‘The Audacity’ Interview With Billy Magnussen & Series Creator Jonathan Glatzen

The Audacity creator Jonathan Glatzen and star Billy Magnussen, who plays wealthy tech CEO Duncan Park, took the stage at Deadline Contenders TV to talk about taking the tech monster lurking in the shadows and those responsible for its existence, and turning it into a comedy.

“The bubble of Silicon Valley and the products that they put out do tend to dehumanize us all and themselves,” Glatzen said. “The idea was ‘let’s make [the characters] fear their own humanity and let the humor come from that.’ AI is mining out emails, our Zoom chats, everything, guys. Do not accept cookies. … They say that when they stop talking about Big Brother, they won.”

In addition to the existential problems of the products being produced in the Valley, for Glatzen there’s the logistical issue of keeping up with the extremely fast pace of technology. 

“There’s no way to keep up with it, and of course a TV show is written 12-18 months before it shoots, so I knew that this was a race that I couldn’t win in terms of trying to anticipate what it would be like,” he said. “Right now we’re writing the second season, which is perhaps even more a jumbled cultural landscape right now than when we wrote the first season. I spent a little time in Silicon Valley and I went up there with the proposition that personal data is perhaps something that we could really land on and was somewhat evergreen and was always going to be an issue.”

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When asked if any of these diabolically hilarious characters in the AMC show were based on any household names like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, Magnussen joked: “We screened it in Silicon Valley for these tech titans, and they were like, ‘Wow you guys kind of nailed it.’ They all kept saying, ‘I know who that person is. I know who that is.’ And we were like, ‘No it’s really you.’” 

Magnussen still was able to find the humanity in Duncan Park. As Glatzen put it: “In the hands of Billy Magnussen, you do find yourself rooting for [Duncan]. I think that’s an incredible magic trick you’re able to pull off.” Said Magnussen: “He’s sad to me. [Duncan] was a hopeful spirit, probably the genesis of the idea was to come to the Valley and do something beautiful. Then greed, jealousy and fear consumed him, and I feel sad for him more than anything. That’s kind of how I built Duncan with [Glatzen]. He just wants to be great, he wants to be enough, he wants his dad to love him.”

The nine-part AMC series was picked up for a second season before the first episode even premiered. New episodes drop Sundays on AMC.

Check back Monday for the panel video.