Jonas Pate from Believe - Exclusive Interview

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: JONAS PATE ON “BELIEVE”
By Abbie Bernstein

On NBC’s BELIEVE, a little girl named Bo, played by Johnny Sequoyah, has telekinetic abilities now and will have the power to change the world someday – if she’s not killed or captured first. A group of people are protecting her, led by the benevolent if mysterious Milton Winter (Delroy Lindo), but Bo’s chief companion is her wrongly convicted prison escapee father William Tate (Jake McLaughlin).

BELIEVE is created by Alfonso Cuaron, the Oscar-winning director of GRAVITY, and Mark Friedman, and J.J. Abrams serves as one of the series executive producers. However, Jonas Pate has the job of BELIEVE’s day-to-day show runner. This means he’s in charge of the writers’ room and oversees the workings of the show overall.

Writer/director/producer Pate has frequently collaborated with his twin brother Josh on a number of projects, including creating the fantasy series GOOD VS. EVIL and the science-fiction series SURFACE. The North Carolina native has also worked on other series including BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, CAPRICA and the U.S. version of PRIME SUSPECT.

Following a Q&A panel hosted by NBC for the Television Critics Association, Pate steps aside for further discussion of his work on BELIEVE. He explains that his twin isn’t working on this series with him, but Josh is still in the science-fiction realm. “He’s off on FALLING SKIES right now.”

Their credits would suggest that the Pate brothers are both big genre fans. Pate qualifies this. “We kind of like everything. It’s a little bit of a sampling error, but yeah.”

As to how Pate became BELIEVE’s show runner, he relates, “I had been involved a lot in the last five years for NBC, actually, and had been the producing director on several of their shows, so they hooked me up with [J.J. Abrams’ production company] Bad Robot. I had worked on a Bad Robot show once [before BELIEVE], but I had never worked extensively with them. I hit it off with those guys, and then I went to go shoot and direct the show. And then, as we had the challenges of some of the scripts, I’d been pretty vocal about where I thought the show should go and they asked me to come on and be the show runner.”

Where did Pate want the show to go? “I wanted to really focus on the relationship between Bo and Tate and that whole sort of PAPER MOON vibe of their sarcastic back and forth and use that as the anchor of the show, and I think that’s what we’ve gone towards.”

Was there anything in the original version Pate wanted to steer away from? “No. It’s tricky when you’re doing a television show, because you have this ongoing story that you have to develop, but there’s a reason that things are often procedural, because it’s an easy story to break. Each week, there will be a case – our character Bo will meet someone out in the world that she’ll help solve some sort of emotional problem for, but then there will be larger mythological elements to the show that will be revealed slowly. So it’s finding that balance of telling stories that you can get into week to week, that an audience can enjoy, but still telling this larger mythology that can be doled out quickly enough so that the audience is titillated, but not so quickly that there’s not mystery left. So it’s all just finding that balance.”

How exactly do Bo’s powers work? Pate says that’s a question the audience is meant to ask, because the characters aren’t sure either.. “She’s not good at it yet. That’s part of it. She’s a child, so she can’t control her powers. So it’s part of the way we generate some of the drama is that it’s inconsistent.”

Why does Milton Winters initially not tell either Bo or Tate that they are daughter and father? “We wanted to pick a moment where, in the first few episodes, they’re pretty much on the run, and we wanted to pick a moment for when that’s revealed where we could sort of honor it emotionally and let Jake’s character process it, and [Bo] as well.”

As far as Pate’s personal connection to the material, he says, “Well, I have a ten-year-old daughter, so I feel like I can relate to a lot of the things [Bo is] going through, but I feel like it opens up a lot of really human stories, that it reminds us to keep it grounded, to not get too genre. I try to think of it in terms of the humanist stories we want to tell with this sort of top spin of a supernatural element. But the most important thing is the human part.”

Pate was not the first show runner on BELIEVE; that job opened up after he’d already been signed up to direct. He’s understandably reluctant to go into great detail on exactly what happened. However, during the panel, executive producer Abrams addresses how Pate was chosen to be the show runner.

“What I’ve always found,” Abrams says, “is that whoever can do it, whoever demonstrates the ability and the desire to do it, is the person who does it. And we were in a situation where, like any great creative endeavor – and this is not a cookie cutter show where you know exactly the person who’s done this show, it’s not a typical procedural, it’s not a typical cop show, it’s a very unique thing – I think finding the correct creative voice that is the strongest, the most passionate and clearly skilled at executing this particular vision that Alfonso came to us with, it was clear that we had to do it in the family. Luckily, Jonas stepped up and was able and willing to do it and is doing an extraordinary job.”

Going from director to show runner isn’t that huge a leap for someone who is also a writer, Pate adds. “It’s been nice actually. I mean, we were always involved in the stories from the beginning. That’s just a normal part of filmmaking. You’re there. You’re working with the writer. And I had become friends with the writers and with the other producers. So it was a pretty natural segue, really.”

Executive producer/co-creator Cuaron directed the pilot for BELIEVE, which set the tone and style for the series, but how hands-on is he as the series progresses? “As much as he can be,” Pate replies. “Obviously, with what’s going on with him right now, he’s very busy. But he weighs in, he calls, he emails – he’s all over the place.”

Is it more difficult being the director who sets the tone of the series, or the person who comes in as the director after this has already been done? Pate says it’s the latter. “Way more difficult. I was the first man up after Alfonso. Believe me, I wasn’t happy about that. But we’ve tried to really faithfully execute [Cuaron’s style] – we’re shooting on much wider lenses than I think you would on a normal TV show, and we’ve tried to keep that style going.”

Because the main characters in BELIEVE are on the run, there are very few sets than can be returned to on a soundstage, which seems like a production challenge. “Yeah, it’s brutal,” Pate acknowledges. “There are very few standing sets. We’re on location almost all the time in New York, in the cold. It’s hard on the crew.”

With so many television productions using Canada to stand in for various parts of the U.S., how did the <iBELIEVE company wind up shooting in New York?

Pate replies, “Honestly, I’m sure you’re aware, there are a lot of shows shooting in New York because of this tax credit, so there’s a financial element, but really, there’s a creative element. We just wanted to use the city and the Northeast; it would give us this sort of gritty, real-world look of the show that we were after.”

It also provides access to Broadway talent as guest stars, which Pate is happy about. “A little more character-y guest stars, too, which is nice.”

Pate says he has a favorite aspect of BELIEVE. “The relationship between the father and the daughter, by far.”

Interview by Abbie Bernstein

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