LEVERAGE: Dean Devlin Teases Season 4

What did you think of the LEVERAGE season premiere last week? Pretty awesome, right?

Now that team has discovered they were bugged, what the heck does that mean for the rest of the season? To find out, I went to executive producer Dean Devlin to get the details on that and more…

At the end of the season premiere, Parker and Hardison seemed to take a step forward in their relationship. She was warning him that she’s not traditional, etc.  Is that going to continue on?
DD: I think people are going to be surprised at the depth of what develops between those two this year. It gets very intense between them and has some unusual turns.

I am intrigued.  Can you tease anything beyond that?
DD: [Laughs] Well, you have to watch the show.

I will definitely be doing that. You mentioned earlier that the team is going to be dealing with the consequences of their actions.  Are you going to be bringing back past marks?
DD: There will be some people from previous seasons who will return and then some new people will show up because of things they’ve done in the past.  So, what we really wanted to explore is both on a personal level between them and then on a plot level of, “What happens when you play in this kind of dangerous world for too long?” And they have been successful but they’re have also been reckless and there’s a bill to be paid and this year, that bill comes up.

Yeah, I mean the team is subtle because they do take on different identities but everyone sees their faces.  If push comes to shove, they can be identified.
DD: That’s right.

Can you tease a little bit about who might be returning?
DD: Well, I think, you know, the thing is, what we discover very early in the season is that someone has been watching them.

Right, the bugs.
DD: And what that person was going to do with what they’ve been watching them is going to be critical to where the season ends up.

Have you finished shooting the season?
DD: No, we’re two-thirds of the way done and I head up [to Portland] in a couple of weeks to start work on the two-part season finale.

Very interesting. So do the actors know where the season is going at this point?
DD: They only find out when we hand them scripts.  [Laughs]

That’s probably a little bit better for you in a way — you don’t have to worry about them, for instance, accidentally leaking things to press.
DD: Well, you know what we do every year is at the beginning of the season, we sit there with the actors and we have long discussions about the show, about their characters, about where we want to go with the characters and how we want to explore it. The exact plots that we go forward with, that we kind of surprise them with, but they’re very well prepared intellectually and emotionally, for where we’re going because they participate in that. They’ve been very much our partners in crafting these characters.

They seem to have such a blast on the show.
DD: We are very tight-knit.  And I think that part of that is because we shoot out-of-town, so they don’t really have other lives to go into at the end of the workday, so they’ve really bonded up here. So a lot of the intensity that you see between them on-camera exists off-camera. They really do love and care about each other.

That’s always a good thing for actors to feel that way, because fans can tell if the chemistry is there.
DD: Well, that’s one of the good and bad things about each HD now.  You can’t hide anything.  They let them see right into your eyes, right into your soul, so it’s really raised the bar now, I think, for actors about how personal they have to be in their performance.

Yeah, that’s a very good point.  HD is a very good and a very bad thing in many ways for television.
DD: That’s right, that’s right.  It really raises the bar…because things you used to be able to get away with in the old days in television, you can’t today. The image quality is too good. You see too much.

True. Let’s talk about the rest of the season: I heard you guys are doing a ’40s episode this year?
DD: We have an episode that takes place in the ’40s.  We [also] have an episode that takes place at a murder mystery weekend. We’ve got a lot of different kind of things we haven’t done before.

And the murder mystery weekend – is that just going to be a traditional, “everyone’s trapped in a place and they’ve got to figure out who did it?”
DD: That’s right, that’s right.  And, of course, that they all have to come dressed as a their favorite detective.

Oh my God…
DD: So, I’m going to leave that as a surprise of who dresses up like who, but that’s a lot of fun.

Just thinking of them like that, that’s going to be hilarious.
DD: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun.

One last question before I let you go: what’s your personal favorite episode of season 4 so far?
DD: There’s an episode that takes place actually in a funeral home this year and so far, out of the episodes I’ve seen, that one was the one that surprised me the most. When it was over, I was really kind of blown away watching that. Like, wow, this show is really taking some unusual turns. But you know, I think – and I know people always say this when they’re hyping their shows, but I honestly believe this, Marisa — this is honestly the best season we’ve ever had.  There’s really not a weak episode in the bunch.  And we’re doing something different because we’re doing 18 this year and I’m just shocked at what has come out of our writers’ room. It’s really been a tremendous year and I think people are going to be very surprised by these episodes.

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