Jonathan Bernstein interviews Josh 'The OC' Schwartz, hit US teen drama writer (original) (raw)

At 26, Josh Schwartz created the late, lamented teen soap The OC and forged a place in the record books as the youngest individual to run a weekly prime-time network series. Five years on, he's carved out another little niche for himself as the only producer to have two brand new shows - the Manhattan rich kid drama Gossip Girl and the geek-spy action comedy Chuck - make simultaneous debuts. Like Joss Whedon, Russell T Davies and Grey's Anatomy's Shonda Rimes, Schwartz quickly became one of those small-screen auteurs whose signature style elevates their profile above the anonymity generally enjoyed by most behind-the-scenes dwellers.

Once it became clear that The OC was more than just a pastel- shaded, surface-deep wallow in the privileged lives of the wealthy and witless, audiences started to tune in for Schwartz's deft leavenings of comedy, his endless torrents of pop-culture references and his propensity for heartfelt Jewish family bonding. Those who stayed the course from the show's first exhilarating season, through its misguided melodrama-packed second and third years all the way through to its little-seen but deeply satisfying last-gasp return to form, wound up with an emotional attachment to Schwartz's work.

Strange as it may seem, some of his fans feel a little proprietorial, as if, having put in the hours following his characters and plotlines, they assume they've earned the right to criticise his characters and the chemistry of his actors. But before I did that and cast a chill over the rest of the interview, I got on swimmingly with Schwartz.

He certainly didn't seem to take offence when I mentioned that, given the sweet natures of both The OC and Gossip Girl, the outstanding theme of his work is that rich people are really, really nice. "I don't know if that's what I'm going for, exactly," he laughed. "But the goal has always been to take these worlds that are very rarefied, that I myself have never lived in, and make them accessible to a broader audience. In order for people to want to spend time in these worlds you have to have characters that people are going to want to spend time with. If everyone is just a rich bitch or a jerk, who's going to want to watch that? So it's trying to find the humanity as well as the flaws."

But Schwartz's warm heart runs contrary to the ice running through the veins of the Gossip Girl books. The endlessly successful series of young adult novels penned by Cecily Von Ziegesar are awash in hedonism and bad behaviour. The show's old money Upper East Side heroines - the dazzling, addled blonde Serena van der Woodson and villainous Blair Waldorf - lurch drunkenly from debutante balls to charity galas, stabbing each other in the back, hooking up with billionaires and misplacing their underwear. Writing in the august pages of the New Yorker, literary critic Janet Malcolm recently hailed the books as "wicked satires" and singled out the vain and hateful print version of Blair Waldorf as a descendant of Becky Sharp and Lizzie Eustace. Leighton Meester, the excellently-named actress who inhabits the TV Blair looks fetching in her Snow White headbands and couture capes, but episodes rarely come to a climax without her receiving a consoling hug or having her brattiness blamed on her high-strung mum.

"I think Blair's a great character," says Schwartz. "Not to take anything away from the books, but you do have to make changes if you want to succeed in a different medium. We had to warm up the show a little bit. I think Blair is still an antihero but we had to give you a better understanding of why she is the way she is. Whether that's to the satisfaction of the New Yorker is not for me to say."

Having established my credentials as someone who hung in with The OC all the way to season four, I feel emboldened - proprietorial! - enough to suggest to Schwartz that as addictive as Gossip Girl has the potential to be, it falls far short of The OC in one respect: adults. No teen show before or since had such great, sympathetic, caring, non-authoritarian adults. The Cohens, who took in mumbling troublemaker Ryan Atwood and raised him as their surrogate son were one of television's last great dream families. By comparison, all the Upper East Side adults might as well be called Nasty McRichington.

Even less endearing is poor but honest Rufus Humphrey from Brooklyn (actor Matthew Settle), the failed 1990s rocker whose romance with Serena's icy mom Lily is rekindled when his mumbling outsider son gets involved with her daughter. "We-e-e-e-lll," replies Schwartz, drawing out his disapproval. "I would disagree. I think the Rufus and Lily romance has been really touching. And there's a lot of women out there who think that Matthew Settle is good-looking."

While Gossip Girl is a hugely buzzed-about show, the amount of discussion and coverage it generates is no way commensurate with its teeny-tiny audience, 20% of which follow the series online. "The difference between a good-sized audience and a small audience is getting smaller and smaller on television. I'd rather a smaller audience but a devoted, passionate cult following and the kind of cultural permeation that the show is achieving than a big fat hit that nobody talks about."

Schwartz's other new show is neither a big-sized hit nor is it much talked-about. Which is not to say that it isn't entirely entertaining. If all the angst and relationship woes of The OC ended up on Gossip Girl, Chuck inherited all the humour, all the pop-culture footnotes and all the warmth. Plus, there are fights, shoot-outs and explosions. Intended as an affectionate nod to 1980s action shows, from MacGyver to Moonlighting, Chuck takes an endearingly bashful geek hero, puts him in the vicinity of a computer programme that downloads national security secrets into his brain and watches him attempt to negotiate a double life. By day he works at a computer warehouse. By night, he's a fearful part of a joint CIA/NSA baddie- busting unit. It's a measure of Schwartz's skill that he can take such a cartoony premise and fill it with an ensemble engaging enough to make you care about their fates.

Of course, rather than telling him that, I take the opportunity to complain about the lack of chemistry between Chuck and his blonde CIA handler who is supposed to be his love interest.

"Keep watching," is his weary reply. Having seemingly used up all of his patience and goodwill, I attempt one last question. As someone who makes a living thinking about and writing for kids, does he, with the passing of time, find himself thinking "I'm sick of these whining little brats"? "Not yet. I do love writing about young adults and I still feel very connected to that time in my life. There's nothing better than writing for a teen audience. They're the most passionate audience you're gonna get, the most excited. As you get older, you get more jaded and pop culture starts to mean less to you. But nothing means more to you when you're a teenager than your favourite show or your favourite band."

· Gossip Girl is on Thu, 10pm, ITV2. Chuck begins April 7, 10pm,Virgin 1.