How Do Tropes Influence the Actual Relationship?: A Conversation with ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’ Co-Creator and Showrunner Francesca Sloane

Two lonely strangers land a job working for a mysterious spy agency that offers them a glorious life of espionage, wealth, world travels and a dream brownstone in Manhattan. The catch: new identities in an arranged marriage as Mr. & Mrs. John and Jane Smith. Now hitched, John and Jane navigate a high risk mission every week while also facing a new relationship milestone. Their complex cover story becomes even more complicated when they catch real feelings for each other. What’s riskier, espionage or marriage?

Francesca Sloane, co-creator and showrunner, recently spoke with Script about the process behind building out the characters John and Jane Smith, how tropes influenced defining character moments, finding the tone of the show, and gave invaluable advice about breaking into television. 

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: One of the many things I love about this show is it's character, character, character. But also the art of communication and how you deliver information. Let’s first talk about character backstories, notably for the key characters, Jane and John Smith. Building out those character arcs in the writers’ room and also the decision process of when to reveal key information about said characters. As an audience, we’re also learning new things, and it’s all on a need-to-know basis.

Francesca Sloane: That's a great way to start. I mean, we had an amazing room, it was just the coolest group of women ever. And Donald [Glover] was really great about letting me sort of cast the room with really powerful funny women. And then he and his brother, Stephen Glover were like the only two guys in this room full of women. And it wasn't based on any reason, outside of just finding the strongest writers and shaking that out, and it ended up being this group of people.

At the time, we were also still working with Phoebe [Waller-Bridge], as we were sort of shaping these two characters. And part of it was like, one of the things that Donald is really good at is sort of bringing himself into the work in a really generous way. And as writers, especially people who worked on Atlanta together, we sort of started off the room almost like a salon-style way of just kind of talking about our heartbreaks, or our vulnerabilities or our deep dark secrets and how we could exploit them [laughs] in terms of marriage and in terms of relationships, and pulling them from there, first and foremost, like what makes us feel as a collective group?

Once we sort of figured that out, John started to take shape very quickly. Donald kind of turned him into the self-proclaimed golden retriever character. This guy who had this dream of what a spy would look like at 15 years old and thought that that would sort of maintain itself and in reality, it was very different. And self-proclaimed mama's boy as well, which is borrowed both from Donald and also my partner at the time. So, I feel like he clicked in very quickly.

Jane was a lot more of a challenge in terms of figuring out who she should be and what her counterpart should look like. What we did know is that if John's the golden retriever, Jane's probably the cat. And she would definitely sort of have more walls up and only kind of approach you when she felt like it. And then because she was a cat, we sort of came up with Max, which was like a really sweet point of vulnerability to sort of enter this person who had all these walls up and yet needed her comfort friend to bring into this house in order to endure this new life, which says a lot about her straightaway. However, she was still a sort of a question mark, in terms of the nitty gritty and the backstory of it all that you mentioned.

We knew that we wanted them to both be failures. We were excited about this notion of sort of creating the reject Mr. and Mrs. Smith comparatively from like a Brad and Angelina, this is the story for rejects to point to and feel like they can relate to them, [laughs] which was really exciting to us. But it wasn't until we cast Maya [Erskine], that Jane kind of became her full self. And part of that was just Maya’s humor, Maya’s sensibilities, Maya's identity. And part of it was also just talking to Maya, who is a writer in her own right, a really strong writer, and sort of bringing into the fold this level of vulnerability that sort of expanded as the season progressed. While she became a better spy, she also became somebody who fell in love for the first time, and what does that do to a person who's so protective of themselves? 

And we also knew that, while we wanted John to have been kicked out of the military very early on, we wanted Jane to be somebody who tried to get into the CIA and was also not allowed into that. And they've been carrying this weight with them of wanting more for themselves, but not actually being good enough to get it at first, until they meet each other.

Sadie: I love that character work. This show has a lot of action and thrills, but it serves a purpose on a different level, again, back to the character work of just amping up the stakes, both personally and professionally. And really diving into those failures to drive those vulnerabilities in each episode, I'm curious how the writers’ room and you as a showrunner and Donald involved as well, what that process was like in picking those defining and turning moments?

Francesca: So early days in the room, I remember, we sort of wrote on a board, as many spy tropes as we could possibly think of. And I mean, like in terms of missions, in terms of geography. And we sort of wanted to capitalize on those tropes. And the way that we would make it feel sort of fresh is how do those tropes then influence the actual relationship themselves? How does seeing somebody have to deal with the cold express what a city guy John is? How do we see that make him need Jane in a way that he otherwise didn't before? How do we put them in a stakeout where suddenly they're enclosed in a room, where suddenly it is revealed that one of them might have IBS? [laughs] Everything was always to serve as the relationship. So that's kind of how we did it, we would think about the relationship as a whole. And then we would sort of cherry-pick missions and figure out how it would then service the overall anchor, which is the two of them.

Sadie: And it works so well. In terms of developing the basically unseen character Hi Hi, which is also such a clever way on how you give out information and leaning into those vulnerabilities. Were you guys doing the same kind of backstory work on what this organization is, and how that plays into the world, and how that will actually evolve over, I hope you guys get many, many seasons after this first season, but how it will evolve over the life of the show?

Francesca: I appreciate that you'd want many, many seasons. Yeah, we definitely wanted to scratch the surface and keep it mysterious. We have answers for all of those things, we did talk about it quite a bit. And we watched a lot of things, we watched a lot of reality television, we watched a lot of really incredible pieces of cinema from the 70s. But we also watched, like kind of fantastically cheesy things from the 80s, a lot of Hart to Hart, or Moonlighting, or things like that, that had the sort of mission of the week vibe, and you hang on to the characters - the plot doesn't necessarily matter as much in terms of moving forward. 

But today in television, serialized TV, there's like sort of this intellect of sort of needing something to grow and grow and grow, you can't just sort of drop off. So how do you take that sort of 80s sensibilities and bring it to today to 2024? And so, we thought Hi Hi, and these guest stars, and these missions of the week, felt like such a fun sandbox to play in so long as the relationship was the thing that evolved over time, and that really subtle seeds were planted and blossomed throughout the series. Yeah, it just feels like the right place to go in terms of all of that.

Sadie: In terms of the overall tonality of the show, with you as the captain of the ship and hiring your team behind the scenes, like your directors, to your production designer and DPs, what were you looking for in those voices and those visions to really amplify your overall vision?

Francesca: Well, excuse my language, but the tone was a motherfucker. [laughs] Definitely the hardest thing to pin down because we knew we wanted it to be fun still, because if you're going to do the spy genre, at least give yourself the freedom to enjoy sort of the ridiculousness of that. But then we also have the sensibilities of really wanting things to feel grounded and really living in-between moments, and we also still wanted it to be funny. But then we also still wanted you to believe the marriage, in which case, you have to be dramatic and vulnerable and get kind of raw. And so how do you blend all of those things together? And I really think it sort of evolved over time.

The show started telling us what it wanted to be, even with scripts done and whatnot, we would sort of see throughout shooting - we started the first episodes in order, which is fantastic for the chemistry between Donald and Maya - but we would start to say, ‘You know what, it is getting a little bit slow in a way that we love, but it may be just a touch too pretentious. Maybe we do need a little more action here, where then suddenly, episode three becomes a little bit more action-packed.’ We did start to sort of feel those things out, again, always servicing the relationship.

Now as far as our collaborators, I mean, starting off the journey with Hiro Murai, who was like one of my closest friends and became an even closer friend doing this. And obviously, he and Donald are like, just the best duo ever. He is such a genius when it sort of comes to subtlety. And allows the audience to sort of stay on board for a slow burn that ends up being quite surprising. And so, he really set the tone in terms of letting the action sort of exist at first as this very real New York nuanced thing. And then over time, I felt like we almost earned the right to get sillier and more stylized. We sort of gained the right to make our version of the movie as the season went on. But we sort of started off with this very Hiro Murai sensibility, which felt really great.

And then in terms of the other guests, like each director brought their own sensibility that was fantastic. We had Amy Seimetz, who brings in sort of like this cuckoo, awkward humanity, and rawness, which I felt like we really needed for those episodes. And then Christian Sprenger just tells such a great straightforward story when you need it, where it feels almost classic. And Karena [Evans] is just utterly romantic in everything she does. So, there was just sort of this really beautiful blend of collaboration that did help dictate how the episodes should feel as we kind of went forward.

Sadie: It is very cinematic for a TV series too and the use of locations too, they're also a character in each episode. Especially in New York City. We're seeing different parts of it that we typically don't see, it's always very romanticized. And we're seeing kind of a different side of the city through Donald Glover running around. [laughs]

Francesca: [laughs] Yeah, I'm so glad you feel that way. That's a shout-out also to our location scouting team, Ryan [Ferguson], and then Anthony Katagas is our line producer, and he is just the quintessential New York cinema guy. And so, he would always check us and be like, ‘This isn't New York…this is New York.’ [laughs] ‘This is what New York really looks like.’ So we were lucky to have him in that sense.

Sadie: Keeping you guys honest.

Francesca: Exactly.

Sadie: I'm curious for you, you know, having come up with different shows and variety of genres and stuff, but like for you like what was the biggest creative challenge on this show for you, that was like, also the biggest learning moment, that wasn't that was crazy, but incredible. We did it. And I'm taking this big moment and carrying it with me on to everything else I do.

Francesca: You know, I can't think of something. I don't know what I wasn't challenged by in making this show. [laughs] I had just had my first child. So, in making the show, I got pregnant. And then I had my beautiful baby. And then my father grew ill and then ultimately, we lost my father all while we were shooting the show. And while I was going through all of that everybody else was going through their own personal things. And it really is some, long hours - you're giving everything to it.

But I think the thing that I learned the most is that, and I mentioned this a little bit earlier, is that the show does tell you what it wants to be and you have to listen to that and create flexibility on a creative front to sort of realize, ‘OK, I had this idea in my head on the page. But now in reality, this is what the chemistry is asking for here, or this is what the action is requesting of us over here. And let's transform that a little bit and be open-minded while still never losing our vision.’

I think the biggest thing that I learned is working with people that you trust, the collaborative process, and having Donald as my partner in this and then having people like Hiro, it just allowed for us to have the shorthand language, where we would check each other to make sure that it still felt really good. You knew that the people around you cared, you knew that they weren't going to let you go too far in the wrong direction, because they're just so smart and special. And so, if I ever have the opportunity to keep making stuff, I definitely want to continue doing that with my friends, because I'm very lucky that I have such beautiful, brilliant friends.

Sadie: What inspired you to become a writer, and what was it about TV that drew you into that world?

Francesca: I wish I had a more interesting answer than this, but I never expected to be a television writer. [laughs] I always wrote, I loved to write - ever since I could write words, I would write stories. I was a very shy kid, and that was always sort of my outlet. But in terms of actually thinking that I could make a career out of it was very foreign to me. I just like didn't grow up with a lot. And so, dreaming that way just felt like too big of a swing. And for whatever reason, I still, always wrote scripts. My happy place was watching films, watching television shows - that would be the place where I would go and get lost. 

But in my 20s, from like doing every job under the sun that you can imagine from scrubbing toilets or assisting or doing all of these kinds of things, I decided to try to go back to school and get an MFA at UCLA in screenwriting with the hopes that if I sold at least one script, maybe I could be a teacher at a community college or something like that. And I thought that would be wonderful, because I could be surrounded by creative minds all the time, who also love to write, never realizing you could also do that in TV writers’ rooms. [laughs]

And I happened to just get a script that won a competition and got me meetings with managers. I signed with one and he put me in my first room - this like little Sony Crackle show called Startup. It's OK if you haven't heard of it. [laughs] I just sort of started leapfrogging from room to room realizing that that was just such a great vessel for the way that my brain worked. And it just never stopped. And then at that point, I started allowing myself to dream a little bit bigger, like, ‘Hey, maybe, maybe this is actually something for me.’ So, I feel very fortunate. I think it kind of found me as corny as that sounds.

Sadie: No, I think that's beautiful. Everyone has their own unique writing journey. Because of your own writing career trajectory, any advice for writers navigating the TV business and of course creative side, from how to get noticed from what you put on the page – I mean, you have some of the sharpest writers in your room, shout out to the Ebo Sisters --

Francesca: Yeah, I love them so much!

Sadie: They’re awesome. But yeah, any advice on putting your best self forward if given the opportunity?

Francesca: I keep feeling so silly to give advice to anyone because I feel like it's like listening to a little fool or something, but I'll try my best. [laughs] I think, again, I don't think I'm saying anything wholly unique here, but write something that you feel first because if you're not feeling it, why should somebody else? I try my best to quiet everything else out completely. I don't think about expectations whatsoever of like what this writing might do or where it might live except how does it feels when I write it. Does this character feel honest to me? Does this scene feel bizarre in a way that it sticks in my head? Is it something that I'll carry forward in some capacity? Is it so quiet that you almost feel nothing, and that's the point? It just should have something that resonates with you first. And then if it does then, you know it affected at least one person even if it's you. And then hopefully it transcends beyond that after that point.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith premieres on Prime Video on February 02, 2024.