Carla Gugino speaks with Screen Rant about her new Cinemax series Jett, how the crime drama came to be, and how the show created a different kind of female antihero. In addition to starring in the series from writer and director Sebastian Gutierrez, Gugino is also an executive producer, which allowed for her to have greater input on the character of Daisy “Jett” Kowalski and her story. The result is an incredibly entertaining series that has hints of Elmore Leonard, but also feels unique, especially in terms of the typically macho programming found on Cinemax.
For her part, Gugino has been on a terrific streak as of late, starring in Netflix’s well-received horror series The Haunting of Hill House, and before that she teamed with Hill House writer-director Mike Flanagan on an adaptation of Stephen King’s Gerald’s Game. While Gugino delivered great performances in those horror stories, she’s seemingly born to play the title role in Jett, bringing plenty of what fans only got a small sample of from the canceled-too-soon series Karen Sisco, which was, of course, based on the character created by Leonard.
As such, it feels a bit like Jett sees Gugino come full circle, with a great new series on a premium channel, one that gives the show the freedom to be as light and funny as needs to be, while also allowing for the kind of dark violence that so often comes with crime dramas of this ilk. In a recent interview with Screen Rant, Gugino spoke about her new show and what viewers can expect from season 1 of Jett.
Jett really hits that crime fiction sweet spot right away. Tell me a little bit about how the project came about and how you came to be involved in the series.
Sebastian Gutierrez, who wrote and directed all of them, created it. He's a big... I can get exactly what you're speaking to. He hits the sweet spot because that is his sweet spot and a real area of interest for him. I love the fact that I think what I gravitated to was he gave me the script and said, "Would you like to play the role of Jett?" And that was the beginning of the conversation.
I was so taken with this thought that it is playful and sexy and there's such great banter but there's humor in it, but the humor is not found in the violence and that the violence actually has consequences, which is a balance that I really appreciate, because here you have this practical unsentimental thief, who's drawn into the proverbial final job and she's smart enough to know you don't ever take the final job, but she ends up for various reasons deciding that she thinks she can pull it off. I was so intrigued to have this first season deliver a compelling storyline for all the characters that [Sebastian] started introducing in episode one. Even seemingly in passing there are characters that we're going to follow for the next nine episodes. I also was drawn to how he plays with structure and time. I think when you've seen the first two you start to get a sense of what the show is and as you see more, you'll see that it continues in a really interesting way, where we're just given information as we need it.
I have to assume that the role was written with you in mind. I really can't see anyone else playing the part. Is that right? Was that sort of how it came about?
That is right, yes. We had talked about it and he had this idea 100% from his imagination, from his creation. But thankfully I am able to read the scripts that he writes first and in this case he, yeah, he wrote this role for me. It's interesting, I've played other strong female characters, obviously, and Karen Sisco being more akin to this, and just having some of those same qualities, but Jett is very different than any character I have played. I think what always surprises me about Sebastian is though he knows me well, he always writes characters that I am not sure exactly how I can pull off, which immediately makes me want to do it.
What is your take on the character of Jett? She feels a bit like a female antihero, but it's not just a direct gender swap of the more typical male antiheroes. Can you tell me a little bit about how you see her and what makes her distinct from other characters who might otherwise be the star of a show like this?
I think that's correct and I feel exactly the same way in regard to antiheroes. Although there are great roles for women in television now, which is wonderful, the antihero is a bit of a double standard, because we have some great male antiheroes and I think when you have a female antihero, often times, there's a notion of "was she abused?" as a young person or does she have some sort of social anxiety. We're always having to come up with some sort of reason why she's behaving not in your standard way.
What I really like about Jett is that she is somebody you might think more of Lee Marvin in "Point Blank" or a young Clint Eastwood. She really is a lone warrior. She keeps her own counsel, she's not particularly introspective. We have seen more examples of men doing that, but it's also really important to Sebastian and I that she not just take on the worst characteristics of a man, but actually that she is distinctly a woman. She wasn't... you know when all the girls around her were dreaming about being princesses and getting married, having children, she was dreaming of skewing things and I think that that, she isn't Robin Hood, she has her own moral compass and it was really important, I hope that we can give a...I say this with a slight wink, because she is of course a criminal, but a role model for young girls-our value doesn't need to be determined by how we're perceived on the outside. You know Jett doesn't care. I think that that's a really refreshing display.
Another thing that is refreshing about the character, and the series itself, is the degree to which the series explores the internal workings of Jett's mind. Can you tell me about that approach and why you think it's important to have that kind of level of interiority to the character?
I think that this is someone who assesses the room in a second. Her mind moves very quickly. She's very economic with her actions. There's not a wasted breath. It was interesting in that first week of filming, because so often, and this does come back to your question, so often as an actress you are asked to come to a piece to bring an emotional element, an emotional depth of complexity or to humanize something. And then the man, the male character gets to just exist. We're very compelled generally by that character, even if we don't know if we like them yet. There's an enigmatic quality. It was interesting in playing this role, because I realize that that was what I got to do with Jett and it really is about how she sees the world, assesses it, and takes action. It's very non-reactive and that was a key component that the characters around her, this colorful group of characters, I think also are a great juxtaposition to her skills.
Each episode is comprised of so many different elements and it moves backwards and forwards in time and you have so many moving parts without it ever feeling discombobulated or confusing. Is that how the episodes were presented to you in the script? Did you have a complete picture of what each episode would eventually be as you were filming it?
Well, first of all very much so in regards to knowing what the episode would eventually be. Sebastian wrote all nine episodes on spec, so before we even started filming it, we had...it was originally ten, actually...it was condensed into nine hours. We knew exactly where the story was going and what was happening. There were alterations made in post, as there always are when you're putting something together and honing it, but what was really wonderful is that we all had the entire piece and very very little was changed in the filming process in terms of script. It was more like if we lost a location or if we needed to change a location or found a great new location. Those kind of changes were made, but otherwise, we shot it as one big movie. We cross boarded the entire thing and we really knew exactly how those timeframes were going to play out and it was really helpful to know where Jett was going to end up in this first season.
It was an absolute luxury to have all of the scripts written and also we originally held on to them for quite awhile until we could find the right place to make [Jett] the way that we wanted to make it, because we never wanted to do it just as a pilot. It really did need to extend for the whole piece. There was also time to really...I don't know that I can remember being on something where the script had the time to get this tight and this specific and Sebastian really had impressively woven those timeframes in a way that is...as I said, you get information just as you need it. It's not confusing, but it is intriguing.
Is that something that you find has changed as television continues to grow and compete with feature films?
I definitely think that television, certainly high-quality television, is really the place where we can do what we used to be able to do in smaller, independent, character driven cinema. It's a place where we can have someone who has a strong vision that can be carried all the way through to the final product and that we can explore each character, because now so many, at least certainly in this country, so many American films have to be at such a large scale and have to appeal to so many people and have to come from some sort of source material that already existed. It's just such a different world, but I would say that for sure, more and more, we're getting to have shows where all of the material get written before filming begins. But it's still relatively rare. I definitely think television can be a place for a singular vision to really thrive.
In addition to starring in the series, you're also a producer. What does that entail? Does that give you, more leverage in terms of having input over the direction of your character as well as the story?
For sure. In terms of the character, Sebastian and I love collaborating and he is really strong at what he does and I'm strong at what I do, so that's something that on that level, in terms of the character, that was really mostly a conversation between the two of us. HBO/Cinemax is incredibly supportive and I think we were very fortunate to have people there who really saw his vision and our vision for the show and really supported it. But certainly I would say, as a producer, what I really enjoy, what I find much more fulfilling is being involved from the ground up in terms of helping to cast the project. Being a part of post-production, looking at various cuts of the show and being able to give input and be more collaborative on that level. I think mostly what it allows is that the vision of the show that we wanted to create actually is able to come to the screen in the way that we want it to. You have your shot at actually having the show that you're able to see being the show that we wanted to make. Because otherwise, you have too many cooks in the kitchen, it's just hard for that vision to continue all the way through.
Jett premieres Friday, June 14 @10pm on Cinemax.