You likely don’t recognize his name, but director and writer Tim Van Patten has contributed to some of the most iconic television series of the 21st century. His credits include 20 episodes of “The Sopranos,” “The Pacific,” “Sex and the City,” “Boardwalk Empire,” “The Wire,” “Deadwood,” and “Game of Thrones.” An HBO go-to, he’s a two-time Emmy Award, two-time DGA Award, two-time WGA Award, and two-time PGA Award winner. Oh, and he’s got a Peabody Award too. It’s no surprise then, that Apple TV+ was eager to have him on board for “Franklin,” a limited series that chronicles Benjamin Franklin’s almost decade-long mission to gain French support in the American Revolution.
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During a recent conversation with The Playlist, Van Patten reflected on how “flawless” the French cast and crew were to work with, why star Michael Douglas decided not to use prosthetic makeup, and the benefits of being able to shoot at the Palace of Versailles every Monday for the entire production.
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The Playlist: So Tim, what about this project made you want to commit eight months of your life or more to shooting this story?
Tim Van Patten: Probably a year and a half of my life, but as I like to say, at this point in my career, I like to take myself someplace where I’ve never been in terms of storytelling and ideally take an audience there as well. I’ve become a student of history over these decades in this job. You could see it in the work I’ve done in historical fiction. But with this in particular, it was this slice of history that I had no idea about. Franklin was going to solicit money, men, and arms from an absolute monarchy to overthrow a monarchy. I never knew that, or if I did, I knew very little about it and I found it fascinating. And having Michael Douglas attached and working with Apple TV+ again, that was all great for me and [executive producer] Richard Plepler and brought some of my team, David Franco, a brilliant [director of photography], and it was just a great experience.
Was it always meant to shoot in France? Was that something you guys had to fight for?
We took a look at doing it in England very early on because of the stages, but then didn’t really make sense. We ended up where we should have been, which normally happens. We ended up in France shooting a show about France. I shot the finale of “Sex and the City” there, and I also shot an episode of “The Sopranos” there. Both of those were brief episodes, but I never shot eight hours of a show. And so authenticity, the audiences nowadays are so sophisticated that to shoot it somewhere else and to not do it in the amount of French we did it in wouldn’t ring true for a contemporary audience.
Was there one sequence or scene that you never could have shot outside of France? It would have looked fake if we shot it on a sound stage or somewhere else?
Well, we were lucky enough to shoot it Versailles every Monday. ,
O.K, for sure.
That should be the answer. We had access to Versailles every Monday throughout the whole shoot, and we would go there and we truly had it to ourselves. So, you get there early in the morning and you’re just walking up and it’s all dark in there, and you’re walking through this vast hall, the Hall of Mirrors, Louis XVI‘s bedroom, Marie Antoinette‘s playroom, and the whole place was yours. And I never got, I mean that was…that was hard to express. I mean, just being on the grounds of Versailles is enough. So it was really special. That was really just a treat and all the many Chateaus that we shot in. Each one of them unique and beautiful. We shot most of the show on location. Over 90%, probably more.
I saw a recent interview where Michael said something along the lines that shooting France was the most wonderful or enjoyable filming experience he’s ever had in his career. Was that your experience as well behind the camera?
I agree with Michael, to be honest, this is the truth. It was great on both a personal level and a professional level. Living in Paris, and shooting in France, I had my family there. The little one was in school at the American School. A really amazing and flawless cast. Even down to the day players, down to the background actors. And the crew was so brilliant and kind. I always say you can’t underestimate the spirit of a crew. They were happy and talented and you could feel it on the screen, you could feel it. It’s alive. So, that was really special. And working with the French, I know very few words in French just basically tilt down, tilt down, pan left, pan right, write. But I tried to do lingo for about a week and she started to get abusive with me. So I got off how they punish you when you’re not staying on your homework. I couldn’t do it. The truth is, I wanted to look at a performance [in French]. I mean, I had a bilingual script supervisor and I had the script translated, but I wanted to look at a performance and see if I could see the truth in the performances. And I never felt lost. I mean, I knew the script well, I had someone who could talk to me about it, but the cast all spoke English, but I never felt lost in any way. They were all terrific.
Since you didn’t speak the language, did the French actors ever seem apprehensive if they were doin the right thing? Would they want to hear from a French producer or somebody else?
Part of world-building is not only just building what’s on the screen, shaping the show and the palette of the show, part of the show, you’re also building a family with the cast. And it’s important to me when life’s too short, everybody’s got to be good people, and they were all good people. It was probably challenging to them. They all spoke English for the most part, almost all of them. And well, the language, we had a dialect coach on, set the language. Even the French language in that period of time in the late 18th century was different. And we really went for a lot of accuracy in this. We wanted to highlight the discrepancy between the social classes, and so we went that far with it. So, sometimes they would struggle with that. And I mean, Noah Jupe [who plays Franklin’s grandson William Temple Franklin] had to learn French and he does it seamlessly.
He’s fantastic. Trust me, I took seven years of French in my life and it went in one year out the other. I don’t remember any of it.
So, if you went to Paris, you couldn’t order a meal in French after seven years of French?
Sadly, probably not. But I am guessing you are in a very, very small company of directors who have directed Michael Douglas for more time on screen than anyone else out there. How would you describe working with him and what are your favorite memories from working with him on “Franklin”?
Well, he’s a consummate professional. I mean, he’s on time. He knows the work. He’s been a producer. Don’t forget an Oscar-winning producer. He never overstepped any boundaries in that. If he did speak up, it always made sense. He’s a real gentleman. And I always like to say, sometimes you dismiss an actor. You have to light, you have to do someone else’s shot, whatever. They go back to their trailer or wherever they have to go. He was never more than 50 feet away from the camera, and he was usually sitting in the sun in a nice chair or talking to the other actors about politics or whatnot, sports. He was always reading the newspapers right there. Be right on set right there. And I just enjoy, it because he represents another time in our business. And there’s a class, an elegance to the way he approaches the day. He’s just gentle and he’s kind to the crew. And his other cast members loved him and he worshiped them. He would stand in front of one. We would introduce a new actor to the show. I’m blown away whether it was a day player or one of the stars of the thing, they were just as blown away just by being in front of Michael, but he was blown away by how good they were. And he would laugh, can you just get someone that sucks in front of me? He was in awe of that and of the crew too.
This is a story that was over 200 years ago, and we don’t really know what anyone sounded like. We don’t know how they really talked. You can only infer their personalities from what they wrote. What sort of conversations did you have with Michael about how he planned on portraying Franklin and with the other writers and other producers about how you wanted to convey that in the story?
Well, I could say that I’m sure he lost a lot of sleep over it. It’s not easy to do that. The Liberace thing was different. There were a lot of applications and makeup, all that stuff, prosthetics and stuff. And we chose not to, Michael and I had a discussion about it. We had the prosthetics made. He tried them on the neck and the receding hair and just felt it was too much. It seemed fake.
It didn’t feel real.
Yeah, they could make it look real, but it was too, Michael brought this up in some other interview where he said, being just him, and he looked great. I mean, he looked a better-looking Franklin, but the fact that so many people recognize him and have grown up with him and have seen him was sort of an assist for us in that they could access him. Oh, this guy, oh, I, and within 10 minutes of the show, you’re with Franklin. At first, you go, “Oh wow, maybe. Oh, that sounds like Michael Douglas. That’s Michael.” But then, and this is a credit to Michael’s acting. He was so thoroughly convincing that it only took minutes, I felt. And I thought it was a good choice at the end of the day, not to create that wall between the audience and him with all the heavy prosthetics and applications.
What part of the story itself were you most concerned about conveying to audiences that they understood?
Well, the concern was honoring the truth of Franklin’s mad mission and making it entertaining at the same time, not dry. Not your grandfather’s Benjamin Franklin story that was always in our minds. Trying to really flesh Benjamin’s character out. To flesh it out so you could feel all the complexity of that man, his character. The good, the bad, and the ugly of him. And so to create a physical world that was authentic, to drop these characters into, but then to work with the characters themselves so they could keep it alive and visceral. Part of the way we photographed it part of, and very much the way the scripts were executed was to capture that humor and the desperation and the intrigue and the stakes, all of it. And so that’s sort of, I don’t sleep over it, but it was always the concern is the pace, right? Are we pushing the humor too much? But I feel, lemme put it this way, I was in it for over a year in post-production. I never got tired of looking at it, and we just screened it in Paris for the crew on the big screen. You see it on the big screen, and you go, “Wow, everyone did such a beautiful job. It looks stunning, and everyone’s terrific and it works.” It’s all you can ask for.
“Franklin” is available to stream on Apple TV+