Now that the killer was revealed in the final, chilling, exciting episodes of Harper’s Island, I gave Co-Executive Producer Karim Zreik a call to find out how he and the creative team of the show configured the show and if they knew from Day One who the killer really was.
Jim Halterman: I literally just finished watching the last 3 episodes of Harper’s Island and it was such a rush.
Karim Zreik: When you and I talked about the show before it aired, I said it kind of feels like two different shows because the first 4-5 episodes it’s a lot of set-up and then from the end of episode 5 on, it was just so fast-paced. It became like a running gun, horror, dark whodunit thing.
Chloe and Cal just about to take a leap.
JH: I’m still shocked that CBS let you get away with such gruesome murders. Each one shocked me more than the one before. I know it’s chilling but I started thinking which murder was my favorite so I wanted to ask which one was your favorite?
KZ: The one that took the longest to shoot was Mr. Wellington (Richard Burgi) in episode 5. The other one that is probably in everyone’s top 2 is the Cal/Chloe (Adam Campbell/Cameron Richardson) in episode 11 when they fall off the bridge. That was so emotional and then the song playing in the background…
JH: What was that song? It was really great.
KZ:…Civil Twilight is the name of the band. It just sort of amplified the emotions. I also liked when Booth (Sean Rogerson) accidentally shot himself in episode 4. That just sort of came out of nowhere and was very emotional. And Sully (Matt Barr), when Sully gets stabbed in 13.
JH: I don’t watch a lot of horror films anymore because they don’t truly scare me but this show got me because it didn’t just have the gore but you also got to know the characters really well. And, in terms of the gore, I loved that you guys didn’t hold back and went there. I mean, that poor guy…Danny (Brandon Jay McLaren) who gets his eye blown out by the memo holder. I loved the way you guys shot it when you see, from Danny’s POV, the sharp tip of the memo holder right there.
KZ: The best thing about it was the sound effect that scrunch. [laughs]
Henry (Christopher Gorham) isn’t the good guy we thought he was.
JH: Did you know the killer was going to be Henry (Christopher Gorham) the whole time?
KZ: Yeah, the whole time. When we first started breaking the story, we broke it backwards. We always knew it would be Henry because he was the one character who provided us the most motive and gave us the most reason for why he would want everyone on this island and slowly kill them off. There was a lot of back story that never made it into the show because, as you can imagine, there’s just not enough time to do it. We tried to cram it all into episode 13 by showing flashbacks of Henry and Abby (Elaine Cassidy) as kids, which led Henry to do what he did. It was always Henry from day one.
JH: When did Chris Gorham find out?
KZ: Right before we started shooting episode 8 I told him and we ended up having a three hour meeting in Vancouver just going over everything and why and who and everything and all the back story because he didn’t know any of this
JH: What was his reaction?
KZ: He loved it! And then after you know you just want to know everything. You want to know why, who, what made this character do all that stuff so he loved it.
JH: I think Gorham did a great job with it. Henry is definitely not the same guy that we saw in the beginning.
KZ: Even his death scene at the end of 13…you feel sorry for him. He did such a good job. I guess that was residual from following him for 12 episodes as a good guy.
JH: With all the back story that came out, it all made sense and because you did get to know him, he wasn’t a total villain like John Wakefield (Callum Keith Rennie), who we hate from the first moment we meet him. Wow! So, what will the DVD have that we didn’t see on the show?
KZ: The DVD comes out on September 8th and we’ve got commentary on four episodes, we’ve got a lot of behind-the-scenes footage, there were 2-3 murders that we had to trim and cut some gory stuff out so we put those back in the DVD as part of the deleted scenes so we could give the audience an example of what we wanted to do. Cast interviews from when we started shooting about who they think the killer is.
JH: I saw on the Harper’s Island show page where the actors talk about how they’d like to see their character get killed and then you get to see how they actually are killed on the show. Much fun. What’s next for you guys? I really don’t want this kind of show to go away but I know CBS isn’t going to move forward with a show like this.
KZ: I don’t know. It’s a discussion on a larger scale because we have always been the guys to deliver serialized television. Jericho andHarper’s are both very serialized shows and it just seems that…you take a look at the last development season and no real serialized shows were picked up. It’s all back to the procedural, close-ended one-hour dramas and I think that this development season we have to get back to that especially if we want to stay active in the network TV business we have to find procedural, close-ended shows. I think serialized shows are just going to go away. It’s tough. It’s tough for many reasons. Getting viewers to dedicate themselves to follow the show it requires a lot of Tivo and DVRing, which advertisers don’t want to hear that I think Harper’s Island will have a good life on DVD. I think it’s one of those things where you can go on and watch it 100 times and watch for the clues that you missed now knowing everything.
You can still watch episodes of Harper’s Island at CBS.com and watch for the complete series on DVD on September 8th.
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Jim Halterman is a freelance writer who spends his days interviewing the top tier of talent and creative forces in the entertainment world and then, because he's that kind of guy, he brings it all to YOU! And, because we all like free stuff, check back on Fridays for the best giveaways!! (Photo: Interviewing actor Ray Ford - from DONT TRUST THE B**** IN APARTMENT 23 - at The Abbey, West Hollywood, 4/2012)
