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The first season came out in September.
Were you surprised by the response?
Did you know it was going to be like this?Tony Yacenda: We had no idea!
Dan Lagana: Its dry enough that it is a question mark.
Were huge true-crime fans, but who knows how many people are as into true crime as us?
We thought that maybe the Venn diagram would be really small.
What sorts of true-crime things are you into now?
Have you been watching or listening to more of it?DP: Errol Morris!
TY: Yeah.Wormwoodwas so cool, how they executed that.
DP: Were huge fans ofS-Town.
DL: Were lucky that the genre just keeps going.
In the early stages of season one, we worried, Will this craze finally end?
And it totally hasnt.
DP: No, its exploded!
Youre watching, like, Did the government really they didallof this stuff!
We always think,Whats the medium-stakes crime?
Whats the less mature, amateur version of this?
Oftentimes, thats how we come up with our best bits.
DY: And were drawing from different true-crime documentaries.
The first [season] wasSerialstructurally, and visually it was closest toMaking a Murderer.
This year, were not abandoning those references completely, but we want to create a new aesthetic.
TY:The Jinxis a good one.
DP: What was the Israeli one we were talking about?
TY:Shadow of Truth!
DP: Yeah, we loveShadow of Truth.
TY: Errol Morris stuff.Thin Blue Linewas really what got us into the genre.
I wonder if we could get Errol Morris to watch it?
HelovedNathan for You.TY: Oh, we loveNathan for You.
They go to another high school, a private Catholic high school.
Do they switch schools or are they just investigating something?DP: Its part of a senior project.
TY: It exists in the same world, but its a different story.
In every season, that should be the engine you should really care about this mystery.
If were relying on, Hey, remember your favorite characters?
then its a disservice to it, because youre not caring about this huge mystery.
DP: Were winking at the audience, but in a different way.
Its Dont you love documentaries as much as we do?
not Dont you love our season and our show?
Because if the rhythm feels jokey, then its not functioning.
DL: I feel like mockumentary, specifically, weve become accustomed to certain rhythms.
DL: We also added scenes that just wouldnt go in a data pipe mockumentary.
Like the scene with Dylans mother very earnestly talking about how she believes her son is innocent.
She gets emotional about it.
I guess this just isnt a dick-joke parody.
We knew we needed a scene like that early on.
DY: Because it makes everything else funnier!
And then we can blindside them with the humor.
You use delayed jokes and big emotional moments, and you avoid big-name actors.
We would take a stab at create those moments in the edit, but the photography was never perfect.
That just has more of a documentary aesthetic than a mockumentary aesthetic.
Are you looking at shows that arent true-crime documentaries?
What are the influential high-school stories?DL: I always likedFreaks and Geeks.
DP: Yeah,Freaks and Geeks!
DL: I thought that was a very honest depiction of high school.
TY: We watched that one a lot.
But the biggest reference we had tonally wasElection.
That movie really is a satire of high school and politics.
Thats what we wanted to do.
Are there different reference points for a private Catholic school?
Did you go to private high schools?DL: I did one year.
DP: We hired a bunch of writers that did.
Were always picking peoples brains.
TY: We watchedLady Bird!
But [season two] is not fullRushmore.
We didnt want it to be likeDead Poets Society.
Its still a show about the kids you went to high school with.
Are the stakes different at a private school?DP: For the second season, its very crime-dependent.
But its a time in your life when the stakes are high every day!
Whats the rest of your life going to be?
It doesnt matter if youre born on third base, youre asking yourself that same question, you know?
Season one felt like an indictment of the true-crime genre, as well as a great replication of it.
Like, All right, Sarah Koenig [fromSerial], lets figure this out together.
Theres this hubris that we all have, that were better judges of character than the system.
DP: The genre manipulates you so masterfully.
If we can replicate that, it feels like a magic trick.
TY: Yeah, it gets you to care about these high-school stories.
How do you guys manage the balance of silly and serious?DP: We like delusional people.
We gravitate toward characters that arent necessarily self-aware.
Instead of Steven Avery, its a dumb SoCal stoner.
DP: And the crime is funny, too.
The foundation is funny.
Once we have the fundamentals, like, my conversations with the cinematographer are overwhelmingly serious.
And in the writers room, its a lot of logically putting the mystery together.
DP: The first two weeks are just mystery.
Its silly, we laugh, but were mystery first.
The top of the season is probably more comedic than the back half.
I think that surprised people.
It lands more effectively because weve laughed the whole way through leading up to that.
On the flip side of that, Tony Soprano is somebody that you develop this weird empathy with.
Drama is whats carrying it, but because youre watching it for the drama, he can behilarious.
That show has, to me, the funniest moments of any TV show.
DP: OrBreaking Bad!
LikeWormwood?TY: Yeah.
It was kind of tough because in the writers room, everybody knows what the show is.
But then youre like, Were throwing out the rules!
DP: We also lean significantly less on voice-over.
More of the talking heads tell the story.
How does a talking head manipulate the audience differently?TY: Season one is really structured likeSerial.
You know all of the context right away, and its like, Okay, now were analyzing it.
What stage of production are you in?DP: Were in post-production!
Are you thinking that its going to be DP: [Laughs] Are people going to be disappointed?
TY: Weve tried not to think about it too much.
And I think we like [season two] more.
TY: Am I going to like it?
DP: We didnt know about the first season!
TY: But we really love it.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
