A Quiet Life (With Joel Edgerton & Jennifer Connelly)

Dark Matter: The Official Podcast

In this episode, showrunners Blake Crouch and Jackie Benzekri discuss the creative expansion of 'Dark Matter' for Season 2, moving beyond th

Key takeaways

• Season 2 writers had to invent new storylines because the original novel's material was exhausted by the end of Season 1.
• The premiere features a pivotal moment where Daniela kills a version of Jason in self-defense, impacting their character dynamics.

Main topics

• Season 2 plot expansion
• Character development of Jason and Daniela

Notable quotes

A good marriage is a marriage where you can bury a body together.

Conclusion

The episode provides a fascinating bridge between the narrative drama

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:00) Yep. Speaker 2 (0:02) So what happened was our... One Speaker 4 (0:05) of the scariest things with season two was at the end of season one, we had used all of the material from Dark Matter at the novel. A good marriage is a marriage where you can bury a body together. Speaker 5 (0:17) It's totally insane with how we were going to roll him up and drag him out. It was like, we just, it was like telepathic. Speaker 4 (0:25) Hi, welcome to the official Dark Matter podcast. I am Blake Crouch, author of the novel Dark Matter and the showrunner of the series. Speaker 2 (0:34) And I'm Jackie Benzekri. I'm an executive producer on our show and co-wrote every episode this season with Blake. Speaker 4 (0:40) We're going to be doing this official companion to season two. Each week, we're going to do a little deep dive into the episodes. We're going to talk about some of the decisions we made to do something different this time out in season two. I'm going to also interview some of our cast and crew and some creators and influencers in the science fiction community. Speaker 2 (1:03) All right. So we're going to talk about episode 201 now. But yeah, it's called The Quiet Life. And we find the Descens set up in this world. Things seem to be going relatively well. That is until Jason, Speaker 4 (1:17) 29, decides Speaker 2 (1:18) that he wants to be with Daniela naturally. And she ends up. Shooting him? I mean, spoiler? Speaker 4 (1:24) Yeah. It's a wild opening to the show. And then we catch up with Ryan and Amanda, who we left at the end of season one in the coffee shop in Seattle. World Speaker 2 (1:36) 26. Speaker 4 (1:36) World 26. People think of it as the futuristic world, but it's really not. It's more of a world built on empathy and, you know, humanity working together. Crazy idea. But Ryan has found Amanda. He has been jettisoned into this world. By Jason, too. And now they're going to join forces in what? Speaker 2 (1:56) And then we have Layton out on his mission, as it were. We don't know a lot about it yet, but he recruits who we're calling Guru Layton. We'll talk a little bit more about them later. Speaker 4 (2:06) And finally, you know, the Dessins get underway and have to escape this world where they've made their home and thought they were. starting to rebuild their life. Speaker 2 (2:16) Oh, yeah, the most important thing. The most important thing. The Destins open the door to World 26, which is where Ryan and Amanda are, and basically creating an opportunity for Ryan and Amanda to be able to use the box again, because the box had been moved in World 26. And for those of you guys who are like, World 26, and da-da-da, we talk a bit about all of this in the Season 1 wrap-up. You can take a look at that. Otherwise, you can probably figure it out as we go. Speaker 4 (2:37) Yeah, but the Destins choose not to stay in World 26. Because Jason's been there before. He knows Amanda's there. And they continue on with their journey through the corridor. Speaker 2 (2:48) And we're also going to be interviewing Jennifer and Joel today. Speaker 4 (2:50) That's right. We're interviewing the Dessens. Yeah. Speaker 2 (2:54) The bandits themselves. Speaker 4 (2:55) But Speaker 2 (2:56) now I think it'd be really great if we talked a little bit more in depth about what's been going on in our segment that we're calling The Debrief. Do-do-do-do-do. Speaker 4 (3:06) Well, I think we should start off by just talking about one of the scariest things with season two was at the end of season one, we had used all of the material from Dark Matter, the novel. We went in season one thinking, let's not leave anything on the field. If there's something cool, let's just use it because honestly, we're not planning for a second season. And so we faced ourselves. Well, Speaker 2 (3:28) that's not entirely true. I mean, before we wrote episode eight and nine, Speaker 4 (3:33) we Speaker 2 (3:34) planned season two. That's true. I would say for most Speaker 4 (3:38) of season one, we were not planning in any meaningful way to continue it. And so it felt a little bit like walking without a safety net because there's no underlying material to. You have to create scenes out of literally nothing. Speaker 2 (3:53) Yeah. I mean, it was definitely a terrifying idea. But I think that it was also very natural for us because we're very character-led writers. And so it was really just about where is everybody and where do we want to take them? Speaker 4 (4:08) Yeah. And you wrote the first thing. Do you remember this? You wrote the first scene, the cold open. Do you want to talk about? When Speaker 2 (4:15) we were filming season one, the last two episodes, our director then was Alex Sakharov, who I love, call him the Russian Winter. He and I were like joking around constantly about all the dead Jasons. It was like dead Jasons for days, especially when you get to the lake house. And so one of the jokes that I was continuously making on set was. We're going to come right back to this house. We're going to open the show on all of these dead Jasons. And we're just going to have like literally the cast of Law and Order be there for some reason. And have it be like this whole like dun-dun. And we're just going to make this whole thing an episode. Because I just loved the idea, the conundrum any human would have in finding all of these dead same person, same DNA, same fingerprints, same everything. Most of them have the same scars. They don't just look similar. They are the same. same top to bottom. I loved the idea of like the medical examiner trying to figure this shit out. So when we started talking about actually writing season two, I knew right off the bat that I wanted there to be, I didn't want to let world one go. I wanted to make sure that we talked about what that would be like to discover a whole bunch of, you know, dead of the same person. We also got a lot of Speaker 4 (5:25) questions from people and I saw a lot of the, you know, the subreddit. People being like, oh, there would be so many Jasons left behind after season one. There would. They're never going to go back and actually address what would happen. Speaker 2 (5:39) And we're like, hold my beer. Yeah. Let's Speaker 4 (5:41) make that the first thing we do. Speaker 2 (5:43) That's the first thing we do. And one of the very first things that we did when we were writing Agent Mac, or Mitchell McNamara, if you will, was. Played Speaker 4 (5:52) by Chris Diamantopoulos. Speaker 2 (5:53) Who we love. Was to sort of brainstorm, like, well, what would people think? You know, cloning is our first stab at it. But as the season goes on, Agent Mac is going to continue to have new and interesting theories that do get explored, which I think is like a really fun sci-fi nod. It's a little X-Files-y, you know? Well, Speaker 4 (6:13) what's cool about it is it places the audience in the position of, like, what would anyone think, a normal person think, if you have all of these... It looks like clones. Like, 12, 13 dead Jasons? They Speaker 2 (6:27) are Speaker 4 (6:27) essentially Speaker 2 (6:28) clones, yeah. Yeah, you would think, Speaker 4 (6:29) what would a normal person think this is? And how would they try to wrap their mind around it? Speaker 2 (6:34) The other thing that was my favorite character to write in season one was Jason 13. Jason 13 is the Jason that we meet in the bar in episode eight of season one. Speaker 4 (6:46) He's the Jason that Jason has. Speaker 4 (6:50) Jason's a beer with himself, which is one of the weirdest things I think you could do is to have a beer with yourself. Speaker 2 (6:55) He's like our most messed up Jason. And so therefore he is my favorite Jason. One other funny thing, too, about that scene, Christy and Metopolis did eat, I think, 15 donuts. And he was like so upset about it later, but also just kept doing it, which is. I Speaker 4 (7:09) believe we actually had to use VFX to track the donut because it was so the continuity was so out of control. We actually used VFX to like. delete the donut or to move it to where it should be because he kept moving and eating like he just went through like a whole dozen of them no we had a whole it Speaker 2 (7:24) was a whole they cut them all in half so he started with a half each time he went in it was great and Speaker 4 (7:28) i want to talk about how we hired uh chris demon topless so i was uh i was in la i don't think you were with me and i was having dinner with with joel edgerton and he had just finished about a year ago or so working with chris on um On this movie. Yeah, this rowing movie. And I was talking to him about this part that we were going to start putting out to cast. And I was curious if he had any thoughts because Joel is such a good, like, he's a director, a writer. He's such an amazing partner. And he was like, oh, I think you should check out this guy, Christine Ventopoulos. I was like, who? And then when I saw who it was, I was like, oh, it's the guy from Silicon Valley. He was like literally the reason I watched Silicon Valley. It was so funny and so just like off the wall. And I just had this weird feeling that maybe he'd be perfect for Agent Mac. And we went to him and he said yes. And as often happens when actors like really are amazing in a scene, we just start writing a bunch for him. And we ended up putting Chris in way more episodes than we intended to. Speaker 2 (8:33) I don't want to give anything away, but during the... planning of it, we had always imagined that we're going to meet three agent max. Right. So like we were always thinking of this as like a, a bigger, you know, kind of role for somebody, but yeah, Speaker 4 (8:48) it's Speaker 2 (8:48) always good when an actor wants to work with another actor, it tells you a lot about, you know, not just their process, but like the quality that you're probably going to get back because, you know, if Joel really likes working with him. And Joel's wonderful all the time, but, like, Joel's going to work harder. That's Speaker 4 (9:03) right. Speaker 2 (9:03) You know, so it's a really good thing to do when you can. Yeah. Speaker 4 (9:06) Another new thing for season two is we made a slight alteration to the main titles. Speaker 2 (9:13) It needed to be a little bit longer because we added the amazing Amanda Bruegel, and we added some of the producers and different things. We wanted to add some people to the opening credits, but we re-recorded the music for a really specific, really dumb world. building reason that we will explain in episode two. So stay tuned for that. So we open with the Dessins in a quiet life. And originally when we planned the opening of the season, we had planned that the Dessins were going to be living like off the grid kind of. Like I think Jennifer at one point had pitched the idea that maybe they are almost Speaker 4 (9:50) homesteading. And then Joel pitched this idea about what if Daniela ends up killing a Jason that comes to the house? Speaker 2 (9:59) And to be clear, he pitched this idea for like later in the season. Speaker 4 (10:02) He did. But when he pitched that, it seemed like, it's like one of those ideas that when someone says it, it's like, obviously that's what we should do because it literally will start the episode off with a bang. And it does this other really cool thing, which it gives Jennifer, Daniela, a lot of... trauma