Kurt Sutter details the creative and logistical issues that TV productions will face in the coronavirus era

Deadline

The Sons of Anarchy creator says coronavirus will have to come up in storylines unless the show is set in a different period. "How do you address it? Because you don’t want to hit people over the head with it, right?" he says. "They’ve just come out of it. They don’t want to be overwhelmed with it, but you can’t ignore it, right? It would be disrespectful to the people who have suffered loss. I think initially, especially with shows that are, you know, present-day, it’s going to be a challenge." Sutter adds that TV productions will face many logistical issues. "In terms of production, here’s the deal. There are some dynamics where it is impossible to create any sort of social distance," he says. "You can’t have makeup applied or your hair worked on without proximity. So those relationships will have to fall under the same standards as the actor relationships. Meaning, the people that you have to come in contact with and can’t wear a mask with. Yes, you can have a makeup person with a mask, but you can’t have an actor with a mask if you’re applying makeup. So, I think those levels of production that require a certain amount of intimacy, for people to do their jobs, will have to fall under different guidelines. Which is whether it’s being tested every day or once a week so that people feel safe, and those people will be the most vulnerable, like it said in your article. The actors will be the most vulnerable, right?" Sutter adds that even the location scouting will need to be overhauled because of coronavirus. "You have to find locations that you’re going to be able to create a safe space for people," he says. "You have to find a location that is separate and safe, away from the public. They’re talking about doing everything on stages, which means that they’re going to have writers try to write towards home sets. But you’re still not going to be able to do everything on a soundstage. And for those things, you’re going to have to find locations that you can isolate. That’s going to be a greater challenge. That’s going to take more time to do. And then once you have those locations, and you get into the nuts and bolts of it, you have a production team that is used to constantly getting into a conference room and discussing how to do things. I guess to a certain degree that can change, and can happen virtually, to a certain degree. But I think once you start working up the ladder in terms of putting together the pieces, it becomes increasingly more difficult to do that without having the proximity of artists and collaborators."