“If I’m here, it’s to watch series, but also to go shopping and have sausages,” warned Lisa Joy, president of the jury for the international competition of Series Mania 2023, during a conference of press on Saturday at the Théâtre du Nord in Lille. The co-creator of Westworld also confided in her career this Tuesday during an exciting masterclass. Still too rare in Hollywood for a woman, Lisa Joy is a screenwriter, producer, director and showrunner all rolled into one. Portrait of the woman who defines herself as a “romantic and lyrical thinker”.
“It’s such an honor to be here,” says the president of the jury, who believes that “there is no objective measure of the quality or value” of a series. And to add: “For me, it is a pleasure to see these works, to learn from these incredible new voices, to learn from my fellow judges who are intelligent and fabulous. »
“I always felt like an outsider”
Lisa Joy grew up in the United States in New Jersey, from a Taiwanese mother and a British father. “I don’t write things that are directly autobiographical, but I think the genre I work in is a metaphor for your internal landscape, how you feel. It’s a way to explore that in a more universal way,” she says.
Of Pushing Daisies Passing by Westworld until Peripherals, the worlds of Flynne, Lisa Joy specializes in science fiction. “If I gravitated around SF, it’s because when you’re an immigrant in a country, you don’t have the same cultural references as the others… At home, we spoke Chinese, we didn’t eat American food and we didn’t have the same customs. I always felt like an outsider, someone from the outside, ”says the screenwriter. And to specify: “It is not a coincidence that I turned to robots in my stories, who look at things from a distance, with a slightly external point of view. »
“My one and only chance to become a screenwriter”
The brilliant Lisa Joy studied law at Stanford and Harvard, the two cradles of brains in Silicon Valley. In debt like many American students, she had to “wait to make that jump to writing” and started working in a huge consulting firm in Los Angeles serving tech companies. “In the meantime, I have learned and absorbed the world in different ways,” she philosophizes.
As she prepares for the Los Angeles bar, she writes a speculative script for an episode of Veronica Mars which catches the attention of Bryan Fuller, the showrunner of Pushing Daisies, a sci-fi drama that follows Ned, a baker who wakes the dead and puts them back to sleep, which entertained ABC viewers from 2007 to 2008. that once I started my career as a lawyer, I wouldn’t have time to write. »
“I have always been shy and nervous”
Desperate to tell stories, Lisa Joy sends her manuscript with a fake letter of recommendation from an agent. “No one believed it, because that’s not how it works. But Bryan Fuller read the script and hired me on that basis,” she laughs.
At the age of 30, to her mother’s chagrin, she dumped her promising career in law to devote herself to writing. “I’ve always been shy and nervous with people around me. Writing stories in my mind was having a fake discussion where I would be much more courageous, ”says the screenwriter.
Her legal background helps her as a producer. “Everyone thinks artists are a little crazy and illogical, it’s part of the author’s mystique, and when you’re a woman, you’re thought to be hysterical. Having an extremely solid foundation in business and law allowed me to avoid these things that women have to deal with,” she says.
“If you raise this complaint, you will not work anymore! »
After Pushing Daisies, Lisa Joy takes part in Burn Notice, a series that follows a blacklisted former spy. “It’s hard to make a living as a screenwriter. Pushing Daisies was extraordinary and feminine. But I’ve always liked action. Doing low-budget action was part of my training as a producer,” she explains.
An experience that has not always been easy. “I was the only woman in the pool of screenwriters. It was very difficult, it was before #Metoo. I once complained to my agent and he said at the time, “If you escalate this complaint to the studio, you’ll never work again!” I learned to cash in and I lost my illusions for a while,” she says.
She finds support from other women in the industry. “We wondered if only the bad guys won in Hollywood. The answer is that Hollywood is agnostic on these issues, you’re as likely to succeed by being nice as you are being mean! »
“I hadn’t seen the movie ‘Westworld'”
On August 31, 2013, HBO ordered a pilot episode of a television series adapted from the film. Westworld, written and directed in 1973 by Michael Crichton. At the helm, Lisa Joy and her husband, Jonathan Nolan. “I hadn’t seen the film when I agreed to do this series,” she admits.
And to tell: “Jonathan (Nolan), my husband and co-showrunner, had seen the film and JJ Abrams, the producer, told him that he had the rights and that he could adapt it. Jonathan initially said “no”. According to him, there was nothing to do with it. He saw it as a kind of fun cruise. All I knew was that it was a western with robots. »
“We exchanged text messages all night”
The screenwriter begins to think about it more seriously. “That’s the good thing about writing with your husband is that you can interact with him all the time. We had just had a baby sleeping in our room, so to keep from waking up, we texted all night long about how we could adapt this film from our perspective,” she explains.
Lisa Joy begins to take an interest in the western genre, and does not appreciate the way women are treated there. “I thought it would be interesting to explore their stories, to these women and turn the case around. That’s how it started. I pushed Jonathan to do it! she says.
“Like a little robot when it comes to plot”
“I’m like a little robot when it comes to setting up the plot,” laughs Lisa Joy. In order to prepare the pilot, the couple of showrunners use a whiteboard, quickly covered with post-it notes and pieces of string. “The whole Season 1 meta arc was there,” she exclaims.
And to summarize the problem of his cult series: “The concept lends itself to an existential examination, it is the will in the face of destiny. There is also this idea, which has become very popular in Silicon Valley, that we live in simulation. Intellectually, it’s an interesting question,” she says.
“‘Westworld’ is part of the collective culture”
On November 5, 2022, HBO announced the cancellation of the series, despite its creators’ desire to produce a fifth and final season: “Being a screenwriter in Hollywood is synonymous with knowing rejection. It’s not the first and it won’t be the last. It happens. Afterwards, these characters and this story continue to live in me and evolve in my mind. They are no longer mine, but are interacting with everyone who has seen the series, which is part of the collective culture. »
Like the conclusion of WestworldLisa Joy has little hope for the future of humanity: “People want AI to destroy us, but there is no need to wait for AI, our destruction is imminent without the AI,” she laments.
“Memories, memory have always interested me”
In this masterclass, the designer spoke at length about memory, memories and reminiscences, a major theme in her work. “Memories, memory have always interested me. Deep down inside, I’m a romantic and lyrical thinker,” she says.
And to continue: “Memory interests me, as does the question of identity. Who are we ? When we look at the past, what do we see? Do we remember the past as detailed and accurate as a computer would? No, we see through the prism of memory and what people say (…) We are all narrators and narrators, ”she considers.
“I’m not a gamer”
A theme that we find in the adaptation of an excellent novel by William Gibson (the father of cyberpunk) that she produces, Peripherals, the worlds of Flynne. A series that is part of the deal concluded by Lisa Joy and Jonathan Dolan, her husband and collaborator (whom she met on the red carpet of Mementoit can’t be invented!) with Amazon Prime Video.
As part of this contract, the producer is currently preparing the highly anticipated adaptation of the video game fallout, a work of SF, rooted in the promise of technological progress, but also in the fear of nuclear annihilation. “I am not a gamer. I’m so bad that when they give me a controller, I collapse… I can’t survive in a video game,” she laughs. A shame for this artist whose work questions our relationship to technology so well!