Jessica Lee Gagné is the first woman ever to be simultaneously Emmy nominated for both Directing for a Drama Series and Cinematography for Drama Series. Since that drama series is Severance — a show about people who are effectively split into two consciousnesses, it seems only right that Lee be serving double duty on the show. As cinematographer from the show’s beginning, she was instrumental in setting the aesthetic tone and now, as she puts on her director’s hat as well for this latest Season 2, she finds the sweet spot where her skills overlap. Here, Lee talks about her key influences, her specific style and her collaboration with the show’s director Ben Stiller, with whom she also worked on Escape at Dannemora.
DEADLINE: Are you currently working on Season 3? Where are you at with it and are you planning to direct more episodes?
No, I’m working on a lot of stuff. It’s a big shift for me, moving into directing and DPing. I’m really trying to give myself a shot at the directing thing, which means I have to stop the DOP train and focus on finding the projects that I want to do, and that takes a lot of time. And then you have to push those projects. So I’m in that. I’m in the like, OK I’ve got to believe that the right thing’s going to come along. It’s an interesting, a different pace.
DEADLINE: Tell me about first connecting with Ben Stiller back before you worked together on Escape at Dannemora?
GAGNÉ: He saw a movie that was directed by a Canadian director called Jamie M. Dagg, it’s called Sweet Virginia, and it was shot in Vancouver, but it was an American production, so that’s why it kind of hit his sphere because most of the films that I DP-ed before were foreign language films or French from France. And I had never done films for the American market with American stars. There always was this inkling that I wanted to shoot stuff in the US and I felt like I was going to work there. I just didn’t know how… When we met on that first Skype, he was like, oh, I saw Sweet Virginia and the camera work and the cinematography, the tone. He couldn’t figure out if it was film or digital, all those things. He was really, really intrigued by it.
DEADLINE: How did he explain severance to you in the beginning? I know you initially had some reservations about a workplace story as a DP?
GAGNÉ: I think that every DP’s nightmare is doing an office show with white walls and it’s not even, there’s no windows in this office, what am I going to do? So obviously it wasn’t like the project that I was pushing for, but then I started doing my own visual research for it to see what I could bring to the table, and I found these references, these books, that really inspired me, and it opened me up to another aesthetic. I got excited at that point, but at first I just felt like it would be limiting as a cinematographer to do this kind of work.
DEADLINE: What did you discuss with Ben early on in terms of your visual concept for Severance?
GAGNÉ: Well, it’s interesting. I think Ben and I always connected over a certain kind of filmmaking, certain films from the ’70s. The show has these two universes that are ultimately very different in nature, even though they still work together cohesively. So that outie world, we kind of knew what it could look like, because of Escape [at Dannemora] and just things that we both like. It was really working with a production designer a lot also, and us all being on the same page and sharing certain references and then an architectural style that we were all aligned on. I feel like it happened organically. I don’t think I ever had to impose anything. I just am always someone bringing visuals to the table to make sure we’re on the same page. And I do that a little bit in my approach to cinematography and filmmaking in general in the early stages of projects. I like to schedule tests, but they’re not just hair and makeup tests. I have a whole process.
I feel like we’re not always given the opportunity or other departments are not always given the opportunity to really understand what the look of something is. You go into something and it’s always a little abstract, but with this, we were really trying to create something new, and we did a series of tests over several months where the first ones were just mostly art department driven. The actors were not in any of these tests.
DEADLINE: What does it mean to you to have this double nomination? You are the first woman to ever achieve this specifically in Drama Series.
GAGNÉ: Honestly, I’m not going to say it’s bigger for me than other people, but the thing that I find really beautiful is I gave myself a chance in something that I had always told myself that wasn’t for me, that that was for other people. The directing thing. I was really never after film school, I completely forgot about that and kind of put it away.
DEADLINE: Why do you think you thought it was for other people?
GAGNÉ: I mean, it’s a little sensitive, but when I was in school, I think that I really only got attention for being the visuals person and a lot of people would come to me to shoot their projects. And I’m also just a doer in terms of an organizer and making sure I’ve always made sure other people were happy and not myself. And I just got in the habit of making things for other people, and doing things for other people, and not considering my own desires and what I really wanted. And then I lived some personal experiences outside of filmmaking after Season 1 of Severance. It had nothing to do with Severance, it was just me in my own life where I had realizations that I wasn’t putting myself first. And then this opportunity showed up and I was like, why not try? You’re surrounded by people who care about you and who want you to succeed. And it took other people believing in me more than myself to be able to do it. It’s almost like the comfort of knowing that Ben thought I could do this. Well then, maybe I should trust him. So, it’s been really cathartic and to get the nomination for both things, there’s nothing more beautiful than that.
DEADLINE: Do you plan to direct more? What about for Season 3?
GAGNÉ: Well, I don’t know what’s going on with Season 3. I’m kind of like everyone in that department. Severance is really mysterious, so I’m focusing currently on movies. I’m looking for films that I want to direct, and those, you never know where they’re going. Movies are very fragile, but I have an erotic thriller that I’m trying to push through. I just don’t know when it’ll get made.
DEADLINE: How did your DP role evolve into directing the Season 2 episode “Chikhai Bardo”?
GAGNÉ: This whole experience of directing and also working with the writer on Severance, Mark Friedman, who wrote this episode specifically, being in the shoes of the director. And now in my own personal life, being in the shoes of a writer, I have so much more respect for writers and for directors now, the amount of energy, first of all, that it takes to write, to create a world. I didn’t see it coming. It is overwhelming, but I’m trying to show up and do it bit by bit, and then I have to kind of block off time to do it for myself. And then directing — I don’t think you can understand what it is until you do it. The amount of questions, the amount of decisions, is overwhelming. And I’m saying that from a perspective of someone who’s been a DP for 15 years, and I’ve shot so many. I’ve shot 40 short films. I’ve shot about 10 feature films, four seasons of television, I don’t even know anymore. It’s hard. Sometimes everything drives you crazy, but the stress on set is a real thing. A lot of pressure. I just couldn’t have done it if I didn’t have the people around me. And it was already an established show. And what was inspiring about [this episode] is there was world building, there was new characters. So, I did get to prove to myself that I could handle that. But then there was still a base of, OK I know everyone who works on this. We know the language. It was a good in-between in terms of proving to myself, I can actually do this. But there is a safety net.
DEADLINE: What was something about this particular episode in terms of direction that makes you proud?
GAGNÉ: I think working with Dichen [Lachman] was first of all an enormous pleasure for me. I think what I thought was the most fun was developing this character with her, really working on building a history to this person, who she is, what happened to her in her life, because these things weren’t very clear at the beginning. So, we got to do that together and with Mark the writer, and it was like, well, what was her life? What kind of woman is she? And for me, I related to her a lot… I feel like building the nuances and the character within each scene and within the larger storyline, for me, that’s the thing I enjoyed the most and I’m the most proud of, because I think she really did end up coming off real and genuine and connecting with women.
DEADLINE: How would you say that your dynamic with Ben Stiller specifically has evolved over all this time?
GAGNÉ: It’s definitely a relationship of growth between us. I feel like we’re different people than we were eight years ago. We’ve really kind of anchored ourselves in what we want in the future and things become clearer for both of us in a way. We met at a time where I think we were looking for something different in our experiences on set. I think he was looking for new storytelling style, and I’m not a predictable choice. That’s kudos to his instincts, to knowing when something can work. I had all these art house films that are really niche and are not commercial at all. I’ve done some work that’s really challenging for audiences… I don’t want to put Ben in the commercial box, but he is larger-audience kind of person. But there’s this super artful person within him that I don’t think people had recognized. And I think I helped pull that out of him, and he pulled out of me this more commercial, more sensitive to audience-type person.
The post ‘Severance’ Director And DP Jessica Lee Gagné On Her Double Emmy Nomination And The “Mysterious” Season 3 appeared first on Deadline.
