fan and my husband Scotty, of the Alien series. We've seen every movie, everything in between, and all incarnations, and, and then when we saw this show coming up, Alien Earth, we're like, wait, finally somebody's, like, doing a series of it. And how did that come to you? And did you feel the weight of it? Because we're like, we did the nerd stuff. We're like, let's find out where it falls into the storyline, you know, and the history. And it's really cool. I love it so much.

[Jason Bateman]

It starts before the original Alien, correct?

[Noah Hawley]

Yes. It's a couple of years before and.

[Sean Hayes]

After the Prometheus and the Covenant. Right in between.

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah, I think, I think that's accurate. You know, I, I, I felt like.

[Jason Bateman]

I wanted, I mean, Sean, sure. Don't, don't mess up your microphone.

[Noah Hawley]

Here.

[Jason Bateman]

Okay. Put some plastic over it.

[Noah Hawley]

One of us is an expert on alien, but I don't think it's me. Okay.

[Sean Hayes]

Okay. Yeah, I'm.

[Will Arnett]

Because, Sean, according to your timeline, actually.

[Sean Hayes]

Yeah, it's the glasses. I got the new glasses. So they make me alien smart. No, but, but yeah. Did you feel the weight of it? And how did it come to you? And, and how did, how did you create it?

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah, I mean, it's. You know, I've now had this opportunity a couple of times, right, to take a classic film and turn it into a TV show. And you know, for me, it's never about going back and re watching the film. Right. It's about thinking about, well, how does that film live in my imagination and what are the feelings that it brings up in me? And how can I create those same feelings in an audience by telling them a different story? You know, the thing with an alien movie is it's a two hour survival story, but a TV show has to be the opposite, right? You have to invest in 10 or 30 or 50 hours about characters who don't die. Right. And so, well, what is it if it's not a two hour survival story? And so there needs to be, you know, even if you have 60% of the best action in horror, you still have 40% of. What are we talking about, right? What's the show about and everything. So that's where it started for me. And it came down to this one moment in Ridley's movie where the monster's out and Sigourney's in the communication room and the computer is telling her that the crew is expendable. And she leans back and Ian Holm is there and you realize he's an Android. And I thought, well, that moment in which humanity realizes it's trapped between nature and technology and they're both trying to kill us, that feels like the moment we're living in.

[Will Arnett]

Right?

[Sean Hayes]

Totally.

[Noah Hawley]

And that feels like what the show is about.

[Sean Hayes]

Yeah, for sure. I got that. I got all that.

[Will Arnett]

Yeah.

[Sean Hayes]

But also this. Also that one, that one creature that you created in the show with just the one eye, you know, like, and that inserts itself into other animals and humans. It's just the one eye. Like, it's so creepy and clever and it's like. And holds like all the mystery. Like, I think it's so cool.

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah. Well, like I said, what are the feelings that the original gave me? Well, the one feeling that, that the movie, the first movie has, right. Is the discovery of the life cycle of the creature. Wait it's an egg. And then the thing comes out and attaches to your face. I'm out. Right? But then, no, it gets worse. Then it falls off and you think, oh, I'm hungry. And you have a meal and it. The next side of your fucking chest. And then it grows to be 10ft tall. And. But that's the one feeling we can never get back for an audience. Right. Is that discovery unless we introduce these new creatures. Right, right, right. We go, all right, well, it's an eyeball with tentacles. And how does it reproduce? And what does it eat? And I don't like that, you know?

[Will Arnett]

Wait, wait, wait, wait. So how do you. This is a great point.

[Sean Hayes]

This is about my mom.

[Will Arnett]

This is one eye. Oh, no, Sean, I'm not gonna reach for the low hanging fruit, even though it's still fruit. That's the thing about low hanging fruit.

[Noah Hawley]

Okay? No.

[Will Arnett]

When you come up with a. When you come up with a creature like that, like, what are the things? And it's got the tentacles and stuff. What is that process? Are you guys in the writer's room going like. Are you people pitching like, no, no, he's got eight tentacles. Yeah, because one of them. No, no, hang on a second. What? And like, how do you write that?

[Noah Hawley]

No, it's really interesting. You know, the, the writer's room. You know, I have a kind of love hate relationship with the writer's room. I had to figure out how to use it for myself. And what I figured out about it is it's a. It's a really good way for. To help me think out loud, you know, So I don't tend to let the room tell the story. I tend to go in there and I go, here, here's where we are. And then if I can't be in the room tomorrow, I'll say, all right, well, you know, it's like, let's say assimilation is a big theme in this story. Why don't you talk tomorrow about how that theme plays into all the characters? And then I'll come back and we'll talk about that and then we'll keep moving forward. So.

[Will Arnett]

Sure. But okay, so then, so then let's say you have an idea for a specific creature.

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah.

[Will Arnett]

What do you. And are you talking with the folks with, like, some of the design folks and the people about that as you're coming up with it? And are they talking to you about limitations or they're like, well, we don't know if we can have it, you know, suck its own eyeball out okay, Eyeball out.

[Noah Hawley]

Family programming.

[Will Arnett]

Yeah, yeah. Can they do what creep?

[Jason Bateman]

What planet do I need?

[Will Arnett]

Yeah, but, but you know what I mean, like, what is that process of, of figuring that.

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah, I mean, first it's a script process that, you know, that was my process. It's sort of function over form. Right. It's, it's, you know, what am I looking for out of this thing? And you know, both in its. How it presents to start, and then, you know, well, okay, here's this other creature and, you know, it's a horrible thing that sucks your blood and then you realize that it lays its eggs in your drinking water. Well, that's worse. Right?

[Will Arnett]

And then.

[Noah Hawley]

So then we go into a design process which was with the folks at Weta, and yeah, we kind of worked through it.

[Sean Hayes]

And how long from concept and writing, the time I saw the first episode. How many years?

[Noah Hawley]

Oh, I mean, that was four years, five years. Wow.

[Sean Hayes]

Yeah.

[Noah Hawley]

I mean, there was. We all remember being on strike. Right. That was in the middle. And so that was tough. But it was like a full year of post production, which, by the way.

[Sean Hayes]

And even after five years, still relevant. Like, the second you watch the first episode, you're like, oh, this is exactly what's happening in the world today.

[Noah Hawley]

There was no chatgpt when I started.

[Sean Hayes]

Right.

[Noah Hawley]

So that's how the zeitgeist rose up to me.

[Will Arnett]

When you were younger, young writer, just starting out, and forgive me, I don't know your origin story, to put it in Sean's terms. Do you. Were you. Did you always have a bent for writing? Because you've done a lot of different stuff. You've written all kinds of genres, you know, in your professional career.

[Jason Bateman]

But did you have novels too?

[Will Arnett]

And novels. So did you. Did you see yourself.

[Sean Hayes]

You write novels?

[Will Arnett]

Did you see yourself six of them? I do writing this kind of stuff. When you were young, did you have a hankering for this? Did you have. Was this a genre that you were into? I'm speaking specifically about the alien world. Yeah, I mean, I'm a like pre Prometheus, right?

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a third generation writer. Both my mother and her mother were writers. Wow. And, you know, my Grandma had an 8th grade education off the boat from Ukraine and my mother had a high school education. And so I knew early on that writing is just. It's something you call yourself and then you have to earn it. There's no special degree or anything. And I, I think that's liberating because you're not learning how to write from people who are judging your work, you know, you gotta assume that you're gonna write some bad things, and then the next thing might be better, and then the thing after that may be better. And, you know, I was. You know, I mean, the first writing I did was songwriting as a musician. Oh, wow. You know, I played guitar and had a band and then realized I'm not a night person, right? So that was not a line of work that was gonna work out really, for me.

[Sean Hayes]

And then Jason's not an Afternoon.

[Jason Bateman]

What was that first. What was the first thing, the little hit you got on the hook that, like, said, okay, I'm. I'm good. I. I know. I. I think I know how to write because. Yeah, well, you did. You didn't. You got. You got a degree in political science, right? It wasn't in. In. In. In writing, was it? Or did you minor in that?

[Sean Hayes]

Geez, man.

[Noah Hawley]

No, Yeah, I was just, you know, studying things that were interesting to me and then. And then, you know, writing on the side, you know, it's interesting. There was. In high school, you know, there was an assignment. We were reading the book Catch 22, right? And very specific voice in that book, comedic, satirical. And there was an assignment which is write your own chapter of Catch 22, right? And I remember that being the first thing, and kind of interesting, considering I ended up, you know, write a Coen Brothers movie and write a Ridley Scott movie, that there was something to that exercise of. Of Joseph Heller's voice of finding it, going, oh, I know what that is, and I know how to do it. That ended up being really seminal for me, I guess.

[Jason Bateman]

Wow.

[Sean Hayes]

We'll be right back. Wayfair is the place to shop for all things home. Everything from sofas to spatulas. You name it, they have it. And you can get up to 70% off during Wayfair's Black Friday sale. Wayfair also has styles you can't find anywhere else. No generic pieces you've seen a hundred times. So you can make your home way more you. Starting October 30th, you can shop Wayfair's can't miss Black Friday deals all month long. Plus, you can sit back and relax with Wayfair's fast and easy shipping just in time for the holidays. You know what I got? It's getting cold outside. Yes, even in Los Angeles, it gets really cold at night. I got a blanket from Wayfair. Don't miss out on early Black Friday deals. Head to Wayfair.com now to shop Wayfair's Black Friday deals for up to 70% off. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com sale ends December 7th.

[Jason Bateman]

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[Sean Hayes]

20Th Century Studios presents the upcoming comedy Ella McKay from Academy Award winning writer and director James L. Brooks. Emma Mackey plays Ella McKay, an idealistic young woman who juggles her family and work life in a story about the people you love and how to survive them. Featuring an all star cast including Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Loudon, Kumail Nanjiani, Ayo Adebari, Julie Kavner. With Albert Brooks and Woody Harrelson. Ella McKay. In theaters December 12th.

[Jason Bateman]

And now back to the show.

[Sean Hayes]

I just have a quick question from Scotty, if that's okay.

[Will Arnett]

Oh, sure.

[Jason Bateman]

Oh, we're not really taking calls right.

[Sean Hayes]

Now, but it's good. Open up the lines, he says. It feels like with your show, with the upcoming release of the movie Predator Badlands, which features a character from the Alien universe, that both the Alien franchise and the Predator franchise are finally being codified in the same universe. Do you see the world of Predator being folded into the world you created? Aliens.

[Jason Bateman]

I know, I've wrecked my microphone.

[Sean Hayes]

Do you see them combined at all or Predator coming onto your show?

[Noah Hawley]

No, not onto the show, I don't think. I mean, I think Dan Trachtenberg, who made Prey and has made the Badlands movie and you know, I mean, I loved Prey, I think he's doing a great job with that franchise. He clearly has a plan there. You know, I've met Dan, once. We're not kind of coordinating any of that stuff, so.

[Sean Hayes]

Yeah. Yeah, okay, fine.

[Noah Hawley]

That's not really my plan to do it.

[Sean Hayes]

Sure.

[Will Arnett]

So just tell Scotty.

[Noah Hawley]

Thanks.

[Will Arnett]

Scotty.

[Sean Hayes]

He just comes in in a predator outfit, like.

[Jason Bateman]

Ok, yeah, well, so no, let me tell us about that moment that the switch from political science to writing. Was there. Was there a first job? Was there. Was. Was it a school paper? Like, what was that transition?

[Noah Hawley]

I mean, I had done some fiction writing and, you know, as a kid and then in college and as I said, I was, you know, I was trying to be a rock star, but, you know, to make ends meet, I took a job working as a paralegal for the legal Aid Society in New York City in family courts. So these are the lawyers who represent children in abuse and neglect cases, termination of parental right cases, but also juvenile delinquency cases, so both civil and criminal law.

[Sean Hayes]

And what did you do? Sorry? What did you do?

[Noah Hawley]

I was a paralegal. I basically tried to help.

[Sean Hayes]

Help.

[Noah Hawley]

Help them, you know, case law, etc. And. And, you know, it was.

[Jason Bateman]

If a dad took off in a, you know, in a car, in a Miata, let's say. Let's say it's a mia. Let's say there was a lot of wheel spin and mg, and there was four or five kids in the rear view, would you. You would take that case on? Yes. Even if it was in Chicago?

[Noah Hawley]

Those kids deserve their day in court as well.

[Will Arnett]

Yes, they do.

[Noah Hawley]

Sure. Amen.

[Sean Hayes]

All right. All right. I'm gonna tell my dad. I'll see you in court.

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah, yeah. But, you know, and the family court. The family court building at that time was this huge black obelisk. It looked like Darth Vader's helmet. Right. And so every day I'd go to work and these kids would come in and, you know, it's obviously, it's heartbreaking, you know, it's outrageous, et cetera. And I started writing fiction as a way to kind of process.

[Sean Hayes]

Yeah.

[Jason Bateman]

Escape a little.

[Noah Hawley]

And, you know, when you're in a band, you're tied to these three filthy, penniless men. Right. And fiction writing, believe me, I know.

[Jason Bateman]

Yeah.

[Noah Hawley]

Fiction writing was a way to. I could just do it myself. And, you know, when you wrote 10 pages, you had 10 pages, right. Like, it's.

[Will Arnett]

Was your material dark at that time? Was it a reflection of what you were going through?

[Noah Hawley]

Well, no, I've always been playful and, you know, I've always been attracted to genre and elevating genre as character pieces. Et cetera So I don't know. The first novel I published was called A Conspiracy of Tall Men, and it was about a professor of conspiracy theories whose wife is killed in a plane crash. And he finally gets the conspiracy he's been looking for. But of course, it's no solace because he had to lose his wife to get it. And it has a bit of a thriller quality. It's also a little satirical. I'm always just trying to figure out, how does the story want to be told.

[Sean Hayes]

But the time as a paralegal and witnessing all of that, you know, horrible stuff to kids and the parents and the families, how did that affect you? And how do you see the. How did that change who you are as a person, as a writer, as a parent, after being experienced and after experiencing all of that?

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah, well, believe me, I tell my kids every day, you got it good. You don't know how good you got it.

[Sean Hayes]

Right, right.

[Jason Bateman]

For sure.

[Noah Hawley]

No, it's interesting, you know, Cause I. My daughter is 18, as I said, and if I look back at the last 20 years of stories that I've told, really, you know, I can't separate my identity as a parent from the stories I'm telling. You know, I look at Alien Earth, which is about these children whose minds are put into adult bodies, or Fargo Season 4, which is about these two crime bosses who trade their youngest sons. There's always something that ties into, like, who are we as a people? How are we raising our children? And, you know, what is moral and what is cynical and. And how are we preparing our kids for the world?

[Sean Hayes]

Right, right, right.

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah.

[Jason Bateman]

I mean, Noah, how do you. Do you have a structured way in which you divvy up your day to tackle these to allow your brain to think, what do I want to do? What do I want to say? What should this episode be about? What should my next project be about? And then do you have a certain time, like in the afternoon, where you actually then do the writing and then another period of time management of it all? And, like, how do you. I just can'. Imagine how you take on as much concentrated individual time along with all the time you need to spend with the teams that you're running.

[Noah Hawley]

It kind of depends on what phase I'm in. Right. You know. Right. Right now. You know, I can look at. At. At having to have scripts due in a. In a few months and production coming up, and, you know, I'm sort of in a phase right now, which is every day I'm like, where does my brain want to Go, you know, and so, and some days that, that's like, you know, I want to watch movies or, you know, I want to read this book. And other days it's like, oh, I guess I'm gonna think about, you know, Alien Earth today or I'm gonna think about Fargo today. And, and you know, in that way, you know, when an idea is new, you don't want to look at it directly, you want to side eye it. You know, you're like, it's fragile. You're like, I don't know what this is yet and I don't want to scare it and I don't want to tell anybo. Just gotta kind of. And, and then after, after a few days or a couple of weeks, you sort of go, okay, now I see a little more clearly. You know, I think I can start to make some hard, hard choices here.

[Jason Bateman]

Starts chasing you.

[Will Arnett]

Yeah, I like that idea. I like to like, keep things out into kind of a soft focus. I always say, like, just keep it out there in a soft focus for now.

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah.

[Will Arnett]

Let it kind of, let it come into, let it sort of marinate and come into focus on its own a little bit. You know, Jason was saying you've got all these different things that you're working on, and when they're in production, I imagine they're in production in lots of different locations as well, which must also be a big issue.

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah. You know, we love Canada. We film a lot in Canada. But no, I mean, I shot Alien Earth in Bangkok. We were in Thailand for, you know, what was probably a total of a year. You know, I wasn't there the whole time. I'm there for a couple of months here, a couple of months there. But yeah, it's hard. It's hard. And, and if I can time it to a kid's summer vacation, it's easier. And if not, we try to have a two week rule, but can't come back from Thailand for a weekend.

[Sean Hayes]

You know what I mean? I was just gonna ask to be, to mimic your son and say, look, if there's a part in Alien Earth.

[Will Arnett]

I always say you can't come back from a weekend in Thailand. You know what I mean?

[Noah Hawley]

I, well, it's metaphorical and literal.

[Will Arnett]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jason Bateman]

So, Jason, anything? No, there I, I, I, it is, it's a coincidence. No, but incredible that you have adapted, as you said earlier, two iconic films in a television series. Is that a coincidence or. Well, let's start with Fargo. How did you have the moxie to say, I want to approach The Coen brothers and talk to them about turning their iconic film into a television series. And then how did you do that again for. With Ridley Scott?

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah, I mean, luckily these were both sort of incoming calls. I had written a couple of pilots for fx. I knew them. I was in, talking to them about something else. They had optioned Fargo as a TV show. Joel and Ethan had signed on and they'd said, if we like the script, you can put our name on it. And if not, you know, where to send the check. And, and you know, so the first process was to sell FX and to go through, you know, that, that process and write a script. And then we sent that first script to Joel and Ethan. And that was when I met them.

[Jason Bateman]

And, and when, sorry, when FX optioned it, was it always going to be an anthology or was the original conceit to take the original characters and, and keep moving them?

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah, they wanted to make a TV show out of it. But they also said, do you think we could do it without Marge? Because who. How could you ever top Francis McDormand?

[Sean Hayes]

Right?

[Noah Hawley]

And I said, well, well, first of all, everyone else is dead or in jail, so. All right, well, that's interesting. If you're adapting the movie without actually any of the characters in the movie, then what are you doing? And I said, look, it's not a TV show because the movie says it's a true story. And at the end of it, she's seen the craziest Coen brothers case and tomorrow's a normal day and she's got two months left to have the baby and he got the 3 cent stamp. And you know what I mean, it's a closed ended thing. If she woke up, up tomorrow and it was another crazy Coen brothers case, you couldn't say it's a true story. No one would, would believe it.

[Sean Hayes]

Right?

[Noah Hawley]

I said, but you could. You know, why is the movie called Fargo? It's set in Minnesota, except that Fargo, the word is evocative of a place, right? What Joel and Ethan call Siberia, with family restaurants. And, you know, but it's also after that movie, it's kind of a state of mind. It's a type of story. And so I said, you know, so you could tell this story about Fargo and this is a Fargo story. Or, you know, as proved out, it could also be a 1979 crime epic about the death of the family business and the rise of corporate America, or it could be a 1950s story about, you know, the sort of alternate economy and immigration and et CETERA So every time I just try to push that envelope of what is a Fargo story.

[Jason Bateman]

But it would all need to take place in Fargo, though. Yes.

[Noah Hawley]

No, it all needs to. I mean, not.

[Jason Bateman]

Not even Fargo, North Dakota. Yes. Well.

[Noah Hawley]

But it needs to have some connection, you know, whether there's a character. I mean, the. The fourth season took place in Kansas City, but Jesse Buckley's character was from North Dakota, you know, and. And, you know, this last season with John Ham, you know, he was in North Dakota.

[Jason Bateman]

Oh, yeah. Guy. I don't know how he gets fired. Honestly, Noah, this month it's a new goddamn Ham vehicle.

[Will Arnett]

Ham's face everywhere.

[Jason Bateman]

Cheese it out, all of that.

[Will Arnett]

And funny.

[Jason Bateman]

All of that needs to be trimmed out, but I just needed to.

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah, no, I'm glad you got that off your chest. Yeah.

[Jason Bateman]

So sorry. Okay, so we're back. So the fourth season was with the great John Ham, right?

[Noah Hawley]

Season, Fourth season. Yeah. Yeah, that's your back season was Chris Rock. And anyway, so, yeah, so they came to me. But then, of course, I realized, look, you know, it's great. I wrote a script that the Coen brothers, you know, when I spoke to them finally, and they said, it's, you know, we hate imitation. But this was. It was eerie reading this because it felt like you were channeling us. Right. That's a great thing to hear. That makes my millennia. Right. But then you gotta film it. And. And there's. We know. We know that the Cohen's, they. They write or rewrite a lot of movies that they don't direct. And those movies never feel like Coen Brothers movies. So there's something in the cinema. Right. That turns those words into that thing. And I had to figure out what that was. Otherwise I was gonna fail on my face.

[Jason Bateman]

Did you end up directing the first episode?

[Noah Hawley]

I didn't, because I wasn't really directing then. And so, you know, I had a director.

[Will Arnett]

Yeah. Who was.

[Jason Bateman]

Did somebody come in and say, yeah, here's the visual component that Coen brothers. Yeah.

[Noah Hawley]

Adam Bernstein came in and he had shot a bunch of Breaking Bad, and we had a good collaboration, but, you know, he gave me his director's cut, and, you know, I recut it. You know, I recut it to find the tone of voice that, to me, felt like a Coen Brothers movie. It's not as comedic as you think. Right. And a lot of the comedy is deployed, you know, like Anton Sugar's haircut. It's deployed in a way where you're like, well, it's not funny. It's just really specific and kind of unsettling.

[Jason Bateman]

Right.

[Sean Hayes]

But it ends up being funny, you know?

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah, well, one of the first things I did was I took like half the edits out of the episode, you know, because nothing makes something feel like television more than cutting to dial. You're cutting every time someone talks. Right. I mean.

[Sean Hayes]

Right, right.

[Noah Hawley]

There's a scene in the emergency room where, where, where Martin Freeman meets Billy Bob for the first time. And I'm in this master shot, sort of slowly pushing in and, you know, Billy Bob gets up and moves over next to him and that's the first cut, you know, but that's a long time. Right, but that's what a movie feels like. You trust the audience. So. Yeah.

[Sean Hayes]

Wait, so who, like, because you're, you're right, it's, it's, I love Martin Freeman.

[Will Arnett]

Sorry, I just had to say that. Have you seen his show, by the way? No, have you seen his show, the responder that he did?

[Noah Hawley]

No, I haven't.

[Will Arnett]

In the uk, yeah. Oh my God. He plays a cop in Liverpool. It's unbelievable. He's so good in that show. Please. I, I, I'll watch it. Yeah, watch it.

[Sean Hayes]

It's so, so, so the, the comedy that, like, it comes like you were talking about from the Coen brothers. Who was that for you growing up? Who, who was the, who was the, the show, the movie, the people, the comedians that you're like. You know what? I really like that kind of style.

[Noah Hawley]

Well, I grew up because my father had studied acting in the uk. He came back with a lot of Goon show records, which was Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers and Harry Seek, whom. This radio, half hour radio show, it was that, it was Monty Python, it was Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. There was a lot of that British humor that really was seminal for me. And then, and you know, because people ask me, when was the first time you saw Alien? And I say, well, I'll tell you, the first time I didn't see it was a nine year old's birthday party where my parents were like, yeah, you're not going to that. And so we went to see the in laws instead, right, with Alan Arkin and Peter Falk. And I was like, I think that explains everything about me. Right. You know, so, you know, that's the sort of thing is the, the absurdism, but, but also, you know, the, the cinematic nature of it.

[Will Arnett]

Right, yeah, go ahead, Jason.

[Jason Bateman]

Well, this, this, the first television writing gig came on Bones. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So you're a Writer, producer on that. And. And then. Then you start to create your own shows. So start with the unusuals in my generation. Were those two of the first. Yeah.

[Noah Hawley]

Both for abc? Yeah.

[Jason Bateman]

And was it a difficult process to get the networks interested in your ideas? I mean, were they receptive right away based on your time there on Bones? Or was that kind of a tough transition into being a showrunner?

[Noah Hawley]

I mean, I had come from being a novelist to writing an original spec feature film that I ended up selling. And my first novel had been optioned. And they said, all right, well, now you're a screenwriter, so give it a shot. So I did some feature writing. And then, you know, the TV agents at the agency were like, would you ever think about doing tv? So I went out and I took some meetings. I ended up selling a couple of TV pilots that I wrote. And I thought, well, if any of these ever get produced, I should know how to make a show. And so, whatever. It was 2004, I was in San Francisco, I came down to LA and I staffed on Bones. And I did it because Hart Hanson, who ran the show, said, well, you're gonna learn how to make a show. There were other shows where they're like, you're gonna be in the room the whole time. And I was like, well, I know how to write, but I need to know how to produce a thing. But then while I was on staff, I was still. I published another book. I sold a movie script each season. I didn't write a pilot the first year, but the second year I went into ABC and developed a show with them that they really liked, but they didn't make. Cause it didn't really have a genre that was the broadcast days where they're like, lawyer, doctor, cop. Right. And so the next year, do you.

[Will Arnett]

Think that show would have been made today? Sorry to interrupt.

[Noah Hawley]

I think so, yeah. It was a sort of white trash Dynasty about a guy who had a used car empire and he had four families and everybody worked for him. And, you know, it was a really fun sort of story.

[Will Arnett]

I want to watch that show.

[Jason Bateman]

I see you as the lead on that, Willie.

[Will Arnett]

Yeah, for sure.

[Noah Hawley]

And they really liked it in the character work. And so then strategically, I thought, okay, well, I'm gonna go back in the next year. What can I sell them that they would actually make? And I thought, well, let's sell them a cop show. Not a procedural, but like a Hil street or Barney Miller or something like that. And so that's the show I pitched them. And then we got it through the process with Jeremy Renner and Goldberg and Harold Perrineau. And we did the eight hours, and then they said, thank you, and don't let the door hit you on the way out. And then the next day, Jeremy Renner was nominated for an Oscar for Hurt Locker. I was like, you guys are real geniuses.

[Jason Bateman]

How did. Talk to us about how the directing thing started to come about, and where did your confidence start to. When did your confidence start to grow for that? Like, asking for the wheel?

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah. I mean, you know what you realize, especially when there's comedy in the work. Right. Is that where you see the joke is different than where somebody else sees the joke. Right. With a beat. And even the unusual pilot. Right. Is like, Stephen Hopkins had directed it, and, you know, he cut a much broader comedy than I saw. Right. And so I would go in and, you know, so you start in the editing room to be a filmmaker.

[Jason Bateman]

Right.

[Noah Hawley]

You know, And. And where, you know, I'm not a. I'm not a big fan of melodrama. I like to keep the emotion sort of low until it's really earned. And, you know, and then my generation was. It was a fake documentary about the high school class of 2000 and where they were 10 years later. And so I had to approach it like I was making a documentary film. So, you know, when you watch a documentary, you're like, well, the cameras weren't there. They've got an audio recording, or they've got still photographs, or they've got, you know, or if the cameras were there and the couple had a fight and she ran off and he ran after her, well, the camera's not there waiting.

[Will Arnett]

Right, Right.

[Noah Hawley]

The camera's chasing. Right. So there was a cinematic mindset of making that. And then, of course, as I said with the Coen brothers film, you know, I started doing a lot of the second unit directing on the first season of Fargo, and then I just started doing the episodic world creation in season two.

[Jason Bateman]

Did you find it? I think most people can read something or watch something, and from the comfort of their couch, the safety of their couch, they can say, oh, I would do this differently, or I would do that differently. And those are, nine times out of 10, like, really good ideas. They're good catches. They're good fixes. But if you give them a blank page or you give them a screen with no image on it, or more pointedly, on a set standing in front of a bunch of actors and some cameras and a cameraman knowing how to create from the ground up, you know, to put this thing into three dimensions. Like did you find that change in the process from just from re cutting stuff that's in front of you to actually creating it from the ground up on set. Was that a comfortable thing for you or would that have some growing pains?

[Noah Hawley]

You know, I'm sure you had that moment the first time you're on a set and they go, what's next boss? And you don't know, right?

[Sean Hayes]

That's scary.

[Noah Hawley]

And 200 people are staring at you. You know, I've gotten comfortable with that feeling, which is like, I just need a minute, I'm gonna figure it out. Cause then of course people start to offer suggestions, which isn't helpful, right. And everything. No, it was just about finding the again, as I said, the feeling. And I don't have any training on this and and so a lot of it for me. There's a moment on Alien Earth I did that fifth hour, which was the trapped in the spaceship hour where you see what happened before the ship crashed. And you know this moment where Richard Moorjani was running away from the xenomorph and she was hiding and she was pressed against a wall and we could see down the hallway and the xenomorph came out and I thought, thought, well, I want to do a push in here, but let's do a zoom. And what if we zoom on her and then we, you know, we do it as a lock off and then I do a longer zoom on the xenomorph and then I marry those two things. It's kind of an impossible shot. I don't know if it's going to work or not work, but I know it'll give you a feeling, right? Which is like something feels wrong here, right? Which you don't know is a cinematic thing. You just feel that feeling and that's sort of how, how I approach it.

[Sean Hayes]

Super cool.

[Jason Bateman]

And we will be right back.

[Sean Hayes]

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[Jason Bateman]

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[Sean Hayes]

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[Will Arnett]

Did you find that once you got kind of like JB was saying, like you could create from the ground up in real time as a director on set, did you find that it took a step out of the process for you? Because as a writer, as a producer, as the showrunner, all these things, you're watching cuts or you're watching them shoot stuff and you're like, yeah. And you're trying to convey what it is that you want. And at a certain point, and just being able to cut the middleman out, as it were.

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah.

[Will Arnett]

Was that satisfying?

[Noah Hawley]

Well, look, my wife Kyle, who I love dearly, she said, you know, at one point to me, do you have to direct too? Right. You know, and I said, but here's the thing.

[Jason Bateman]

Opposed to just one.

[Noah Hawley]

No. Do you have to direct at all? Like you're writing your show running. You also have to be a director. And I said, well, here's the thing. I'd have to be there anyway. Right. The first episode of a new season, a new series, whatever. I got to be there anyway. It's actually, you're going to see me quicker if I do.

[Will Arnett]

Way more efficient.

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah.

[Will Arnett]

Way more efficient.

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah. So. So that's that. And, and for me, look, it's. It's all an act of play. Right? There's a, you know, I'm, as a writer, I'm a sort of. Yes. And improv guy, you know, in the room. I'm like, okay, I like that we're doing that now.

[Will Arnett]

What?

[Noah Hawley]

Right. I mean, I've heard these stories about Vince Gilligan where he's like, that's good. Let's spend two weeks seeing if we can top it. That would make me crazy.

[Sean Hayes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. For Tracy, he created Breaking Bad.

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah, yeah. And so, so you get on set and, and you know, I have a script I, I think is great. And, and, and I get on the set with the actors and I'm not saying we're gonna change the words, but like, let's figure out what it would really be like and what it wants to be. And you got to be open to play in that moment.

[Sean Hayes]

Yeah.

[Jason Bateman]

What about. So you wrote and directed a film as well, Lucy in the sky with Natalie Portman. Was the film experience anything different than basically just a double length episode for you? And I guess the question behind the question is, is there a desire to do film or do you see it as just simply arbitrarily, a different medium that is. Is every bit consistent with what you're doing on television anyway? And one could argue much more sort of creative control on television.

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah. I mean, it's its own unique medium. Right. And I did like the experience of it, you know, I mean, one of the things that, you know, I'm such a. Use every part of the animal television filmmaker that, you know, sometimes a scene doesn't fit, and you're like, I'll use it in episode four, you know, or I'll repurpose this. And then. But with the movie, you're like, there is no episode four. It's either in this movie or it doesn't exist, right? And, you know, whenever I come into a project, my first question is always, what am I taking for granted? Right? As a storyteller, a filmmaker, whatever. And with Lucy, I was like, all right, well, this is a movie that's gonna be shown in theaters. Well, maybe I'm taking the movie theater itself for granted. The fact that it's a. You got a giant rectangle at the front and all these speakers on the side. And you're taking for granted that you want to use the whole rectangle and all the speakers. But what if this woman goes to space and it's this huge, you know, spiritual experience, and the screen is full and the sound is full, and then she comes back down to earth. We see her in the pickup line, you know, to pick up her kid. And now the image is small and the sound is in the front, right? But. But then, you know, she meets your friend Jon Hamm, and you guys want to grumble about John some more.

[Jason Bateman]

I mean, he's all right, he's all right.

[Sean Hayes]

He's okay.

[Noah Hawley]

But she meets John and they have an affair, and so the feelings get big and the screen opens up, you know, so I'm always looking for those sorts of things. You know, I think that the structure of a story should reflect the content of a story, you know?

[Jason Bateman]

And what was it about that story that you thought lent itself better to feature as opposed to long form in television? And how do you treat any idea that comes into your head? Decide whether to, you know, write another book based on that idea, or. Actually, this is something that could go into as a limited series or an ongoing or a feature.

[Noah Hawley]

Some of it is how long you want to live with it. And the other TV work, interacting with the culture mostly in real time, you know, you might be 18 months, a year away, like, from writing to production, airing whatever a book, you know, you might live with for five years, a film you might live with for seven years before it hits the screen. So it's sort of like, is this interesting enough? Is this gonna hold my attention enough? Is there enough there for me to live with for that length of time and do I have enough to say.

[Will Arnett]

Were there any. Were there any sort of creative babies that you had to let go that. Ideas that you loved for a long time do. Anyone that sticks out, that you're like, I love this so passionately for a.

[Jason Bateman]

Year, then you read someone else's doing.

[Will Arnett]

A year and a day later, you're like, yeah. Or you just. Or you just go, it doesn't really get me anymore.

[Jason Bateman]

Yeah.

[Noah Hawley]

Well, I feel like you're looking for some free ideas here.

[Jason Bateman]

If you could be any scraps.

[Will Arnett]

All I'm saying, what would it be?

[Noah Hawley]

And can I produce it? Yeah. I mean, there's always stuff, but again.

[Will Arnett]

You don't have to say specifically the actual idea.

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah, I think there are things. And there. You know, there's scripts that I wrote that I. That I love. And, you know, I wrote this novel before the fall, and, you know, Sony owned it, and I adapted it. I think it's great. But it's expensive. Right. It's like a, you know, $70 million drama thriller, and they don't make those right now. So I could beat my head against a wall for five years trying to get it made, or I could go, I'm gonna bide my time and.

[Jason Bateman]

Or turn it into a limited series.

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah. Or turn it into a limited series. Yeah.

[Jason Bateman]

So what about other people's ideas?

[Will Arnett]

Let me shoot you my number real quick. Okay, great.

[Noah Hawley]

Thanks.

[Jason Bateman]

You're such an auteur. Do you even spend any time considering other people's work and adapting?

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah, it's interesting. You know, Lucy in the Sky, I did not originate that project, that Fox Searchlight brought that to me. It was a script that Reese Witherstein was producing. The first draft, you know, it's sort of like a dramatization of this true. You know, this tabloid story about this astronaut who has an affair and, you know, drives across the country, allegedly in a diaper, you know, to kidnap the. You know, it's a very tabloidy story. And the first script was kind of a diaper joke script. And I passed on it, and then, you know, and then they came back to me with. With a script that began through magic realism, to explore her psychological state of how she went from being that one person to being that other person. And I thought that was really interesting. And so I. I signed on and I developed it with John Henry Butterworth, and. And then, you know. But it's. In the end, I feel like if I had had the idea and written it from scratch, it probably would have been a different movie. You know, when you Get a script. You kind of can't see past what the script was, so, I don't know, it was. It was a $35 million magic realism astronaut movie, and it turns out people don't want to see those, so.

[Jason Bateman]

Yeah, I'm not sure what they want to see nowadays. It's such a crapshoot, you know, it's really, really interesting.

[Sean Hayes]

What about stuff for the stage or theater?

[Jason Bateman]

Oh, here he comes.

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah.

[Jason Bateman]

Did you ever forget a line on stage and anybody ever have a heart attack?

[Noah Hawley]

Think about it. You know, like I said, I'm a New York City kid. My dad had been an actor. I grew up going to all the, you know, shows, and, you know, it's. And it's a different medium. It's a. An animal I haven't tried yet.

[Sean Hayes]

Yeah, it's a good way to test the waters for, you know, bigger things. Yeah.

[Jason Bateman]

And then. And so let's. Let's go back to. To music a little bit. Sean, will you be surprised to hear that he's a singer as well and has sung on his. On some of his shows? Yes.

[Sean Hayes]

I didn't know that.

[Jason Bateman]

You do a little bit of singing. I think that's. That's a. That's a big surprise. We like to know what the audience is surprised about.

[Sean Hayes]

Yeah. Can you give us a little something?

[Noah Hawley]

A little. A little something.

[Jason Bateman]

Something Just like happy birthday, you know, and it's Sean's birthday today day.

[Noah Hawley]

Okay. Yeah.

[Jason Bateman]

That's something you still do. Yeah, it is.

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah. And. And, you know, like I said, I. I wanted to be a. A musician. It wasn't really in the cards for me professionally, but I found a workaround. Right. That's. That's what I try to do is what's the system? And can I game it? And, you know, it's. It started on. On season two of Fargo, where I. Where I decided to. I wanted songs in the show that were covers of songs from Coen Brothers movies, you know, so Jeff Tweedy did the. Did a cover of the Jose Feliciano song from the movie Fargo. And, you know, there were a lot. You know, there were a lot of covers. And then I thought, well, why don't I do one? And so Jeff Russo, the composer, and I recorded the Go to Sleep, you little baby from oh, Brother. And then when I made Legion, which was, you know, very surreal, Marvel inspired show, I wanted the songs to sound like score. I wanted. I wanted it to go from score into songs without feeling like there was any difference. So he and I just started recording again. It's like, I hear it in my head. I could try to explain it to somebody else, or we could just do it, you know? And so that. That's what we ended up.

[Jason Bateman]

Up.

[Noah Hawley]

Ended up doing. And now we do that.

[Jason Bateman]

It's cool. Tell. Tell the audience a bit. The, the.

[Noah Hawley]

The.

[Jason Bateman]

The torture, the horror or the pleasure, you tell me, of pitching what, what, what, what a writer. Ha. Well, you explain what a writer has to do to get the people who write the checks to write the check. Like, you gotta basically tell them what's coming, right?

[Sean Hayes]

And you gotta trick them sometimes.

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah, yeah. It's fascinating that this visual medium is still rooted in the oral storytelling tradition, right? Which is I walk into a room, I tell you a story, right? And if I'm charismatic and I've got good timing, you're gonna go, oh, my God, that's amazing. I wanna see that. I did one pitch where I went in and I started to talk about the segue. The segue, of course, is the segue from small talk to the pitch, right? And we did the small talk. And I was like. I was thinking on the way over here about the segue of how I was gonna get into the pitch. And I was thinking about, how are you? Yeah, I was thinking about how recently my house got broken into and they stole some guitars. And then I was thinking, no, maybe I'll talk about how I was watching TV last night and Stripes was on. And I thought, we don't have that kind of Bill Murray anti hero anymore. And I went through a couple of other things. And then at a certain point, they realized, oh, the segue is the pitch. Right? Because it is an anti hero story about a crime, you know, and, yeah, my feeling is always when you're asking someone to interact with the show in any way, whether it's an outline or a pitch, it's gotta feel like the show. And so I do these hair and makeup tests when we get on set where it's, you know, it's grown to this thing where I'll have like a, you know, a crane on my hair and makeup, you know. Cause I'll get the characters in. I'm like, let's not waste an opportunity just by looking at people in clothes, right? We have an opportunity to like, you know, let's get David Thewlis and Michael stuhlbarg and Ewan McGregor in a room and feel like what that dynamic is between them. And, you know, and so I end up cutting these things together with music. And when I show it to them, that they. This is what the show's gonna feel like, right? I love that.

[Sean Hayes]

Right? Yeah, yeah. Because it's not. I mean, we're kind of past the point of talking, just going in a room and pitching and telling a story. You need shiny objects, you need to excite them, and you need to, like, you sizzle reels and.

[Noah Hawley]

Or whatever. But it's great for the actors because they get to put the skin on without any pressure. Right. For a day or two. And. And then that wakes the crew up. Right. They're like, oh, we're. We're pushing a dolly in the. In the hair and makeup test. Like, I'm laying track and we're doing this for real.

[Jason Bateman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Noah Hawley]

You know, we did that.

[Will Arnett]

We did that actually on our film last year on this. This movie that I did. And we. We did all this camera testing here in the city outside, just me and Bradley and Mattie Libatique and guys. And we went out and shot for a couple days during the day. At night, we went, Shot all this stuff. Stuff. And Bradley ended up cutting it together and putting together this reel that he was showing the studio and cut it with music and with stuff that happened. And it was so, A, it was great for them, but B, really for us, it really started to. It taught us the language of the film before we started.

[Sean Hayes]

Yeah, you get to feel it.

[Will Arnett]

Yeah. And it was. It was really, really helpful.

[Sean Hayes]

Yeah, for sure.

[Noah Hawley]

Yeah, it is. It is. I find it, you know, and it. It becomes a sales document for them internally of like, look what this guy's making for us. You know, we're making Alien Earth, and you feel like you're watching, you know, an alien movie for four minutes or whatever it is. Yeah, it's.

[Jason Bateman]

We would be criminal if we let you go without giving you an opportunity to discuss with Sean what, to the extent you're comfortable, we can cut it if you're not. What happened with Star Trek? And will it. Will your participation with Star Trek becoming.

[Sean Hayes]

Yeah, because you're supposed to write and direct it, right?

[Noah Hawley]

I did. I signed on, you know, after Lucy in the Sky, I thought, oh, I like this movie thing. I'd like to do another one, but I think maybe I'd like to try something a little bigger. And, you know, it's all franchises, and I thought, yeah, but everything's war, right? Star wars is war and Marvel is war, but Star Trek isn't war. Star Trek is exploration. Right. It's people solving problems by being smarter than the other guy. Like the best movie from the best Moment from Star Trek is in Wrath of Khan, where Shatner puts on his reading glasses and, like, lowers the shields on the other ship. It costs like 45 cents. Right, right. But it's like, you see, oh, he's smarter than Khan. He's, you know. And so I went in, I talked to Paramount, I sold them. This original idea wasn't. It wasn't Chris Pine. It wasn't anything. I wrote it. They said, we love it. Let's prep it. We were, you know, we were, I was gonna move to Australia. We were booking stages, whatever. And then, you know, as happens in Hollywood, Jim Giannopoulos, who was running the studio at the time, he's like, I'm gonna bring in somebody else under me, and they're gonna take over the film studio. And the first thing they did was kill the original Star Trek movie. Cause because they said, well, how do we know people are going to like, like there, you know, shouldn't we do a transition movie from Chris Pine? Play it safe, you know, whatever. And so it kind of went away. But, you know, I do, I mean, I, I, I talked to David Ellison recently, and I was like, you still haven't made a Star Trek movie. I'm just saying, it's in there. I love it.

[Jason Bateman]

Yeah, it's sort of like with all this new ownership and administration over there, I guess it's, you can just pick up the phone and say, hey, guys, want to dust this off? Yeah.

[Sean Hayes]

Right, right, right. You just wait five minutes in Hollywood for everybody to get a new job and then go pitch the same stuff again.

[Will Arnett]

Sean, what are you saying?

[Noah Hawley]

Nothing, you know, but, I mean, I don't know if you guys feel the same way, but they, you know, to some degree, you really have to declare, this is my next thing. This is all I want to do, all I want to think about. And then, and then you can move the mountain. Right? For, for me, I've got more Alien Earth. I could make more Fargo. Less like, it's a little, it's more like, well, you know what I learned from Ridley Scott, you know who I got to know some. He'll develop three movies at the same time, and he'll say to Sony, I'm gonna make the Fox movie unless you guys, you know what I mean? So you kind of have to try to get them to play your game as opposed to playing.

[Jason Bateman]

Create a little leverage there.

[Sean Hayes]

Right, Right.

[Jason Bateman]

Well, you've certainly done your part with that. Keep it coming, please. Noah, it's an incredible body work already. And are you even 40 yet, I mean, you know, I mean, I am.

[Noah Hawley]

I'm older than 40.

[Jason Bateman]

Well, you've. You've got.

[Will Arnett]

It's just impressive. It's so broad and it's so diverse, and it's so. Everything about it is just.

[Jason Bateman]

And the degree of difficulty is high on this stuff. You're not.

[Noah Hawley]

You're not.

[Sean Hayes]

The novel and the fact that you write novels and, like, the.

[Will Arnett]

I know all these novels that these guys will never read.

[Sean Hayes]

Yeah.

[Will Arnett]

I am. I am going to start. I am going to buy some of your. Your books.

[Noah Hawley]

Well, I appreciate that. Even if they're just on your shelf. It's meaningful to me.

[Jason Bateman]

No, no. He reads these things. It's a very surprising element of Will Arnett. This guy knocks down books like Reese Witherspoon.

[Sean Hayes]

Yeah.

[Will Arnett]

So I'm. I'm gonna check out.

[Jason Bateman]

All right, pal. Well, thank you for doing this very much. I'm glad we got this done. I'm glad you had time to squeeze this in in your busy, busy schedule.

[Noah Hawley]

Thanks, guys. I really appreciate it.

[Sean Hayes]

So nice to meet you.

[Will Arnett]

Yeah, nice to meet you, Noah.

[Noah Hawley]

Thanks, too, guys.

[Jason Bateman]

Talk soon, man. There goes Noah Holly. I mean, I.

[Will Arnett]

He's something else, man. What an impressive guy.

[Jason Bateman]

I like to think I work hard, you know, But I don't.

[Will Arnett]

What are you talking about? You're tired at two.

[Jason Bateman]

Yeah, but I work so hard until two.

[Will Arnett]

Yeah, how? I mean, you like to think that you work hard and. Can I just say. And I want you to be honest. As honest as you can be.

[Jason Bateman]

Okay, I'm ready.

[Will Arnett]

How many golf games do you have scheduled this week? Including yesterday day?

[Jason Bateman]

I will be playing Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

[Sean Hayes]

Okay.

[Jason Bateman]

But I work. I work during the round, as you know. I'm returning emails and texts all the way through it, and I'm usually knocking down one of these goddamn things before I get out there. And then I make a more phone call when I get home.

[Will Arnett]

Sorry, we're getting in the way of.

[Jason Bateman]

Your golf podcast, man. No good for my golf game, by.

[Will Arnett]

The way, Sean, you know what my favorite thing about JB is? Sometimes we're playing golf and he won't pull out his phone. But you'll see, all of a sudden, he'll just wander off talking into his apple, into his wrist. And he's talking to his wrist, and he's like, yeah, we'll get them to send it. Tell them we'll look at the thing tomorrow. If the period just.

[Jason Bateman]

New paragraph.

[Sean Hayes]

Why don't we try to do an episode of Smart List while you're playing golf?

[Jason Bateman]

You Know, because I. I don't play that much. I. I work. I work a lot.

[Sean Hayes]

No, but while you're on the course.

[Will Arnett]

Why don't we go to Hawaii? Hawaii. And play around a golf.

[Jason Bateman]

We've been invited and, you know, we're actually, to be honest, we're all a little bit too busy to do that.

[Will Arnett]

I know.

[Jason Bateman]

You know, we're all. We're all.

[Will Arnett]

Should we. Should we. I think, and I know again, we should talk about this privately, but we might as well do it here. We've talked about it. We should go back and do some shows. Some live shows.

[Jason Bateman]

Yeah. Why not start. Get up back, get back out on the road.

[Will Arnett]

Yeah. Do you think?

[Sean Hayes]

Why wouldn't we?

[Jason Bateman]

Yeah, at the very. At the. At a minimum, we should go and be on stage somewhere and doing it in front of a live audience.

[Sean Hayes]

Why don't we it like at the end of next year?

[Jason Bateman]

Okay.

[Will Arnett]

We could.

[Sean Hayes]

Okay.

[Will Arnett]

Could we do this spring or no. Is the spring off limits for us?

[Sean Hayes]

I'm gonna book.

[Jason Bateman]

Can you guys hold on one second? Yeah.

[Will Arnett]

No shy. When are you done? The play.

[Sean Hayes]

I'm doing the play. January.

[Will Arnett]

We're doing this in real time. I know.

[Sean Hayes]

Do the play January to April, like January 3rd, basically February.

[Will Arnett]

I say we do like pre summer. So it's nice out. That's what I'm saying, that we can get out.

[Sean Hayes]

Not so cold.

[Will Arnett]

Sort of like September. We were gonna go, so we were gonna.

[Jason Bateman]

Yeah, I might have a little bit of work as well.

[Will Arnett]

Well, I know you are. I know. Yeah.

[Jason Bateman]

You're not planning on doing any work. Will, are you done?

[Will Arnett]

I am. I might, I might, I might.

[Jason Bateman]

You're gonna pack it in now?

[Sean Hayes]

You know what? We can. We can, we can talk about it. We can. We can keep talking about it. Like we don't have to decide.

[Will Arnett]

We can make a decision.

[Sean Hayes]

Yeah.

[Will Arnett]

Bye.

[Sean Hayes]

The end of the year. I know. God.

[Jason Bateman]

No, Sean, what was yours gonna.

[Sean Hayes]

Mine was. We can just talk about. We don't have to decide now. We can go day by day.

[Jason Bateman]

Or you know what? Better still, we just play it by year.

[Will Arnett]

Oh, a three by.

[Jason Bateman]

By triple by.

[Sean Hayes]

Pass.

[Noah Hawley]

Smart.

[Jason Bateman]

Less.

[Will Arnett]

Smart.

[Noah Hawley]

Less.

[Will Arnett]

Smartless is 100% organic and artisanally handcrafted by Bennett Barbico, Michael Grant, Terry and Rob Armjarv.

[Noah Hawley]

Smart, less.

[Sean Hayes]

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