Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump’s campaign stop at a McDonald’s in suburban Philadelphia on Sunday has sparked bemusement and bewilderment from onlookers. But the Golden Arches photo op was far from random: it represents the culmination of a yearslong fascination Trump has had with the fast food chain.
Trading in his suit jacket for a yellow-lined apron, Trump, in a branch in Feasterville-Trevose, Pa., took a turn at dunking baskets of fries in oil, salting them, and scooping them into boxes—the well-documented germaphobe expressed delight at how it “never touches the human hand”—and he handed bags of food to a few preselected customers through the drive-thru window. The play-acting at working came as Trump has fixated on Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris’ claim of a brief employment at McDonald’s in the 1980s—something Trump has refused to believe is true.
Trump appears adamant to shake any notion that his rival could have a stronger connection to a brand he’s so long adored and patronized—and a potent symbol of America’s working class.
“I love McDonald’s,” Trump said. “I like to see good jobs, and I think it’s inappropriate when somebody puts down all over the place that she worked at McDonald’s.”
In apparent effort to boost her working-class bona fides, Harris and her campaign have said she manned the register, the fry station, and the ice cream machine in an Alameda, Calif., McDonald’s in 1983 during a summer while she was in college. “She’s a liar,” Trump has repeatedly argued on the campaign trail, with scant evidence (allies have pointed to a résumé that makes no mention of McDonald’s). “Birtherism, meet burgerism,” summed the New York Times in a recent story about the candidate who has a long history of questioning the biographies of his opponents. Trump, while at the drive-thru window on Sunday, said, “I’ve now worked for 15 minutes more than Kamala.”
The fast food chain has become a strange point of competition for the Trump campaign. Speaking to Fox News last week, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. said his father “knows the McDonald’s menu much better than Kamala Harris ever did.” That may actually be true given the public evidence of just how much he enjoys their food. In early 2023, Trump himself said the same thing to McDonald’s staffers in East Palestine, Ohio—“I know this menu better than you do”—before buying meals for frontline responders to the hazardous chemical accident caused by a train derailment in the area.
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, wrote in his 2022 memoir Breaking History that when his father-in-law contracted COVID-19 in 2020, ordering in from the fast food chain signaled that he was on the way to recovery. “I knew he was feeling better when he requested one of his favorite meals: a McDonald’s Big Mac, Filet-o-Fish, fries and a vanilla shake,” Kushner wrote. Former Trump campaign officials Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie said in their 2017 book Let Trump be Trump that the former President’s go-to McDonald’s order consisted of “two Big Macs, two Fillet-O-Fish and a chocolate malted [shake].”
In 2017, Politico reported that during Trump’s 2016 campaign, his former bodyguard and confidante Keith Schiller would routinely go to the McDonald’s near the Marine Air Terminal in Queens while Trump waited in the limousine. “Egg McMuffins were often the order in the morning, or two quarter-pounders and a large fries later in the day,” Politico reported, citing another unnamed former aide. The report also said Schiller would make fast food runs down Washington D.C.’s New York Avenue if “the White House kitchen staff couldn’t match the satisfaction of a quarter-pounder with cheese (no pickles, extra ketchup) and a fried apple pie.”
In October 2023, during Trump’s fraud trial in Manhattan, several large bags of McDonalds were hauled into court. And in 2019, on more than one occasion, Trump controversially catered McDonald’s meals for champion college athletes visiting the White House. In 2002, the billionaire even appeared in an ad for the McDonald’s dollar-menu.
As to why Trump loves McDonald’s—and fast food in general—so much, there are multiple, seemingly related explanations. In his 2018 book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, author Michael Wolff said Trump “had a longtime fear of being poisoned.” When he ate at McDonald’s, Wolff relayed Trump’s thinking, “nobody knew he was coming and the food was safely premade.”
Trump, for his part, has justified his tastes by citing the standards of food preparation. “I’m a very clean person. I like cleanliness, and I think you’re better off going there than maybe someplace that you have no idea where the food’s coming from. It’s a certain standard,” Trump told CNN in a 2016 town hall. “One bad hamburger, you can destroy McDonald’s.”
Warning: This post contains spoilers for It’s What’s Inside.
The concept of body-swapping in horror movies is nothing new. Just think about Christopher Landon’s Freaky, Joe Lynch’s Suitable Flesh, and, of course, Jordan Peele’s inimitable Get Out.
However, in those films, the swapping happens against one or both of the swappers’ wills. In writer-director Greg Jardin’s debut feature It’s What’s Inside, on the other hand, a group of college friends reunited for the night before the wedding of one of their own all make the conscious decision to mentally trade places amongst themselves—to disastrous results.
Following a buzzy premiere at Sundance, the low-budget, high-concept horror comedy is now streaming on Netflix (which purchased the genre-bender earlier this year for a cool $17 million, one of the biggest sales in the festival’s history). “Initially I was pitching it as The Big Chill meets Freaky Friday by way of Black Mirror,” Jardin told IndieWire of the inspiration behind his surprise breakout hit. “When I initially came up with the idea, I saw it as a straight-up sci-fi comedy. And then as I was really working through it…I thought, maybe I can lean into a darker vibe but still be funny.”
The setup
(L-R): Brittany O’Grady as Shelby and James Morosini as Cyrus in It’s What’s Inside.Netflix
The movie opens with anxious lead Shelby (Brittany O’Grady) trying and failing to seduce her longtime—and clearly indifferent—boyfriend Cyrus (James Morosini) into a role-playing scenario involving a blonde wig. It’s a thinly-veiled display of Shelby’s insecurities surrounding Cyrus’ interest in women who don’t look anything like her, particularly their old college friend-turned-social media influencer Nikki (Alycia Debnam-Carey).
The struggling couple then heads to a pre-wedding party at the eclectic mansion of the late mother of the groom-to-be, their friend Reuben (Devon Terrell). There, they reunite with the rest of their college cohort, artsy party girl Brooke (Reina Hardesty), trust-fund baby Dennis (Gavin Leatherwood), spiritual seeker Maya (Nina Bloomgarden), and Nikki.
Suddenly, there’s a knock on the door and their estranged friend Forbes (David Thompson), who was expelled from college following an incident at a party involving his unstable younger sister, Beatrice (Madison Davenport), shows up. Forbes, who has spent the past eight years working in tech, offers the group a chance to test out his team’s latest invention, a “game” contained within a suitcase that allows everyone in the group to temporarily and randomly swap bodies.
The first time, nobody knows what they’re getting into. But the gang, despite Shelby’s initial reluctance, subsequently all make the choice to participate in a second and third round. Naturally, horrifying chaos quickly ensues.
The twist
(L-R): Devon Terrell as Reuben and James Morosini as Cyrus in It’s What’s Inside.Netflix
While Jardin does a good job of making it pretty clear who’s in whose body throughout the movie, the existential thrills kick into high gear after Reuben and Brooke, who are inside the bodies of Dennis and Maya, fall from a crumbling balcony while in the throes of passion and are killed instantly. This leaves the rest of the group to decide how to handle the switch back now that two of their bodies are broken and unusable.
Unable to agree on what they should do, the survivors split into factions and plot various ways to double-cross each other to get what they want. However, it turns out they were all being scammed from the start, as Beatrice was the one inside Forbes’ body all along. We learn that Beatrice stole Forbes’ body and his machine in order to get revenge for that long-ago party, which ended in Forbes and Dennis getting in a physical altercation over Dennis hooking up with a then-high-school-aged Beatrice while he was dating Nikki and ultimately landed Beatrice in a mental hospital.
By the end of the movie, only Shelby and Cyrus are back inside their own bodies, with Cyrus left to take the fall for Reuben and Brooke’s deaths (while in the bodies of Dennis and Maya) as Dennis called the cops while still inside Cyrus’ body and claimed to have pushed them. Meanwhile, Maya is trapped in Brooke’s body, Nikki in Reuben’s, Dennis in Forbes’, and Beatrice—who transferred all of Dennis’ trust-fund money into her own offshore account—in Nikki’s.
We see Beatrice (as Nikki) driving off into the sunset with the suitcase in tow before we get a flashback to her (then in Forbes’ body) explaining the addictive nature of the machine. “Every new body you go into gives you a new piece of the human condition,” she says. “And then, after a while, you just want to constantly switch.”
What’s the price of beauty? “Uglies,” a new Netflix movie, asks that question — and, indeed, there is a price.
The movie, starring Joey King, is based on Scott Westerfeld’s 2005 novel of the same name.
A dystopia, “Uglies” unfolds in a world with a unique coming-of-age ritual.
On their 16th birthday, people undergo a surgery that turns them into their “healthy, happy, pretty” selves, as the movie puts it. Until they become Pretties, they are called Uglies and exist at a lower social strata.
At the start of the movie, Tally is about two months away from turning 16. Her best friend, Peris (Chase Stokes), is about to undergo the surgery. They promise not to let the surgery change them, and talk about the identical scars that they both have on their hands.
Online, viewers are saying what comes next is a throwback to the era of dystopias published in the years after “The Hunger Games.” Here’s what to know about the plot and ending of “Uglies.”
Joey King before her “Uglies” transformation.Brian Douglas / Netflix
What happens in ‘Uglies’?
After Peris leaves, Tally becomes friends with Shay (Brianne Tju), who also has two months until her procedure.
Unlike Tally, Shay does not know if she wants to undergo the surgery and says she might want to live the rest of her days in the Smoke.
Tally always thought the Smoke was an urban legend, but Shay brings her there to show it’s very real, and so is a life without the procedure. Shay wants the freedom that the Smoke would give her even if it means she’ll never be officially “Pretty.”
Tally’s not convinced. While Shay makes her decision to avoid the surgery, Tally says goodbye and commits to Pretty-dom. She wakes up on her 16th birthday excited for her procedure.
However, instead of becoming a Pretty, Tally is whisked away to see Dr. Cable (Laverne Cox), head of a division called Special Circumstances, who gives her an ultimatum: Give up information about Shay or never get the procedure.
According to Cable, the Smoke is developing a weapon that will wipe out the current civilization, and Shay has been brainwashed by David (Keith Powers), whom Cable views as the radical leader of The Smoke. It’s now up to Tally to find this weapon and save the city.
When Tally arrives to the Smoke, Shay quickly figures out her ulterior motives, but lets Tally stay because she is convinced that her mind will change.
Shay’s right. While spending time in the Smoke, Tally awakens to the value in loving who you are and not worrying about appearances.
What do the surgeries really do?
Tally starts getting closer with David and meets his parents, Az (DeVon Johnson) and Maddy (Charmin Lee).
Az and Maddy used to work for the city as surgeons. They realized the real point of the surgery was to create lesions in the brain that enabled mind control.
“These lesions in the frontal cortex, they dull you. You don’t care about anything. You can’t think clearly. You’re sedated into a false sense of happiness,” Az says.
In effect, through the procedure, the government can control the entire population.
Cable later explains the rationale: “Freethinking is a cancer… Leave people to choose for themselves, and they’ll destroy the world, they nearly did. Freeing them of choice saved them. Humanity needs to be led, and there are those of us fit to lead. People are so much happier this way.”
Since avoiding the surgery and beginning to age naturally, Az and Maddy have been working on finding a cure to the lesions — but but they’re missing a piece.
“For the last 20 years, we’ve been working on replicating this cure, and Cable knows it. It’s why she’s closing in,” Maddy says, convincing Tally to fully commit to the Smoke’s cause.
Laverne Cox as Dr. Cable and Joey King as Tally in UGLIES.Brian Douglas / Netflix
Does Peris die?
City officials close in on the Smoke, tracking Tally down through the pendant Cable gave her.
Peris, now fully Pretty and fully brainwashed, kills Az at Cable’s orders.
Cable reveals that Peris has been turned into an “upgraded” form of Pretty, called a Special. Shay has also been turned into a Pretty.
Later on, Tally tries to use their emotional bond to try to bring Peris back to himself. David thinks he’s about to kill her and swoops in to tackle Peris. The two continue to fight until Peris is left hanging off the building.
Chase Stokes as Peris in “Uglies.” Brian Douglas / Netflix
Looking up at Tally, Peris’ final word is the nickname he called her before surgery, suggesting that he has not been completely brainwashed.
He lets go and falls to his seeming death. As a Special, he may be able to survive, since they are genetically enhanced.
Why does Tally become a Pretty, and what’s the future of the cure?
During their showdown, Cable forces Tally, David and Maddy to undergo the procedure.
Then, fighters from the Smoke swarm in, torching the procedure chambers.
As David and Tally run away with Shay, Maddy grabs a capsule from a sealed case. She now has the missing piece she needs to complete the formula for the cure.
Tally is excited about the opportunity to cure her friend Shay, but since she’s already been turned Pretty, Shay refuses the cure.
Maddy does not want to force Shay to take the cure, believing that forcing bodily modifications on anyone not consenting would make her as bad as Cable. As a solution, Tally volunteers to be the test subject.
“They’ll turn me and then you’ll turn me back,” Tally says. “You have the cure, and if it works then maybe we can convince Shay and maybe we can convince everybody else. That’s how we change the world.”
David pushes back, afraid they’ll lose Tally like they lost Shay, but Tally insists that she is strong.
“It took me a long time, but I know who I am now. I’m not going to let them take that away from me,” Tally says to David.
“But how will we know it’s still you?” David asks.
Brian Douglas / Netflix
“I’ll leave you a sign,” she responds.
“You are so beautiful,” David says through tears.
In a dramatic fashion, Tally gives herself up and wakes up in her new home as a Pretty. As she looks out the window, she tells the AI voice in her house that she loves being Pretty.
As she looks down, there is clearly still a scar on her hand, suggesting that she did leave a sign of the old her, just as she and Peris promised they would do before their surgeries.
What’s next for Tally?
The movie potentially sets the scene for a sequel. “Uglies” is the first in a trilogy, followed by “Pretties” and “Specials.”
In “Pretties,” the second installment, Tally no longer remembers her mission. Then, she receives a letter from herself, written in the past, and she learns what she needs to do. She eventually takes the cure and is returned to herself.
The final book follows Tally and a group of Pretties who work for Special Circumstances, called Specials. Rather than just becoming beautiful through surgery, they’re turned into genetically modified super humans, with enhanced brain function and reflexes.
What happens when Tally goes from Pretty to Special? Find out.
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain wore a t-shirt during his address to the DNC Monday that is setting social media on fire, but what does it mean?
The shirt, which he wore under his jacket during his address, contained the phrase “Trump is a scab. Vote Harris.”
His rhetoric echoed that sentiment, as he called former President Donald Trump a “scab” and praised Vice President Kamala Harris as a champion of the working class.
Trump has faced fire from unions for decades, but his presidency amplified those criticisms. According to CNN, the Trump administration’s appointees to the Supreme Court helped strike down rules regarding public sector unions, making it easier for public employees to not pay union dues even if they work in a unionized workplace.
He was also criticized at the DNC for failing to keep open a GM plant in Ohio, despite promising to protect the facility’s jobs.
The UAW has endorsed Harris, along with several other high-profile unions.
Notably, the Teamsters Union has not, and their president Sean O’Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention, but has not been invited to the DNC in Chicago.
[This story contains spoilers from the fourth and final season of The Umbrella Academy.]
On Thursday, The Umbrella Academy revealed its final timeline to audiences.
One in which the Hargreeve siblings finally, actually, save the day. For those who have been with the show the last five years — and the various crew and creative team members who have been with it for nearly twice as long — it’s a bittersweet ending for one of TV’s favorite dysfunctional (and lovable) families.
As one of Netflix’s most popular genre series, Steve Blackman’s adaptation of Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá’s graphic novel managed to carve out a distinctive corner within the superhero space. That’s due, in part, to its colorful cast of “oddball” characters, as Blackman described them at this week’s premiere, including leads Elliot Page (Viktor), Justin Min (Ben), Tom Hopper (Luther), Emmy Raver-Lampman (Allison), Robert Sheehan (Klaus), David Castañeda (Diego), Aidan Gallagher (Number Five), Ritu Arya (Lila Pitts), and Colm Feore (Sir Reginald).
Part of that success is also due to four seasons of grand world-building, all supported by the show’s sharp writers, directors and production teams who have elevated its comedy and action, sets, costumes, music, vfx, cinematography and more. That refreshing spin on the genre garnered the show its rabid following, an audience that Blackman hopes will feel satisfied by the series’ final six episodes and ultimately, the show’s legacy.
Ahead of the final season’s premiere, The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Blackman about the meaning behind that ending, the final days on set and growing alongside his cast and crew for more than half a decade. In the chat below, he also addresses the toxic workplace allegations made by former writers, potential spinoffs, what he’s most proud of about The Umbrella Academy’s run, and where he thinks there were missed storytelling opportunities.
***
Did you discuss with the comics creators, Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá, how you planned to end the series and did they have any questions or conditions?
They were so lovely, Gerard and Gabriel, from the very beginning. Every year I’ve talked to them, we’ve discussed things. Very early on, Gerard was very gracious and said, “Look, the TV show and the graphic novel are going to be different.” They’re going to continue with the graphic novel long after us. But every year I’ve run things by them, they’ve told me things that they’re going to do later on. So it’s always been wonderfully collaborative. They have such a generosity of spirit. And yes, I ran everything by them in the end, and they just thought it was a great ending for the TV show. They may go somewhere else, but they’ve been lovely from start to finish. I couldn’t get luckier with two great creative people.
This season only featured six episodes, a departure from the 10-episode arcs of the past. How did that impact how you told the story?
The decision was made at a certain point that Netflix wanted six episodes. That was fine with me. I could have been happy with eight, but it really worked out well. Some of the things we wanted to do, I think, got jettisoned along the way. I wanted to tell a little bit more story with Viktor and Hargreeves. I wanted to do a little bit more with [Luther] and what happened to Sloane. But at the end of the day, when you’re forced to do a certain amount, it forces you to say, what’s the most important? What are the things that really matter in the storytelling? So sometimes when you don’t get the luxury of 10, you really get to titrate it down to the things that are really important — not just to us as writers, producers, but to the fans. I hope we did justice to that for the fans.
Each season you’ve managed to bring in a familiar face as a recurring or guest character. This time it was David Cross, Megan a and Nick Offerman. How did those castings come together?
It was an amazing bit of luck. I will say that I had read that Megan and Nick liked working together as husband and wife, and I thought, “I’ll take a chance.” But I didn’t think I had any hope of getting them. So I reached out, we did a Zoom together, and it turns out that they’re superfans of the show. They knew every episode, every character. They were so excited to meet the cast. I’m like, this just might work. They said, “We want to do this. We want to work together as husband and wife. We want to meet the cast.” One of the best days was when they showed up on set. Our cast ran over, they ran to the cast. They were all so excited to see each other. David came along, just because I wanted to work with David. He wasn’t familiar with the show, but has become a superfan of the show. Having three comic geniuses together, the crew and I laughed so much because they did so many things unscripted. They would just riff and sometimes it was just hard to keep the camera steady with all of us just laughing.
You do a lot of callbacks to previous seasons with the characters, items and powers. What were things you wanted to put in season four that felt maybe like a mirror to where this story started?
I’m not sure if I thought of it that way. I think what I wanted to do is moreso tie up a lot of the loose ends. I felt like we’ve had such great fans over the years and they’re so loyal, I wanted to make sure I answered some of the big questions. Some of them I wanted to leave unanswered, to subjectively let you decide on your own what happens and what this is. But the Jennifer [Victoria Sawal] incident was important to close that loop, and a few other things. So I was really looking at it that way: What things do I want to answer that the fans deserve to know? If I was a fan, what would I hate to leave unanswered?
Victoria Sawal as Jennifer/Rosie with Justin H. Min as Ben Hargreeves in The Umbrella Academy.
Netflix
The soundtrack has been a defining element of this show from the beginning, with each season feeling like there’s at least one song that really defines it. For season four, what was the song you were most excited to have?
I’ve been trying to get “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves” by Cher for years and she has said no to me many, many times. I’m just a big fan. I think she’s just phenomenal. Culturally, she’s everywhere in the zeitgeist for four decades now, and this time she said yes. I was like, “Are you sure we could have the song?” She’s like, “Yes, go for it.” So it was so exciting to get that song, and it worked really well in the moment with Jean and Gene [Offerman and Mullally].
Was there any song you had wished you had gotten but didn’t?
There were quite a few. There were some songs — I don’t want to give specifics — from the seventies. We thought for sure these artists would say yes. They said, “No, we don’t allow use of the songs.” There were a few things by other famous people and they said no, too. I didn’t realize until I got much more into it that it is a thing. A lot of people are very specific about where they want their songs used or not used. I was very respectful of that. But even Adele, getting her to do “Hello” in season three, the Swedish version, was a hard get. It was only when I explained to her that this young woman from Sweden who’s trying to get a career who sang it that she changed her mind and said we can use it. They don’t say no automatically, so you have to work for it sometimes. We got lucky with a few songs this year.
Nick Offerman as Dr. Gene Thibedeau with Megan Mullally as Dr. Jean Thibedeau.
Christos Kalohoridis/Netflix
Each season you’ve grappled with time travel, and this time around, you add the underground train system to the bit. Was there a subway system that inspired it?
Yes, the Tokyo subway system was very confusing to me when I looked at it, and I thought, “let’s take that to the extreme.” Ultimately, Five [Aidan Gallagher] finds the cipher in episode five, which explains how that works, but without the cipher, it’s just impossible — although Lila [Ritu Arya] thinks she can figure it out. But it’s taken to the absurd of what a subway system could be like. If you have unlimited timelines, I suppose that’s what the subway system looks like, right?
At the start of top of the season, after the world has been reset again, audiences see the Hargreeves as regular people without powers. Aspects of their day jobs and personal lives are all sort of reminiscent of their past powers or things they’ve done in other timelines. How did you decide who they would be and what they would do?
It was a lot of fun. I sat down with the writers and we joked about where would they be. We knew Luther [Tom Hopper] would not be able to have a stable job, because he’s a bit of a manchild. We always thought that Viktor [Elliot Page] would be the one who would probably be most OK with living an “ordinary life,” despite unresolved issues with dad. Then with Diego [David Castañeda] and Lila, it made sense that they were going to try being a domesticated thing. How would that work for them? Children is a complication, so it just fell into place quite easily and we all agreed on those things as writers, and they all played out really well. I have no regrets about what each of them ended up doing.
When Ben has the family drink Marigold, some of those powers come back a little differently. It feels like this very subtle illustration of their personal evolutions through reimagined powers. How did you approach conceiving their returned abilities?
I gave us a lot of leeway on that. We wanted just for the fans to show some really interesting extensions of power so it wouldn’t feel too derivative. The logic was they never took Marigold that fast. That shot of Marigold was like an overdose of Marigold, so things were not going to happen the way they expected. I wanted to have fun with the storytelling, so I think it evolved from the storytelling what their powers would be.
You spent three seasons with the Hargreeves successfully escaping the world’s end. This time they don’t. They stay, fight and die together. Can you talk about when you knew that was going to be the ending and why you wanted the series to finish on that mutual sacrifice?
I knew very early on, almost in season one, how I wanted to end the show — and I didn’t see it as killing them. I thought there was an interesting idea of ceasing to exist, to never have been known. What is a superhero if no one knows you exist? That was the philosophical question. Can you be a superhero if no one ever knew you were a superhero? What does it mean to them? And I also thought it was an incredible sacrifice. I hate to say it, but maybe it’s worse than being dead. If you never existed, what does that mean? Does anything in your life have any meaning? It’s not that you lived and died — you never lived. I thought it was a very powerful concept to play with non-existence as opposed to just dying. So in my mind, they never existed. They didn’t die. They just ceased to exist. They never were. And, what does that mean?
You allow them to save their families. Why did you want those characters to live?
It didn’t seem right for them to bring their families down that road with them. I felt the families had to survive, because they were good parents and they all loved their kids; those aunts and uncles and moms and dads and everything else. I didn’t want them to die. Then we had this device of the subway, which allowed them within the logic of the show to exist. Now, I don’t give away whether or not in that very final scene they remember the families that they were. I just know that they’re alive, and the fans can decide whether or not they remembered everything from the past. Are they the only people remembering these people ever existing or not?
That penultimate sequence is the clearest example of them as a fractured family finally coming together. What did you want audiences to take away from them choosing each other despite everything else?
I think if you juxtapose from season one where they’re so immature with each other, I don’t think they quite love each other in season one when they regroup after the trauma of their father’s death. I think they truly love each other at this point. They really are a family. They’re family and now love each other, and want to be together in this final moment. They don’t want to be going off [alone]. This is how they want to be. The love is real, the camaraderie, the loyalty is real. I think that’s the journey for them. By the end, they truly are a family.
Speaking of, Reginald (Colm Feore) has a very complicated relationship with his children across timelines. Some of that is resolved this season. By the end, how much did you want people to see Reginald as a villain versus someone simply growing alongside his children?
Not to complicate it, but this is the Hargreeves of the Sparrow Academy timeline, so it’s not the Hargreeves that raised them. Similar, but not the dad who made the mistakes, though he probably would have. I don’t see him as a villain in the end. I see him as making choices that he did — some hubris, but some out of love. He wanted to be back with his wife again and the consequences of that he wasn’t thinking through. I like that it took his wife Abigail to say, “What you’re doing is wrong and someone had to stop you, and I was the one who did it.” But I never saw Hargreeves necessarily as the villain, per se. I think he’s a deeply dysfunctional person who’s trying to make it through the day like everyone else.
Colm Feore as Reginald Hargreeves.
Christos Kalohoridis/Netflix
While the family ends in an actual place of love, their romantic relationships — this season’s love triangle with Five, Lila and Diego, Viktor’s dating, Ben and Jennifer — aren’t as clean. That also applies to relationships in seasons past: Viktor and Sissy, Allison and Ray, Allison and Luther, Luther and Sloane, Klaus and David, Reginald and his wife. Did you mean for all the romantic relationships to end in a sort of tragedy or unresolved?
I think it changed throughout the seasons depending on what the storylines were doing. I wanted it to always feel organic, as much as it could be. [With Allison, played by Emmy Raver-Lampman, and Luther], yes, they’re not biological siblings, but they’re siblings. So there’s only so far we could go with certain things. But I wanted to do more with it. I would’ve liked to have seen some more long-term ongoing relationships, but by virtue of jumping through time and all the complications, we didn’t get to see it. One of the relationships we never got to see play out was Luther and Sloane [Genesis Rodriguez]. That would’ve been a lovely one. He finally found love and we rip it away from him. I love Viktor’s relationships. I thought season two was a lovely relationship, but again, that person didn’t exist anymore in the future.
That was one of the harder truths about being a time traveling superhero. You don’t get everything you want. But I love what [Viktor and Sissy, played by Marin Ireland] found with each other, and we talked about whether Sissy could come into the timeline and be in the future. It just didn’t work for the actor’s schedule. I think what we did with Five and Lila was really interesting. They are very similar — I think the most similar siblings. I think they made the most sense to be together. But again, seven years lost in time together, they grew close, and what would that have meant? If they didn’t end the way they ended, would she have gone back to Diego, stayed with Five? The fans can figure that out.
So we did romances, but in the sort of way the show would do them. We weren’t that show that would take them too far. We always wanted to see how people’s relationships would evolve with each other.
The final sequence is a timeline where the Hargreeves don’t exist but all these characters from past seasons do, and they appear to have different lives. How did you decide who was going to appear in that — and did you try to get Mary J. Blige?
I did. (Laughs) I tried to get everybody and the only people I couldn’t get were Mary J., because I think she was in concert somewhere, and I couldn’t get John Magaro who played our bad guy from season one. But everyone else is there. Some of them are obvious if you look carefully, some of them are more hidden than the others. There’s some people hidden in the bushes. But we got everyone we wanted to get. Even Kate Walsh, who I think was shooting in Australia and flew in for that. It was nice. It was such a beautiful day. It was our first sunny day in a while. We were all just hugging it out. It was such fun to see all of them together in one place from all the seasons.
You’ve previously mentioned having interest in doing spinoffs. Are you still interested and, what are some of the stories you’re considering?
It is really up to Netflix at the end of the day — and we’ve talked about it and it’s a lot of variables in play — but I think there’s a great story in young Hazel [Cameron Britton] and Cha-Cha [Blige] down the road. There’s obviously the Commission. I think there’s wonderful stories also with some other secondary characters. Then what’s wonderful about our world is we could crossover with our main characters anytime we want to because in a wonderful time-traveling world, you can end up with anyone anytime you want. There are ideas, there’s things I’ve talked about, and if Netflix decides down the road, I’d love to do it. But ultimately Netflix will make that decision. I hope this isn’t the end of Umbrella Academy. I hope there’s another iteration somewhere down the road.
The last table reads and days on set are often described as emotional. What were those like on season four?
We didn’t do a last table read. We didn’t have time. The first two episodes, I believe, we did table reads, which was great. We didn’t have time to do any other ones, but the last day of filming was very emotional, because the last scene you saw when they’re all together in the very end, that was the last scene we shot, and then we blew up The Academy. We literally blew it up. The actors were exhausted, they were ready to go off on a holiday, but then I reminded them, “This is the last time you guys will ever be together as a family. This is our last, both on the show and together.” Then I think it hit them all like bricks in the head, and I think the emotion you’re seeing on screen is a lot about how they felt in that moment. It was a long day of 13 hours staying in that circle. But they were so kind to each other, giving with each scene — even when they weren’t on camera, even when it wasn’t their closeup — full emotion. They gave to each other full-heartedly. Then at the end of the night, I think as everyone was going to the cars, they told me afterwards, it hit them that this is it and there was a lot of sadness. They’ve gotten to see the show and I think it’s a very emotional ending for all of them as well.
Most of these actors were in different places in their lives, personally and professionally, when they started on this show. One literally grew up on your set, one transitioned, some became parents, and everyone had creative and career growth. Can you talk about that initial decision to cast them and what it has been like to grow with them over the last four years?
I feel very fortunate for all of them. Elliot Page’s journey has been a remarkable journey to witness — to be a very small part of that, to see his life and how happy he is and his growth. But also, like you said, Aidan grew up in the show. He was a little boy when I met him. He auditioned at 12, he’s 20 now, playing in a rock band. Tom Hopper had children. Emmy had a child. Everyone has changed. We spent a lot of years together. Like Tom always said, “I spent my thirties on this show,” and they got to see changes in my life. So I feel like it was a wonderful thing that we got to spend this much time together and I feel very lucky that we got to spend four seasons, which is a lot of time for a lot of shows these days. Not a lot of shows get to a fourth season, and we did. So it ended exactly where I think it had to end in terms of how long we were together. I think if we pushed a fifth season, it might’ve been too long for all of us. It was just the right time.
(L to R) Emmy Raver-Lampman as Allison Hargreeves, Elliot Page as Viktor Hargreeves, Aidan Gallagher as Number Five, Robert Sheehan as Klaus Hargreeves, David Castañeda as Diego Hargreeves, Tom Hopper as Luther Hargreeves, Justin H. Min as Ben Hargreeves and Ritu Arya as Lila Pitts in The Umbrella Academy.
Christos Kalohoridis/Netflix
When you initially cast this group of talent, you diverged from the comics in terms of many of their identities, from race to sexuality to gender. It became a blueprint of sorts for other shows about inclusive family casting in genre. Beyond casting for who was best for the role, can you talk about how you feel that diversity helped make this adaptation its own?
I think I always wanted to make it more diverse than the graphic novel, and to be honest, I think Gerard, who’s told me this, wishes in retrospect that he had written it a bit more diverse. At the time he wrote it, it was quite a long time ago, and I think he was the first to say to me, “Please cast this more diverse. Don’t make it like I did.” So from the get-go, we were going to do a much more diverse cast, and it just seemed right from the beginning. I wanted these actors. I wasn’t looking for anything for one role, I just wanted to get the best actors, and we got great people. From the very beginning, they fit the roles. I don’t think with anyone I cast I had any moment of regret saying, “Oh, I made the wrong choice there.” The very first person I wanted to cast was obviously Elliot Page, and [he and] Tom Hopper were the two people I already pictured in my head. Then there was Robert. As we went along, I basically got everyone I wanted and I got very lucky with that. We continued with that, with all the guest stars and everyone else we could along the way.
Onscreen representation has been a central tenet of the show’s storytelling, but last month allegations were published about production conduct, including that you made inappropriate remarks or used derogatory language about specific groups, something that was ultimately addressed with you through HR. Looking back, what do you want people to know about those statements? Do you have any regrets about making them?
The statements weren’t accurate. They simply weren’t accurate. They weren’t correct. And I have to be honest with you, I’m very, very proud of my 21 years in this business, my reputation, what I’ve done, and especially through Umbrella Academy. So the truth is, I don’t accept those statements because I didn’t say them, and it’s just disappointing. But I’m very proud of the journey for Umbrella Academy. I stand by all these people, I’ve worked very hard with these people, and I have great respect for all of them.
You’ve praised the work of various members of the show’s team online and the press, but the allegations from writers, including a co-showrunner, expressed a disconnect in how their treatment, work and voice on the show had been respected and properly credited. What is your response to people who feel like they weren’t treated equitably in your writers room?
Everyone has their own perception, but my perception is I did treat everybody equally. I went out of my way to make sure everyone felt heard and respected. A writers room is a tough place and you’re not always going to get your version of the thing through or whatever. Some days you get what you want in the writers room and sometimes you don’t. And it’s hard, writers rooms are tricky places, but I do feel that I respected all the writers and I’m proud of what I did on that show and how I treated everybody.
It’s been a nearly decade-long journey with this show. What are you most proud of with The Umbrella Academy and what do you hope people walk away with now that it’s done?
I think there’s a few things. We love our fans and the fact that the fans have stayed with us for so many years. Those young adults are now new adults, if you think about how much time has [passed], and they’re still watching the show. Then younger people are watching the show. I’m also very proud of the crew, that we had the same people who worked with us year after year because it was so collaborative. I care about those people as my family and I think they feel the same about me. So the fact that not only was the cast a family, but the crew was very much a family for many years, and I’m proud that we all got to stay together for so long, which is rare in this industry.
And I’m proud of the stories we told. We did some challenging stories. Some of them were harder to do, some of them were easier to do. But I think at the end of the day, I will look back and say the team, myself, the writers, producers, everyone, we did a good job on the show. We stayed as true as we could to Gerard and Gabriel’s work, but we made a show that was different, our own way, a little orbit away from all the other superhero shows, and hopefully it will stand the test of time.
Umbrella Academy is now streaming all episodes on Netflix.
