‘The Magicians’ Producers Sarah Gamble and John McNamara Talk Network Pressure and How Mentors Screw You

On paper, The Magicians sounds like Harry Potter. But when you actually read it, it couldn’t be more different.

Yeah, it’s a school for magicians and it’s about teen angst and there’s big nasty villain they have to eventually kill. But there’s not a heck of a lot of goofy wand waving or chocolate frogs at Brakebills. Written by TIME journalist Lev Grossman, The Magicians trilogy is coming to live-action TV adaptation on Syfy. The show has already made its premiere online but formally kicks off this week.

Back at the New York Comic-Con last October, executive producers Sarah Gamble and John McNamara spoke to the press about the challenges of adapting Grossman’s successful series, especially at a time when Syfy is seeking a total reboot of its brand of genre TV.

So, right off the bat, how much of the books are you guys covering in this first season?

John McNamara: Part of one and part of two.

Sarah Gamble: So, Julia disappears for a lot of book one. She’s back at the end of book one but she’s very changed. That’s not the same girl who was at the beginning of the story. So, we move those timelines to be current. Essentially she went off and did that stuff while Quentin was in his first year of Brakebills. So, when we talk about it with Lev, we say we’re sort of doing the Julia origin story, in a way, this season.

What has Lev Grossman been like throughout the process? How much as he been involved and how much has he left up to you guys?

John McNamara: This is going to be such a boring answer you’re going to go into a coma. He’s great, the process has been very smooth. There’s nothing. I would tell you if there was like, cause everything gets out anyway.

Sarah Gamble: He’s kind of an asshole, you know. He’s super generous.

John McNamara: He’s not a good actor so you know he’s not lying. He has one scene.

Sarah Gamble: He has a cameo. He’s great, so I don’t know what John’s talking about.

John McNamara: He’s good. He’s good. He didn’t say the lines as written, so I don’t know. He improvised a bit, which I thought was good.

What was the most unexpected challenge that you had in adapting these books into a series. Did you run into anything that made you go, “I did not expect I’d be dealing with this”?

John McNamara: Well, one thing was, the pilot was always a tough opening, for me, because, the first ten pages of the book you’re in Quentin’s head and the whole point is like, how do you pull that out and dramatize it? And we finally saw that Quentin, like he was someone who was depressed. Say, aww, we’ll just try him in a mental hospital, see what happens. I sent that to Lev, and he was like, “How’d you know?”. We were like, “What?”. He was like, “Yeah, we sent Quentin to the mental hospital. I just never wrote the scene.” So, we somehow guessed right. That’s what I mean by trail and error. We just kept guessing and sometimes Lev would say, “Woo hoo, no, no, no, no, no, don’t do that.” And other times he was like, “Wow, how’d you, it’s like you almost read my mind.” So it’s literally just trying stuff and trying stuff and trying stuff and trying stuff.

Like intuitively knowing what works and what didn’t.

John McNamara: Intuitively implies constant success and in fact, we used to, it was eighty percent failure, to get the twenty percent we felt right.

Sarah Gamble: Yeah.

John McNamara: Re-writing is really about right where it’s at. Nothing comes out perfect the first time.

Syfy is trying to get back into the genre game in a big way. The Magicians is at the forefront of their initiative. Is there an extra pressure from the network on The Magicians for putting Syfy back on the map?

John McNamara: If there is, they’ve kept it to themselves.

Sarah Gamble: I don’t know if there is, if it’s possible to do extra pressure on top of just the normal pressure of just watching the first season. I think you’re at max but I do think there’s excitement about it, and there’s desire at the network to put out a certain kind of show and you feel that. They’ve been great.

When The Magicians came out, it was hailed as the next-gen Harry Potter. It basically is Harry Potter, but far more world-weary. There’s drugs, alcohol, a lot of sex — which by the way, the fox sex. Is that going to happen?

Sarah Gamble: Yeah. Oh yeah. I got an email just a little while ago saying the foxes are in the province.

John McNamara: Guess what foxes don’t do? They’re like writers, they don’t do what they’re told.

This audience that has grown up with Harry Potter, and like Quentin they’re probably in grad school themselves. So, was it just a matter of time for a project like this to happen? You mentioned before there were a ton of roadblocks getting this greenlit.

Sarah Gamble: Maybe so. I do think that there is, there are multiple generations of adults who grew up with these canonical fantasy series and it just like, it affected their lives, I mean it’s in their DNA, right? It’s in my DNA from from growing up and reading all that stuff and I think the thing that Lev get right in the books, because the homage to some of these other fantasy stories is very knowing on his part, but he doesn’t just add the adult stuff of sex and drugs. He also deconstructs the metaphor. Good and evil are not as black and white. The idea that you have a destiny is not as clear. He makes all of the things more adult. So I actually think there’s a lot of grit and there’s a lot of depth for people.

John McNamara: [Lev] once said, when we were talking was, there are no Dumbledores in real life so there are no Dumbledores in my books.

I noticed that there’s a distinct lack of mentor figure in The Magicians. Even Star Wars has mentors. Was it difficult guiding the show without Quentin having a human GPS to tell him where to go?

Sarah Gamble: No, it’s fun!

John McNamara: No, actually, I couldn’t write if he had a GPS because I think they’re bullshit. I think that our mentors end up being very flawed people who fuck you over as much as they help you. You know, and I like go back to my favorite show of all time, Star Trek. Who was Captain Kirk’s mentor? Nobody. He’s on his own man. That’s why he’s drinking so much.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T0a2B71qs8

The Magicians premieres January 25 on Syfy. The first episode is available now on YouTube.