Author: Emma Loggins
Date: 2008-12-09

Interview:
We had the honor of sitting down with Leverage Executive Producer Dean Devlin recently to talk about the series, his involvement, and the progression of the digital entertainment world. Here's what he had to say:

How did you get involved with Leverage?

Dean: I do a series of movies with TNT called The Librarian, and they've worked out really well for us. We've really enjoyed making them, and they've performed really well on the network. And after we did the second one, we were at the Upfronts promoting it, and Michael Wright, from TNT, said, 'Well, when do I get a series out of you?'

I said 'What do you think about the idea of us doing a show about a group of hi-tech thieves who become a type of modern-day Robin Hoods?'

And he went, 'Sold!' (laughs)

So then I had to come up with a show! Coincidentally, one of my favorite writers in Hollywood, name is John Rogers, was that same day in his garage with a friend of his, and he was saying how he would like to do a modern Mission Impossible or Rockford Files. You know, bringing back the fun. Because shows have gotten so dry, dark, edgy, procedural. We missed the kind of shows we grew up on.

The very next day I had lunch with him, and I told him about the series that I was going to do with TNT, and he said, 'I was just talking about doing this show yesterday. Let's do this together!'

And so together we wrote a phenomenal pilot, and they became the executive producers of the show with me. They put together a great staff of writers, and the rest is a 13-episode history!

I know you also directed the pilot episode. Does being executive producer affect how you direct at all?

Dean: Well, I argued a lot with the executive producers, we didn't always agree (laughs). But I always got to win, sometimes as one or the other, but always got to win. It also meant I lost every argument too, so it was a little tough, a little split personality. But, it was fun!

The amazing thing about this show is that there was no studio involved, so we got to do this series very much like an independent film. So there was no one there to tell us, 'You can't shoot that on the red camera' or 'You can't shoot this in 7 days' or 'You can't do all these sequences on your budget.'

So we just got to do what we thought was the right thing, and it ended up being more fun that way. I think, at the end of the day, we ended up getting more on camera than if we had done this the traditional way. So, being both the director and executive producer was really great in that I had no one to answer to except TNT.