On its face, HBO's new series "The Franchise" may look like a blunt send-up of some of the well-known pitfalls of making a superhero film — and it is. But it's also a love letter to the under-recognized crews full of people who actually care very deeply about their jobs.
That's especially true of Himesh Patel's character, Daniel. In the series, he's the First AD on a fictional superhero film called "Tecto: Eye of the Storm." And though he's definitely jaded about what's happening on set and within the franchise as a whole, he still actively tries to pitch ideas to make it better. As Patel explained it, Daniel has worked his way up through the studio system and is really quite proud to be a part of it.
"He's leading with actually wanting it to be good," Patel told TheWrap. "And that's all that any of the crew are trying to do. They want it to genuinely be good. And so I think at the same time that we're satirizing the machine of what it can become at its biggest and most unwieldy, I think we're celebrating the drive of the people on any project of any sort of size, of any genre."
"Any crew wants it to be the best it's going to be because then they want to say, 'Oh, I worked on that thing,' you know?" he added.
Meanwhile, Billy Magnussen gets the duties of being Tecto himself. As the fake film's leading man, Magnussen found himself reflecting on his own career and wanting to be honest about what actors face.
"I think everyone in our industry is struggling to elevate themselves," he said. "As a younger actor in my 20s and 30s, I realized it was a very selfish career, in a way. And with that selfishness, a lot of isolation starts to happen, and then your vulnerability and insecurity start spilling in. That isolation is really the story that we never talk about with people in those positions. It's like, the higher you get, the more alone you become."
Of course, while it's common to see stories about actors on screen, it's less typical to see assistant directors or script supervisors or many of the others that "The Franchise" highlights. To get to do that was an exciting thing for both Patel and Lolly Adefope, who plays Dag, the third assistant director who's genuinely thrilled to be there.
"The show has a lot of respect for those people, shining a light onto ADs, producers, people who don't really get that glory and don't really get thanks for the hard work that gets put in," Adefope said. "And I remember Jon [Brown, creator of "The Franchise"] said in the beginning, 'Sometimes these films are kind of chaotic and maybe people are being mean to each other. I don't want this set to be like that at all.'"
She continued, "And that was kind of a very inspiring note to start on, which definitely carried through. We're not trying to punch down or attack people for just working hard and loving what they do and trying to make art."
In its third episode, the show pokes at a particularly rough issue in the world of franchises: women. As the studio head in the episode notes, they have a "woman problem" in that the film needs to appear more feminist.
But the lone actress in the movie (played by Katherine Waterston) looks forward to wrapping on the film, as the most toxic parts of Tecto fandom complain the lore has been changed too much in order to fit in her character.
But once again, the series strived not to punch down. For Aya Cash, who has her own experience in the world of franchises thanks to her role on "The Boys," and stars as the producer of "Tecto" in "The Franchise," the clear goal for everyone involved on the third episode was not to make fun of the idea of feminism itself.
"We're making fun of corporate adoption of feminism, and the inaccuracies and blindness to what they're doing," she said. "The sort of blunt force trauma, hit it over the head without any understanding of what they're actually doing or talking about. It's not like we're making fun of the fact that women struggle in this industry. We're making fun of how that's dealt with."
"The Franchise" is now streaming on Max.
This story first appeared in the SAG Preview issue of TheWrap's awards magazine.
Read more from the SAG issue here.
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