♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYS) PATRICK SOMERVILLE:
Station Eleven is a story about people trying to rebuild
after they lost everything. It focuses on things
that the genre of post-apocalyptic storytelling
doesn't typically get into. Opening up auditions
for one time only. We only perform Shakespeare. Fine. Yes! PATRICK: I loved the novel,
Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel. I thought that it was this
really incredible, gentle balance between
huge ideas, but very small, local stories. SPEAKER:
What's gonna happen? I don't know,
but I'm glad you're here. MACKENZIE DAVIS: I think
in the DNA of Station Eleven, it really wanted
to push away from the idea that life after civilization
was lesser than life before. HIMESH PATEL: It doesn't
necessarily linger on that period of time,
where the most suffering is happening. Our story takes the moment
just before that– Is this because
of that thing? And then many years after that. HIRO MURAI: It's about a group
of interconnected characters before, during,
and after this flu pandemic that wipes out 98 percent
of the human population. People have rebuilt the world
and managed to move forward.
I'd also say it's
a creation story about unionization of people
through love. Station Eleven is about
how people relate to each other or how relationships occur. PATRICK: The threats
that are out there don't have to do with humans
turning on other humans. Maybe it wouldn't turn
into a nightmare. Maybe anything was possible. We have to abandon the future!
All that matters is the now! DAVID WILMOT: We started
before we even heard the words, "COVID-19."
We'd done two episodes. It's probably very rare
where the audience are gonna understand
so implicitly what the characters
are going through. PATRICK: What we wanted to see
is what people were doing later, to find a way
of surviving through music and art. MACKENZIE: And you meet
this group of people, the Traveling Symphony,
who travel from town-to-town.
PATRICK:
They've been going around
and around Lake Michigan in a big circle,
putting on Shakespeare for the last 20 years. MACKENZIE: They've chosen this
nomadic lifestyle as testament to their passion
and dedication to their art, and how much it sustains
and keeps them alive. CREWMEMBER: Rolling! PATRICK: When you're adapting
for visual storytelling, you just need to find
all sorts of ways to make sure your tone
is saying the right thing. HIRO: The thing that really
spoke to me about Patrick's take
was that there's humor in it, and there an absurdist edge
to what he wants to do. PATRICK: I think
"post-apocalyptic" and "funny" don't tend to go hand-in-hand. But I think the humor emerges
out of really grounded moments. We need protein. -(GUNSHOT)
-Good shot. HIRO: It had such a human take
on the genre. It was sort of subversive
and wistful and it was about the details
of modern living rather than the loss
and the devastation. RUTH AMMON: All the locations
on this series are gigantic. These exteriors had
to be huge, and they had to show
the massiveness of nature with the tiny people
who are just surviving.
HELEN HUANG: One of the charms
of what Patrick wrote is it's about art,
and this renaissance. And so that's where we wanted
to approach the costumes, make the pallet lively
from the world that exists. Because I feel like
that's been very absent in a lot of the post-apocalyptic
aesthetic. PATRICK: What's important?
What do we need? It's definitely more than
shelter, water, and food. We need art.
We need humor. THE CONDUCTOR: (LAUGHING)
We should do this more though. I mean it's not like
we have lives or anything. PATRICK: That's why I think
Station Eleven's not really a
post-apocalyptic story. It's an adaptation
of a brilliant novel, about what's good
about people that they happen to be able
to see in our story because the world
gets swept away. ♪ (MUSIC INTENSIFIES) ♪.