Coming off a year that saw his network's viewership rise 21 percent, FX president John Landgraf talked to TheWrap about Russell Brand's stripped down and raw talk show, whether or not working with Charlie Sheen on the upcoming sitcom "Anger Management" is a risky move and the sport he's programming on FX Friday nights.
Did you pause at all when you heard Ryan Murphy's idea for "American Horror Story"? Were you concerned that viewers might not stick with it for a whole season, take the time to find out what it was really about?
No, I really didn't. For whatever reason, with "American Horror Story," I just felt really confident from the beginning that it was going to be very successful. Notwithstanding the fact that I knew it would be polarizing, and some people would get it, and some people won't. Some people would like it, some people wouldn't like it. I just really genuinely believed that an audience would really dig that show.
You have "Anger Management" with Charlie Sheen coming up next summer. "Two and a Half Men" does really well on FX, but just given his personal history in the last year, how much of a risk is it to do this new series with him?
Well, I guess I know what little I know, which is that I've had a couple conversations with Charlie, and conversations with the producers, with Joe Roth and with the folks at Lionsgate, and I think Charlie really, really wants to make a good show.
I think he really, really wants to get back up and prove that he is what he is, which is a really big TV star. We're only licensing the show, so the production challenges of the show, in all aspects, really lie with Lionsgate. But all I can say is I like the show. I really think it's a terrific pitch. Bruce Helford, from what I've seen, I think he and the writers are doing a terrific job on it. And Charlie's a really good actor. I'm quite optimistic that there will be something very entertaining in that show and very good.
You also have a limited series, a late night show, coming up with Russell Brand. It's been described as a talk show, but is it going to be a traditional, late-night talk show?
No, it isn't. I think part of what we've been thinking about in terms of late‑night is, OK, so you have these traditional talk shows, and you have some very good ones, and you have these enormously experienced hosts in Conan and Jay and David Letterman, but the format is a format that's been around now for 50 years. And then you have these topical shows, Colbert and Stewart, that are more topical and more politically oriented.
For me, the fact that Russell is willing to go in front of a live audience and take an enormous amount of risk, do an enormous amount of improvisation and audience interaction, and willing to have a much, much more loosely structured format that requires more of him in the moment, more real‑time presence and improvisation, is great. I mean, it almost is to a talk show what "The Shield" is to a drama.
(Brand's production partner) Troy Miller has this very nimble setup with 13 cameras that can move anywhere. And it's a rather small audience: it's about 140 people, as many as you can fit on three buses. So, literally, the show can be taped anywhere in the world that Russell is, in any kind of space or venue or auditorium. You pull in a local audience. You can transport the audience in the middle of the show if you want to, because it's relatively small.
I think it's only about what's essential, in a performer who's willing to go out and be present and be topical and be funny and be improvisational, and he's really, really good at this.
And that's for the spring?
Yeah. We're going to launch a half‑dozen episodes in the spring. And then, knock wood, if it works, and we've structured this like a lot of our comedies, so it's quite inexpensive, because we really want to give these things time to grow and time to find an audience. Assuming it goes well and he's happy and we're happy creatively, we could easily turn around another cycle next year. I could see us making six episodes in the spring and then another 13 in the fall.
"Justified" season three premieres on Jan. 17. I've seen the first four episodes that were sent for review, and it promises to be another great season, with more outstanding performances following last year's Emmy-winning performance by Margo Martindale. How involved are you with casting for the network?
Pretty involved in some decisions and not as involved in others. ("Justified" star) Timothy Olyphant's casting was something I was very involved in. Elijah's casting was something I was very involved in. Margo Martindale? Not at all. That was all Graham (Yost, "Justified producer) and his team. And Graham, of course, and his team, the executive producer, would be involved in any decision we've made. I was pretty involved in bringing Glenn Close to "The Shield" and ultimately developing "Damages" for her.
But it's kind of a collective effort. This whole process of making really good television does not work without a great writer and a great actor, and there has to be an almost perfect mesh between the writer and the actor for it to work.
