Mr. & Mrs. Smith's showrunner previews the subversive new spy drama

Prepare for Mr. & Mrs. Smith to completely surprise you, at least according to series co-creator Francesca Sloane, who developed the show with star Donald Glover. Prime Video’s spy romance drama, which drops all eight episodes on February 2, is loosely based on the 2005 action film of the same name starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. But, as Sloane tells The A.V. Club, you should expect a fun subversion of the spy-romance genre here.

The show follows John (Glover) and Jane Smith (Maya Erskine), two spies paired by a mysterious agency. They get “married,” move into a New York City loft, and build a life together. It’s all a guise for various challenging missions that take them around the globe.

The A.V. Club spoke to Sloane about reuniting with Glover after they worked together on Atlanta’s final season, how they landed on Erskine to replace Phoebe Waller-Bridge, how Mr. & Mrs. Smith differs from The Americans, and the new show’s impressive roster of guest stars.

Francesca Sloane: When Donald asks you to do something, you’d be foolish to not want to for so many reasons. The purest and realest reason was we have a great creative shorthand. There’s a genuine understanding between the two of us and our sensibilities. It’s a joy to work with him because of that. We both like to pull from real life. We both laugh at the same things. So to be able to continue forward creatively with somebody you have that dynamic with is a great goal. It was exciting to take on something challenging and out of my wheelhouse, and then make it feel honest and authentic in a way that it did feel like something we should’ve been writing all along.

AVC: Is that something you both took away from your time working on Atlanta’s final season together?

FS: Definitely. I was a newcomer to Atlanta season four. They had a strong foundation in the room already, they were great friends, and they had written previously successful seasons with that established alchemy. I was nervous to join in on that, but it was an incredible experience. With Atlanta, the world was our creative oyster. You could really experiment and play around; the story could go anywhere and it would be acceptable. In terms of my career, it’ll be a highlight because of the respect and philosophy I experienced.

AVC: You’ve also worked on Fargo, which is one of my favorite TV shows. It similarly uses dark moments of humor and unexpected thrills to study its characters. How did working on it affect your approach to something like Mr. And Mrs. Smith?

FS: That’s an interesting question, and you’re also the first person to ask me that in relation to Fargo, so thank you for that. What was really cool about working on it with the writers and, of course, Noah Hawley, who is a genius, was thinking about different ways to portray action that somehow looped back around to informing characters as you said. I held onto that here in terms of our missions and any action onscreen. We wanted those moments to inform something real to humanity. Even outside of John and Jane’s relationship, which was always the anchor for why we did what we did, you very rarely see people running around during a chase sequence and talking about how their knees hurt, or characters playing their age and thinking about that stuff. Now that I’m thinking about it, it’s a nod to something we used to think about in Fargo. The action feels real.

AVC: Mr. & Mrs. Smith has been in the making for a while, since it was announced in 2021. How did you and Donald navigate the breaks, starting with Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s departure? How did her exit impact plans for the show?

FS: When we were working with Phoebe, it was still very early days. We maintained the idea of wanting the relationship to be the anchor, knowing we wanted it to be about two people meeting and seeing their relationship evolve into something real, and showcasing their milestones along with their missions. We held onto that. It was a vision that felt correct. The thing that was then missing was the question of, “Who is Jane?”

As much as John and Jane are both important, Jane’s story has the strongest arc. Once we figured out who should play her, even though we had some notion of who the character was in terms of being closed off and protective of herself, and someone whose walls go down as she goes forward in this relationship, Maya Erskine showed us who our Jane was supposed to be.

AVC: How did you actually land on Maya for the part? Was there a chemistry read with Donald?

FS: Maya is the best. It’s one of those things where I tried to listen to my gut when we were looking for Jane. Hers was the first name that came to my mind. We were on a text thread with Carmen Cuba, our casting director, and Hiro Murai, our executive producer and director, and they also said yes. Donald was intrigued by that. Then I went down on this journey on why my gut was saying Maya, and I think it’s because she’s a surprising choice. It was exciting to get her out of that Pen15 bowl-cut wig and give her the opportunity.

She’s an incredible actor. As we’ve seen, she has a vulnerability and generosity that allows her to go to almost humiliating places and make it feel brave and beautiful. She felt like somebody that our version of Donald playing John would feel real with. It felt authentic. In terms of a chemistry test, Donald met with her on a Zoom call first. He immediately loved her. Then I got on a Zoom with her, and we got along so organically, all of us. Then we crossed our fingers and started rolling the cameras, hoping the chemistry would be there. And it was.

AVC: What was it like to work with both of them specifically as actors to craft their characters, knowing they’ve each co-created their own brilliant TV shows in Atlanta and Pen15?

FS: Yeah, they are both exceptional writers with great insights, so I knew it would translate to their characters. I knew that about Donald already, but Maya is next level. Any time there was a moment that felt inauthentic to Jane, she could sniff it out, and the course was corrected.

Donald wanted his character to be like a golden retriever and excitable. He wanted John to be like a 15-year-old kid who has an idea of what spy life would be and then feels disappointed in how different it is in reality. Jane was always supposed to be like a cat. She’s withholding and only lets her walls down when she’s ready, but then John’s influence and love affect her over time. So both Donald and Maya figured out how to bring those aspects to the characters.

AVC: What was it like to interweave Jane and John’s marriage with the missions? What were the conversations like about how much romance versus action there should be?

FS: The priority was to make sure the relationship remains true. The best version was anytime the mission would come into play, it would highlight each of their insecurities or how they were getting closer. For instance, one of the first ideas we ever had was of them being sent to protect a man-child played by Ron Perlman and take care of this person. It would draw them to have a conversation about whether they’d want kids, and we see that happen in an episode. We were allowed to get away with popcorn action so long as we invested in their marriage. If we found a way to do that, we could keep doing it in bigger and bigger ways as the episodes went on.

AVC: You also bring on impressive guest stars in each episode, including Perlman, Parker Posey, Michaela Coel, Paul Dano, John Turturro, and Sharon Horgan. How did you figure out who’s right for which role?

FS: Our guest cast is a dream come true. It’s extraordinary. And it depends. With Michaela Coel, we wrote the part with her in mind. We wanted it to be somebody who would be the most intimidating person you can imagine that your partner is secretly spending time with. Who’s cooler and more breathtaking than her? Donald is friends with Michaela, so he passed along the script, and thankfully she loved it and came onboard. With some of the others, it was important to have people who are legends but also have the acting chops, similar to what Donald and Maya have, of bringing out something raw but still having that twinkle in their eye and a bit of a wink to having fun.

AVC: What should audiences expect the most from the show and would you be open to working on a season two if it’s renewed?

FS: It’s a unique story. It’s a lovely, awkward, honest love story about genuine intimacy. It also has a lot of the stuff action fans would want in terms of being able to see exciting explosions, gunfights, and various locations. We wrote this wanting it to be a satisfying eight-hour movie, but if people should want more, we certainly have pretty fun ideas and take on a potential season two.

AVC: The spy-romance drama is a loaded genre. Did you guys watch any other projects for inspiration to figure out what to include, or how to subvert those tropes and expectations? I’m also asking because one of my favorites in this category is The Americans, and I’m wondering if you saw that, too.

FS: Yes, we watched a ton of things. We watched Hitchcock, Mission Impossible, the original movie, of course. In terms of the relationship, we watched Ingmar Bergman. We watched a lot of reality TV in terms of how a mysterious company pairs two people together and they’re suddenly in close proximity. And yes, The Americans is a great show. Most fantastically, [Philip and Elizabeth Jennings] are very competent. One of my favorites is when they’re disposing of a body in a suitcase, and it’s done so cleanly. That’s not Jane and John. We thought of showing the horror and awkwardness of it, and how clumsy and creepy it is to get rid of a body. So that’s our show.

AVC: Your show is inspired by the 2005 film and shares the same name. How did that end up being useful?

FS: It ends up being helpful because it’s interesting how people will have expectations about what it’s supposed to be, and we wanted to do something wholly unique and subvert those expectations. It’s more fun to do something surprising as an artist, to take what somebody might anticipate and do something different, so long as it’s satisfying. That’s what I hope we achieved. We just wanted to tell a story we liked, and this was the version of telling that story that spoke to Donald, Hiro, Maya, and everyone we collaborated with. So we listened to that, and I hope audiences like it too.