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.
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