Jill Soloway Interview

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? I've kind of decided that I didn't really want to be on a show unless it's my own show.

Okay. So, hopefullyI 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 aI 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.

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 boardsI 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.