John Requa
Appearances
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
That seems to be the, even for those of us who didn't know Dan's story, when we read that script, that we knew that there was something different about that script. And everyone we've talked to has had that same response. More That Was Us after these words from our sponsors. We are getting away next weekend and we're taking the whole family to San Diego to celebrate my dad's birthday.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
We've got all kinds of stuff planned. We're going to see a little concert, take the kids down there, see some friends, and we are going with Airbnb.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
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That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
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That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
Someone off the podcast told Sterling that he talks too much on the podcast. And now he has like a thing. And we want him to erase that from his memory.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
I think it's when I rolled the camera up in the window. And the window shattered. Oh, was it you? What did you do? Well, it was so hot. We would roll the windows down between takes me and Chrissy's window up front. Yasu was sitting in the backseat with the camera and he had like, OK, rolling. He had rolled his window down so he could fit the back of the camera out the window.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
And when I went to roll our windows up, I hit the wrong switch. And all I heard Yasu very quickly go, Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Boom. the whole window exploded on the back of it. I remember this now. Yeah, yeah. It was about then that we stopped letting the actors drive. The camera union. The camera union. The operators, the operator union.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
It's also kind of a trajectory of life in general. It all starts out so fun. It all starts out so fun, so light. Yeah.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
I got very sad when I realized that they were gone. They weren't coming back. I was like, what do you mean?
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
Amazing. I'm so glad to hear that.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
I love that Dan probably didn't even have to be out of town. He just left because he didn't want to do Paley Fest. He was like, you guys do it.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
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That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
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That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
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That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
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That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
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That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
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That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
Because we're going to ask him the same thing about you. I'll ask him. So, yeah. You know, he's just like, he makes fun of us mercilessly. He makes fun of everybody.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
He likes to save it for sweeps, though.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
Thank you so much for joining us. Pleasure to be here. These two gentlemen are a creative duo. Yes, they are. Directing, writing, producing team, who I think, I Love You Philip Morris was probably the first like- First film? Your coming out party, as it were. Our first official directing.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
This is actually my question, because collaborative seems to be the word. Like, you guys have this balance, right? Where collaboration is built into your creative process just by being a team, a partner. Partnership, right? But you're also...
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
very well known for partnering the genres like you were saying dramedy uh drama and comedy yeah um but i also felt like when you guys were directing i felt empowered in a way that i did not feel empowered anywhere else and that's not to put anyone else down it was just a different Vibe and- Soderbergh. Say again? Soderbergh is a hack. Yes, that's right. That's right. This is what I wanted to say.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
So that you can hear me say. What has he done? It's hard to explain in our industry that television specifically is maybe the most collaborative form of creation. It has to be. It makes it, quote unquote, has to be, but it isn't always.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
It can be very isolating. You can feel... left out, you can feel put down, and that goes for anybody, not just actors. I've seen directors feel that, I've seen writers feel that way. And so I'm wondering how you got there to this point where you were so inclusive and so welcoming?
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
Because that was what Sterling was saying about your show now, Paradise, because it's not, I'll tell you, it's not as common as I would hope that it would be.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
I know your answer. Which is? Oh, give his answer. Yeah, give his answer.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
A few seasons in, I finally asked her, I'm like, how did I get here? And it was because of you two, and you two had seen The Nick.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
Are you serious? Yes. And I was like, what?
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
Yeah! But my question was, you watched that and saw Toby? And I was like, why? I would never ask that to anybody else. I don't want to know why.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
You've done some questionable things. Well, there was, when you guys left, I remember the last episode that you guys did, because it was like, I had that realization, like, wait, what do you mean? What do you mean you're going to do something else?
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
Yeah, okay. And during my last scene, you both separately were like, just so you know, as you go forward in this show, do your thing.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
All of you are going to know these characters better than anybody. And I just, I don't know, that was kind of a big moment for me in my career.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
That's right. So they have been working with you. They are working with you.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
I'm just not quite sure how it works. For our listeners, the reason why there's a different director for every episode of television, usually, is because there's all of this prep work that goes into each episode and post-production.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
And you can't do both while also shooting. And so there has to be a rotation. And so you get to work with all of these wonderful guest directors who come in and do their episode. Yeah. But that being said, you get into season three, four, five, six of a TV show, and they've watched a couple episodes, but they're not- As adept, like steeped in the knowledge of the- They usually watch the pilot.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
And their job on a very rudimentary, and this is me minimizing it terribly, is to get coverage. enough coverage that when they pass that coverage on to the creator of the show who's gonna edit it together, he has every option he could want or she could want to put an episode of television together.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
By the entire This Is Us crew. Yeah, that's right. And we will be interviewing the creator of This Is Us right after this. It's a family affair. It's pretty exciting. Can you guys, let's go back to the 1900s. Let's go back. And talk to me, because we actually, with Isaac and Elizabeth, had another kind of what I view as, maybe it's not as rare, but a rare happening in our industry, which is a...
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
So they're getting different colors and different levels and different emotions and they're honestly getting way more options than someone like you or Ken Olin would get, because they are, for lack of a better term, covering their asses.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
years of trust and we can we shorthand each other yeah i will say that was probably one of my biggest growing areas as a professional on this show was was to allow collaboration with a guest director who i maybe didn't think knew as much as I did. I'm serious about this scene, about these two people, about where we've been and where we're going, like all these things.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
And I certainly got a little like, Resistant. Pardon me, sir, madam. I'll take it from here.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
Right. Yeah. And to allow collaboration like that, to let them do their job and to not be a pain in the ass of like, all right, you want to try something different? Great, let's try something different. To allow, I definitely needed to learn how to do that more.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
directing, writing, team. And you guys have been doing that from the beginning. And so had Isaac and Elizabeth. And we had two sets of those on our show, which I think is even rarer. That's true. You guys started in college. Talk to me about where you went, how you decided that this partnership was going to be lasting. If you still have. I mean, it might not.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
Sterling, you know what I think a black man would say here? Yeah. If I could.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
I hitched my horse. There was disease. There was disease. There was. But if anybody ever asks me about you two, because I do talk about you a lot, I have a great amount of respect and admiration for both of you. I said, all you need to know about these two men is that they directed the pilot of This Is Us and Bad Santa. We wrote Bad Santa. And wrote Bad Santa.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
Yeah, tell me about that, because there are several directing duos. There's a lot more, I'd say, writing teams than there are directing teams. Logistically speaking, the unions... don't like that. They don't like to.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
Oh my God, welcome back to the podcast. On this, a very special day. The two gentlemen who we are welcoming into the studio today are two of my favorite members of the This Is Us family. We have Glenn Ficarra and John Requa.
That Was Us
John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Us | Directors & Producers
Those two projects, if you mash them together, I think are a perfect encapsulation of you two. And thank you so much for joining us today.