History of the Future

Ryan Condal, who describes himself as “co-creator, co-showrunner, and lead crazy guy” of USA’s Colony, loves history and science fiction.

He and co-creator Carlton Cuse (Lost, Bates Motel) have combined the two into Colony, starring Josh Holloway and Sarah Wayne Callies, which depicts a dystopian Los Angeles, occupied by a military regime known as the Colony Transitional Authority.

Condal describes Colony as, “A story about occupation and colonization. One of the allegories we always talked about was the Nazi occupation of Europe during World War II.”

According to Condal, Colony was inspired by two things: a love of history and a love of science fiction. He explained that he’d always loved stories of the French resistance to Nazi occupation in WWII. “It was a fascinating world to me where, particularly in Paris, you had the most beautiful city in the world suddenly overtaken by the ugliest force that humanity has ever seen.”

He continued, “The underbelly of that occupation was the shadowy world of the French resistance, made up of laborers and farmers – people who weren’t soldiers – just banding together to try to resist and fight the Nazis. I thought this was the right light to tell the story.”

Condal thought that a period piece about the Nazi occupation of France would be less accessible to an audience, which is where his love for science fiction came into play.

Condal said, “Colony is a way of exploring occupation and colonization as well as how humans react to these ideas, but doing it in a way that puts it in this fantastical world with a big backdrop of military occupation in one of the greatest, most beautiful cities in America. This puts it in a perspective that allows the audience to participate and be intrigued and engaged by it without feeling like we are lecturing them.”

When it comes to the characters, Condal said he hopes that he and Cuse have successfully created human beings, as opposed to “television characters.”

He explained, “Everybody in the show is hopefully a real person and the audience sees them as real people in the sense that these are just men and women, like you and I, that have been put into an extraordinary situation and have been forced to survive and adapt.”

He continued, “However [the characters] have reacted, whether they’ve chosen to collaborate and survive or resist the occupation, hopefully [the audience] can at least understand or come to understand where [the characters] are coming from and the reason why they made those choices.”

Condal knew he wanted to be a writer from age 12, but started writing for film when he was in high school. He’s written several screen plays and was a co-writer for the 2014 film Hercules, starring Dwayne Johnson. Colony is his first successful television creation.

Cuse and Condal previously worked together on the pilot of a show called The Sixth Gun for NBC, which did not get picked up. On working with Cuse, Condal said, “I wanted to keep working with him because we had a really great creative energy.”

Inspired by this creative energy, Colony was born. Condal said, “I came to [Cuse] and sort of pitched the DNA of what would become Colony and he really responded to it.” The pair partnered up on the project and eventually sold it to USA.

A lot of work goes into creating, writing and running a new show. He said, “It’s challenging. It’s definitely not a 9-5 job, but it’s great fun.”

As the lead writer, co-show runner and co-producer, Condal described a typical work day on Colony in phases. The first phase is writing, explains Condal, “We will go in and meet every day for a full work day where we sit in a room with cork boards, index cards and sharpies, and we write story.”

The second phase is production, where they are making the early episodes of the season, re-writing the middle episodes and writing the final episodes. “There’s sort of multiple phases to your day: there’s production, there’s prep of new episodes and then there’s writing and rewriting of existing episodes.”

In the final phase, post-production, the showrunner is focused on the final product and their overall vision. Condal explains, “It’s a lot of work for the showrunner, but the final project is truly your vision being put on screen. What creator wouldn’t want that?”

Not that it’s simple.  Condal joked, “As Carlton Cuse puts it and I always use, the bad thing about being a show runner is that you’re expected to be in three places at once. The sad thing is, you can only be in two.”

On what he finds most rewarding about working on Colony, Condal said, “The show is incredibly creatively rewarding because of the fact that everything that goes on from the script to the casting to the look of the production comes through and stops with Carlton and me. To have that kind of control in a filmed medium is just everything I could ask for.”

Condal’s biggest hope is that Colony is the type of show that people like, watch, follow, and get into. He said, “I would love to have created something that inspires engagement with the fans because I think that means you’re doing something interesting that gets people talking.”

He continued, “To me, that’s the greatest reward you can get as a creator.”

Colony airs Thursdays at 10:00 on USA Network.