Check out our exclusive interview with the creator of Netflix’s new show, ‘Daybreak’, Aron Eli Coleite!
Writer and Producer, Aron Eli Coleite.
Picture Credit: IMDb
Writer and Producer Aron Eli Coleite, best known for his work on hit sci-fi and thriller shows like ‘Heroes’, ‘Star Trek: Discovery’, and ‘Home’, makes a return with the new Netflix series, ‘Daybreak’. The show, taking place after a nuclear apocalypse destroyed civilization and turned all adults into zombie-like creatures called ‘Ghoulies’, follows Josh Wheeler and his two misfit companions Angelica Green and Wesley Fists, as he navigates a world run by factions of high school cliques in order to reunite with the girl he loves. We got a chance to speak with Aron about creating the show, check it out below!
The Knockturnal: Can you talk about the inspiration for this show?
Aron Eli Coleite: For me, high school and junior high were the worst and best times of my life. Every day was a struggle. I felt like a complete outsider. Like no one understood me. I think a lot of kids feel that way. At that time, I remember watching a relatively obscure horror movie called Night of the Comet. It used to be on HBO all the time. In the movie, a comet passes by earth and most of the population dies – except the teenagers. For those teenagers, this was the best thing that ever happened to them. They could do anything they wanted. Be anything they wanted. The high school version of Aron thought a lot about what would happen if the world ended. What I would do. Who I would be…
Our co-creator and director, Brad Peyton, found Brian Ralph’s amazing book in a comic shop and optioned it immediately. Originally, Brad wrote a movie version of the comic. When I first met Brad, I only wanted to talk about Daybreak. Brian Ralph’s comic has a narrator who directly addresses the camera like Ferris Bueller. I loved the idea that there was a character who looked at the apocalypse not as the end of the world or a terrible tragedy, but as the best thing that ever happened to him. It evoked all the feelings I had in high school. Brad, Jeff Fierson (our executive producer), and I spent the entire meeting recalling our own high school experiences and how we would each reinvent ourselves as different people if there was an apocalypse. It was this optimistic and wish-fulfilling view of Armageddon that became the seed of the show.
The Knockturnal: The cast of the show is really amazing and each one fits their character incredibly well. What was the casting process like?
Aron Eli Coleite: First of all, thank you. We think the cast is incredibly talented and have brought these roles to life in ways we could never imagine. Second, we have an incredible casting director, Denise Chamian. She read the scripts and said the voices of the characters were so specific that we would only find one actor that would be right for the role. Denise was absolutely right. After looking at tons of actors, only one stood out for each role. Alyvia was Angelica. Austin was Wesley. Krysta was Ms. Crumble. And Greg was most definitely Eli. There was never a second choice.
The hardest roles to cast were Sam and Josh. Because their story is so integral to the season, we had to match them perfectly, and we didn’t have the ability to do chemistry reads to see actors together. We were very fortunate that Colin and Sophie have such different energies that just blend perfectly together.
Mathew Broderick as Principal Burr in ‘Daybreak’ Picture Credit: IMDb
The Knockturnal: Having Mathew Broderick on the show doesn’t hurt the comparisons between Daybreak and Ferris Bueller. Did knowing he was playing the role of Principal Burr change how you approached writing for the character?
Aron Eli Coleite: We actually wrote the role for Matthew. He was always our top choice. The show takes a lot of inspiration from John Hughes’s movies. Matthew always seemed like the best actor for the role not only for the delicious irony that Ferris was now playing the Principal — and an extremely sadistic principal at that – but Matthew’s other work made him perfect. The Freshman. Election.
We never thought we would actually get Matthew. Matthew instantly and totally understood what we were trying to do, but he did have one concern. The kids in the show have truly foul mouths. Just filthy. Kids curse in the most brilliant ways. It’s an art form. Matthew wondered if we were using too many derogatory terms to describe the female anatomy. One of the best moments of my entire life is having Matthew Broderick ask, “Do you have to use the word… vadge?” We told him that we use an equal number of colloquial terms for male genitalia, and that eased his concerns.
The Knockturnal: The show steps away from the traditional post-apocalyptic style and instead uses the dangers of the apocalypse to elevate these kids’ coming to age experiences. Can you talk about the decision to diverge from the traditional post-apocalyptic style to instead make it feel like high-school with much higher stakes?
Aron Eli Coleite: This was exactly what was at the center of the core metaphor of the show. Surviving high school is like surviving the apocalypse. It is both the hardest time in your life and also the most wonderful. The teenage brain is still developing, which is why the emotions you feel when you’re in high school feel so heightened. You love more. You hurt harder. Even the connection you feel to music, movies, and television is heightened (which is one reason every generation feels like the media of their youth is the best and it’s all gone downhill ever since). We wanted our apocalypse to feel like an authentic coming of age story, complete with all the love, betrayal and school dances that seem familiar to the audience but set against the extreme backdrop of the apocalypse.
This gave every story a heightened sense of tension, stakes, and fun. Our characters are literally fighting for their survival. Even in the 1950s, we saw movies and TV shows where a rival gang showed up at a school dance to cause trouble. In our Armageddon, the rival tribe shows up, but now it’s with chainsaws. The audience is extremely genre literate. They’ve seen all the movies, TV shows, video games and comics that we’ve seen. This gave us the license we needed to try to subvert those tropes, and in the process, hopefully, create something unique.
The Knockturnal: The show uses a lot of different elements from several, very different genres to create something completely unique. How did you go about balancing those elements and what challenges did you face in doing so?
From left to right: Angelica (Alyvia Alyn Lind), Wesley (Austin Crute), Josh (Colin Ford), and Eli (Gregory Kasyan) Picture Credit: IMDb
Aron Eli Coleite: The secret weapon of the show is POV. We’re most interested in telling character stories. I believe that people are the star of their own movie, the heroes of their own story. The great thing about people is that we are all unique. We’re all in completely different movies. We dug deeply into each character to figure out how they would tell their story to the audience. That gave us the ability to be playful with different genres from episode to episode without the audience feeling like the show was schizophrenic. The POV was still grounded within the character. As long as we adhered to the character, it felt like we could go from Legos to woodblock paintings. This was an extremely difficult creative challenge because essentially each episode is almost like a brand new pilot. We had to craft a new visual language to tell the story. This was both almost impossibly hard and incredibly rewarding at the same time.
The Knockturnal: The humor is a very important part of the show. How did you go about maintaining the style of today’s teenager’s humor while still making the comedy accessible to everyone, even those outside of that generation?
Aron Eli Coleite: Can I be totally honest? I don’t know. Go check out my IMDB page. You won’t find a whole lot of comedy credits. In fact, you won’t find any. I’ve never done anything quite like this before. It’s actually really terrifying. To make matters even more difficult, none of the writing staff came from a comedy background either. This was partially by design and partially coincidence. The writing staff was made with the strongest and most diverse voices I could find. It just so happened that most of them were genre or drama writers. I think this worked out for the best because we were never trying to write jokes, but simply attempting to find the humor.
The gang of kids in ‘Daybreak’ Picture Credit: IMDb
The Knockturnal: Finally, can you tell us about the recently announced podcast, “The Only Podcast Left”, that is set in the Daybreak universe?
Aron Eli Coleite: Yes. This is definitely exciting and feels like a creative exploration into the unknown. Netflix approached us about making their first narrative podcast. At first, I was both completely honored and totally apprehensive. I didn’t want to make something just for the sake of making it. If it was going to be tied to the world of Daybreak, it had to feel completely organic. The show itself is extremely visual and irreverent. A podcast had to carry similar DNA. Except, it’s a podcast — so we’re immediately cutting out the visuals. I didn’t want to simply follow around a different tribe in our apocalypse that just happened to be in podcast form. I wanted to figure out a way to embrace the audio as a necessary and integral aspect of the storytelling, and then I had a concept that I couldn’t get out of my head. It was just surreal and profane enough that it not only made me laugh, but it also felt like it could fit in Daybreak. I’m extremely obsessed with listening to and learning about the rise of the after-show fan podcasts. How it creates a sense of community around a show – I wanted to do the Daybreak version of that. The core concept is that we’re following the AV Club. We learn the way they’ve hacked into and powered up all of the cameras around Glendale. At first, this was their method of surviving the apocalypse so they could surveil any marauders coming. But these are kids who haven’t had any new content to binge, so watching the cameras turned them into voyeurs. They’ve been watching the same show we’re watching and have become fans of Josh, Angelica, Wesley, Turbo, and Mona. But what starts as a fancast takes an absurdist turn as the drama of the AV Club’s personal life completely takes over the show. In the way that Daybreak is able to hop around genres, the podcast is also able to do something similar in the podcast space — being able to dabble in mystery shows like “Serial” or cultural podcasts like “Pod Save America” or the NPR pledge drive or all of the commercials we’ve gotten so used like Casper Mattress. It’s an exciting experiment in storytelling.
‘Daybreak’ is out on Netflix now, check it out!
