Filmmaker George Nolfi pulls triple duty on NBC’s new dramatic spy series Allegiance (based on an Israeli format) as director, executive producer, and showrunner. Nolfi’s no stranger to the spy genre having written and directed The Adjustment Bureau as well as penning the screenplays for The Bourne Ultimatum and The Sentinel, and with Allegiance he delves into the world of Russian spies living in contemporary America.
The Plot: “This high-octane thriller revolves around the O’Connor family and their son, Alex (Gavin Stenhouse), a young idealistic CIA analyst specializing in Russian affairs. Unbeknownst to him, both of his parents and his sister are part of a dormant Russian sleeper cell that has just been reactivated.
Years ago, Russian-born Katya (Hope Davis) was tasked by the KGB to recruit American businessman Mark O’Connor (Scott Cohen) as a spy, and the two fell in love. A deal was struck: As long as Katya remained an asset for Russia, she would be allowed to marry Mark and move to America. After years in America building a happy life and without word from Moscow, they thought they had escaped.
Now it seems that the new Mother Russia has one more mission — turning Alex into a spy. The SVR has re-enlisted the entire family into service as they plan a terrorist operation inside the U.S. border that will bring America to its knees. For these anguished parents, the choice is clear: betray their country… or risk their family.”
In support of the show’s upcoming premiere on February 5, 2015, Nolfi took part in a press conference during NBC’s TCA winter press day in Pasadena, CA. Here are some of the key questions Nolfi answered about the new series during the Q&A.
On how the project came about:
George Nolfi: “The project came to me. The CEO of Keshet, the company that owns the underlying property, asked to meet with me. We had a really interesting meeting. It’s a world that I thought was a very interesting way into the kind of national security spy role, which is something I’ve been interested in for 30+ years. Namely, this sort of central dilemma of a family that has to protect its son by spying on him. So it was just sort of a good fit with my interests and a really interesting premise.”
On changes from the original concept:
George Nolfi: “The central character of Alex is quite different. The sort of the issues that he has and the way that he’s the center of an investigation, his ability to see patterns that other people don’t see, but that coupled with he can sort of comprehend the most complex patterns out there and facts, but he can’t comprehend the most simple social situations. That changed, and then the binding together of the notion that he was investigating something that would uncover his parents as spies, that sort of central dilemma. The pilot takes off from that premise, changed in the way that I just talked about. Then from there, it’s a completely different ride.”
On relating to the central character of Alex played by Gavin Stenhouse:
George Nolfi: “I was looking for an interesting way into this particular story, this spy story, and I was also reaching back to some of my own childhood, and so it came really from that. I wouldn’t say there’s a direct relationship, but I had a pretty severe learning disability when I was kid. So the notion of feeling outside the system, outside the normal ways of social interaction but still having your mind work okay was something that I was very familiar with.
I would also just say the character has a lot of complexity to him, and it’s going to come out over the course of the season. We’ll know a lot more about him by the end of the season than we do in the pilot, obviously. So there’s no easy label to put on him.”
On the message sent out in the show’s opening scene:
George Nolfi: “Well, I think that, if you look at the world today versus the world 15 years ago, there’s probably a lot of things the average person in the public would never have imagined they were reading on the news – whether it’s a civilian jetliner getting shot down by a military missile or what happened in Paris or 9/11. I think there’s an increasing appreciation for how dangerous the world is and how serious the people, entities of all stripes are out there that want to do harm to, America, the West, whatever, civilization. So I wanted to send a message that the threat was serious and have it overhang the whole show.”
On comparisons to FX’s The Americans:
George Nolfi: “I mean, watch one or two episodes and I think it’s pretty clear that we’re going in a very different direction. This is fundamentally a family drama about people who really do not want to be spies, and they’re forced into this situation. They’re stuck in a vise. On the one hand, they face the possibility of death at the hands of SVR, and on the other hand, life imprisonment at the hands of the U.S. government. That’s just an extremely different setup, and then where we take it is very different as well.”
On finding a way for the audience to embrace these characters:
George Nolfi: “I don’t think there’s a sympathy problem at all with the characters, because they’re basically forced into this situation. I also think that what for me as a writer and filmmaker is kind of fascinating about kind of the five central characters is they are all in various ways – they’ve made some form of mistake, but they’re all in various ways caught in this vise and their moral code, whatever it is, gets challenged repeatedly. In order to get out of their situation, they have to do bad things, and as you’ll see during the season and hopefully in subsequent seasons, worse and worse and worse things but always with the desire to get out, with a desire to free themselves from this circumstances that they’re put in.”
On drawing on his films to help inform Allegiance:
George Nolfi: “I will say this is probably the most realistic, authentic depiction of the way the intelligence community actually operates, more so than a Bourne or something like that, which is a very sort of paranoid world. I have a luxury or an opportunity, I guess, in this show because the protagonists of the show are caught in this bind, which is a life and death bind. They can do the kind of extreme things that you need to do to keep a dramatic television show going.
Then the people who are around them, who work as FBI agents or CIA officers, CIA analysts can follow the rules, I can really describe how the intelligence community fits into the government and show it accurately. So, yeah, I guess I’d just make that point. I think you’ll see something that is more realistic in this realm than has really ever been on TV.”
On sustaining the tension throughout the season:
George Nolfi: “Well, I have a lot of tricks up my sleeve for later in the season, so I’m not worried about that. We change it up on you in a bunch of different ways.”
