Welcome to It’s a Hit! In this series, IndieWire speaks to creators and showrunners behind a few of our favorite television programs about the moment they realized their show was breaking big.
A basketball-themed Netflix comedy starring Kate Hudson might seem like a surefire recipe for a hit, but as showrunner David Stassen told IndieWire, you really just never know.
“We felt like we had a great cast, and we had the benefit of a lot of time with the show before going to production, because of a delay in the room starting and then the writers’ strike, I like to say the show just got to bake a little longer,” he told IndieWire. “We really knew who our characters were, and we knew the family and the dynamics. We loved the world and the family, and we loved our cast, but you just don’t know how something’s going to be received. Shows with bigger names have have failed, and shows with nobodies have been huge hits.”
But “Running Point” was received to the tune of an instant #1 on Netflix, five consecutive weeks in the Top 10, and a Season 2 order within days of release. It was a bona fide hit, but by then, Stassen already had a feeling.
“I never received more messages on Instagram or [from] people I went to college with I haven’t talked to in 20 years — my mom’s friends, my brother’s friends, just the most random assortment of people,” he said. “Over the weekend, it felt like it really took hold.”
It’s a success he shares with longtime collaborators Ike Barinholtz and Mindy Kaling, as well as crew from “The Mindy Project” and “History of the World,” from grips and electricians to cinematographer Marco Fargnoli and producing director Michael Weaver.
“A lot of it felt familiar,” Stassen shared. “What felt different is it felt like a really adult show. ‘The Mindy Project,’ it felt like we were all a bunch of kids getting to make something. There was a lot of pressure and a lot of rules and notes, but it still felt like, ‘Wow, we’re a lot of young people in charge.’ Mindy was in charge, and she was she was young. This felt like we were now adults making an adult show, but still got to be funny and goofy.”
Below, Stassen shares the unusually long process of getting “Running Point” to the screen and which NBA legend spoke to him about the show.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
IndieWire: What did the original pitch look like? I describe it to people as “Succession” meets “Ted lasso” with Kate Hudson. Am I close?
David Stassen: You’re right in the ballpark. That’s really close. I always thought of it as a “Righteous Gemstones” in the world of basketball, because I love the dysfunction of that family and how mean they are to each other. “Gemstones” is one of my favorite shows in the last decade, but I think our characters probably redeem themselves with their family members a little bit more. There’s definitely “Succession” vibes, somebody called it “‘Arrested Development’ meets ‘Ted Lasso’” — I had never thought of “Arrested Development,” one of my favorite shows ever, but that one also works in terms of a wealthy family with total dysfunction.
Did anything major change from when you were first shopping it around?
We slowed down the romance between Isla and the coach, between Kate Hudson and Jay Ellis. I think we had originally thought maybe that would be a reveal in the pilot, that she and the coach were secretly together, but we ended up slowing it down. I think that was really beneficial and kept the audience more interested in where this was going to go.
And then we went back and forth on would it be the Lakers or not. It was almost the Lakers, and then it ended up not being the Lakers. All of our partners are really cool — Warner Bros., Netflix — they did not have a big opinion. They were like, “Whatever you guys think is best.” Jeannie Buss, who owns the Lakers and is a producer on the show, was open to it being the Lakers, but also did not care. Ultimately, it worked out better that we got to do a fictional team, so the family felt more real in that world. All the stories could come out of this environment we created, and we didn’t have to manage everybody’s expectations who already know who the Lakers are.
And then you don’t run into, “Who’s that supposed to be?” and people trying to draw parallels.
Yeah, we got to do our mix. We have a character that’s an inspiration from Kobe [Bryant], LeBron [James], Michael Jordan — not just, “Oh, that’s definitely this person or that person.”
Obviously Kate’s attachment was huge, and an early step within this. What was your reaction when you first learned that she had read it and was interested?
Total shock. We were early in the writers’ room and I think Mindy’s manager, Howard Klein, who’s the producer on the show, told us Kate’s gonna read it. You know, you hear this stuff all the time. OK, we’ll wait three to five weeks for a pass from a big star, and then we’ll move on. I don’t know if it was a week later or three or five days later — Kate loved it. Then the strike happened, and we had to wait months and months to talk to her. But it turns out she grew up sort of knowing Jeannie Buss, going to LA Kings games, and the Buss family bringing in Kate and her family. Jeannie was kind of like a big sister to Kate when they were much younger.
So Kate just knew the world. She comes from a dynastic family herself, and she’s a big sports fan, and so yeah — just shock. And then: “Of course, this makes perfect sense.” There were moments when we were shooting the pilot, where she was in line to get the steak, and Jackie (Fabrizio Guido) spills the juice on her, with the hair flowing and the band around her neck — I’ve gone to games with Jeannie Buss now, and I said, “She looks exactly like Jeannie Buss at a Lakers game.” I was like, “Wow, she had to play this part.”
We had no episodes written besides the pilot before the strike. So she read it, she was interested, everything shut down, and then we started writing toward Kate in the fall of 2023 and early 2024.
How did that affect digging into the character? When you already know, it’s just different, and it’s not a luxury that you always get to have.
We didn’t know her personally all that well. I’d been to a couple parties at her house and had never met her. She’s known for throwing these huge, great parties. So I’d been to her house a few times and but we didn’t know her. It was using kind of what we knew about her in her performances; she’s fun, she’s beautiful, she’s smart, but she can also play the rube in a scene. We got to use all those things, and then as we got to know her more, it became fun on set to to figure out what’s a good energy for her to play to.
I read that you had a lot of time before production where you were just able to sit with the project. Can you tell me a more about that and what that time was like creatively?
It took years. We had written the pilot, and it was expensive, so there was some rewriting of the pilot and some negotiating with the studio on what we were going to save for the second episode so we could afford it all. So we pushed some stuff in the pilot into the second episode. That takes weeks, and then you’re waiting for, “Are we going to do it with the Lakers? Netflix is talking to the NBA about it.” The room was supposed to start in January of 2023 and we didn’t start till March, so we had extra time. Ike, Mindy, and I were getting together multiple days a week and just getting to talk about the characters more, and their dynamic.
So going into the room, we really knew not just who the characters were, but we talked about where we saw the season heading. It was helpful to the writers in the room to really feel like there was a sense of direction on the show so they could pitch. It’s hard to pitch in a total black hole sometimes, if you don’t know what your boss or your showrunner wants. Everyone just might be saying random things that could go a million different directions. But we kind of knew the path that we wanted to take.
Then the strike happened and we got to think about the show more, we got to think about the show for five more months. And then we had 12 or 13 more weeks of writing after the strike. Really, the show was just forming that whole time — a year and a half probably after we had written the pilot — before we shot.
What was the moment during that process where you felt like you had something special?
I think it was when we saw the first cut of the pilot. James Ponsoldt, who directed the first two, he’s a great director. We were in our writers’ room during production and we got to watch the pilot. It was long and there was stuff to change, but we were like, “Oh, this works.” You just had that feeling that it works, like you didn’t make a total piece of shit — and then you never know if it’s gonna find the audience. There’s a lot of good things that don’t find their audience. We had a feeling, and then then you kind of go forward with a little more confidence. You start working on set, and eventually you direct towards those things that are working as you watch cuts come in.
You, Mindy, and Ike have worked together for years. How has that working relationship evolved, and what was it like this time working with Netflix?
Mindy, Ike, and I — we communicate constantly, so it’s not like we ever get together and have to catch up. We all have a really similar sense of humor. Ike and I have one brain, so Mindy only has to know one of us to understand the dynamic, probably. We just get along great. We like the same things. We think the same things are funny. And Netflix was just awesome. They saw the vision of the show. They saw this big, family, workplace comedy, maybe something they haven’t done a lot of in the past, something maybe for a broad audience. They have broad, broad hits, but sometimes it feels like it’s more focused on “This is for women,” or “This is for fans of this type of show.” So Netflix was a great partner, them and Warner Bros.
Executives get a bad rap. I love “The Studio,” currently, and executives are definitely the butt of the joke not just in that show but in general — but these are people who all want the same thing. They all love TV, and they love movies, and they’ve been really good partners.
OK, let’s say it’s the night before the show is about to premiere on Netflix. What is your headspace? What are your expectations?
It’s funny, the morning the show came out, I was so relieved that it was finally out. I’d done the premiere and spoke at the premiere and done some interviews and the red carpet and all the stuff that a writer kind of dreads. Then I was walking my dogs the morning it came out, and for the first time, I was like, “Oh, no, people actually have to watch it now.” I was so focused on getting to the finish line of it coming out, I forgot it actually had to be seen by people. I think it was a good thing I hadn’t thought about it yet. I had hit the benchmarks of other of other parts of the process, so I was focused on those.
In this town, what you’re working on, for better or worse, — usually for worse — becomes your identity for the time being, because it’s so consuming. When you’re not coaching soccer or walking the dogs, all you get to do is this one thing. So it’s part of your identity, and so you just want people to see it. You just want people to know the thing you’re talking about actually exists. Just a lot of anticipation the night before. You can’t wait to share the thing you’ve been working on.
Well, a lot of people did end up seeing it. In the following days or weeks, what was the moment then when you were like, “Oh, I think we have a hit.”
It was probably the Tuesday. It came out on Thursday, and I think the next Tuesday we had the call with Netflix where they picked up the show. So it was pretty early. Even even before that, I never received more messages on Instagram or [from] people I went to college with I haven’t talked to in 20 years, my mom’s friends, my brother’s friends, just the most random assortment of people. Over the weekend, it felt like it really took hold and then, yeah, getting the early pickup call was, was really exciting.
Were there any pinch-me moments — people who you didn’t expect who saw the show, audience reactions, memes?
This is really for basketball people. Jeannie Buss’s right-hand woman at the Lakers is Linda Rambis, and she is married to Kurt Rambis, who was a Laker in the ’80s. He wore glasses, he got in fist fights with the Celtics — he’s a legend, and he works for the Lakers now. At a game a few weeks ago, he came up to me and thanked me for making his wife so happy, because she loved the show; for years she thought that she and Jeannie should have a show about themselves because their life is so crazy. I couldn’t believe that Kurt Rambis, someone I grew up watching play basketball with Magic Johnson versus Larry Bird, was thanking me for something I did. I’m such a basketball fan, I’m always starstruck when I see these guys in real life. So that was a real pinch-me moment.
That’s so cool. With Season 2 coming down the pipeline, how are you feeling? There have to be different expectations after the magnitude of a major Netflix hit.
We’re in the writers’ room. It feels natural to pitch on these characters now, the room really knows them. There is a little pressure to make these characters perform and be in situations that the audience loves and has already responded to — but also we want to elevate it and make it different and original. It’s that balance of “The formula works, but how do we keep it fresh?” But we’re having fun, and we’re going to start shooting it this fall for for it to come out next year.
We love a tight production. You have mentioned that the 10-episode season is great, but why stop there? To that end, what are some pros and cons in your opinion of how television comedy has evolved in the past 10-15, years?
The pros are there’s obviously so much more to watch. There’s so many more opportunities, so many different stories being told. It’s not just three networks making seven or eight shows on the air in a year. I don’t think in 2001 or 1995 we would have had “The Bear” or “The Studio.” We had “Larry Sanders,” which is one of my favorite shows ever. So the drive from everyone in town to make exciting new stuff is there more than ever.
The downside is — I don’t know the financial reasons behind it — it just seems like eight to 12 episodes is standard, unless you’re on CBS or ABC. And now the streamers want libraries of stuff, so it’d be nice to help them build their libraries and produce more shows. I feel like our audience would have eaten up two, four, six, eight more episodes. But an advantage is it’s great when we go into production and we have basically the entire season written. It is great to be on set and I can answer any question from an actor about where their character is headed or where the story is headed, because we’ve written it. We’ve broken the season. We know how it’s going to end.
You were the “boots-on-the-ground showrunner,” because Ike also had to perform, and Mindy just had a baby. What was it like? You built this together, and then you had to divide and conquer.
I had Akshara Sekar, one of our producers, with me on set, and she was invaluable. Joe Mande was on set for a little bit. Ike, when he wasn’t shooting “The Studio,” would come by. Mindy stopped by a few times, but yeah, she had a baby like right before we started shooting. Mike Weaver, our producing director, is so experienced. I call him our Swiss Army knife, because he used to be a cameraman and a DP and now he directs, so he can walk on to a set or look at a scene, and just help start solving problems. And Marco Fargnoli, our DP, is so experienced, and everyone leans on to him to help design the shots and the blocking of scenes — so it really is a village that does it.
The actors are so lovely; Kate and Drew and Scotty and Brenda and Fab and Justin and Jay, everyone just got along so great that it’s a really great environment. It’s a lot of fun — sometimes too much fun. Sometimes the actors are talking right as we’re rolling into action, and you gotta kind of tell them to cut the story short so we can get back to work. But that’s that’s a great problem to have.
I saw that cast together at a panel and I was like, “Oh, this is real. You’re obsessed with each other.”
They are. They are siblings by choice at this point. They get along great. It’s a really funny dynamic.
Any highlights that you want to share from the writers’ room, anything that was particularly fun or challenging to break?
There’s a chopped cheese sandwich from Bodega Park I really recommend for anyone who could pick one up. We’re obsessed with the chopped cheese sandwich from Bodega Park. Besides that, I think the hardest we laughed was pitching for Chet Hanks’ mom on the show Bonnie Bugg, Travis Bugg’s mom, played by Nicole Sullivan, my dear friend. We loved pitching on this character, and a lot of times the room bit is better than on the day when you when you actually put it on its on his feet.
Nicole killed it as Bonnie Bugg, and that’s one of my favorite memories, seeing that character we were crying laughing in the room about come to life. It’s one of the best episodes of the season, where she tries to take over the Waves and gets in Kate’s way and is overbearing in Travis’s life. So that’s a great memory. That and the chopped cheese — they’re like, neck-and-neck.
“Running Point” is now streaming on Netflix.
