After ABC pulled the plug last year on the White House thrillerDesignated Survivor, showrunner Neal Baer saw the opportunity to do a grittier, more realistic political drama on Netflix.
Enter Eric Schultz, veteran of both the real-life White House under PresidentBarack Obamaandareal-life political scandal(see:John Edwards for President, 2008).
Schultz signed on as a consultant — with, he says, Obama’s blessing.
“He was super-excited for me when this came together,” Schultz tells PEOPLE. “And I teased him that he wasn’t the only one with abig Netflix deal.” (The former president and his wife,Michelle Obama, are also producing a wholeslate of fiction and nonfiction programmingfor the streaming giant.)
One of the first things Schultz told the producers and set designers was to dial back the glamor. “I grew up watchingThe West Wingand that show was partly responsible for my interest in going into government,” he says.
“Now that I’ve actually worked in the White House, I can tell you that theHollywood-ization of our workspace can be too glamorous,” he explains. “If you remember what the White House Situation Room was like in the first two seasons ofDesignated Survivor, it looks like an international global command center. It’s really a conference room.”
Obama adviser Eric Schultz, on set for aDesignated Survivorseason 3 scene in the presidential cabin of Air Force One.Eric Schultz
The worker-bee areas of the West Wing are also not as sleek and state-of-the-art as Hollywood imagines, Schultz says.
“It’s cramped and stodgy. The phones we had were from the Clinton administration 20 years prior. It’s still the best place on earth to work, but trying to relay the reality of it on the screen is a challenge.”
StarKiefer Sutherland, who plays President Tom Kirkman like an earnest Eagle Scout, especially relished Schultz’s real-world input, Baer says.
“Eric read all the early drafts and outlines of scripts and would tell us, ‘You guys, we don’t say it that way.’ Or, ‘That wouldn’t happen that way.’ And we’re like, ‘Okay, tell us how it really is.’ Kiefer loved that,” Baer says. “He wants the authenticity.”
The second episode’s rat infestation was all Schultz. So is a later storyline about White House staffers getting mugged on their way from work.
“I said, ‘Eric, did you ever have problems with rats?’ And he goes, ‘Oh my God, yes!’ So that went in,” says Baer. “And then he told me about people getting mugged and how common it was — one out of five White House employees. And I was, like, ‘What?! Did President Obama know?’ And Eric said, ‘No, we didn’t really tell him.’ ”
“So I really got a peek inside that whole world,” Baer says. “We spent days with Eric talking about what it’s like on a Saturday. What about Sunday? Do you wear different clothes to work on a Sunday?”
Says Schultz: “They asked a lot about suits, ties and shirt colors.”
Baer described the expert input — as well as Schultz’s willingness to mine his contacts for specialists on everything from “dark money” in campaign finance to child marriage — as “a godsend.”
From experience, Schultz painted for Baer and his writers the details of “what craziness goes on” if the president decides to go out for pizza. Baer says he also learned that presidential staffers were “sleeping with each when they were on the road [traveling]” and that the Secret Service guards not only the president’s life — but also his DNA.
“That becomes an issue in episode 3. We found out that, when the president travels, all the sheets, the plate: everything is whisked away.”
Eric Schultz (left) and Anthony Edwards on the Toronto set ofDesignated Survivorin February.Eric Schultz
Schultz says he just wanted to help Baer and his team — including cast newcomerAnthony Edwards, who worked with Baer onERin the late 1990s, and his costarKal Penn, who has his own White House experience as Obama’s former associate director of public engagement — “tell the story they wanted to tell in the most realistic way possible.”
One suggestion the team vetoed?
“I wanted to get some real Washington people in there, reporters likeJake TapperandApril Ryan,” says Schultz. “But the writers just weren’t into it.”
source: people.com
