With the Reacher Season 4 finale on the horizon, there’s even more to get excited about as all eight episodes of Neagley Season 1 will drop the same day.
Spinning off Jack Reacher’s go-to Girl Friday, Frances Neagley, into her own television series has fans of the character chomping at the bit for details.
TV Fanatic had the opportunity to chat with showrunner Nick Wootton and stars Maria Sten, Greyston Holt, Jasper Jones, and Adeline Rudolph at a recent virtual press day to pick their brains about the show.
Nick Wootton, Co-Creator and Showrunner
In spinning off from the Reacher series, what were the challenges, how did you meet them, and what was your favorite part?
NW: What were the challenges? Well, it’s funny, the main challenge of any first-season show, any show really, any season of a show, is to figure out, “How is this about our main character?”
It’s a mystery show. It is an action show. There is the fight against injustice, taking a case that normally nobody else would really take. That, to me, was very much part of what we knew we were going to be doing because that is what the Reacher show is.
For this, we started with, “What is the reason behind her haphephobia?” That is the only thing we know about her backstory. It’s the only thing we’ve ever heard about her psychologically.
What happened there? What’s going on there? ‘Cause it’s a mystery not only to us as an audience, but it’s a mystery to the character. She doesn’t really know the whole story. We could build a season around all of that.
That was really our touchstone. And if we veered from that, we went back to that.
The challenges of making a show are just making it all click together as a mystery and making it logically shine. But that’s pretty mechanical legwork.
But the thing for us that made it really easy was the fact that we had this emotional story we all felt very strongly about.
It was, “Let’s come back to her. What is her story? And how can we tell a deeper tale about Neagley?”
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The characters you’ve gathered around Neagley for this first season establish a lot of different facets of her personality and theirs. Working with the cast to create a rich relationship network, where did you find, again, a touchstone for the group?
NW: The first thing I kept coming back to was, “Who’s going to drive her crazy? Who’s going to drive her nuts?”
This is a character who doesn’t want anybody around her and feels very confident that she can take care of all these things by herself. And yet [she] runs into these people who she can’t shake.
She can’t shake Greyston’s character. She can’t shake Addy. And she can’t shake the Keno character.
She needs them to do what they’re doing. [A question] was, “How do we build a team around her that initially drives her bananas and then she grows towards and feels responsible for and wants to make into a family?” That was always the thing.
And initially, she’s just like, “Oh God, why do I have to deal with these people?” And then ultimately, she knows she’d fight to the death for them and with them.
Jasper Jones and Adeline Rudolph
On Neagley Season 1, Jones and Rudolph play ne’er-do-well teen Keno and ambitious office assistant Renee Birdwhistle, respectively. In a short time, they move from supporting, peripheral players to key team members.
Both your characters reveal so many layers over Season 1’s eight episodes. As actors, can you describe how you explored those layers yourself?
JJ: Yeah, I explored the layers of Keno a lot of times, in a dark room at a desk. Just going through it, feeling my way through it, especially.
Leaving room for inspiration to hit, paying attention to the text, because without the text, you can’t really do much. And then it came to good direction on the day and great execution.
AR: For me, I’m such a backstory girl. I love a good backstory, so especially for Renee, what was really nice is I knew that as she enters, where we meet her, she’s kind of at York Investigations with a specific goal in mind.
She has this bigger purpose outside of Neagley for herself.
When she gets thrown into this whirlwind of an adventure with Neagley and meeting all the other characters, it was important for me to have her main motivation be the baseline of the reasons why she is putting herself into these situations, even though she’s way in over her head.
Going through it was my favorite way to layer. To [focus on] what is the driving force and the main motivation for her, and then these spontaneous close relationships that she starts building.
The relationship between Keno and Adeline becomes such a fraught, intense piece of the story and creates this emotional connection.
Did you two work together on those scenes even though you weren’t physically in the same location for the most tense interactions?
JJ: Girl, we worked! Yeah, we had a lot of talks. A lot of talks about where we both thought we were coming from and our characters. And a lot of matchas in coffee shops.
AR: Yes, but also Jasper was so lovely.
For a lot of my scenes where Renee’s on the phone, Jasper would come in to set and read with me off-screen, which was really, really lovely to have that to build off of because it can feel very separate and you might miss each other’s tone.
To be able to at least do it together a couple of times before was really beneficial and great.
JJ: Yeah, yeah. It did feel, like in the story, we’re both supporting each other. That was true outside of the story. That was true just with Addy and Jasper.
We’re both very “Need anything?” type of energy. We definitely played Codenames on our days off too, board games and stuff. With Damon Herriman. Legendary.
Maria Sten and Greyston Holt
We learn a lot about Frances Neagley and Hudson Riley throughout Neagley Season 1. At the same time, they’re learning a lot about each other.
What was there that they couldn’t have learned without each other?
MS: In a lot of ways, they are mirrors for each other. I don’t think Hudson would’ve had to go down his rabbit hole if not for Neagley, and I don’t think that Neagley would’ve gone down her rabbit hole…
Well, something happens to her, and she’s forced down the rabbit hole, but then he is there when that happens. That then forces her to crack open in a way. That would be my take on it.
GH: That’s a fantastic answer. We push each other. We have a lot of skeletons in the closet, and we’re able to see each other for who we really are under our very guarded exteriors.
She basically forced my hand and forced me to deal with some of my family shit, and I came out better for it.
Greyston, were you a fan of the Reacher series before signing onto Neagley?
GH: I certainly knew of the show. It’s hard not to know of it. I hadn’t seen it prior to reading for it. I’m a dad.
I’m pretty busy, so I don’t have time to watch too much television, but of course, upon reading for the role, I wanted to do my research.
I watched the series. It’s so obvious why it was, and is still, such a huge success. We wanted to honor that with Neagley, and I think we do it in our own way.
Maria, when you came on Reacher, you were told Neagley was going to play a large part in the series. Did you suspect there would be a spinoff based on her?
MS: No, I did not. I knew that people had great aspirations for that possibly being a possibility. Success!
But I think anyone going into the first season of a show and already planning a spinoff and thinking that’s going to happen is, in our business, presumptuous.
Because it’s so rare that that happens and it’s so rare that that works, so I am certainly surprised to be sitting here today, but also very thrilled.
Neagley Season 1 premieres on Prime Video on September 16.
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