Yesterday, we brought you onto the set of ABC Family’s 10 Things I Hate About You, premiering next Tuesday at 8/7c. Tomorrow, highlights from breakfast with Ethan Peck, who plays Patrick.
Today, though, here are the highlights from the interview with writer and executive producer Carter Covington. Carter not only directed the set tour, but also provided some interesting insight toward the show and its direction.
(On what made him want to work on 10 Things)
[W]hat drew me to this project is I kind of felt like both of the sisters in high school – you have one sister who is dying to be popular and one who’s like, “Oh, my God, high school is such a stupid lame rite of passage.” And that’s how I felt about it. On the one hand, I [really wanted to be accepted] and then on the other half I was like, “God, I can’t wait to get in college and get out of here and leave this behind…” I really wanted that feeling in the series just like that you’re at high school, and it can be the best of times and it can feel like the worst place on earth. And that’s kind of what we’re going to play with in the series that it is kind of this place of many feelings.
Carter Covington (front center) with press. Photo courtesy of ABC Family/Adam Rose.
How did you come to be on this project?
You know, it’s funny. […L]ast summer, I worked with Gil Junger, who directed the movie and directed the pilot. [We’d worked together before and] we really got along. And it was sort of this, like—I would always ask him about 10 Things. I was such a huge 10 Things fan, and I’d be like, “Oh, my God,” and, “What was Heath Ledger like,” and, you know, “How did you cast Julia Stiles?” I was just always wanting to sort of know… and the pilot kind of grew out of that.
It’s been ten years, and I’d always wanted to do a show about high school. I mean, I grew up loving John Hughes movies. And no one’s ever really kind of captured that spirit to me in a series. And so when we kind of came up with the idea, I got the blessing from the writers of the original movie, who are friends of friends. They were like, “That’s a great idea. We’re super excited.” And it was important. It was their first big feature film. […]
I want it to feel like a half-hour teen movie every week. I like funny, but I like emotional moment in the story, like the warm chewy center that’s not too sweet that you get a cavity but, just a nice moment where you kind of get what these people are going through. And so that’s what we put together, and it’s been a challenge. […] I really want the characters to sort of look differently in the show—you know, the DNA of them is the same but they’re played by new actors, they have new spins on them that are slightly different. I hope that people will watch it and be like, you know what, it feels like the movie because it’s directed by the same director, it has the same music, it has Larry Miller, but it also has this new spirit, this new life that is totally different. And literally after the first episode, nothing follows the movie.
How did you cast the role of Patrick?
We had the hardest time casting that role. And on the page, when I had sat down to write it, I had said, “Okay, this character cannot be anything like Heath Ledger. Like, it needs to be a different sort of version of the teen heartthrob.” I like the Outsiders sort of dangerous guy angle because I think that’s really important, but I kept thinking of Jordan Catalano from My So-Called Life. I just kept going back there. I was like, “He was so interesting.” But [he was] this guy who just plays with peoples’ buttons because they don’t know what he’s thinking, and he’s really more of an introvert. And I’d never really kind of seen that sort of vibe in a comedy.
So that’s really what was in my head when I was writing. I was like, “Let’s keep this guy mysterious. Let’s find an actor who doesn’t have Heath Ledger or is like singing in the bleachers sort of extroverted energy who has more of this like ‘I’m this mysterious guy.’”
And we couldn’t find him. We kept casting, we kept casting, and we kept casting. And I called the network. I said, “I think we need to, like, expand out of LA. Like, I’d really like to see if there’s anyone in New York and anyone in Canada.” And so we had some casting directors.
And Ethan went on tape and I was, like, going, “Nah, nah,” through all these auditions. And he just walked on screen, and the first word out of his mouth I was like, “What?” [laughs] “Whose voice is that?” And I didn’t know anything about his grandfather or anything like that. I didn’t know that he came from this past.
We flew him out for the final audition with the network, so I’d never met him in person until the day he was auditioning. And it was just like a no-brainer. I mean, it was—literally, he came in and just—he read the scene and everyone was just kind of like, “Whoa.”
How did you cast the characters and what were you looking for in their roles?
I’m probably the most excited about Kat as a character in the life of the series because I think teen female characters tend to be more like Bianca. They tend to be popular. They tend to be [more like] the Gossip Girls, you have the 90210s. And I really am excited about having one of our lead characters be an anti-hero in a way.
And so I want—but it’s tough. It’s tough to find someone who, week after week, is kind of going, “High school is stupid,” and you’re not like, “Shut up already,” you know, “Like, I’m sick of you talking about that.”
So we also wanted to find someone that just had this, like, really warm likeable, and you’re kind of drawn to them. And Lindsey has that in spades. Like, she is just really able to say sort of—she’s sarcastic and wry and snarky, but you like her.
It’s sort of like Buffy. She has bigger problems than high school, but she has high school problems, too.
Totally. Exactly. […S]o that’s Kat. We found Lindsey Shaw who is like kickass beyond belief. I don’t think that girl has any limits as an actress. I think she can do anything.
And then Bianca, you know, in the movie, she was—the sisters were established at the school because it was based on Taming of the Shrew. And in Taming of the Shrew, the Patrick character comes into town.
I wanted to start with the sisters moving into town so that we could see all the relationships start and sort of make a fresh start. That’s part of the whole reimagining things.
So they’re new to school. And Bianca was popular at her old school, and she’s starting fresh. So, her whole drive is, “I want to be popular.” But it’s not just, “I want to be popular.” It’s like she could be, and she probably will be, the CEO of a company some day. You know, she is driven. She could have a 4.0 and get into Harvard, but she is putting all that energy into being popular. And I really wanted to make her smart and driven versus just vapid and, “I really want things,” and to be silly.
So what I love about Meaghan Jette Martin is she is that person. I mean, even—she’s a 17-year old, like, driven actress who wants to be a star, you know? And she’s going to be a star.
But she has her own ambition in life, and it comes through on the screen really well. And she’s also just a really likeable sweet nice person, and that helps too because she’s often times making really shallow choices to be popular, and you’ve got to also kind of be onboard with her.
10 Things is a pretty iconic ‘90s movie. Can you talk about what sort of things you’ve done to “modernize” the movie and bring it into the 2000’s?
I do think that the ten years buys us distance from the movie. I think this would be a really bad idea if the movie came out last year, you know? That’s my feeling. I genuinely feel like we’ve gotten a little time. People can still love the movie, but we have some distance from it. […] But I do think now that—kids are so much more connected than they were in ’99, you know? It’s like there’s so much more interactivity of their ability to talk to each other and sort of for rumors to spread, for information to get out there. I also think it’s a little more of a stressful time to be a high school student.
Like, I feel like it keeps getting more and more stressful, and the stakes of, like, getting into college and all of that is heightened. So we’re going to play with that. But I wouldn’t say I made any, like, crazy changes from ’99.
(On the movie and show’s quirky sense of humor regarding high school)
I think, hopefully you will agree when you watch it that the sense of humor—I actually think our show’s a little bit funnier than the movie because the movie is a movie and had a lot more sort of dramatic elements. And ours has to be twenty-two minutes of, like, funny and story. So I think the humor quotient is a little higher than the film just in terms of packing it all in.
We want the school to feel like the character. And I think the movie did that well of having, like, all the people in the school feel like a character… so that’s what we’re doing here. We’ve already got that pervy kid that, like, looks at every girl’s boobs. And we have the student council secretary who tattles on everyone, you know, and wants to brownnose. Like, we’re trying to take those people that you’re like, “I knew that person in high school,” and put them in our school with good actors who we can bring back. And it’s a good place to go for funny and story.
Ethan talked about Larry Miller and he likes to improv a lot. How do you work that into the scripts?
Well it’s funny where it is a—what we do is we sort of—we let him do a take where he can sort of play. And then he’s pretty good about saying, you know, “Hey, here’s the scene that’s written. What do you think if I said this here?” What do you think if he said this here?
And when you have someone like Larry Miller, like, you’ve got to acknowledge that because he is just an improv genius. So we’re trying to incorporate that because it’s such a huge asset he brings to the show.
And actually, Lindsey and Meaghan really love it because they get to sort of—you know, it’s fun for actors to improv. For writers, we’re like, “Wait a second. Where are we in this process, you know? [laughs] What? What?”
Well it’s been a pleasure…. I look forward to hopefully you enjoying the show. But if you don’t, don’t be too harsh.