Josh Schwartz

At age 26, a precocious USC film-school dropout
named Josh Schwartz became the youngest show-runner in network-television
history when Fox gambled on his primetime soap opera The O.C. Though it owed something
to the trail blazed by the likes of Melrose Place and Dawson's Creek, the show distinguished
itself through a savvy mix of teen angst and snappy banter, juicy class-driven
conflicts, a great alt-rock soundtrack, and adult characters who were just as
well-drawn as the kids.

After four seasons, The O.C. faded away, and Schwartz
returned as co-creator on two new shows launched in fall 2007. Pitched as The
Office
meets Alias,
NBC's Chuck
(which Schwartz created alongside his USC buddy Chris Fedak) stars Zachary Levi
as a wimpy tech geek who becomes an accidental James Bond when an encoded e-mail
from an old friend in the CIA embeds spy secrets into his brain. Protected by a
pair of government agents (Yvonne Strahovski and Adam Baldwin), he experiences
"flashes" that help them track down criminals.

Co-created with Stephanie Savage, Schwartz's other
series, the CW's Gossip Girl, doesn't score high in conventional ratings, but
it's quickly become the struggling network's most buzzed-about show. Based on
Cecily von Ziegesar's young-adult novels, the show imports some of the wealth
and treachery from The O.C. to the Upper East Side, but ramps up the underage
excess and sexual shenanigans considerably. So much so, in fact, that a new ad
campaign brazenly trumpets the show as "Every parent's worst nightmare." With
the second seasons of Gossip Girl and Chuck set to launch in September, Schwartz
recently spoke to The A.V. Club about…

The A.V. Club: How are your time-management
skills these days?

Josh Schwartz: Well, luckily I'm getting
married in a couple of weeks, and so I have that to completely occupy my
thoughts. [Laughs.]

AVC: What are your duties on these two shows?
How does a work week go for you?

JS: The thing that's cool about it is that every week
is different. And both shows couldn't be more different as well. So if you ever
tire of Upper East Siders [on Gossip Girl] or are blocked about it, you can go
downstairs to Chuck and blow stuff up. So both shows appeal to very different
sides of my brain. But I'm really fortunate, because I work with great people.
I co-created both shows. And both the people I created the shows with are
amazing and fully capable of doing the shows in their own right, which makes my
life a lot easier in terms of being able to go back and forth. So I go where
I'm needed.

AVC: Are you doing a lot of writing, or just
overseeing the process?

JS: My job has sort of evolved. On the first season of The O.C., I wrote a
lot. We
did 27 episodes, and I wrote maybe 22 of them or some crazy number. And I was
like, "Wow, that was fun, but I don't know if I could ever do that again,
technically or emotionally." Now I would say that I write when it's necessary,
or I'll jump in and rewrite a couple of acts if needed. Probably most of my
time, I'd say, I spend in editing now. Casting and editing.

AVC: Do you have to fight the impulse to
micromanage?

JS: Not at all. [Laughs.] I'm not a micromanager. I
think with The O.C., the lesson for me was, I wanted to write less. And I wrote
less as the show went on. So I wrote probably half as much in season two as I
did in season one, and even less in season three. Then I came back in season four
and did more writing. But I think the key is, if you're not going to write,
then feel like you've laid out a vision for what the show should be, and
hopefully have a team of people around you that can really execute that. I feel
that the writing staffs for both shows are so good that they write the shows
better than I would. Which I'm fine with.

AVC: Did the strike blow a hole in both shows

for you? Did you simply table developments for season two, or did entire
subplots just have to get scrapped?

JS: Well, with Gossip Girl, we actually came back
and did five more episodes after the strike. Which is kind of great, because 22
episodes is a lot of episodes. I think if you asked anybody who works in
network television, they would say that the perfect number is somewhere between
13 and 16. That's what they do on cable. So the five episodes we did of Gossip
Girl at
the end, I feel, were really able to go to a new level in terms of generating
excitement. And the storylines seemed really juicy, and people got really,
really into the show. I think we benefited, in that during the strike, a lot of
people discovered the show, caught repeats, or watched it on iTunes. It felt
like the audience grew for the show even during the strike. And so when the
show came back, it seemed like the audience was really primed. But because we
were doing nine episodes' worth of story in five episodes, it really allowed us
to make those episodes action-packed. So I think Gossip Girl benefited from it. With Chuck, we would have loved to
have come back to do additional episodes, but NBC really wanted to keep us
paired with Heroes
on Monday nights. And that show, because of its production size, wouldn't have
been able to be back on air in the spring. So we had ideas for the end of season
one that we weren't able to do, that we've kind of figured out how to roll into
and employ in this part of season two.

AVC: Does Chuck have to be rebooted?
With so much time having passed between the end of season one and the beginning
of season two, do you have to do something to bring viewers back in?

JS: I think that's absolutely right. I think our point
of view going into it was that the first episode of season two was going to be
almost like a new pilot. And Chuck is not a show where if you've missed an episode,
you're out. It's not a super-serialized kind of show. Although we are working
this season to make the show more serialized, and deepen the mythologies, and
have the stories sort of link more episodically. The romance of the show,
obviously, is the more serialized component. Still, there's nothing in the
season première that would keep you from being able to understand or enjoy the
first episode. It's not contingent on having seen that final episode of last
season. We bring the audience back up to speed very, very quickly at the
opening of the show. Within the first 30 seconds of the new episode, I think
you'll be completely caught up, whether you've never missed an episode or never
seen the show before. You'll totally get it, and be able to dive into the
storyline.

AVC: With shows like Chuck, and with a lot of
these serialized shows, it seems like the big challenge is to figure out how to
service an overarching plot without alienating potential new viewers who might
feel they can't get into something mid-season. Is that something you always
have to struggle with?

JS: I think with Chuck, there's an element that
is procedural. It's got a very specific tone, and it has its own unique take on
a procedural. But there are close-ended stories in every episode. And that will
always be the case. We found last year that the show really started to hit its
stride creatively, and in terms of building an audience, about a handful of
episodes into the season, when we started to go into more serialized
storytelling. It was something we always planned on doing. The stories worked
best when they linked back into who Chuck was, and why he got sent all this
information. You know, that kind of origin story of the character, and
deepening the mythology of his character as well. So our goal this year was to
continue to tell close-ended stories every week, but have every episode be part
of a larger storyline.

AVC: How conscious are you of how people
respond to a show? Do you ever make adjustments based on that? Do you feel like
there's a relationship between viewership and the creative team on a show?

JS: I used to be a lot more hypersensitive to it. I
used to spend an unhealthy amount of time during the O.C. era on message boards.
Which is sort of the most direct way to get feedback. And you know, you can
worry about it too much, you could over-correct, you can start writing for the
message board instead of what's necessary for the show. But that being said,
audience reaction, fan reaction, is critically important, because that's who
you're doing the show for. So I always like to try to stay connected to that to
a degree, and feel like, "Is this working for the audience? What are they
responding to?" You always want to give people more of something that they
love. And if there's something that feels like a larger number of people are
bumpy on, then you want to be able to go make an adjustment there. So I try to
spend what I now feel like is a healthy amount of time worrying about that. But
it's absolutely a critical component. I mean, we're not making the show just
for ourselves. We're making it also, hopefully, for an audience.

AVC: But then there's this kind of idea that
writers have to give viewers what they need more than what they want. Do you subscribe to
that notion?

JS: Meaning, sometimes what they want, they won't like
if they get it?

AVC: Exactly. They want two characters to get
together, but it's your job to put obstacles in the way.

JS: That's absolutely true. And that's what I mean
about spending an unhealthy amount of time trying to write for the message
boards. Because if they say, "I want this" and you go too far, it can
potentially backfire. But you're right, though, you do have to give them what
they need and not what they want. And you have to always keep in mind that the
fans, or whoever is on the message board, are reacting to the episode that
they've seen, and what's happened between two characters that episode, and
don't have the information that you do as the producer of the show. I often
read reactions thinking, "Well, if you're really mad right now because so-and-so
broke up, in four episodes, you're going to be really happy." And so you also
have to sometimes take the reaction with a grain of salt. Because you know
where the storyline is going in a way that they don't know. But I have found
that you want people reacting passionately at one point or the other.

AVC: Can you contrast the sort of input and
notes that you've gotten on the shows you've worked on? You were a little green
when you started with The O.C. Have things changed for you at NBC and the CW?

JS: I'm very fortunate that both networks have been
incredibly supportive. The O.C. was challenging because, as you said, I was
green. I'd never done anything before. I'd never had a job before, let alone a
job working television. I may have had a job, you know, but not like a real job,
with people working for you. It was very much a learning curve. And there was a
regime change at the network, and there were a lot of ideas like, "Well, how do
we make this show bolder?" And you're like, "Well, you don't. That's not what
the show is." So sometimes things happen, and a network completely changes its
profile, and then wants to push your show in a different direction. But right
now, luckily, both shows seem to be exactly right for what the networks want them
to be.

[pagebreak]

AVC: Do you get a lot of input from both
networks about what they want?

JS: I do. I get input from the networks. I get input
from the studio. And I'm open to it. I'm of the mind—like about
micromanaging—to where I'm open to a good idea, wherever it comes from. And again,
you want the networks to be invested and supportive of your show. You want them
to be championing it. The difference between great ratings and not-great
ratings is pretty small now. And a lot more shows can survive on ratings that
are borderline. So you want everybody to feel really invested in the show
you're doing. And I think there's a lot of smart people that work at the
networks, and can always give you perspective that you don't have necessarily
have when you're in the trenches and trying to fight your way through a season.
So I'm open to input. That being said, you don't agree with every note you get.
But there's always good ideas coming from different places, and I never want to
have my head in the sand and miss an opportunity to make the shows better.

AVC: What can Gossip Girl viewers expect from the
second season? The show seemed to really find its groove in the back half of
the first one.

JS: That groove, I think, is a balance of outrageous
moments—or I guess now, as it's called, OMFG moments—that are
grounded with humor and really emotionally relatable characters. Stephanie
[Savage] and I have spent a lot of time talking about that. We make decisions
on certain episodes. Like the season finale last year, we felt like, "Well,
there's an expectation that it's just going to be completely crazy and all the
emotional pyrotechnics will take place." And we felt like the previous four
episodes had been pretty outrageous and had gotten really juicy. And you never
want your characters to feel like they're leaving earth. You could overheat
these shows to a point, and the characters lose their relatability. So we
really wanted to do a finale that, while it might not be as shocking as some of
the previous episodes, felt like it was landing our characters in a very
grounded, emotional place. It's that balance in storytelling that has really been the
mantra for moving forward in season two.

AVC: On a show like Gossip Girl, which takes place
over 22 episodes, is it hard to keep the characters' actions consistent over
time?

JS: That's another thing that's really great about TV.
As you write more, you really start to find the characters. And they start to
write themselves, to a degree. Certainly not the storylines, but how they would
react in those situations. And you get more comfortable writing for the actor.
And everyone just gets more distinctly drawn over time. So I think you start to
anticipate that part with a degree of glee. You know, you look forward to how
Blair Waldorf is going to react to a certain situation. Or Chuck Bass.

AVC: Shows like The O.C. and Gossip Girl break the mold, in a
sense. They're supposed to follow bad behavior with a moral lesson, but the
shows are both pretty resistant to that.

JS: Overtly resistant. [Laughs.]

AVC: How do you get away with it?

JS: I don't know that it totally works that way. We
don't necessarily preach our positions of morality. And certainly the shows
push the envelope in ways. But I think at the end of the day, most of the
characters, if not all of them, are good people struggling to make decisions in
the world. You even see that Chuck Bass has a redemptive side. I think you can
show consequences over time. It doesn't necessarily have to be someone smoking
a joint in the first act of the episode, and then contracting lung cancer by
the end of the episode. I think there are ways that you can dole out the
repercussions for people's behavior over time. And in ways that are not
necessarily from an after-school special. But it's hard, because on the one
hand, you want to present things realistically. And this world is very
accelerated and sophisticated in terms of the behavior of these kids. And at
the same time, you also want to be aware and responsible to your audience. Part
of the audience is young, and you certainly want to be sensitive to that.

AVC: Do you have a sense of how far you can
really go on the show? Are there certain lines that you worry about crossing, that
will make the sponsors revolt, or viewers flee?

JS: That's never our concern. That's usually more the
network's concern. And I know Stephanie's had quite a few heated arguments over
the last few days about stuff. [Laughs.] There is a double standard, I think,
in terms of what's okay to show in terms of the guys' sexuality. But people are
sometimes more resistant to that when it comes to girls' sexually.

AVC: They have to be in one box or the other.
They're either pure or they're harlots, right?
JS: Yeah. And I think
sometimes we run up against that in Gossip Girl. Bass can behave a
certain way, but Blair can't.

AVC: Early in the show's run, Gossip Girl
herself seemed to comment on the action more than she affected it. But that
seems to have evolved a bit.

JS: I think from the beginning, the omniscient-narrator
device of Gossip Girl was always there to comment on the action, and occasionally
move the action forward. It's something Stephanie and I spent a long time
talking about as well, the balance of that. You don't want episodes where
Gossip Girl is driving all the action. But there have certainly been episodes
where things landing on Gossip Girl were showing up on the site, or being
forwarded to the site, and are responsible for characters breaking up or
confronting each other. So I do think that from episode to episode, it changes.
But we've kept it alive. From the pilot, you know, Serena [van der Woodsen]'s
return was heralded by Gossip Girl first, and that's kind of what got the crowd
reacting. We've had other episodes where Gossip Girl's been much more directly
related to the action, and some episodes where it's less. Every episode, Steph
and I look at and go, "Do we need more Gossip Girl voiceover there? Should we
pull some out there?" So you're always trying to find that balance.

AVC: Heading into the second season of Chuck, do you have a sense
of what the network's expectations of the show are going to be at this point?
They seem fairly high.

JS: They are. The Olympics were very good for us. I think
I've been very, very lucky. All the shows I've done, I've loved, and loved
working on. It's so exciting, people reacting to Gossip Girl the way they have. And
that it's gotten the amount of press it's got. And all the publicity. And the
cast deserves all of it, all the publicity they get. Chuck has been a little bit
quieter in comparison. But it's the most ambitious show I've ever worked on, in
terms of the tone we're trying to strike, the fact that it's an
action-comedy-romance-coming-of-age hybrid. It's this really fun, and really
unique show.

Every week, I watch Zach Levi, and I'm just
completely blown away by how he's able to walk that line between comedy and
being this real guy in this believable situation that's selling you on this
jeopardy. Actually, the entire cast is really incredible. So my goal this year
was to try to keep pushing the show, and like I said, delve into more of this
serialized storytelling in terms of having each episode relate to the one
before. Something catastrophic happens at the beginning of the first episode
this season that kind of sets up what the larger storyline is going to be for
the entire season. We're also going to own the romance right out of the gate. I
think that Zach and Yvonne have unbelievable chemistry. We really wanted to
write to that right out of the gate. Yvonne Strahovski's incredible, because
she totally tells you that she's this ass-kicking CIA agent, she does most of
her own stunts, she's incredibly beautiful, and she's a really, really great
dramatic actress. There are some emotional scenes between them that are just… I
get a little choked up. I'm not going to lie. And we want the Buy More world to
really start to flush itself out. We're spending more time with those
characters. Just more. More of everything.

AVC: Do you have a fairly complicated mythology
worked out for the show? How far ahead are you looking here, in terms of the
show and the way these things develop?

JS: Chris Fedak and I co-created the show, and we've
talked about it quite a bit. We know what the end of the season's going to be,
and how that will launch us into a third season. And that would be different,
but still the show. We'd take the show to another level, but it'll still be the
show. The mythology is not so complicated that it's the labyrinth that you'll
never be able to find your way out of. But I think it goes to interesting
places, and connects in ways that are unexpected, and exciting, and that give
the show real weight.

AVC: It seems like the major challenge of
making an action/comedy like Chuck is that the light tone can drain the
danger and suspense out of the action. Is that something you always have to
deal with? How do you go about combating it?

JS: That's something else we talk about a lot. In the
first episode, there's this notion that Chuck can get this intersect out of his
head, or that the new intersect is going to be complete, and that Chuck will be
able to go back to his original life, not working in the CIA. And of course as
John Casey, Adam Baldwin is incredible. He gets the call saying, "Once the new
intersect computer is complete, it's time to disappear Chuck Bartowski." And he
is going to kill Chuck. And you keep reminding the audience that the people in
Chuck's life that are there to protect him—one of them works at the Buy
More [Baldwin], one of them used to work at a Weinerlicious [Strahovski] and
now works at the Orange Orange, which is our version of a Pink Berry—are
at the same time trained killers. People die on the show, Chuck's life is in
danger, and if his family or friends ever found out, they would be killed. There
is danger to this world.

AVC: Do you mind the tone wavering a little
from light to dark?

JS: I really like that. I think my favorite episodes
of The O.C. did
that. My favorite episodes of Gossip Girl do that. You can, on the one hand, do
something that feels really broad. We would always write these Seth [Cohen] /
Summer [Roberts] scenes that were really funny, and then these tragic Marissa [Cooper]
scenes right on top of them. I like moving between tones. And in Chuck, you're actually moving
between genres. I think this year, the tone is more consistent than it's ever
been, and the show has really found its voice, and confidence. I think we know
what our target is, and we know when we feel like we've gone too dark and when
we've gone too light. And I think that's really given us a lot of focus in
moving forward this season. But that's part of what excited me about working on
the show. It's a show that's really ambitious, and there are no signs to making
it. You'll shoot scenes because they feel like they push the tone. It's a show
that really can find its voice in editing sometimes.

AVC: Do you have much input into how your shows
are promoted?

JS: Yeah. Ultimately, at the end of the day, the
networks will decide how they want to promote something. Steph and I were less
than happy with how Gossip Girl was originally promoted. And then we loved the OMFG ads, and think
the new ads are really fun, the ones that are out now. [The sexually suggestive
ads, featuring alarmist newspaper quotes like "Every parent's worst nightmare,"
have attracted some controversy. —ed.] I was quoted somewhere as saying,
"They make me feel really bad." Which is not true. If I said that, I said it
tongue-in-cheek. You see an ad that says "Every parent's nightmare" and you do
go, "Well, I wonder how my mom feels about that." At the same time, I do think
they captured the tone and subversive quality of the show. So I think the CW's
done a brilliant job of marketing Gossip Girl. With Chuck, they're very open as
well. We set scenes together, or montage clips, and try to work with them. It's
a hard show to market, because of the different tone and high concept, and
there's a lot of elements to it. You sell the romance, the action, the comedy.
So actually, I was really happy during the Olympics. I felt like they ran a lot
of different kinds of spots. Because I do feel like there's a lot about that
show that can appeal to people. But at the end of the day, everybody does what
they're going to do.