AMC is ready to Feed the Beast with its new restaurant business drama.
Phillips makes no mistake that hes the furthest thing from a foodie.
So what drove Phillips to re-enter the prestige television world with a serious look into the restaurant business?
Den of Geek: How did Feed the Beast come across your desk?
I had dinner and relaxed for a while and said oh what the hell.
I watched the first one and I was spellbound.
We sat with another guy and banged out the pitch.
How similar is your adaptation to the original series?
The basic through line of the storyline is quite similar.
Many of the characters are similar, but its a Danish show.
So first of all its 25-minute episodes and an eight-episode season.
I need to do 430 minutes.
But its also like watching a Bergman film everybodys white.
Im not doing a show in New York where everyones white, nor should I.
We have the Polish mob, the Greek chef, and an Irish sommelier.
Thats what this town is like.
If were going to diversify, how about portraying a racist as a real racist?
Was New York always the original setting for your vision of the series?
It was always New York and it was always the Bronx.
The Bronx is the last frontier of gentrification in New York City.
Its the Wild West.
I mean entrepreneurs are just starting to go in there.
Theyre building studios, new real estate with high rises are going in.
Theres good news and bad news to gentrification.
How New York local does the show get?
Did you tour some of the multicultural areas that make up the Bronx while conceiving the show?
I dont know the names of the areas.
Does a neighborhood need to gentrify for an upscale restaurant to thrive?
Well it depends on the neighborhood and how depressed it is.
The neighborhood that were moving our show into is a series of abandoned warehouses.
Arguably theres something better that can be done with that real estate than just having empty buildings.
Theres so much great television today with new platforms testing the waters.
Does this make you put a premium on having to capture an audiences attention from the outset?
You have a show where introducing backstory early in the story is necessary.
How do you strike a balance between constantly moving the story forward and fleshing out the characters?
Thats a good question its really hard to do.
Theres a lot of what we call clutter out there.
Theres 409 scripted series on outlets that I cant even name.
We have our restaurant already up and going in the fifth episode.
So we needed to have the story move quickly.
And then challenge for me is how do I get you to not watch something else?
Part of that is star power.
Schwimmer and Sturgess… amazing.
Part of that is the promotion the data pipe does, which is great.
Part of it is identification of the characters.
Did you see it as an opportunity for a prestige drama to capture the attention of this audience?
If you look at it, so many way things can go wrong.
That makes [running a restaurant] exciting.
I watched the showChefs Tableon Netflix and those are beautiful documentaries.
I dont watchTop Chefor any other food shows.
What if you lose gas?
Youre fucked and youve got 100 people coming tonight.
What if the delivery truck gets stuck in the tunnel?
What if two of your chefs get the flu?
One character is an alcoholic and the other is a cokehead.
Theyre in debt to the mob.
[Davids character] is grieving.
His son is mute and is having trouble in school.
There are all of these challenges.
