[Only IN Hollywood] Dean Devlin on how Filipina mom inspired his love for spaceship shows

'The Ark,' which Dean co-created with Jonathan Glassner, is set 100 years in the future and dramatizes the voyage of a spacecraft to a potential new home after Earth is devastated

LOS ANGELES, USA – “When I was about 6 or 7 years old, maybe 8, my mother (Pilar Seurat) was a guest star on the original Star Trek in the Wolf in the Fold episode. She played the princess,” Filipino American producer Dean Devlin recounted when asked why he has a passion for science fiction shows.

“She came home from work with a rubber phaser (a Starfleet weapon) from one of the stunt guys. That was the crack that got me addicted to science fiction. And my whole life, I’ve always wanted to have my own spaceship show, and I got one.”

And that’s The Ark, now on Prime Video in its season two, for which we had a video conversation with Dean, who was calling from the Hilton Bayfront Hotel during the recent San Diego Comic-Con. We chatted with him and Christie Burke, who stars as Sharon Garnet in his latest TV series.

I asked Dean what Pilar would have said to him if she were still alive. Born as Rita Hernandez in Manila, Pilar started as a dancer in Los Angeles before landing roles in film, including John Frankenheimer’s The Young Savages, and television, from Hawaii Five-O to The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

“I don’t know what mom would have said, but my mom was such a character,” Dean said of Pilar, whose father, Al Hernandez, fought in the Philippines during World War II. “She was an actress in the ’’60s and the ’70s, and then she kind of walked away from it all.”

“She was very supportive of my career. Honestly, I think if my mom were alive today, she wouldn’t care at all about any of the work I am doing.”

“She’d be completely fixated on my children instead,” added Dean, who has two kids with his wife, actress Lisa Brenner — Hannah, also a writer-actress, and Penelope. “My mom would absolutely be bugging them 24 hours a day, buying them too many things and taking them out. She was that kind of lady.”

Pilar was one of the actresses who paved the way for Asian actors to make inroads in Hollywood. She was married to Don Devlin, who was an actor-writer-producer like Dean. Don’s producer credits include the hit, George Miller’s The Witches of Eastwick, which starred Jack Nicholson.

Pilar and Don died in 2001 and 2000, respectively. Both would have been very proud of how much Dean has succeeded — he’s one of the top creators and producers in Hollywood. And he’s the highest ranking Filipino American executive in La La Land.

Dean’s other sci-fi productions include the films The Deal, which centered on a personal story of a mother and daughter, for a change, and was top billed by a Fil-Am, for once — Sumalee Montano; the beloved classic Stargate; the blockbusters Independence Day and Godzilla; and Geostorm.

I asked the New York-born, boyish-looking producer how he juggles several projects being shot in different parts of the world — Almost Paradise in Cebu, Philippines; The Ark, The Librarians: The Next Chapter, and The Outpost in Serbia; and Leverage: Redemption in New Orleans.

Dean answered: “I guess the short answer is it’s a lot of jet lag (laughs). I live in a constant state of jet lag, playing around. We’ve been working in Serbia now on three different shows.”

“We’ve done two seasons of Almost Paradise in the Philippines,” Dean replied when I also asked for an update on the series starring Christian Kane as Alex Walker and Filipino actors, including Arthur Acuña, Samantha Richelle, Sophia Reola, Angeli Bayani, and Dante Basco.

“We’re waiting for word on season three. Hopefully, I’ll have something to announce pretty soon.”

“It’s a lot of traveling, and our studio just got completed in New Orleans, where we do Leverage: Redemption. So, yeah, there’s a lot going on for our little company.” (In Leverage…, Almost Paradise star Christian returns as Eliot Spencer.)

The Ark, which Dean co-created with Jonathan Glassner, is set 100 years in the future and dramatizes the voyage of a spacecraft to a potential new home after Earth is devastated. When disaster hits the spacecraft and kills many of the crew, the survivors, led by Christie’s Garnet, struggle to stay on course to reach their destination.

On casting Christie as the leader, Dean said: “We have a streaming platform called ElectricNOW. And very often, we purchase films to be on ElectricNOW. And I had just finished writing The Ark.”

“We hadn’t cast anyone yet. I was reviewing some of the films that we had just purchased for ElectricNOW. Christie was starring in one of them and she was so brilliant.”

“And I just looked at her, and even though it was a completely different character — night and day — I just knew in my heart that’s the girl. She’s my Garnet and I was just determined to get her for this role.”

“Who doesn’t want to work with Dean Devlin, especially when you’re dealing with sci-fi? He’s a sci-fi legend,” Christie replied when asked why Dean is the perfect captain to steer The Ark.

“From the callback and the first moment I ever spoke to Dean about this project, and even just the pilot in general, thinking Garnet was a man and then finding out it was a woman, that was a whole thing for me (laughs).”

“I was like, they want me to audition for Cat Brandice. And then my agent was like, ‘No, Garnet.’ I was like, Garnet is a woman? From the moment I met Dean and Jonathan, they’re just such giving individuals and so knowledgeable.”

“The question is actually, why not work with Dean Devlin? He’s the best. So, I feel like the answer to that question is, have you met Dean? He’s literally the best. I’m very lucky.”

The Ark‘s other key characters are Alicia Nevins (Stacey Read), Lt. James Brice (Richard Fleeshman), Lt. Spencer Lane (Reece Ritchie), and Eva Markovic (Tiana Upcheva).

As for tapping Lisa in the role of Susan Ingram, Dean said: “Lisa and I met in the movie, The Patriot. She is an actor of enormous depth, very much like Christie. She just cares so much about the work. It’s not about fame or anything else.”

Dean, turning to Christie, said, “Lisa is an old-school actor like you are. And so, getting Lisa to come in and do, I think, three or four episodes in season one, it was such a gift for me.”

“Because I knew that we could have this character who didn’t really have a whole lot of screen time but had an enormous amount of depth to the character. It was a little present she gave me.”

The Patriot, the 2000 American historical epic that starred Mel Gibson and the late Heath Ledger, was one of Dean’s film producing hit collaborations with Roland Emmerich, who directed. Through the film’s junket, I met and interviewed Dean for the first time (it was also one of my first Hollywood interviews).

There was a period when Dean moved from LA, where he was raised, to New York. In an interview for TheWrap, Dean said a promised PA job with Martin Scorsese did not pan out and instead, he worked as Al Pacino’s chauffeur for four years.

Dean was quoted as saying: “I had done some acting earlier in my life, but it wasn’t really something that I took very seriously. It was always a means to an end. But the more I worked with him (Pacino), the more interested I got in the craft and what it was about.”

When Dean, who studied at the University of Southern California, began as an actor in film and television, he eventually wrote scripts (Universal Soldier, Stargate, Independence Day, The Visitor, and more).

When Dean and Roland went on their separate career paths, after 12 years of jointly producing some of Hollywood’s all-time biggest hits that grossed over a billion dollars, Dean made his feature directing debut with Gerard Butler’s Geostorm. He continues to direct some episodes of his own TV projects.

Since founding Electric Entertainment in 2001, a full-service production and distribution company, Dean has been a prolific producer of mostly TV shows.

On what Dean is excited for audiences to see in The Ark‘s new season, which premiered last July 17, he remarked: “I love the optimism in season two. I love that these characters have now really become the roles that they’ve grown into.”

“But what I really love, and I give all the credit to Jonathan, is that we really expand the storytelling this year. We really embrace some larger sci-fi concepts that we weren’t doing in season one. In a way, season one was a disaster movie every week. What else can go wrong?”

“But in season two, we really start to explore some other things and all of them relating to who the characters are. So, for me, it’s a love letter to all the sci-fi that I grew up watching. It’s very old school.”

“I feel like there are so many shows that are very dark, edgy and heavy on science, and that’s great. But we’re a love letter to a type of sci-fi that’s not done anymore.”

Dean turned to Christie again and commented: “There’s something else you’ve learned. I can say this and she can’t. The audience gets to see what’s on the camera but they don’t get to see what’s behind the camera.”

“Christie has always been a wonderful actor, but what she had to become on the show off-camera was the same kind of leader that Garnet is on-camera. And the way she led, what happens off-camera, that’s truly remarkable.”

“Honestly, when you have to make these shows with the limited budget and time, it’s really difficult. And if you don’t have someone in the number one position who can lead from a place of generosity and love, it can go south really fast.”

“If you get some egomaniacs on shows, it’s too difficult. Christie not only took that leadership role on-camera, but she also took it off-camera. And a lot of the relationships that you see on the show are informed by the relationships that they’ve all nurtured together off-camera.”

Christie quipped, “And also out of fear because Dean took us all to a room individually and said, ‘If you don’t behave, you’re out of here’ (laughs).”

Dean joked, “I have death scenes for every one of you written right here in my pocket (laughs).”

Christie ribbed, “That’s the part of this story he leaves out (laughs).”

As to what kind of leader he is, Dean candidly said: “I think I lead by making mistakes. People are so frightened to make a mistake that they end up making mistakes out of fear. I make mistakes all the time and just embrace it, I acknowledge it, and I try not to make the same mistake twice.”

“By doing that and being actively screwing up, it takes some of the pressure off. The people around go, ‘All right, if Dean can get through that mess up, we can get through anything.’ So, I probably lead through the example and the example is failing (laughs).”

Christie added: “But also, Dean leads with a lot of heart. He’s missing that out. This is a man of pure passion, and he makes you believe that you can do the thing that he’s asking you to do.”

“This is why a lot of Dean’s shows have heart. And why I fell in love with this entire process. Dean is someone who leads with heart, and I want to be with people that lead with that.”

A follow-up on his mention of limited budgets led to a question on how he adjusts to varying budgets. Dean replied: “I never think that storytelling has anything to do with budgets. Some things are big budgets. Some things are tiny budgets. What’s important is what’s right for the story.”

“Our company is very small. Electric Entertainment is a completely independent company. We’re not owned by any studios. There’s no giant board of directors.”

“We’re not funded by a hedge fund. We’re just a small little company. It’s harder and harder to be independent today. So, to get shows made, you end up getting much less money than the studios get.”

“Our ambition has been, okay, we have less money, but it can’t look like we have less. So, how can we, with less money, put out a product that competes with people spending 10 times as much? I would say we succeed more often than we fail at that.”

I asked how Dean, as a creator of shows like The Ark, deals with the challenge of deciding which characters die or survive. He answered, “That is literally the most painful part of making the show because we made a decision…literally, on the very first episode, on the pilot, we killed a character.”

“All of us loved that actor so much. It was like, does he really have to die?”

“For a show like ours, which is much more character-based than it is science-based, we felt really strongly that it had to be a show where almost anyone could die on any episode. So that the stakes were really high.”

“So, the way the decisions were always made was in the writers’ room, and we tried to forget about what actor was playing the part. But just say, where can we go with the character? Has the character run its course? Do we have really good ideas of what to do with the character moving forward?”

“When balancing that, it was the characters that we didn’t have the best ideas for that we said, ‘All right, that’s the one that’s not going to survive.'”

“But it’s heartbreaking because the actors are fantastic and we don’t want to lose any of them. So, it was never because of the actor…yet (laughs).”

“But it was always really just being in the writers’ room, going, ‘I don’t know what to do with that character this season.’ So, I was like, ‘All right, that’s the one who’s not going to survive.'”

On The Ark’s studio in Serbia, Dean and his team built spacious sets, especially for the spaceship which is named Ark One. “It is impossible to walk on our set and not become 13 years old again,” Dean pointed out.

“And it has a ceiling, which is very rare for sets, so you really feel you’re inside of it. But when we went and started this, and Christie can confirm this, I didn’t show the actors clips from old sci-fi shows.”

“We actually looked at clips from The West Wing because I said I really want to do a lot of walk and talks. So, we built sets that go on and so that you could do a five-minute scene starting here, going through the halls, and ending up at another set.”

“Because to me, while this a very different show than The West Wing, it did have that sense of urgency inside a structure.”

“I said, these people think fast, talk fast, and walk fast (laughs). All went into the design of it. It was all always a thing of saying, we have to live on this ship and we don’t want it to become claustrophobic.”

“So, we had to have enough different areas that you can be on the show for season after season and not feel like you’re locked in a small room. Then, every season, new areas show up, or in season one, we blew up a bathroom.”

“So, what do you do with that blown-up bathroom? Well, now it’s a jail cell (laughs). So, you’ll see parts of the ship you didn’t see before.”

Asked for his vision of the future in real life, not in his sci-fi shows, Dean was on point: “I hope the future of reality is not the future of our show (laughs), but it started with this idea that we have a handful of billionaires who now have their own private space programs. I imagined what happens if that keeps happening?”

“What if we have less and less control over space programs from governments and more and more control by billionaires? Where does the space program go? Are there as many safety concerns?”

“Are they built for the same reasons, or who makes the decisions and what would that look like in the future? In the future of The Ark, governments have less and less influence and billionaires have more and more influence.”

“And so, where we end up in the future of The Ark is what I think is the result of that. In other words, if we get rid of all regulations…. It’s funny, sometimes I’ll read someone online say, ‘They would never build a spaceship to do that.'”

“And I was like, ‘Yeah, you’re right.’ The government wouldn’t, but if a billionaire didn’t care about it, would they build it that way? And so, for me, a lot of the faults of our spaceship were because it wasn’t of the concern of the person who was building it.”

“They had a different concern, a different focus. That’s kind of the way we imagine the future. What would happen if we took today, threw steroids on it, and watched it grow for 100 years?”

In wrapping up, Dean, who turns 62 on August 27, was asked how different it is to produce these days, compared to when he did The Visitor, his first TV series.

“It’s very different,” he stressed. “When we did The Visitor, it was right after we had done Independence Day, so we had a decent budget to do The Visitor.”

“But it was under very strange circumstances because we had the head of the network who wanted one show and we had the head of the studio who wanted a very different show.”

“We were always trying to walk this line of pleasing somebody and we ended up pleasing no one except ourselves.”

“So, yeah, The Visitor always left a hole in my heart because I had so much of that story I wanted to tell but I didn’t own the show. I couldn’t move the show. I couldn’t do anything with the show.”

“Since then, now we own all of our shows, and if a network doesn’t like it, we move it somewhere else. We keep it going.”

“I think The Librarians has been on three different networks from the beginning till today, and Almost Paradise has been on two. So, the biggest difference is that we control the destiny of our shows now.” – Rappler.com