Why Ponies showrunner David Iserson is interested in people of no interest

In Peacock series Ponies, two secretaries become CIA operatives in 1977 Moscow after their husbands die in mysterious circumstances. Showrunner David Iserson reveals his interest in spy stories, discusses filming in Budapest and explains how his start on Saturday Night Live shaped his approach to writing. David Iserson has been in a lot of fast-paced writers’ rooms, picking up credits on shows from New Girl and Mad Men to Mr Robot and Mozart in the Jungle. Yet the US screenwriter started his career among the comics that populated the legendary halls of Saturday Night Live – and it’s an experience that has shaped every project he’s later worked on, whether they are labelled as comedies or dramas. “Any writer who has any sort of interest in comedy at all, even if that is not where they end up, they’re gonna learn a lot by working in a comedy room, by just being able to write a joke at that speed and that volume,” he tells DQ at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival, where Ponies won the public prize at the event’s Golden Nymph Awards. “When I worked on New Girl, you would write 50 jokes as alternates to every joke [in the script], and it gets your brain in that zone. So when I write on my own, not for anybody, or when I write things that speak to me, I love things to be in a middle tone that has drama, that has comedy, because that’s just how I see … Continue reading Why Ponies showrunner David Iserson is interested in people of no interest →