Over the course of 30-plus years, director Lesli Linka Glatter has racked up an impressive and diverse list of prestigious film, network, premium cable and streaming television dramas, including Homeland,
Love and Death,
The Morning Show,
The Walking Dead,
Masters of Sex,
Mad Men,
The Good Wife,
The West Wing,
NYPD Blue and
Twin Peaks. In doing so, she’s shattered the glass ceiling for women in the industry and became one of the most in-demand television directors/producers working today.
Her latest show is Zero Day, a taut political thriller starring Robert De Niro as a former U.S. president, who’s tasked with investigating a catastrophic ‘Zero-Day’ cyberattack. It marks De Niro’s first leading role in a TV series, and the legendary actor is joined by a large ensemble cast that includes Lizzy Caplan, Jesse Plemons, Angela Bassett and Connie Britton. Behind the scenes, Glatter collaborated with DP John Conroy and editors Ben Lester, Hugo Diaz and Jon Otazua.
Here, in an exclusive interview with Post, Glatter, the current DGA president, four-time Emmy nominee and DGA Award winner, talks about making the hit show, working with De Niro and her love of post.
You have done so many great shows. What was the appeal of this one?
“I was sent the pilot script and immediately responded to it. It is a political, paranoid conspiracy thriller, totally based on research, and it felt so real. I was on the edge of my seat as I was reading it, and I thought, 'I must tell the story,' especially because the themes are about what is truth in a post-truth world. It felt just very pertinent to the time we’re living in, and the characters were layered and complicated.”
It was quite a coup getting De Niro. What did he bring to the show?
“Incredible commitment, veracity. I have to say I was a bit intimidated at first. You’re working with a legend and as I got to know him, he is just a wonderful collaborator, and the added plus, which I didn’t know, is he has a wonderful sense of humor. So, he was great to work with. Very prepared.”
And unlike a lot of shows, you directed every episode.
“I did, and I think as it was De Niro’s first time doing a lead role for television, doing a show with the usual change of director on each episode would’ve been a challenge. I think it was much easier to wrap his mind around the single director plan on this huge project. And we had a lot of technical challenges, as we were cross-boarding all six hours. So, often in a single day’s shoot, we were jumping around from episode to episode, and to keep track of that on an emotional level and a plot level is really challenging. That was something I had to be on top of all the time. And we had so many locations in New York and D.C., and all the logistics to deal with. It was a huge undertaking.”
Tell us about collaborating with your DP, John Conroy.
“The maestro! I loved every second of collaborating with him. He shot part of HBO’s Love and Death for me, and we were supposed to do a huge limited series for Amazon when COVID struck, and we prepped the show and never shot it, so when Zero came around, I immediately picked up the phone and he was like the first call. As a director, I had the dream team of a cast and the dream team of a crew, and we shot for 103 days, so it’s like shooting three back-to-back movies. And we had some very complex setups. We were shooting in one set that was four layers of glass and not one thing was on a gimbal. And they came up with a method of how to shoot in that set, so that we could move the camera everywhere. They built these black boards that fit in every window, so there would never be any reflection behind us, so it was just a masterful invention of how to shoot in many glass boxes.”
How early did you start integrating post and visual effects?
“Very early on. I was working with Ben Lester, an editor that I had worked with before on Love and Death, who is just fantastic. We were talking daily, which I think is really important. Our post producer was Tim King, and we did all the sound work and mix at Signature Post, and we were based at Harbor Pictures for the DI with colorist Roman Hankewycz. He’s an amazing colorist, and he and John were very connected, and talking all the time. They set the look and feel of the show, so when we were seeing dailies or frame grabs, you’ve got a really good sense of what the look and feel was going to be.”
You had three editors in the end. How did that work?
“Ben Lester came to the set several times, and we did all the cuts together, and then we were pressed for time, as we had to meet a firm delivery date. It was my first experience with Netflix, and a very positive one, but they need months to prepare the show and do all the subtitles and dubbing so it can be released in every country in the world simultaneously. And we needed to bring on two other editors to make those dates, so at the end we brought in Hugo Diaz and Jon Otazua to help out.”
What were the main editing challenges?
“We’ve got a lot of threads going on and the stories are quite complex, so I think being honest to the story and telling it in the best possible way was a challenge because, besides the thriller plot, you also have issues of acuity in a leader, and then you have to merge that storyline into the political thriller and all of the deep character work. So, it’s always finding the balance between that and being sure that the pace and rhythm is there, but not to the detriment of character development and relationships.”
TV shows are usually very different in terms of post for a director. You hand it off and then it’s really a producer’s job in post. But this was more like a movie post, right?
“Yes, and I love post, and I’ve worked in it now for a while. When I did Love and Death, creator and writer David E. Kelley was an incredible partner in that way, and we were both very involved with post. So, I’ve always had that great experience of working in collaboration with the writer and the post producer to tell the best possible story, because we get to re-look at the story again in post. I can’t imagine not doing post, as it’s been a long time since I came into an existing series and after four or six days, you’re handing it off. So, I love being part of the whole post process, and on this we had an incredible supervising sound editor that I’d worked with before, Brett Hinton, who did this incredible sound design. And with that and the music, you can change your story so drastically in post. So, to not be part of that process is just unthinkable.”
Fair to say this has more visual effects than one might think?
“Yes, we tried to do a lot practically, but we also had quite a lot of VFX, and our visual effects supervisor, Douglas Purver, was just brilliant, and we used several vendors, including Dream Machine, RVX, and Fox and Wizard. A lot of it was set enhancement. We built part of a set for the floor of the House of Representatives, and then the rest of it is VFX, and we used the steps of the courthouse and added the Capitol, because you can’t shoot in any of these places now. When I shot West Wing in D.C., there was a lot of access, but that all changed after 911. Now it’s very challenging to shoot in D.C. We did shoot a second unit in D.C., where we could close certain streets and put military equipment there, which was great. But you need all the VFX, and I really enjoy working with them, as you get to create worlds.”
How important is the sound and music part of the equation to you?
“It’s huge, because you can have great visuals, but if the score doesn’t work and if the sound design takes you out of the experience, because you can’t hear the dialogue, then nothing works as well as it should. So, I’m very involved in those sessions and we had a great team at Signature. Along with Brett, whose sound design work adds a whole other level to the emotionality of the story, our re-recording mixers Pete Elia and Jason Coleman did a great job. And it’s the second time I’ve worked with our composer, Jeff Russo, who I thought did a spectacular job with the score. And the thing that’s so amazing about sound and post in general is that it’s such a collaborative team sport, and you want the best possible team that you can get, and it all has to work together, and I feel we got all that.”
Tell us about doing the DI with colorist Roman Hankewycz and your DP at Harbor.
“So much of the look and feel was set early on in prep when they were doing tests, and then John talked to Roman all the time. John really set what the look was going to be, and then for the DI, I went and previewed everything, and in the sessions it was more about finessing the frames. Sometimes there would be something where I’d say, ‘I’d love to see that a bit darker,’ or maybe lighten up a sequence, and they’d go back and make certain adjustments. And after they felt happy with the pass they did, I would go in and watch it. But honestly, it was not a lot that got changed in the DI, as they did such a great job right from the start of setting the look we wanted.”
Where does this rate on the scale of great projects you’ve done? It must be near the top right?
“It was a really good one. I feel blessed to have worked on such interesting and provocative material, and that’s what I want to continue to do. They still let me do this crazy job and I still love doing it, and hopefully I’ll be doing it till they roll me to the set with my walker and my oxygen tank, you know? But it’s always about the material at the end of the day. You must have a great story.”