'Mrs Davis' Creators Tara Hernandez and Damon Lindelof Discuss Comic Book 'Tone,' Praise NBCUniversal for Taking 'Huge Risk' on Peacock Series
Peacock recently debuted Mrs. Davis, a genre-defying adventure series starring Betty Gilpin as a nun seeking to take down a world-dominating Artificial Intelligence. The show was created by Tara Hernandez and Damon Lindelof, who are both well-known for comic and comic-adjacent projects such as The Big Bang Theory and HBO's critically acclaimed Watchmen mini-series. PopCulture.com had a chance to speak with Hernandez and Lindelof — alongside other outlets — and they opened up about the "specific tone" they were aiming to capture, as well as how important NBCUniversal Television and Streaming boss Susan Rovner and her team were to giving the series life.
"We are sort of a product of things that we consume, and big fans over here, and I think really, sort of the intention was to do something that we just hadn't seen before," Hernandez offered, after being asked about the comic book-esque elements of Mrs. Davis. "There's so much great content and viewers have so much at their fingertips to consume, and so if you're lucky enough as we were to get to create a show, it's like how do you just make this something that cuts through? And, more than that, something that we would watch?" She continued, "So landing on this specific tone, I would say was something that we were craving, we were wanting. It was a product of the time that we were developing this series, which was very early and throughout the pandemic.
Hernandez went on to add, "It just felt like, 'Let's go for it,' and it can be all these sort of out there, zany, wacky things if you're behind the lead, if you're behind sort of the superhero on the cover of that comic as you used [to see]. We believed in Betty Gilpin and her ability to embody Simone — who I think is absolutely super — and we just said because we had her giving us such an incredible grounded performance, let's swing for the fences.
While Mrs. Davis landed at Peacock, Hernandez and Lindelof had actually begun working on it while Rovner was at Warner Bros. "It's such a joy to get to talk about Susan," Hernandez said after we asked about Rovner's involvement, "and she's responsible for linking us up creatively. We both worked for her at Warner Bros. where we are on overall deals... She sort of put us together just as sort of recognizing high level that there might be some creative similarities there." She continued, "When she made the move over to Peacock, she was just such a fan of the initial pitch that she had heard from us and always made that known which I think is very rare. In this industry people, sort of, play their cards, hold them really close, and she was effusive and it didn't feel like lip service, it felt like she got it.
Hernandez also noted that when she and Lindelof "made the official pitch to our streamers," Rovner was there to support them and back them up on their "zany" then-prospective series that could garner some "fear and skepticism and total doubt" from other studio executives. "Looking at the Zoom screen and pitching our ideas and just seeing her laugh and smile and engage with us," she said, "it just felt like this is the right home for us because she gets it. Maybe not all of it, maybe she's nervous, but at least she's leaning in and she's excited and what a joy, and the whole team has sort of been that for us."
Elaborating further on how crucial Rovner and her team were, Lindelof explained, "The show is a huge risk, particularly for a streamer that's just kind of trying to brand itself. I think that alongside a couple of other television shows, Peacock is trying to put up a sign for other talent that says, 'This is the kind of stuff that we make here.' For some reason — obviously, to our advantage — Susan was like, 'Mrs. Davis is the kind of thing that we want to make here.' So, we're obviously the beneficiaries of that."
Lindelof explained that Rovner was also integral to shaping the story, saying, "As you might imagine, if you just close your eyes and imagine what it must have been like to have some of these ideas get pitched before she even said yes to putting the show on the air, even though she knew us both and kind of institutionally trusted us, we will never take for granted what it was like to get those yeses, and also get challenged at the appropriate times. Susan and her team were not there to just say, 'We love it all.'"
He added, "There were multiple times that they were sort of like, 'Okay, we hear where you're going with this. We have some concerns. We'd like to talk these things through.' You have to kind of sing for your supper. But, it was never from a place of, 'You're not doing that. We don't like that.' It was always like, 'It seems a bit foggy. Help us get this plane down on the ground.'" The first four episodes of Mrs. Davis are now streaming on Peacock, with new episodes debuting on Thursdays.