On Friday afternoon I had the opportunity to speak with Jeff Eastin, creator and executive producer of USA's "White Collar." During the discussion Jeff hinted at a deeper season two storyline involving Mozzie's background, but he also spoke about having a compelling lead in Matthew Bomer and how his show actually took down "The Jay Leno Show" in the ratings earlier this year.
When asked about casting Bomer as Neal, Jeff had this to say:
"I can't say how lucky I am to have Matt on this thing. I give most of the credit to Gayle Pillsbury who was my casting director on the pilot. Matt came into casting -- we looking for good-looking guys in LA...Matt was fairly unassuming, I remember he was listening to his iPod in the corner with his glasses on. Gail pulled me aside and say 'keep an eye on that guy, he's a star.' He came in and read and we liked him right away...we brought him back two or three times, USA is really particular with the casting -- which was frustrating at the time but I'm really glad we took the time to get it right.
"There was a moment in the room -- it was the scene from the pilot where he was going to Peter with the photo...that was the audition scene. About halfway through that scene I looked over at the USA executives and nodded. I knew we had the right guy."
I then asked Jeff why he thought cable TV as a medium was working so successfully, with shows like "White Collar" and "Burn Notice" leading the way in opposition to the more generalized network show:
"It's interesting because there were some rumors that when Leno was leaving that 10:00 slot, that USA -- with us and "Psych" and "Burn Notice" -- would move over and take that spot on NBC. To be honest I was terrified -- I don't think there was any reality to that rumor but hearing it scared the heck out of me.
"I can't speak for the other networks but USA is a really good network. For me creatively, USA is really two things. One is they know who they are which is really the biggest thing. Having developed shows at networks before, the hardest [thing] is when the network itself doesn't know what their network identity is. Then you get pulled in a lot of directions. One day they might tell you 'you're a teen drama' and then say 'you're a darker 10 o'clock show.' That sort of thing is very hard to develop any sort of coherency to a show.
"USA knows exactly who they are...they embrace that. The other thing that's wonderful creatively is that I don't worry they will can the show if we don't pull in the numbers...luckily for us, we've been pretty successful off the top. But it was just that freedom of knowing that we can develop the show we want to develop.
"What ends up happening a lot of the time [is] it becomes this kind of weird pendulum effect. You have one episode where the numbers are bad -- and keep in mind we may be six episodes downstream by the time that episode airs -- and so if one set of numbers are bad, you may get the call that 'you need more female appeal on the show.' You're reacting to it...but by the time you get to [it] there's a new issue...if you ever wonder why certain shows in the middle of the season start getting weird and going all over the place, that's why. You're reacting to something happening previously in the season.
"Probably the success of cable has to do with the cable networks having some sort of identity. If you tune in to FX, you know what you're going to get...and the virtue of having a smaller, more targeted audience. You're not trying to play the board and make every thing happy. "The Shield" was one of my favorite shows...you couldn't do that on NBC or CBS.
"...Now, thanks to "Monk" and "Burn Notice," USA is cool to watch now. A couple of years ago, when you looked at USA Network, you would see "guilty pleasure" attached. I've only seem that attached to us a couple of times. So I think there's that sort of awakening when people say, 'hey...it's cool to watch cable.'"
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"White Collar" airs Tuesdays at 10:00 Eastern. Are you a fan of the show? Feel free to share your thoughts with a comment below.
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Comments
Love White Collar--the chemistry of the characters, the face that it keeps my attention, as well as makes me chuckle and smile through the show. A highlight of my week.
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