This script has been lightly edited for clarity.

 

Jace Lacob: I’m Jace Lacob, and you’re listening to MASTERPIECE Studio.

Parliament Hill, London. The majestic beauty of British summertime envelops two star-crossed lovers perched on a hill. A tender yet somber tone embraces these two — ever distant and melancholy Alice and lovesick Jack — as they sit quietly in the tall grass and watch as kites soar overhead. Free yet tethered, these kites are a harbinger for Alice and Jack’s future — one tinged with the illusion of freedom but grounded by the poignant tether of connection. We flash back to two years prior to Alice and Jack as strangers, meeting for the first time in a London bar…

 

CLIP

Jack: Any goals beyond personal wealth?

Alice: I think of it more like a defense fund. Like a war chest.

Jack: Who are you fighting? People like me?

Alice: No. Everyone else.

 

Despite their instant rapport, the nascent relationship between Alice and Jack hits the rocks pretty quickly. They reconnect months after their one-night stand, but Alice abandons Jack at a museum and later says she doesn’t want to see him again. 

A year and a half later, Jack seems to have put Alice out of his mind and moved on with his life. He’s now married to Lynn and has a baby named Celia. Just when things are stable in his life, as if on cue, he gets a call from Alice.  

 

CLIP

(Phone ringing)

Lynn: Lovey?

Jack: Yep?

Lynn: Who’s Alice?

Jack: Alice? She’s an ex.

Lynn: Oh, she’s an ex. Oh no. Do you want to take it?

Jack: Nah.

Lynn: Nah?

 

Jack tries to do the right thing, but it becomes almost impossible when Alice shows up at his workplace in the middle of the day. They take a walk and Jack brings her up to speed on his life. So much has changed for Jack, but not for Alice, who has been caught in patterns of behavior from which she can’t escape. 

 

CLIP

Alice: Look, I’m sorry I called you, Jack. I’m sorry I turned up like this. I think I just thought that your life had just stood still without me.

 

What will this mean for their relationship? This week, Alice & Jack writer and creator Victor Levin joins us to share his feelings on the nature of love, and what he hopes viewers take away from this series. 

 

Jace Lacob: And this week we are joined by Alice & Jack creator, Victor Levin.

Victor Levin: Welcome. Thank you so much.

Jace Lacob: Alice & Jack is not your ordinary love story. It is constructed a little bit like a puzzle box mystery as the story unfolds in a non-linear fashion and plays with both time and absence. Where did the initial conceit for this series come from?

Victor Levin: Well, imagine the story is an unspooled ribbon. Most stories start at one end of the ribbon and go to the other end of the ribbon. But in this one, I thought, what if you cut pieces of the ribbon and change the order? What would happen? What would that do to the feelings, the emotions, the rising action, the climax? And what options would be open to me as a writer that otherwise wouldn’t?

Jace Lacob: I love that concept of. Taking that unspooled ribbon, cutting it, pasting it, changing it. It is structured over six episodes of television, however. How long did it take you to write, and how much time was there between the initial idea and the start of production?

Victor Levin: It was six years from the initial idea until almost today. It was April of 2018 that I first sat down and spoke with the originating and developing producer Michael London about the idea. And most of that time in one form or another was spent either writing or rewriting. The first and last episodes, along with a document that described the story in between, were what we worked on first. I wrote the drafts, Michael gave his thoughts. I rewrote the drafts, Michael gave his thoughts. I rewrote the drafts, Michael gave his thoughts. And at some point we felt that we were ready to go out and look for actor attachments.

And then the document of the story that took place in between the first and last episode was turned into what amounted to the middle episodes. And that was just as arduous a process of figuring out where the big story points were, how to get to them, how to move on to the next one, how to shape it so that each hour, as Michael put it, was a satisfying meal in and of itself, but so that at the same time we were working toward a longer six-episode story that had its own, if you will, three-act structure.

Jace Lacob: When we first meet Alice and Jack, they could be anyone. They’re “everypeople” who match on a dating app and meet up in real life. How challenging was it to cast your protagonists? How hard was it to find Andrea and Domhnall?

Victor Levin: You know, Andrea and Domhnall were both my first choices for the roles. It almost never happens that you get your first choices for the roles. Maybe get your first choice for one, but not both. That’s science fiction, frankly. But it happened this time and I just felt that of the 9 billion people on earth, these two somehow seemed to be the best fit for these two characters. I had seen a great deal of both of their work. I imagined them together. So, figuratively speaking, we pushed send on the PDF and we hoped.

Jace Lacob: The scene on Parliament Hill, the kite festival, ends up being a foundational sequence within Alice & Jack and a formative one for their relationship. There’s so much contained within this sequence, both spoken and unspoken. How did you decide to begin Alice & Jack with this particular sequence?

Victor Levin: Well, it is a moment to stake a claim. Here is what this series is about. Here is what these people value. Here is what will be in play and at risk for the next six episodes. Here is how we, the show, feel about it and, and how these two characters feel about it. This is what you’re in for, audience and please stay with us.

Jace Lacob: We flashback to two years earlier where we see these two meet for the first time. They feel at first like a mismatch as Alice tosses off a series of rapid-fire questions at Jack and she seems bulletproof except for that little bit of vulnerability about her defense fund and whether it’s to fight people like him. Is that moment enough to intrigue him here? That little display of vulnerability?

Victor Levin: When he sees that moment of vulnerability that you’re speaking of, he understands that there is a great deal more to this person than what she has demonstrated so far — that the water is very deep, that if he hangs in there, he’s going to be fascinated and learn a great deal and very possibly fall in love.

Jace Lacob: They sleep together, Alice wakes Jack to chuck him out, and he fumbles around looking for his sock, and then she watches him put it on down on the street. And there’s a messiness and awkwardness here that’s not only really endearing but refreshing for television.

 

CLIP

Jack: Where’s my sock?

Alice: Have you done this before?

Jack: Slept with a stranger?

Alice: Dressed yourself.

Jack: I have dressed myself before, yeah.

 

Jace Lacob: Was that sense of messiness, that awkwardness something you wanted to showcase here?

Victor Levin: Absolutely I wanted to showcase it. And I believe the director, Juho Kuosmanen, our brilliant, brilliant lead director, wanted to showcase it as well as, as did Andrea and Domhnall. He’s off his center, he’s on his back foot. He’s doing his best, but it’s a new turf for him. And so, yes, the more awkward, the more bewildered he is, the better. But he knows how she feels about him because she says so. And so he knows that there are no easy answers here.

Jace Lacob: In this first episode, Alice seems to be playing offense in the relationship and Jack defense or, to put it in a different way, Alice takes the more active role and Jack can’t help but to follow her lead, often at the expense of what could be seen as his objective well-being. What is it about Jack’s character that makes him so susceptible to Alice’s actions?

Victor Levin: Well, it’s not that he’s susceptible, it’s that he’s interested. He’s fascinated. He wants to know more. Yes, he is off his center, but not so far off his center that he feels as though he can’t handle it, not completely out of his depth, just suddenly in the presence of a phenomenon that he has never faced before.

Now, curious people, loving people, people with tremendous self-confidence like Jack, don’t shy away from events like that. Just because Jack is not showy and overtly confident doesn’t mean that he isn’t hugely confident. He is. He’s just quiet about it.

Jace Lacob: A now bearded Jack has a major breakthrough with his Hashimoto’s research and immediately calls Alice. They make a plan to meet up in 20 minutes time despite not having spoken in months. Why do you feel Jack calls Alice specifically? What is it about their connection that pushes him to take this action?

Victor Levin: Jack calls her because it is his instinct to call her, even though he hasn’t given it the least bit of thought until the moment that he does it. It is his instinct to call her because these two people are bound together, and he acts on that instinct.

Jace Lacob: I just want to drill down on that sense of instinct. And when you say instinct, are you talking about an instinct that’s rooted in the heart or the head?

Victor Levin: That instinct is rooted in the heart. I’m not sure how much intellectual evidence there is at this moment that this is the right thing for him to do, but he knows in his bones that it is the right thing for him to do, and that’s why he picks up the phone.

Jace Lacob: Their meet-up leads them back to Alice’s flat and to bed. And I love the scene where Alice shaves Jack’s beard off with her pink razor.

 

CLIP

Jack: Isn’t that razor made for legs and armpits?

Alice: It’s not like they use a different grade of steel.

Jack: Be careful.

Alice: If I were careful with anything in this world, I would be careful with you.

Jack: You weren’t though.

 

Jace Lacob: What’s contained within this scene and Alice’s sentiment? Does Alice have a capacity for carefulness toward others?

Victor Levin: Alice understands that she cannot treat this person the way she has treated men to this point in her life, which is to say as objects and people from whom certain things can be extracted without any great emotional investment on her part. She understands that this is different, that he is different, and that she must open the door to a new portion of herself that is capable of relating to someone on this level if she possibly can.

Jace Lacob: So men have been sort of as disposable as that razor then?

Victor Levin: That’s exactly right.

Jace Lacob: And that this is someone who she will take more care with that she doesn’t want to treat in the same way?

Victor Levin: Yes, exactly. This is an important relationship. She knows it just as he knows it. That’s different from however many relationships she’s had in the past.

Jace Lacob: Juxtaposed with that scene, there is a line in episode four, the context for which I won’t spoil, but I do keep turning it over in my mind and it’s, “Everything’s breakable, Alice, even this.” And my question is, what were you looking to say as a writer about the elasticity of the human heart with this project?

Victor Levin: The core question behind this project is, how much does love conquer? Does it conquer all? Does it conquer some? You’re taught that it conquers all. Is that really true? And at this moment in the story, Jack believes that there are certain things that doesn’t conquer.

He’s tried his best. It hasn’t gone well. And at some point, if you’re a sane person, you have to walk away. That’s his feeling now. But these things are not linear, these decisions we make about others and about ourselves. Sometimes we change our minds and we realize that changing our minds was wrong. He is steadfast, but he has his moments of doubt, and this is one of them.

Jace Lacob: I do think there is a sense here of the human heart as being something that’s somehow both inherently fragile but resilient at the same time. Is that a theme that you find of interest, that duality?

Victor Levin: I think the human heart has to be resilient or we’re all in a lot of trouble because love is a messy business, love in all its forms. So, we’d better be able to bounce back from disappointments, even deep ones here and there, or we don’t stand much of a chance, do we? And yes, that was a very important element of what I wanted to lay out there. If you love somebody and you believe in them, you fight for them and you fight for the love. You don’t just slink away at the first or the second or the 10th sign of trouble. But Jack does have a moment where he thinks he should slink away. Just a moment, just a day.

 

MIDROLL

 

Jace Lacob: We see the aftermath of trauma on Alice; how she perceives the world, trusts or doesn’t trust people, the rules by which she keeps everyone at arm’s length. Her terror when she believes Jack has abandoned her is palpable in that scene. How does Alice square that terror at abandonment with the way she casually abandons Jack after the museum?

Victor Levin: Alice is struggling against her past every step of the way, and sometimes it feels too strong for her to win that struggle. But in the end, she does fight back and struggle again and try to win again. So just as the arc isn’t smooth and linear for Jack, neither is it smooth and linear for Alice. She’s going to have her times when she thinks it’s too much for her. But in the end, she’ll fight for love too. She’ll fight for him too. And when I say in the end, I mean after the moment of which you’re speaking.

Jace Lacob:  So, a year and a half go by from that incident at the museum. Jack has moved on. He’s now married to Lynn, played by the always amazing Aisling Bea, and they have a daughter, Celia. There is an ease and a playfulness, a sense of banter between the two of them. That, it is different to the almost overwhelming rapport between Jack and Alice, but it is not a meeting of souls. And, I love the fact that Jack says to Alice:

 

CLIP

Jack: Life is pretty simple for a lot of people. They meet someone, they fall in love, and they’re all set. No suffering, no gnawing your own hand to the wrist. And I thought, I should try that. Or at least be open to the possibility of trying that.

 

Jace Lacob: Is that what drove him to take a chance to Lynn, this sense that, well, I might as well try this thing? It’s not a meeting of souls, it’s not this thing that I have with Alice, but I should just try this. This is what most people do.

Victor Levin: Yes, that’s exactly right. At some point, maybe I should stop beating my head against the wall. I mean, this is not working out. This is a very poor business plan. So, here’s this fabulous, beautiful, brilliant, funny, warm person who seems to have all the confidence in the world and can really just, metaphorically speaking, put her arms around you and you around her. And yes, that’s a good idea. Why must I be looking for trouble? Here’s wonderfulness. Why shouldn’t I embrace that?

Jace Lacob: On the note of that wonderfulness, Aisling Bea is fantastic as Lynn here, she brings this wry sense of humor that’s unlike the very smart repartee between Alice and Jack. What do you make of Aisling’s performance as the consolation prize, Lynn, here?

Victor Levin: I am absolutely in love with what Aisling does in this show. I am stunned and have been since the first day we shot. I think she’s phenomenal. There are 9 billion people on this earth, and I don’t think there’s anybody else who could have done that, who could have played the comedy so beautifully, but also the pain, and who could have made you believe everything, the way she makes you believe everything. And who could have returned to a state of grace after all of that, the way she did, in a way that doesn’t feel artificial for a second. This is a genius, this person. I don’t know how she does it.

Jace Lacob: We see Jack and Lynn’s early courtship play out from Jack’s perspective, or if it’s not Jack’s perspective, it’s his recounting of their early days to Alice. And this brings up, I think, a host of questions. Is this just Jack’s version of events edited for Alice as his audience? Is it the truth? And might Lynn see things entirely differently?

Victor Levin: I think it is the truth as Jack sees it. I don’t think Lynn would see the events entirely differently. Maybe she didn’t know his inner thoughts at that moment, but she certainly was dealing with a sincere person. So I don’t think the story would have been all that different. But of course, in the context of Alice, it is different, isn’t it? Knowing the history between the two of them, it does land differently upon the ear, and that’s why no one in this story is perfect, including Jack. You know, nobody in this story wouldn’t go back and do this or that thing differently with the benefit of hindsight. These characters are doing their best in the moment, and you don’t always have perspective.

Jace Lacob: Jack and Lynn’s daughter is named Celia. Celia is, of course, an anagram for Alice. Is this a clue to the audience, a subconscious notion of Jack manifesting in his own choice of name for his daughter, or something else?

Victor Levin: That’s exactly right. It is Jack’s subconscious rearranging the letters of Alice’s name and naming his child that way without any knowledge that he’s doing so. And we hope that in the execution we have made that point without making it too firmly.

Jace Lacob: Alice’s mom has died, and she can’t face it without Jack by her side. But she leaves him there as she gets into her taxi with Jack staring at where she’d just been. Is this a callback to that opening scene on Parliament Hill fulfilling that pattern of departure and absence?

Victor Levin: Well, she isn’t one to stick around. She does a fair amount of leaving him over the course of the show, as you know. He leaves her a couple of times also, in a sense, at least here and there. But what we are seeing is how much Jack’s mind is open to the possibility of a future, even after all of this stuff goes on. Now, let’s not miss the bigger point here though, which is that when her mom passes away, Alice’s first thought, just like Jack’s first thought when he had the biomedical breakthrough, was to call Alice. Her first thought is to call Jack, and she says,  I can’t imagine going to this funeral without you.

Now, what does that tell him about the preternatural connection between the two of them and the idea that the two of them feel that she feels that they were meant to walk beside one another for all of life, to be there for the most critical moments?

Jace Lacob: I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up the other central dynamic in the series, that between Alice and her assistant Maya, who truly seems to care for her employer. But Alice is pretty dismissive of Maya and about her feelings. She says, “You can’t be my friend because you’re someone I pay.” Does Alice see in that moment the hurt that she’s causing Maya?

Victor Levin: She does. And she may not see it clearly, and she may not see it for more than a nanosecond, but she sees it. You know, you bring up another incredible artist who joined our troupe, Aimee Lou Wood. This is a nuanced and skilled and talented, and deeply, deeply funny and smart person and performer, and she brings all of that to the role of Maya. And very often doesn’t say what she is thinking, but she’s thinking it. And one of the things she’s thinking is, I know better than this person about herself. And even though she has said that to me, I know there’s something more. And if she says at some point later in this series, I’m going to be this woman’s friend if it kills me.

So, yes, it is hurtful and yes, she registers it, Alice does, if only for a nanosecond. Certainly Aimee Lou, certainly Maya registers it. But also, this is going to be about Alice’s growth. Alice’s growth as a person inspired by, brought about by her relationship with Jack extends to the other relationships in her life, her relationship with Celia, her relationship with Maya. So, the benefits of love are not just between you and the beloved, but also between you and those other important people in your life.

Jace Lacob: Even in the case of Maya, when the person is unwilling of reciprocating that, but I love the fact that Maya persists. She still sees her employer as a friend, even if Alice is unwilling to call herself one. And that to me is just another form of love that we’re exploring here.

Victor Levin: That is another form of love. That is friendship, that’s sororal love. That’s Maya having a deeper emotional understanding of the connection between them at that moment than Alice does. Alice is being very cynical at that moment in the first episode when she says, I can’t be your friend because you’re someone I pay. That’s a very, very deeply cynical way to look at life, but it’s also Alice’s habit to put people in columns. She’s going to get out of that habit. She’s going to learn, as you brought up earlier, if I were careful with anything in this world, I would be careful with you, she’s going to learn that there are new categories out there than the ones she thought there were. And this is an example of that.

Jace Lacob: What do you ultimately hope viewers take away from Alice & Jack, either in terms of theme or from the extraordinary love story itself between these two characters?

Victor Levin: Love is messy. It’s a big mess. It’s awful. It’s difficult. It throws all kinds of curve balls at you. It can fill you with despair, but you have to fight for it. It is the best thing we have. It’s the only thing that holds up to real scrutiny when you start going through the best things in life. And I don’t just mean romantic love, I mean all forms of love, sororal, romantic, fraternal, paternal, familial, whatever you care to name. And I think that it’s easy to lose track of that in our world, frankly, where divisions are rife and there’s bad news every day. I would like people to remember, I would like people to come away from this show and remember the feeling that they get from love, carry it around with them all the time, and call it forth when necessary to avoid conflict and choose a different way.

Jace Lacob: You are no stranger to unusual or complex love stories. Your 2012 film 5 to 7 explores another such complicated romance. Is that, as a writer, the best well to go back to, the universal experience of love in all its messy, complex glory?

Victor Levin: Listen, I’ve been trying to figure this thing out since about 1975, okay? I have no idea what the answers are, none. But I’m starting to figure out what the questions are and I’m starting to figure out how to argue both sides of the answers. And a good story is an argument, isn’t it? A good story is here’s what one character thinks and here’s what another character thinks, and here’s one way you could go, and here’s another way you could go and let’s see what happens.

So, until I get to some sort of truth, which is to say never, because who knows. I’m going to keep wrestling with it and try to come up with stories that are meaningful to people that maybe they can see themselves in, you know, fictional stories like this one that have emotional truth to them. I think it’s a good area for me simply because I’m fascinated by it. I’d really like to know what the truth is. I don’t think I ever will.

Jace Lacob: You’ve directed several features. Was there ever a temptation to direct Alice & Jack yourself?

Victor Levin: There was, until Juho became a possibility. Juho Kuosmanen is a singular artist. His films don’t look or feel or seem or implant themselves in you like anybody else’s films. And I studied them. I watched both Olli Mäki and Compartment Number 6 several times. I talked to him several times. And I felt that his visual style, which is a very indie and easy rig, basically the camera is supported on a harness that the cameraman holds. So, it is handheld, but the cameraman can do long takes because he’s not supporting the weight of the camera with just his arms or his shoulders. His whole body is doing it. And so, it has a slightly smoother feel, but you still understand that it’s handheld. That’s most of the stuff that we shot.

I loved the way that that felt. And I wondered, you know, because my films tend to be more locked off frames, I wondered, could you still be funny with that kind of visual style? Would it be distracting, or would it be interesting to watch a camera do what Juho does, to watch an editor do what his editor does? And what happens when you aren’t quite so well-scrubbed in the lighting, when it’s a little bit less Hollywood and a little bit more vérité, I suppose?

And I should say also that we never would’ve had Juho as a possibility had not Andrea Riseborough seen to it that he was a possibility. She was in Finland filming, and she knew that we loved him, and she talked to him and she told him what was up and it became a possibility because of Andrea. So yeah, I would’ve certainly thought about directing it, but to have the chance to work with Juho was an absolutely irresistible opportunity.

Jace Lacob: Well, I cannot wait for people to get to see this. Victor Levin, thank you so very much.

Victor Levin: Thank you so very much.

 

Next time, we travel back to the world of Nolly as trailblazing actor Noele Gordon tries to make sense of why the television executives sacked her beloved Crossroads character, Meg, after almost two successful decades on screen. 

 

CLIP

Tony: I would like to congratulate you, Miss Gordon, you were absolutely magnificent for 18 years!

Nolly: Well, I tried.

Tony: No, you were wonderful.

 

Join us next week as we talk with Nolly composer Blair Mowat about how he approached writing the music for this eloquent and emotional real-life drama series.