After my recap for the sixth Six Feet Under episode of this season, "The Rainbow of her Reasons," went up a few weeks ago, I got a very nice email from Jill Soloway, the writer of the episode. So naturally, I repaid her kindness by bugging her for an interview.
In addition to "The Rainbow of her Reasons," Jill wrote the episodes "Back to the Garden," "I'll Take You," "Making Love Work," "I'm Sorry, I'm Lost," "Parallel Play," and "The Black Forest." Now that Six Feet Under has wrapped, she'll be going on the road in support of her first book and working on her TV project. We discussed this, the show, and more when we talked on the phone twice in August, including a shorter follow-up conversation just hours before the series finale aired. I've edited them so it basically seems like one conversation, and also to make myself sound a little less like Chris Farley.
M. Giant: So, congratulations on the show, and the run, and the season, and everything.
Jill Soloway: Yeah.
So, what's it like to be done?
It's okay. It's not really all that sad.You're a producer as well as a writer on the show.
Yeah. The different producer titles are basically different levels of writer. The producer titles all go in order. Your title at your first job is staff writer, then story editor, then executive story editor, co-producer, producer, supervising producer, co-executive producer. Each one represents how many years you've been in the business. I started during the second season.So what other producer-type stuff do you do besides writing?
On the show?Yeah.
Well, Alan Ball is really committed to the concept of writers getting an opportunity to be involved in the whole production.Being a writer himself has something to do with that?
Yeah, totally. When he worked on sitcoms, he always swore, "When I'm in charge, the writers will have a lot more control." So a lot of writers [on other shows] will be able to, like, drop in on the set and watch part of what is done, but Alan Ball had it so from the first moment that we get into production, casting…we'd meet with the department heads about props, wardrobe, hair and makeup. We'd go to the set and sit to the director and make comments, probably much to the chagrin of the directors. Some liked it but some would get kind of annoyed. We'll be there reminding them of why or what or the reason for something. And then after, the director would take a pass at the footage and the writers would be involved with that, and the editing after that.Cool. Do you think you're spoiled for your show?
Cool. Do you think you're spoiled for your show? I've kind of decided that I didn't really want to be on a show unless it's my own show. Okay. So, hopefully…I think that if I went to work on somebody else's show, I think that I would be in trouble soon. Uh-oh. When you're writing an episode, how much of a framework or how much freedom do you get as far as… We get a three-page outline. [Jill explains that the outline specifies how the episode fits into the overall season arc, but my cheap-ass tape recorder doesn't pick up her exact words.] I mean, you have to follow your outline. Who determines the arc, is it Alan Ball? No, all the writers sit around and talk about it every season. So it wasn't like Joss Whedon claims to do, having the whole run of the show planned out? No. No, Alan doesn't work that way. I read in TV Guide that there was kind of a different plan for the final season before Rachel Griffiths came in and said she was pregnant? Yeah, well, we were gonna have a…I think there was another…[long pause] I don't want to spoil [the finale]. You haven't watched it yet, have you? No, I haven't. Why don't we say that there was gonna be another miscarriage. And some of these problems with the baby that are now being bandied about? We had another storyline where there was yet another pregnancy. You know how we had the two pregnancies this season? Right. Before we found out Rachel was pregnant there were three pregnancies. And the middle one was, I think, a second miscarriage, and then the third one was gonna be, like, some of these problems and an abortion. And it was just going to be a lot more complicated. Wow. And, uh, she did not want to play an abortion scene. She was willing to play the first miscarriage, because, you know, certain stuff. It was early on. But she didn't want to be playing anything involving the death of the baby. I don't blame her at all. Yes. How did you get into writing for TV? I created a play with my sister called The Real Life Brady Bunch that became a big hit, and I got an agent, and I got my first TV writing job at The Steve Harvey Show. Do you remember that show? Yes, I do [by which I mean that I remember when it was on]. So how did you…is that how you got into Six Feet Under, through your agent?
Then I worked on sitcoms for, like, four or five or six years and worked my way up and still was like, really frustrated with sitcom writing 'cause it was just so writers' room-ish, and long, long hours, and everything I was working on I thought I was too good. And, like, the last sitcom I worked on was a sitcom called Nikki. I remember that show [again, I remember when it was on]. Yeah, horrible show. [laughs] I basically went from Nikki to Six Feet Under by writing a short story called "Courteney Cox's Asshole." Okay. It's on my website. People read it online, that I wrote this short story. It sort of got a lot of attention and was actually kind of considered a piece of literature and got published in, like, journals, and my agent sent it to Alan Ball and he loved it. Very cool. So what's your favorite episode of Six Feet Under that you've written? That I've written? Yeah. [pause] I don't know. "Back to the Garden" and "Rainbow of Her Reasons" are related, to me, because they're my first and my last episodes. They sort of go together. It's like beginning and ending to me. And I loved writing "Back to the Garden" because it was my first episode and it was so exciting to see it become real. To go out to the location at Aunt Sarah's house, cover that whole world, and have people dancing at the bonfire and the treehouse they built for Claire and her boyfriend. Cool. And then "The Rainbow of Her Reasons" was really fun for me because it was my last episode and I got to put everything in there that was mine to share. Yeah, I liked the bit with Claire singing. Yeah, like, that was awesome. That was great. Had you heard her sing before? Yeah, I knew she was a great singer. She's, like, a classically trained singer, you know, so she could sing. Yeah, she did a great job. So you got to be there for the shooting of that part? Exactly. Of course. And the recording. We went to a recording studio first and recorded it. Yeah. The guy who produced it, he's produced big -- you know, Whitney Houston, Barbra Streisand, you know, really huge singers -- so it was in his recording studio because we had to record it first and then bring it to the set to play back. That was really fun. Can you give me an example of how an episode or script might change from when it's written to when it actually gets shot and ends up on the screen?
Well, like every episode of everything, whether it's television or film, basically is never really finished, you know? It's not really finished until people watch it. There's a constant sort of shaping and changing of everything in this business every day, actually. An episode will be written and then we'll take notes in the writers' room. There'll be a table reading, the director will have some thoughts, and other people will have thoughts. It's always small little things, but dialogue is changed and we'll have production meetings and somebody will say, you know, something about the location that it'd have to be written at. For example, there's a joke, I don't know if you make it, but somebody made up their mind that Maggie lives in a car. It's hilarious. Because we make that same joke in the writer's room, because we couldn't afford to build her a set for her apartment. Oh. [laughs] We actually did [build one], but for example, like I said, if somebody had written, you know "Maggie's Apartment" as the location, and we only have nine days to shoot, then the location department says, "We don't have enough time to go to location those days," and we go, "Okay, we'll put her in her car." Oh, okay. I figured it was something like that. Yeah. So how did you find Television Without Pity? I love it. How did I find it? Everybody knows about it. I'm trying to be modest. I think everybody knows about it. You know, I mean as writers, we all read it. You know, we go into that, we go into the HBO boards to see if people like our episodes. You know. We try not to, because a lot of times you don't want to see what people have to say, because it's horrifying a lot of the time. [laughs] It's so scary, you know, because all of our friends always tell us that our episodes are great but when you just go to some of those message boards…I mean, some writers probably don't go. I know Craig [Wright] goes and I go and some writers have to go and see what people are saying. I think that's the second place we check after the HBO boards. Do you ever post on the boards? No, uh-uh. Never. One thing that happens on the boards a lot that's really annoying is that people really love to catch us in mistakes. And it's like, for example, like Fiona's date of birth? Uh-huh? And, you know, the fact that the math that Nate was saying, when he's having the scene with Billy about how old he was or how old Fiona was, mixed with what we put up as her date of birth/date of death on the white card, mixed with what was on the sign in front of her funeral? And that was, like, stuff we were all going through constantly throughout the prep process, trying to get it right. Trying to get an age that Lee Garlington wouldn't feel like was offensive for her as an actress to be calling her, because she acted much older than she actually was.
I see. And an age that would make sense for Nate to have his virginity taken away. And then, like, ultimately, a mistake was made by the prop department for the funeral sign there, and we were all going crazy, and I was saying to Alan Poul, the producer, like, "Don't worry, nobody's going to notice." [laughs cynically] And then on the message board that's all anybody talks about. [laughs] Well, I have to be honest, I probably wouldn't have noticed it if a poster hadn't mentioned it on the boards. Yeah, they love to catch us. I love when people talk about like what's going on or why [characters] are doing things but, like, when they're just pointing out mistakes it's so embarrassing to me. You know, obviously we know that we made them. Yeah, there's so many details that go into a show that it's not feasible to get them all right in the amount of time you have, I would imagine. Yeah. It's true. And that scene that we shot, that funeral scene where the sign was up with her name on it? We shot that the morning after our mid-season party so the prop guy was really hung over. [laughs] Oh, that's great. And he made the mistake. So is there anything you can tell me that you couldn't tell me while the show was still in production? Well, obviously, you know, Nate dying. Right. And so, everybody knows that now, and that was kind of the main thing that we were hoping people wouldn't know. Um, but other than that, I think, you know, the two episodes don't have any kind of, like, main surprises in them except for that they're just amazingly beautifully written. There's no secrets any more. Yeah. Someone actually came out with a pretty detailed synopsis of the Nate's death episode like a week before on our boards. And were they close? Were they right? Yeah, they were pretty much dead on. Well, any, yeah, the thing is, like, there's extras can come on the set and get scripts. I mean, anybody who has seen a script can leak it and it's really easy to see the script. There's extras, there's casting people, there's makeup people, there's day players on the set, you know? People who'll come in and work for a day and see whatever in whatever department. They can know things we're keeping secret and it's really easy to leak. I suppose. And you guys have a lot of bigger casts for a TV show. Yeah, that's true, there's a lot more people.
That must make it tricky too. Do you ever have situations where you want to get a character for a specific episode but that actor isn't available? Yeah, that happens a lot. In fact, um, you know, like in my episode, "Rainbow of Her Reasons," there was a scene…that last scene that -- in fact, I think you knew it. Somebody knew it. You called her…what did you call her? You called Brett [Paesel] something, you called her "not Bettina." Oh, "Bet-two-na." Yeah, how did you know that? I think there was something on the board where someone said Kathy Bates was sick… Yeah, that happens. That woman, Brett, is a friend of mine, she's like, somebody who's, like, four years ago, when the producers were saying, like, "Nobody's gonna dance around with her shirt off." [laughs] I have a friend, Brett, she loves to take her shirt off. She's always taking her shirt off at parties. She's a great actress, too, she's produced her own show, she's talented and funny, so I knew that she would do that. But when we were shooting that, Kathy was sick, and so, yeah, that was that scene where it was supposed to be Kathy. Kathy was supposed to tell Ruth that Sarah had left. Yeah, that happens all the time. You know, we'll have a scene where somebody's supposed to be there or sign up that they're supposed to be there and they can't make it, we have to change. Yeah, Patty Clarkson is rarely available. Jeremy Sisto's schedule often made us have to change, when he couldn't be used. Only guest stars, though. Regular actors have to be there all the time. Right. So, I have to ask kind of a standard, obligatory, boring cliché question: What do you want your funeral to be like? Oh, that's not boring or cliché at all. I figured you'd get asked that all the time. I really don't. Really? Yeah. I mean, you know, the show has affected me a lot. I now really want what Nate had. That is a real thing you can do. A guy here named Tyler Cassity, he has a funeral home and a mortuary and a cemetery called Hollywood Forever. He's a really amazing guy who also comes from a funeral family. He's the gay brother to the straight brother. He, like, immediately felt like someone had, like, known about his life and like told people and they created Six Feet Under about him. Oh. [laughs] But he's this kind of like, funeral visionary, this really amazing guy, and he told us about these -- he is doing that in Northern California. He has pieces of land and he's teaming up with preservationists, people who are trying to get the land so they can -- so you can go and spend time with somebody who's died but not be in a cemetery. And they've got these, um, what are they called? They're like these little kind of iPods, they operate like GPSes. You stand over the spot where your loved one is buried and a little sort of picture of them comes up and you can walk through this place that just looks like a nature preserve. And you have a bunch of people buried there but you can't tell. I like that. I want to go there.
That sounds cool. Tell me about your book. Okay. It's called Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants. And you can link to Amazon. It's gonna come out in the couple weeks but people can preorder if they want to. It's basically just, like, the book of everything I've ever wanted to say to everyone in the world. [laughs] Okay. A lot of people think a lot of it has a very Claire-ish voice. A lot of people would say that my writing reads like Claire's. Yeah? But for example, the pantyhose, when she's saying, like, "Why in the world do we have these perfect, like Barbie leg, like, what's the point of that?" Basically it's a whole book like that. That was a great line. Yeah, that's like the kind of stuff I'm constantly angry about and always thinking Claire things. Is Claire your favorite character to write for on the show? I like writing for everybody, although definitely Claire and Brenda are the closest to me. Writing for Claire is basically tuning into my head-voice. But I'm sorry, back to your book. Okay, so the book is basically like, 200 pages of that sort of internal monologue, rambling, funny, essayish stuff. A lot of it is kind of about celebrity obsession and worship. I don't know if you watch the Kathy Griffin show? Or her special? I've seen parts of it, yeah. She cracks me up. It's about celebrity worship, it's about being a woman, its about working the TV business, it's got a whole bunch of tips of how to get into the TV business, it's how a lot of, like, feminist theory. Kind of, you know, trying to understand the truth behind the whole Kobe situation, what actually happened in that room, and, like, giving Monica Lewinsky her due. Really, who wouldn't blow the President, given the chance? [laughs] Well, sure. [laughs] I mean, seriously. I'd probably pass on the current one. Maybe you would, maybe you wouldn't. You don't know. That's true. One never knows. The Oval Office? A lot of history there. You might want to be part of history. [laughs] Until it comes up, who knows? Yeah, I mean, really. I mean, she got the short end of the stick, figuratively. Possibly literally. And so, it's just that kind of book. It's just very, very funny, very, kind of like feminist and essays and things. I'm going to be going on a book tour around the country. The book tour's on my website.
I was looking at your book tour itinerary. Yeah. That looks awesome, with the Six Feet Under actresses. Uh-huh. I'm really excited. In Chicago, it's going to be people from my old theater company. But in New York, Lauren Ambrose, and then possibly Tina Holmes -- she's in New York. And Ileana Douglas is in New York. But right now I have Tina -- Tina played Maggie -- I have Tina and Ileana down for L.A. Okay. But, like uh, the actresses -- Vanessa, Justina [Machado]…Sprague [Grayden], who played Anita, is gonna be at one of my bookstore events. Jennifer Elise Cox, who played the surrogate, is gonna be at one. My friend Becky, who played Kathy's daughter Marcie -- she's gonna be in the last episode -- yeah, every woman in the book will be read by women. That's so cool. So you just, like, asked them to do this? Yeah. That's awesome. I think it'll be fun. Whether it's true or not, I'm definitely trying to send out that message of, "Don't worry, you won't miss Six Feet Under, come to Jill Soloway's book signing!" There is a bit of a difference between Six Feet Under and me. I mean, people who really, truly love Six Feet Under, you know, are a lot more interested in death than I am. I personally am not all that interested in death. I don't like to think about it all that much. I'm kind of shallow. [laughs] I'm more into, like, pop culture. You know. Pop culture and feminism. And, you know, about Hollywood and love and sex and, you know. Like the people who are really into, like, deeply thinking about what we're doing here on earth and why we die? They may not like my book. But people who are sort of looking for distractions from thinking about death, I'd say that's more who would like it. Yeah, that'd be me. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, people who like Television Without Pity would probably love it. I talk about all these theories about celebrities, and I have this whole theory that they're big babies in the community and I sort of go into detail about that. Did you ever read Stiff by Mary Roach? We were all given that book on our first day of work and I never read it. Yeah, the whole death thing, I mean, uch. Well, the book's about death, but it's actually pretty funny. ["I thought it was trying too hard. Call it in the air." -- Sars] Yeah, I'm sure it's good. I just try to avoid it. Fair enough. So what are you working on ? Do you have another TV project that's coming up in the future?
I'm actually, I got a deal to write a pilot professionally through my agency. Okay. We'll figure out what the show will be and we'll go and pitch to different networks, and it might end up on TV season. Did you say you had a title for the show you're working on now? I'm thinking about calling it Mamas. Either Mamas or Mommies. I'm not sure yet. So that would be after the book tour, I take it? Yeah. [At this point, Jill is nice enough to ask me a bunch of questions about me and my life and how I got hired at TWoP and so on, but that's not what you're here to read about, is it?] So, I'm not spoiled for the last couple of episodes, by the way. Yeah, I don't want to… You don't want to ruin them? No. Can you give me a hint? I heard that it goes far into the future until everyone dies. Where'd you hear that? Uh, the boards? Where do they hear that stuff? I don't know. How are they finding out? So that's not that far off? Would it ruin it for you if I told you? Do you want to know or do you want to be surprised? Well, you know, to be honest, I want to be surprised. Because I wasn't at all spoiled for the season finale of 24 and yet I wasn't surprised by that ending. Yeah, it's better to be surprised. So I was like, if I had been spoiled, I would have wondered if it didn't surprise me because I was spoiled, or because it just wasn't surprising. I think it's better. I think people ask me all the time but they actually really want to be surprised. I think I'll enjoy it more if I don't know. Yeah, I won't tell you. [laughs] That's probably for the best. Not that I don't want to know, and I'm looking forward to the ending. Yeah, I can't wait to watch it. I actually didn't. I mean, I knew what was in the script, obviously, and I went to the table read, but I didn't watch any cuts. I didn't go into the editing to see any of it. Is that how you usually do it? A lot if times I will watch -- you know, the writers can watch tapes and we can give notes if we notice anything. Little teeny input things. So that we can, you know, see them first. I would say up to my episode I had seen them all. So when I watch them on TV, I like to watch them at nine o'clock on Sunday night. Like, for example, when Nate died? I was on vacation in a place that didn't have HBO. So I asked for a copy of the tape and popped it in on Sunday night. I just, like, really wanted to be there at the moment it happened for everybody. I wanted to experience it at the same time all my friends were experiencing it. Everybody I know is really, really, really into it right now. I'm the same way.
Did your phone ring off the hook at ten o'clock that night? Well, I wasn't home, but yeah, I mean, emails did, and yeah. I mean, my family is really into it, you know? My dad calls, and he's like, [weepy voice] "I can't talk. I have to go. I can't talk." That must be gratifying. Yeah, everybody's freaking out. Who are some of the other writers about the show that you've been reading? Do you read, like, Heather Havrilesky at Salon? I love her, yeah, and I've been emailing her and talking to her a little bit. I mean, she has a much more complicated and interesting take on the show then even we do as the writers who are crafting it. She wrote that great thing about Nate representing everybody's kind of narcissistic side, the part of all of us that says, Hey, there's a better relationship out there for me, or, Hey, I'm really right and everybody else is wrong. Yeah. I love that thing that she wrote. I kept it for a lot of people that I knew and then she and I started emailing and talking. You know, I found out I had a friend who knew her. Just how…she really illuminates things. You know, we all have a lot of really interesting things and thoughts about the characters as writers, but because we're so into it, it's really interesting to watch someone like Heather just write a paragraph that makes us go, "Oh yeah, that's what we were doing." Which we kind of didn't even really know. I forwarded what she wrote to everybody now and everybody loved it. I feel like, you know, what the characters do is kind of like a cross-section between who the characters are and who the actors are and who the writers are, so we're all just kind of, like, in it too, just as much as the characters are. This'll happen up in the writers' room, and its not like each person is a character, but we all live through things that the characters go through. And so, we're kind of right in the middle of it as much as anybody and it's the kind of analysis that Heather does or even that Virginia Heffernan does, which I have no idea what she's talking about most of the time. [laughs] I look and I'm just like, What is she saying? "This breathes sincerity and authenticity" and I don't know what she's talking about, you know? I really don't. I don't know if you read those things that she writes in the New York Times, but she also writes really sort of complicated, interesting, you know, academic-y foundation takes on the show. I mean, I can barely follow what Heather's talking about? I like what she's talking about and I get it and sometimes she goes into tangents where I go, "I have no idea what you're talking about anymore." And, with Virginia Heffernan I have no idea. I mean, I cannot make heads or tails of her commentary at all. She seems very, very, very smart. I mean, I read stuff like that and I go, "Wow, this person's brilliant. Don't know what they're talking about."
So, you know you can get a t-shirt on Television Without Pity that says "Narm"? Oh, really? I had no idea. Yeah, it's got a gravestone on it, and the gravestone says "Narm." Oh my God, that's so funny. Because, on this website that I'm on with all my friends, there's me and like twelve or fifteen other women and we all write to each other all day long. But anyway, we're all constantly saying "Narm" on there. I can imagine. But you can only get it until the end of August. If you're gonna order one. It's a "Now or Never" kind of thing. I’m gonna order one right now. All your friends, all your family. So what was the set like, when the show was still going on. Did you hang out with the actors and directors? Yeah. They generally wanted to talk about stuff before they did it. I think actors pretty much socialize with each other and writers socialize with each other. That's what I've read. I just ordered my Narm t-shirt. Already? Wow, that's great. Enjoy it. I will. It's really cool. I promise not to ring your phone off the hook at ten o'clock, but I'm looking forward to the finale. Very excited. Me too. Yeah, you must be. We're all going to watch it at Bob Greenblatt's house. One of the original producers. I'm sure it'll be great. Well, have fun. Say hi to everyone for me. Okay, I will. Like they care. I was gonna tell you, too, you have fans on the board now. After the In Memoriam special came on? Oh, yeah? Yeah. People on the boards totally dig you. Oh, good [laughs]. That's good. A market for your book. Yeah. And it's good for Television Without Pity people. I think they'll like it.