‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’: Francesca Sloane On That ‘Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid’ Inspired Cliffhanger [Interview]

Gregory Ellwood

When Francesca Sloane jumped on a Zoom five weeks ago to discuss the celebrated “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” the show’s co-creator didn’t know if the Prime Video series was coming back for a second season. In hindsight, it would have been shocking if it didn’t. The Donald Glover and Maya Erskine drama series earned almost 1 billion views in the U.S. in its opening week and was a mainstay on the streamer’s top 10 trending list for over two months. A few weeks after our conversation, Prime Video announced “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” would indeed return for another go around. That prompted a timely question for anyone who saw the show’s finale: Who would exactly be starring in season two?

And, it goes without saying, major spoilers ahead.

READ MORE: “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” Review: Donald Glover reinvents spy life with a darkly comedic take on messy marital complications [Review]

The final episode of “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” saw Jane (Erskine) jumping into a potential barrage of oncoming gunfire while her spy “husband” John (Glover) lay wounded on the ground behind her. The show cuts to a street view of the pair’s townhouse where only a flash of gunfire lights are seen. Did they survive? Did they die? The audience is left to ponder the possibilities. One might assume Sloane and Glover (who directed that particular episode), gave themselves some leeway in the editing room with multiple endings just in case they wanted different options to end the season. It turns out that wasn’t the case.

“No, that was always it,” Sloane says. “We watched a lot of films and a lot of films from the seventies, and we kept kind of returning to ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,‘ that freeze frame moment at the very end there where they’re going out into the firing squad and it’s them versus the world, and it sort of stuck with us. We wanted to allow the audience to have their own interpretation of what happens in the end.”

Sloane continues, “And I’ve said this before, but I really believe it. I feel like there are three types of people in how you digest that ending. There are some people who see the glass half empty, in which case they are both dead. There are some people who see the glass half full, where they’re both alive and then there are realists where maybe one of them is alive and one of them is not.”

A writer and producer on both “Atlanta” and “Fargo” season 4, Sloane reflected on her passion for working with her “Smith” creative family, the strategy behind keeping the spy organization the Smiths are working for mysterious, the challenges of shooting Europe, the inspiration for the “date night” with the other Smiths, and much, much more.

The Playlist: As we speak, it is the end of April. Next week is May, and I just logged into Prime Video and it told me that “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” is still in the top 10 of Prime Video shows. That’s almost three months since its debut Did you ever expect it would be this big of a hit?

Francesa Sloane: Absolutely not, but I’m very happy that it is.

When you came on board, what was your goal for the series? What did you want to accomplish with it?

I really wanted it to be a story about vulnerability, a character piece, while still sort of giving the excitement of an espionage thriller. I wanted people to be able to look at it either with their spouse and see themselves in it somehow, or sitting alone because they’re so screwed up and no longer have their spouse sitting next to them and seeing themselves in it. I wanted it to be relatable in some way. I wanted it to feel like an accessible spy show, which felt unique to me in a way that felt exciting.

Was that a tough nut to crack? Was that harder to sort of balance the espionage and the relationship stuff as evenly or as well as you guys did?

Yeah, it was definitely a tough nut to crack. I think making sure that all of the mission stuff was always in tandem with the relationship, seeing when they were doing well at something because they were doing well as a couple, or they were utterly failing at something because they weren’t doing well as a couple when they were in sync with each other versus when they had to get to know each other because the trust wasn’t in place yet. That always affected the way that they sort of went about their spy work. So maintaining that and making sure that that felt consistent and didn’t feel too hokey or corny was definitely a challenge at times.

I thought that you accomplished that very well as did critics. Did you think you hadn’t, were you worried when the show was about to drop?

I’m a very anxious person, so yes, I think eternally worried is sort of just part of my DNA and when you love something as much as we love this project and everybody involved, we were so lucky, we all really had a lot of love for it. You always feel like you can do something even better than maybe what you did. But I do think that the finished product, all of us looked around at each other, at least Hiro [Murai], Donald, Christian [Sprenger], Maya, all of these amazing directors and editors, and we’re like, “Well, I mean, we like it, so at least we said that.”

Did the fact you shot the second to last season of “Atlanta” in Europe help in shooting overseas for this series?

No, because I’m being completely honest. No, I think Atlanta is so special, and it’s probably one of the most freeing and liberating creative experiences because Atlanta kind of was allowed to do whatever it wanted to do, and that was sort of the joy of working on it. This had such strict guardrails based on the formula that we kind of set up for ourselves. Plus it was a much bigger budget than any of us had ever worked with, especially myself as a first time showrunner, and as notorious BIG says Mo money mo problems. We really needed to make sure that we were bringing the popcorn along with all of the quirk and being diligent about all of these sort of big set pieces. So I think there was a lot of pressure on us, but it was also what made it so exciting too.

How hard as a producer was it to pull off shooting the entirety of episode five in Lake Como?

Sometimes the show sort of tells you what it needs to be more than you tell. It is what I sort of realized in this experience. And to be completely honest, while we were shooting the show, we started realizing we did all of New York first, and the excitement on set was so contagious when we finally got to just sort of do the damn thing and give the actual straightforward action. And it became sort of clear that the audience is going to want more of a taste of that, and you’re going to want that excitement at that point in their journey. And so we’re like, “You know what? Let’s make a full on action film. Let’s really go for it, and then let’s have them in this quiet little writer’s cabin where we get to be intimate and quiet once again.” And there’s sort of these two parts, almost like action film meets a play. But yeah, it was incredibly challenging just because it’s in another country, but we were so lucky. The Italian crew was so incredible. Karena Evans was our director, and she came so prepared and so ready for it all. It really was probably one of the most well-oiled machines at that point. We had been shooting for quite some time, and so it went as about as smooth as something like that could have gone. So zero complaints there.

In episode four they meet the more experienced Mr. And Mrs. Smiths played by Parker Posey and Wagner Moura, which is basically just a dinner conversation episode. Who came up with that idea? Do you remember?

That was a collective effort in the writer’s room. We had such an incredible group of season one writers, and we just knew that in addition to spy tropes, we wanted to kind of check as many of those off as we could, but we also wanted to check off relationship tropes And we thought to ourselves very early days in the room, “Well, a relationship trope is certainly a double date. And how do you do a double date in spy terms?” Well, you do a double date in spy terms with other people who happen to be better spies. It’s the same thing as going and having a work dinner, but we get to do it with people who also are assassins, and how much fun is that? And we just also love the idea of afterwards where you have that moment with your spouse, where you compare yourself to the other couple, and you either think that you’re so much better than them, or you think that you’re so much worse than them. And it just felt like a really real place to go. And so yeah, I think it was really about sort of showcasing a true moment between a relationship and really giving this time to John and Jane to really show that they really have become best friends, and that felt like a good platform to showcase that.

Many things are purposefully left unexplained at the end of the series. Was the idea to save the reveal of the spy organization for future potential seasons? Or did you feel like the cards of the show would fall apart if you gave that away?

Donald has said time and time again, I mean, pardon my French, but he says, “I love being a subtle motherf**ker.” I feel like that’s sort of part of the making of Donald and working with him. It is sort of this contagious thing of what you hold back allows the audience to fill out the rest and allows you to sort of sit in a feeling more. And so we played around with it of how overt we wanted to be with this mysterious organization, how much we wanted to tell. There were moments where we told a ton more. There were moments where we told even less. It was a calibration thing. And at the end of the day, we did feel like leaving a lot of that in the background allowed for the relationship to be in the foreground. And it does give room for more story for down the road, which we would love to tell in some way and give more answers. We liked it being intriguing like that.

Speaking of being intriguing, you mentioned shooting the New York scenes first. I’ll therefore assume you shot the final episode before you shot some of the stuff overseas or in other locations. Was that always the final sequence of the season? Maya’s character opening the door, going out, the image from the street of the flash flash? Or was that something you guys came to in the editing room?

No, that was always it. We watched a lot of films and a lot of films from the seventies, and we kept kind of returning to“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” that freeze frame moment at the very end there where they’re going out into the firing squad and it’s them versus the world, and it sort of stuck with us. We wanted to allow the audience to have their own interpretation of what happens in the end. And I’ve said this before, but I really believe it. I feel like there are three types of people in how you digest that ending. There are some people who see the glass half empty, in which case they are both dead. There are some people who see the glass half full, where they’re both alive, and then there were realists where maybe one of them is alive and one of them is not.

You also put in an extra scene after the initial credits with Paul Dano which gives even more hints about what potentially could have happened. Was that also part of the plan? Was that something you did later?

That was something that came later. Paul was initially going to be maybe in an episode where we wanted that nosey neighbor that you sort of see a lot in these types of TV shows and films. But Paul was so fricking good, and we realized that we needed it to be this ongoing character with an ongoing arc. And we also sort of thought it would be hysterical to give the most New York ending of all time. That did come while we were shooting, and Paul sort of inspired that. We just knew that he deserved a full arc.

Do you still have the enthusiasm to make another season? Or are you sort of like, “I did this chapter. Let someone else take the reins and I want to move on to something else”?

That’s a great question. I’m a new mother, and I had my child while I was making the show, but people relate making TV sometimes to being pregnant and then giving birth. And I actually understand that now having lived through both things in reality, because while you’re doing it, it’s so hard and it’s so excruciating, and you’re dealing with so much. But then once it comes out, it’s almost like you have this euphoria where you forget all of the hardships and you just see how much you love it. So, I would say, hell yeah, I would love to make a season two. I feel like, especially with this group of people continuing to work with my family, with my best friends, it’s sort of the dream.

Now that it’s all finished and done, is there one moment or one scene that you’re most proud of?

Oh, I’m so proud of everybody for the whole thing because it was such a collaborative effort with so many brilliant people who I admire and love so deeply. But I will say that therapy episode required a lot of reshoots and a lot of rethinking in a way that should tell the story in a way that it needed to be told in our opinion. And there’s one scene in particular where Maya and Donald are arguing in the woods, and we shot that with the great Amy Seimetz in Harriman State Park. We were cold, we were wet, we were exhausted, we were dragging New York crew members to the woods, which is not exactly the greatest thing for New Yorkers. And everybody was working so hard. We were all sort of losing our minds, but just the way that we wrote that scene and the way that Donald and Maya really went there and really performed it was sort of the entire crew got dead silent watching them. It was a real moment that we captured, and their acting was just so incredible, and the way that they delivered on what we wrote felt so raw. So, I think maybe that scene is the thing I’m most proud of.

Maya has done some interviews and has sort of hinted that there could be another season. Prime Video is trumpeting like it’s a big hit. You would think they would want a second season. Have there been any discussions about continuing the story in some manner?

We’ll have to wait and see. I think everybody’s really excited about it being a possibility. We’ll say that.

Now that you have ended this chapter for the moment, are you working on anything else? Have you jumped on any new projects?

I still feel like I’m pretty heavily invested in the world of “Mr. & Mrs. Smith.” But yeah, there are a few other projects. One of the writers from “Mr. & Mrs. Smith.”is working on a show right now about a young woman who sort of loses her faith in God in her late twenties and kind of finds it again by becoming a dog walker. The dogs are all played by puppets, but it’s played very, very straight. It’s hilarious. It’s charming. Yvonne Hana Yi, she’s crazy talented. She’s going to be the next huge thing, I’m sure of it. So some of that, a few features, but that’ll always keep the writing brain busy. Can’t sit, keep it busy.