‘Stranger Things’, ‘Beef, ‘Big Mistakes’ & ‘Lord Of The Flies’ Creators On Their Recipes For Success

Even television’s most in-demand multi-hyphenates can’t go it alone. In fact, as the creators behind some of Netflix’s flashiest series attest, the secret to success often lies in leaning on the expertise of those around them.

That was a major theme during a conversation at Netflix & Deadline Present: The Visionaries featuring Stranger Things‘ Matt and Ross Duffer, Big Mistakes‘ Dan Levy, Lord of the Flies‘ Jack Thorne and Beef‘s Lee Sung Jin. All agreed that their shows are a testament to the talented cast and crews that have helped bring the ideas in their heads to life on the small screen.

Watch the conversation with them below and scroll down for photos from the event.

“There’s no greater feeling than conceiving of something and then having it be a reality. It’s so surreal, and if you surround yourself with the right people, it is the greatest joy,” Levy said.

Lee added that Beef, at least in terms of the final product, is “the result of 200-plus people working together for something bigger.”

When a team of artists is given the space to bring all their ideas to the table for the good of the project, “this alchemy happens… and that’s the best feeling in the world,” he says.

The benefit to television, as opposed to film, is that it is long-running. Often, these creative teams will have the opportunity to hone their craft together not once but several times over the space of many years. In that time, they may work on other projects, gain more life experience, and come back to the project with a fresh set of eyes or a newfound perspective that elevates it even more.

“It’s a stressful thing about TV, because it goes on for so long, but I also love that about it, that it continues to change and evolve and hopefully get better,” Ross Duffer said.

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L-R: Katie Campione, Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer, Lee Sung Jin, Dan Levy and Jack Thorne

Thomas Lynch for Netflixv

L-R: Lee Sung Jin, Dan Levy and Jack Thorne

Thomas Lynch for Netflix

L-R: Dan Levy and Jack Thorne

Thomas Lynch for Netflix

Lee Sung Jin

Thomas Lynch for Netflix

Jack Thorne

Thomas Lynch for Netflix

The Duffer Brothers

Thomas Lynch for Netflix

L-R: Matt Duffer and Ross Duffer

Thomas Lynch for Netflix

That’s how he and his brother Matt Duffer say they felt returning to Stranger Things over the years, particularly when it came to evolving with the cast as they aged — and as they got to know their characters on a deeper level. They explain that their deepening relationships to the cast over the years kept their creative process “alive” with a “sense of discovery” even as they approached the fifth and final season.

“They’re such a huge part of these characters, and even when we cast them on Season 1, it changed who the characters were from moment,” Ross said. “I think it wasn’t necessarily intentional, but I think a lot of that final season is us in dialogue with the actors and ourselves. We all spent this final year filming this sort of having to say goodbye to something that was such a big part of our lives.”

Both Levy and Lee also credit the cast in aiding their creative processes as well. Levy, who had a tough act to follow after Schitt’s Creek, said he was interested in exploring some of the same themes in Big Mistakes but through a completely different lens — which meant finding a cast that he could anchor that style of comedy around.

“Family, to me, is always the funniest thing to write… the breakdown of who we are as people behind closed doors with our families is nuts,” he laughs. “It just became ‘OK, I want to tell another family story.’ I think casting Laurie Metcalf as my mother is such a huge departure from what Catherine [O’Hara] did as Moira Rose, that the show itself almost from that piece of casting launched itself into a completely different arena of comedy and of storytelling.”

While he looks back on it fondly now, the casting process was a bit of a nightmare for Thorne, whose adaptation of William Golding’s 1954 novel would need to be sustained entirely by a group of adolescent boys.

“That bit was terrifying. I didn’t think about it when I was writing. I just wrote the characters, and then we had nine months of auditions trying to find these characters and seeing tapes of 7,000 children,” he recalled. “The last lead we cast was David McKenna, who played Piggy, and he’s extraordinary, and he totally changed the show, not by me necessarily feeding off him too much, though I did a little. It’s just that he played Piggy in a way that I wasn’t expecting. He found joy in the part, and suddenly you’ve got completely different show, because you’ve got someone in the middle of it who refuses to be a victim, who just wants to be joyful, and is having an amazing time on this island. So everything sort of changed as a result of the beautiful personality that he brought to it.”

To further illustrate that point, Thorne continued: “The question they had to on their first tape was: What would you need on a desert island? And his answer was the West End Company of Les Miserables.”

Lee — whose Beef Season 2 cast includes Carey Mulligan, Oscar Isaac, Cailee Spaeny and Charles Melton — agreed that the writers room is just one half of the equation when it comes to the characters.

“In the writers room we can do all the story math we want, but there’s nothing more ingenious than the universe, and so we, I try to just absorb everything that people generously give me and put it into these characters,” he said.