Marc Guggenheim has been a driving force behind the Arrowverse since Arrow launched on The CW in 2012, but he'll make his directorial debut this week with Legends of Tomorrow Season 5's penultimate episode, "The One Where We're Trapped on TV." The episode takes place in an alternate reality created by the Greek Fates, where Charlie has joined her sisters Lachesis and Atropos in stamping out free will. Now, to save her friends, Charlie has trapped them on TV inside parodies of series like Friends, Downton Abbey and Star Trek.
Speaking to CBR, Guggenheim revealed what led him to cut his teeth on directing with a Legends of Tomorrow episode. He explained the challenges he faced with this particular episode, as well as the lessons he learned along the way. He weighed in on Caity Lotz's William Shatner impression and the upcoming resolution to Zari Tarazi's storyline. He also addressed his hopes that Swamp Thing may someday appear on the series, teased his favorite scene from the finale, discussed the writers' progress on Season 6 and more.
CBR: Considering your work with the Arrowverse, I was shocked to discover this is your directorial debut! What made Legends the right project for that? Why now?
Marc Guggenheim: So, about a year and a half ago, I was in the middle of a bit of a creative malaise. I was out to lunch with Greg Berlanti and he said that he thought the solution was that I should do something that scared me, and he suggested directing. He kind of incepted the idea in me. Beforehand, I had never had any desire to direct, but the more I thought about it, the more the idea took root in my thinking, and I was like, "Okay, I'll do this."
In terms of why Legends, there were two really good reasons, I thought. One was, I've always said, for eight years, that Arrow is not a show that first time directors should tackle. Even though we've had first-time directors on the show, I've been saying that for eight years. So it struck me as very hypocritical to say that I should direct my first episode and make it an Arrow episode.
The other reason was, I knew we were doing "Crisis on Infinite Earths." I knew that I'd be heavily involved with it, and I wanted to pick an episode that would basically be shooting as late as possible, as far away from "Crisis" as possible. That instantaneously ruled out Arrow, because we were still heavily in post-production on "Crisis" all the way through the Arrow filming. So, you know, Arrow was out, and I basically picked the episode of Legends that was as far away from "Crisis" as I could get without directing the season finale of Legends, which -- had I directed it -- probably would have become a series finale. So it was timing more than anything else that really kind of drove this, and even with that timing, I was still reviewing some final visual effects shots for "Crisis" while I was working on the Legends episode.
This particular episode was interesting, because it jumps from one genre of television to another and another. How did you adapt your style between every different series?
I made the decision very early on that I wanted to mimic the shooting style of each of the shows we were homaging. So, that meant shooting Ultimate Buds with three cameras in a proscenium style like a multi-camera sitcom. For Highcastle Abbey, it meant using long lenses while we were with the wealthy characters and going handheld once we moved into the kitchen. For Star Trip, a lot of dolly and push ins -- as well as using actual miniatures instead of CG for the visual effects.
I think one of my favorite parts of the episode was Caity Lotz doing her best William Shatner impression. Tell me a little about the process of developing and really nailing that cadence with her.
That tickled us so much! Caity is such a gamer. Everyone was, but that was really a lot of fun. I'll tell you, she basically just came to play. She had done her homework. After the first tape, she was like, "Is that too much?" And I remember saying something along the lines of, "There is no such thing as too much where Legends is concerned." That's a lesson I learned on the show very early on. So, you know, she just threw herself into it. She had done her homework and she knew what she wanted to do.
Watching Tala Ashe create these two distinct voices for Zari this season has been an absolute delight, but it really feels like that storyline is coming to a head, particularly in this episode. How did you build on that in your role as director?
Again, as with Caity, Tala is amazing. She really has created two completely different performances. I think the big challenge for Tala and, quite frankly, the whole cast in this episode was everyone is different versions of themselves. They have different memories. Sometimes, they're in the costume of their television alter ego, but they're still themselves, and it gets very complicated very fast.
So, one of the things we did was, at the beginning of every scene, before we even ran the words or ran the lines, I would just orient myself and everybody else to where we were in the story. So it's like: in this scene, you are a Gromulan and you still retain the memories of Zari 1.0; in this scene, you're still an Ultimate Bud and you have no memory of the Legends. You know, just sort of making sure that we were keeping all the back and forth in terms of people's emotions and memories and identity straight.
My big fear was that I would cut the episode together, put it all in linear order, and the emotions would feel schizophrenic. I was deathly afraid of that. That little check in at the beginning of each scene, it was helpful for the cast, but it was also very, very helpful for me.
What was the biggest challenge you faced as director?
I definitely think that was the biggest challenge is making sure that it was all tracking. And then, of course, there's simply the idea of -- between Loomworld and the four television shows, it's five distinct worlds, five distinct flavors that have to feel unique but all have to go together. Just like the emotions can't feel schizophrenic, the episode itself has to feel holistic, even though it's jumping from these very different worlds. So, it all falls under the heading of making the whole thing hang together as one piece and not feeling like it's just individual moments that have all been lumped together. That was very, very tricky.
What was your favorite moment from the episode you directed?
Honestly, it depends upon my mood. There's a lot of moments I was really happy with. You know, the thing I discovered in directing is you feel good under two different circumstances. One is when you plan a shot or a moment out, and it comes out exactly the way you planned. That's a great feeling. It's an amazing feeling. But then there are moments where you or the cast -- or both of you, in conjunction with each other -- were seized by a moment of inspiration, and that turns out incredible. Both are satisfying for completely different reasons, but both are extremely gratifying.
Can you tease your favorite moment or scene from the finale?
I can't spoil it, but there's a moment towards the end that I would say is probably one of the most emotional moments of the whole series, and I thought the cast just really acted the hell out of it -- one cast member in particular, but I can't say who without coming dangerously close to spoiling it.
Beyond the shifted premiere date, has the coronavirus pandemic impacted plans for Season 6?
I think that question is more for Phil [Klemmer] and Keto [Shimizu] and Grainne [Godfree] and the rest of the writers to answer. I will say that, during the pandemic, the writers have been working and they've been generating story documents and the story documents are awesome and they're hysterical. The writers are not impacted -- the stories are not impacted by the pandemic.
Truth be told, I think that that's kind of the philosophy that Legends has always taken, which is that the idea and the story and the characters come first and then the logistical feasibility of pulling something off, that becomes very last. That's just as true with Season 6, in large part also because no one knows exactly how and when production will resume and what limitations there will be. But I think if you can try to get ahead of it, you end up closing doors that would otherwise remain open.
Recently, The CW acquired the broadcast rights to air Swamp Thing. How likely are we to see the Protector of the Green on Legends down the line?
Oh, good question. I mean, look, I tried very, very hard to get Swamp Thing in "Crisis on Infinite Earths." Because when you've got Constantine, to not have a crossover with Swamp Thing, it's just a shame, a wasted opportunity. I honestly don't know the answer to that question, in large part because whether The CW has the broadcast rights to Swamp Thing or not, it doesn't really impact the various reasons why Swamp Thing wasn't in "Crisis." My attitude is always hope springs eternal.
You know, if you had asked me before we'd done 90% of the things we've ended up doing on the Arrowverse shows, I would have told you it wasn't going to happen. So long ago, I got out of the prediction business, because stuff happens that, man, I would have bet real money that it wasn't gonna happen.
Your whole career has been defined by comic books, from the X-Men Origins: Wolverine video game to Green Lantern to the Arrowverse and now Prophet and Jackpot. What is it about comics that draws you back again and again?
That's a great question. You know, it's funny, I don't truly know. One of the things I've been doing during the pandemic is writing more comics. I've been working on a bunch of different creator-owned comics, and I've just been struck by how much I love the medium, which doesn't really speak to all the live-action stuff I do.
But I think the answer is that, for me, it hasn't just been about superheroes. I've always been drawn to the mix of the two; I've been drawn to both the medium of comics, as well as the characters who originated comics. That's been the case literally for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories are just flipping through comics or playing with neo-action figure superheroes. I wish I had a good answer for it, but I don't. It's just always been in my blood.
Have you been working with Rob Liefeld on the Prophet script?
Oh, yeah! I mean, I'm still right now in the outline stage, but I've had numerous conversations with Rob as I was developing my take. He gets copies of everything that I write up, from the outlines and when I eventually have a draft, he'll get the draft. It's really important to me that I do right by the character, and I think he's the best barometer of whether or not I'm doing that, because it's his baby.
Rob is a really smart and savvy guy. He recognizes, kind of like I do, which is whenever you take a character from one medium to another, it's very, very difficult and probably ill-advised to do a literal translation. You know, there are things that have to change. There's also things that have had to change, by virtue of the fact that Rob created this character back in the 90s, and here we are in 2020. A lot has happened in between. He's actually the first guy to point that out.
So it's actually kind of nice, because I've worked on Green Lantern and I've worked on the DC shows, but this is the first time I've been adapting a character, with the creator of the character available. I couldn't talk to the guys who created Green Arrow when we were doing Arrow! So this is kind of nice. It's great to be able to go directly to the source.
Airing Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on The CW, DC's Legends of Tomorrow stars Caity Lotz, Dominic Purcell, Nick Zano, Maisie Richardson-Sellers, Tala Ashe, Matt Ryan and Jes Macallan.