'Coastal Elites' writer Paul Rudnick on making the HBO special in quarantine, the joy of Issa Rae, and stepping on Ivanka Trump's gown
); and a Wyoming nurse who travels to New York to help treat COVID patients, and finds surprising connections with the city’s residents amid the ER chaos. With the diversity of perspectives, Rudnick says, he aims not to skewer any one group, but to uncover more points of similarity among us than we might expect.
The title is a sort of triggering term. People may even feel wary, thinking, “Why should I watch this?” You do such a good job of combining comedy with politics, but people don’t always want that, especially now. They don’t want to laugh at themselves, or don’t feel like they can laugh at all. How do you respond to that?
I always welcome input from actors, especially with a cast of this caliber who are all so smart and so funny and so heartbreaking. They have such a world-class skill set that I would be very foolish not to not to value that. Jay and I had extensive rehearsals over Zoom with the cast. So, I rewrote to sculpt the pieces for these performers. I was so eager to hear what they had to say, both about the contents of the pieces, and about the direction the characters would take.
I guess I have certainly studied Ivanka over the years. I mean, I’m a longtime New Yorker, and the city knows that family, and the city has never “voted” for that family. I think there’s always been a sense of betrayal. They’re all in: They’ve supported [the president’s] birtherism; they’ve supported the trans ban; they’ve supported caging immigrant children. You know, they are far from blameless.
I remember when I first went to college — and I’m a very middle-class kid from New Jersey — but when I went to Yale, it was the first time I’d ever been around people of enormous wealth and influence. And Callie was somewhat inspired by a lot of those people, because I saw that some of them became completely lost; that in a certain sense, their family power destroyed them or certainly confused them. And then there were a handful of people who took it as a responsibility.
I do know people who’ve gone to the White House, and everyone has a very different response, because it’s got a glorious history and a shameful history. It’s a building that was built by slaves. A lot of it depends on who’s in the White House. I remember in the days when President Obama and his family were there, it was such a joyous building. He invited people from every level of the culture — from the great pop artists to bus drivers and subway workers to health care workers to theater people.
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