Bonus Episode: Inside the TV Series Dirty John Part 2 AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast Dirty John
Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Bonus Episode: Inside the TV Series "Dirty John" Part 2) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.
Go to PodExtra AI's podcast page (Dirty John) to view the AI-processed content of all episodes of this podcast.
Dirty John episodes list: view full AI transcripts and summaries of this podcast on the blog
Episode: Bonus Episode: Inside the TV Series "Dirty John" Part 2
Author: Los Angeles Times | Wondery
Duration: 00:14:06
Episode Shownotes
In the second of three special episodes, Connie Britton (“Friday Night Lights,” “Nashville”) talks about playing Debra Newell in the new Bravo series, and why the story feels timely. Julia Garner and Juno Temple, who play Newell’s daughters, discuss how they came to inhabit their roles, and the show’s production
designer and costume designer share details of how they helped create the characters’ worlds.“Dirty John” premieres on Bravo at 10 p.m. on Sunday, November 25. You can also find the original LA Times series, plus 14 other pieces of narrative journalism, in a new collection called “Dirty John and Other True Stories of Outlaws and Outsiders” by Christopher Goffard, published by Simon & Schuster.
Summary
In the second episode of 'Dirty John,' Connie Britton, portraying Debra Newell, discusses her approach to showing empowerment and complexity in her character. She emphasizes Debra's transition from a vulnerable place to establishing boundaries in relationships, illustrated through costume design reflecting her emotional journey. Julia Garner and Juno Temple explore their character preparations while production designer Ruth Ammon addresses the challenges of visually depicting the socio-cultural context of Orange County. The episode underscores the complexities of familial relationships and emotional struggles stemming from Debra's past, including her mother's controversial forgiveness of violence.
Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Bonus Episode: Inside the TV Series "Dirty John" Part 2) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.
Full Transcript
00:00:07 Speaker_02
It was really important to me not to show Debra as somebody who's foolish or silly or stupid or any of those things, first of all, because that was not my experience listening to the podcast at all.
00:00:20 Speaker_00
I'm talking with Connie Britton, who is playing Deborah Newell in the new Bravo series, Dirty John.
00:00:26 Speaker_02
The first experience that I had listening to the podcast was how terrifying this guy is and how easy it is to be conned. And that, for me, was the most chilling part because, frankly, I believe we're living in a country where
00:00:45 Speaker_02
we've been to some degree conned. People are having a hard time accessing truth and values and in steps the con man.
00:00:55 Speaker_00
Britton is best known for her role as Tammy Taylor on the show Friday Night Lights. In Dirty John, she's a successful interior designer in an affluent area of Orange County, California.
00:01:06 Speaker_00
She ignores her family's warnings about the new man in her life, marries him hastily, then after she discovers he's been lying to her from the start, takes him back.
00:01:15 Speaker_02
To me, it was a really important story to tell because I love telling stories of women
00:01:22 Speaker_02
trying to find their own power through whatever influences have been given to them by, you know, their community, by their church, by the state that they live in, by their family.
00:01:36 Speaker_00
On some level, she tells me, she sees the story as being about the passing down of values through generations and how women struggle to define themselves against those forces.
00:01:47 Speaker_02
To some degree, your value is as much as who you are with a man.
00:01:55 Speaker_02
That can be a very subtle thing because, especially in this day and age, women, if you're lucky, you're raised to believe that you can do whatever you want and you can accomplish anything.
00:02:08 Speaker_02
But there are still very, very old conventions about what it is to be a woman.
00:02:22 Speaker_00
From the Los Angeles Times and Wondery, I'm Chris Goffert, and this is a special bonus episode of Dirty John.
00:02:42 Speaker_00
As preparation for her role in the new Bravo series, Connie Britton tells me she made it a point to meet the woman her character is based on, Deborah Newell.
00:02:50 Speaker_02
I think it was really, really helpful to be able to spend time with her and for no other reason just to kind of learn her mannerisms and, you know, try to get some of that, the physicality and her vocal cadence and all the rest of it.
00:03:04 Speaker_02
But also, it really gave me insight into who she is as a person.
00:03:11 Speaker_02
You know, I also realized that I think Debra was in a point in her life where she was actually trying to empower herself because she's a self-made, very successful woman, has a very, very successful business, but has been doing that completely on her own really so that she could raise her four children mostly on her own.
00:03:33 Speaker_02
And because her marriages hadn't worked. And in the course of doing that, felt a lot of guilt, especially about her two youngest daughters, because she felt like she just wasn't around for them.
00:03:50 Speaker_02
So I really saw, as we were exploring the journey of this in our storytelling, I really saw her actually trying to empower herself with the relationship with John.
00:04:02 Speaker_02
by, you know, when the daughters were saying, no, no, no, we don't like him, we don't like him, saying, well, you know, I love you and I respect you, but I like him and I'm not gonna let you dictate what my life is supposed to be to me.
00:04:16 Speaker_02
I'm going to do this for myself, you know? And she's trying to create boundaries for the first time, and because of some of her guilt and all the rest of it, she hadn't been able to really create boundaries with her daughters before.
00:04:31 Speaker_00
Susie DeSanto, the costume designer on Dirty John, told me that the specific look she picked for Deborah is meant to reflect her emotional journey through the season's eight-episode arc. She took me through the costume trailer.
00:04:43 Speaker_06
You can see by looking at Connie's line, who plays Deborah, in the beginning I used a lot of pink and cream colors and soft fabrics just to kind of set the scene of romance and falling in love and just also being part of Deborah's curated world.
00:05:06 Speaker_06
her very specific color schemes, her specific aesthetic. So Connie and I worked a lot with all of these colors that were really pretty and soft.
00:05:15 Speaker_06
And then as things start to get a little darker, and John Meehan, who I call the heart of darkness of the show, as it becomes apparent, like, what is happening in this woman's family and to her family, we start to work with more blues.
00:05:32 Speaker_06
And then once John is killed, the heart of darkness is lifted, and we go back to the light colors again.
00:05:41 Speaker_00
In the show, Debra's daughters are played by Juno Temple and Julia Garner. Juno Temple is the older sister, whose name on the show is Veronica.
00:05:49 Speaker_00
She's the one who doesn't need more than a single contemptuous glance at John Meehan to make up her mind about him, who puts a tracker on her mom's car to find out where he goes in it. She's the daughter with a safe full of expensive handbags.
00:06:01 Speaker_05
She's somebody I have respect for because I think she really does have a quite fearless quality about her. I mean, I haven't had to ever go through a situation like this, but she got balls that I am quite amazed by.
00:06:14 Speaker_05
You know, going out and talking to police people and talking to investigators and tracking devices and all of these things, it's a pretty baller move.
00:06:23 Speaker_00
I asked her how she arrived at the voice she uses for Veronica.
00:06:27 Speaker_05
To me, it was kind of the idea of that sort of nasally American voice, right? It's kind of that, but also there's something really interesting about an American girl that kind of has been there, seen that, done it all, so it's like impressed me.
00:06:46 Speaker_05
And it's this super monotonous way of talking, which I think Veronica needed. I think it takes quite a lot to impress her.
00:06:55 Speaker_05
And I think when you're around somebody like that, whatever walk of life they are, if they have that kind of voice where it's like, oh, impress me, they weirdly make you quite nervous because you're like, okay, what am I going to do?
00:07:05 Speaker_05
How can I impress them? What do I do? Do I need to cartwheel? Do I need to flash them? Do I need like, I don't know what to do.
00:07:10 Speaker_00
Deborah Newell's youngest daughter stands in dramatic contrast, down to earth, approachable, vulnerable, dressed kind of like a teenager. This is Tara played by Julia Garner.
00:07:21 Speaker_04
You know, the thing that I really like about Tara is how much she's open and willing to give people chances. When you watch the show or listen to the podcast, you'll see or hear what I mean by giving people second chances.
00:07:35 Speaker_04
Because I think Tara is kind of, she's a very hopeful person.
00:07:40 Speaker_00
Garner told me she keeps a journal in which she works out her thoughts about her roles. She plays a character on the show Ozark named Ruth and the governing word she uses to understand her is stuck. With Tara Newell, the word is uncertainty.
00:07:53 Speaker_04
Uncertainty in a way, like I'm not quite clear. Cause I think Tara is contemplating whether if John's a good guy or not throughout the season. So she has the feeling of uncertainty all the time.
00:08:08 Speaker_00
Garner is from New York and her vocal transformation for the role is less dramatic than Temple's but distinctive nonetheless.
00:08:14 Speaker_04
I mean, I obviously listened to the podcasts and interviews and I wanted to play it as close to her as possible. I wasn't going to have like, I wasn't going to be like, Hey mom, I really like, I really don't like John.
00:08:26 Speaker_04
I wasn't gonna have, this is my voice. I wasn't gonna have my voice.
00:08:30 Speaker_03
I wanted to, so I just, you know, I think people, I'm doing Tara's voice. I think people in, I mean, this is to me like very much of a California accent in a way. And it's very clear that this is the world that they're from.
00:08:46 Speaker_03
So I wanted to be very respectful for that.
00:09:01 Speaker_00
At the center of the complicated Newell family is Debra, trying to navigate her own needs and those of her kids.
00:09:07 Speaker_00
As I was reporting the story originally, I found it hard to make sense of Debra's decision to take John Meehan back, in the face of so much damning evidence about his criminal past.
00:09:17 Speaker_00
It only really began to make sense to me in the context of her painful family history.
00:09:22 Speaker_02
Deborah has a strong religious background.
00:09:25 Speaker_02
She had the experience of her sister being shot point blank in the back of the head by her husband and then watched her mother completely forgive him for that and have him serve almost no jail time, very little jail time.
00:09:41 Speaker_00
Debra's mother, Arlene, did more than just forgive the man who killed her daughter. She testified on his behalf at his trial. Her behavior baffled and outraged a lot of people who listened to the podcast or read the series.
00:09:53 Speaker_00
I got a lot of emails on that theme. In the TV show, Arlene is played by the actress, Jean Smart. I asked her if she felt protective of the character.
00:10:01 Speaker_01
Well, of course, I certainly try to put myself in her mindset, because some people, their reaction is, well, as a mother, that thing is so primal, that feeling of protecting your child and losing your child, that is such a primal, primal thing.
00:10:16 Speaker_01
How could she possibly have overcome that? But again, I think that because she feels that love and forgiveness trumps everything, and that she knew that the only place she could find that solace, and she went there instantaneously.
00:10:33 Speaker_01
She knew that if she didn't make that choice to go with her faith and her feelings of forgiveness, that she would probably lose her mind. It's kind of like I have met women who have lost
00:10:45 Speaker_01
children in Iraq and Afghanistan because I did a piece about a lot of those mothers and there are some that are very bitter of course and then there are some who after that were still you know George Bush is the greatest thing in the world and
00:11:00 Speaker_01
you know, America first, and this is, you know, the war is a good thing, and... Well, that in a way gives meaning to the death of the child, too. Exactly.
00:11:08 Speaker_01
Because if you felt that your child was just cannon fodder, that you lost your child for nothing except perhaps maybe greed or God knows what else, you would go insane. You would be destroyed through your rage and your grief.
00:11:25 Speaker_01
I mean, I don't know how you could keep putting one foot in front of the other.
00:11:31 Speaker_00
The production designer on Dirty John is Ruth Ammon, and she's responsible for the show's overall look, from the green vase in Deborah's therapist's office to the giant decorative lips on the wall of Veronica's bedroom.
00:11:43 Speaker_00
Part of the challenge was how to present a part of Orange County not notable for striking architectural diversity. This made it among her most challenging jobs.
00:11:51 Speaker_07
I worked in New York for 20-something years, and every building there has a lifetime of different facades and paints and textures. So I always typically build a story from that. When you talk about Orange County, new is better.
00:12:08 Speaker_07
So when we thought about Debra also being an interior designer, if we did the interior design from when the story specifically took place, she would look dated. And no one would get who she was because it was passé at that point.
00:12:26 Speaker_00
I remind her that the story takes place only three or four years ago.
00:12:29 Speaker_07
That's a lot of time when you have West Elm and Restoration Hardware and Pottery Barn and CB2 and all these like big box stores that are telling you how to live your life constantly.
00:12:43 Speaker_00
Earlier this year, I led Ammon and a scouting crew to Balboa Island in Newport Beach, where Deborah and John Meehan were living in the early months of their relationship. The lady living there was nice enough to let us in to look around.
00:12:54 Speaker_00
On the sidewalk as we were leaving, a well-dressed young man who lived nearby came running out in a rage, wielding a golf club and screaming. One of the crew had inadvertently tried his door.
00:13:06 Speaker_07
It was terrifying.
00:13:07 Speaker_07
I mean, there was a lot of us there, so I wasn't super scared, but his anger and rage was kind of too weirdly connected to what I would imagine was the rage of John and just seeing this like male anger in the same place where all this stuff happened.
00:13:25 Speaker_07
You know, it was kind of creepy.
00:13:31 Speaker_00
You can catch the premiere of Dirty John on Bravo at 10 p.m. on Sunday, November 25th. It's a production of Universal Cable Productions and LA Times Studios, and this is the second of three bonus episodes about its making.
00:13:44 Speaker_00
If you're a reader, you can pick up my new story collection, which contains the original print series and 14 other stories, many of them equally weird.
00:13:52 Speaker_00
It's called Dirty John and Other True Stories of Outlaws and Outsiders by Christopher Goffard, published by Simon & Schuster. This is Chris Goffard. Thanks for listening.