Lee Eisenberg, Alan Yang, & Joshuah Bearman Interview: Little America
We interview Little America producers Lee Eisenberg, Alan Yang, & Joshuah Bearman about their work on the show and writing season 2.
The minds behind Little America are determined to showcase that it really is a small world after all, and they’ve got another year in which to do it. Apple TV+ has shown tremendous faith in its new shows, renewing them all for second seasons before the streaming service even launched – and that’s because they all have something important to say.
The first season is available to watch in full, however, with eight vignettes about immigrants from diverse locations who have helped make America the country it is today. Producers Lee Eisenberg, Joshuah Bearman, and Alan Yang discussed their methods of collecting stories with Screen Rant, and the ways those stories spread from magazine articles to books to the Little America television anthology itself.
Amazing show. I watched it all yesterday, and I want to watch it again. It's a shared experience, because this is a topic that really touches pretty much everybody. This was taken from Epic magazine. How did you guys filter in which stories you guys were going to use?
Joshuah Bearman: Well, when Lee first suggested doing a show about immigrants and collecting a bunch of true stories to fill it out - I'm a journalist, and I went and sent all my writers around the country to find stories. And then I was just sharing them with Lee, and then also with Alan and Kumail and Emily when they joined the show. And we were looking at them as they were coming in, and figuring out which ones would sort of represent all different parts of the world and people living in different parts of the country. Because we wanted it to sort of have a wide range.
We were all looking at them together. And once we saw them, we realized like, "Oh my God. The show is right here." It's in the characters that are just jumping off the page.
Alan Yang: Yeah, we wanted a variety. It's a show about people; it's about characters, about human beings. And so we wanted to get that essence of all these characters, but also have diverse countries of origin and diverse places where they landed.
So, you see a lot of stories that took place in New York and LA, but we wanted to do stories in Boise or in Oklahoma. And that really helped enhance and broaden the scope of the show as well.
This is an anthology, really, of storytelling. How far ahead are you in the process? You guys got already renewed for season two, even before season one debuted.
Lee Eisenberg: Even before Apple TV plus originated.
Alan Yang: Before Apple was founded.
How far ahead are you guys with the stories for season two?
Lee Eisenberg: I mean, we're still collecting stories. We're in the writers room; I'll be back there tomorrow morning in LA.
Alan Yang: Early morning flight. Just get in there.
Lee Eisenberg: We're talking about it already. Epic's coming out with a book in a month. And so, throughout this process, we've just been collecting stories more and more. We talked about a story about Alan's mom. My dad's Israeli, we talked about his story. An Uber driver that I had two years ago, he's in the book.
I just talk to people and say, "Hey, I'm doing a show about immigrants." That story is in the book, and that might be an episode in season two. We're talking about an episode that takes place in the 1830s, going a little farther back.
Can you guys talk to me about the methodology of pairing your writers and directors, and how they connect with the material?
Lee Eisenberg: Yeah. I mean, as much as possible, in Season One, we tried to have someone who had access to the country of origin - whether it's the director or the writer. And I think that added a level of authenticity and texture. I think with a show like this, where there isn't the President's daughters being kidnapped every episode, you need to invest in the character and you need to invest in the world.
So much of it is the production design, the props, the locations. And I think when somebody has an access point to that, they can kind of say, "Oh, the table would look like this." Or, "Persian families always have pistachios on the table." And it's like, "Okay, I wrote that episode, and I think I did a lot of research. I didn't know about the pistachios." Those types of things - it sounds silly, but as you add 20 of those things to an episode, it just gives it that layer of authenticity. The Persian community, when they watch that episode, will say, "Oh, that's exactly what my family's like."
I think this show's coming at the perfect time; 2020 is an election year. This show really has something for everybody. Immigration to the forefront of the political issue, but also a huge part of the show. For somebody that may not want to give the show a chance, what would you tell them?
Lee Eisenberg: You're making a huge mistake.
Alan Yang: Well, we don't want the show to be... We talked about it yesterday; we don't want the show to be something like a broccoli show or a salad show. The show is a sandwich; it's a delicious sandwich.
Lee Eisenberg: The show's really unhealthy, but it's delicious.
Alan Yang: It's pleasurable, right? We want it to be fun to consume; we want it to be entertaining first and foremost, and have these stories be compelling and rich and funny and heartfelt and emotional and romantic.
Forget the politics of it, forget that. Even if it's a show about immigrants, it's me it's just eight portraits; eight snapshots of eight interesting people. And the fact that they're inspired by real people, I think, is another bonus. At the end of every episode, you kind of go to a picture of the actual person and, in some cases, it's just an interesting kind of twist on the whole thing. And that's really important for us, too.