The fourth season of the HBO seriesIn Treatmentfollows Dr. Brooke Taylor (Uzo Aduba), a therapist in Los Angeles who currently has a diverse trio of patients — home health aide Eladio (Anthony Ramos), millionaire turned white-collar criminal Colin (John Benjamin Hickey), and distrustful teenager Laila (Quintessa Swindell) — for whom she’s trying to help navigate their concerns. Current social and cultural shifts permeate all of the therapy sessions while Brooke also tries to deal with complications and demons in her own life that are proving to be quite challenging.
During a virtual junket to promote the new season, Collider got the opportunity to chat with co-showrunnersJennifer SchuurandJoshua Allenabout bringingIn Treatmentback after more than a decade, the nerves about making therapy session conversations interesting, why this was a show they could make safely during COVID, meticulously designing the set, the incredible performance that Aduba gave, shooting each episode in two days, and whether they’d want to do another season.
Collider: Were you ever nervous about making a series that consists of therapy conversations in one room interesting?
JENNIFER SCHUUR: Yeah, of course, you get nervous about that. But the second we started to actually break the stories and figure out how we wanted these conversations to go, more often than not, we had more than we could work with. We had more things that we had to leave on the cutting room floor, as they say, that were really exciting moments because the episodes are 25 to 30 minutes and there ended up not being as much real estate as we could used. So, we had an embarrassment of riches on that front. But yes, we had to think about how we were going to ensure that the stories felt like they had a climax. It’s all of the structure stuff that comes along with writing, but it had to go into just a conversation between two people who don’t really move much.
ALLEN: Yes, every moment, which is why in anticipation of creating this new season, I went back and watched all 106 episodes of the first three seasons ofIn Treatment. I watched it as a viewer and a fan when it originally aired, but I also had to now engage with it, as someone who had to replicate the magic of it. And so, every day, as we met with individual writers and we talked about each patient’s arc, and then Brooke the therapist’s arc, we were constantly in a state of terror. We had to hold the audience’s attention with nothing but words and performances.
How did you even end up re-imagining a show that had been off television for more than a decade?
SCHUUR: The inspiration was easy. It was three months after the pandemic had shut the world down and it felt like we had already been struggling with mental health, as a collective. And then, we all knew that this was an indefinite thing and that, by the time we started tiptoeing back to life as we used to know it, there would be a surge in mental health needs. It felt like this is the perfect show to be able to offer up at that moment to say, “Look, this is for everyone and everyone can benefit.” There’s real beauty in doing the internal work that therapy asks of us. You get a lot out of it. And so, that was easy. Part of the inspiration to do it was logistical, in that it is two people in one room. We were trying to make a COVID safe production and that seemed like a very controllable atmosphere to be able to do that in. The bottom line for me, personally, was that I’ve been in therapy for over 15 years, every week with the same therapist, and it is one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever gotten in my life. I felt like I could not wait to dive in and talk about that.
ALLEN: It’s two-pronged. HBO rightfully and understandably decided thatIn Treatmentwas a show that could be very COVID-friendly, in terms of production, because it’s two people sitting across from each other. You don’t need a whole lot of bells and whistles. You don’t need a million extras on set. Practically, that was a consideration. We are also in a very unique moment right now where people who hadn’t even thought about mental health or therapy are now thinking about it and talking about it because this year has been too much for the human psyche. That’s an indisputable fact. I think those two considerations together made this the perfect show for us to produce right now.
Joshua, what did you learn from watching all of the original episodes? Did it teach you anything specific that you wanted to incorporate or carry over into what you were doing?
ALLEN: I have a playwriting background, so I’m used to writing plays, but this is a very unique TV show, in that it lends itself to that sort of writing. What I learned was that it still has to be television. So, even though you’re sort of writing little one-act plays, it still has to hold people’s attention, who are looking at a screen. There are going to be elements that you don’t have in the theater. There are going to be camera moves sometimes. There is going to be set decoration. Not that you don’t have that in the theater, but there are elements that are television that you have to incorporate into what is very much a theatrical sensibility. You’re going to have to write what, in the theater, would be sitting in the orchestra balcony, but write it in a way that it holds up in a close-up.
Jennifer, do you feel like this would have been a very different show without COVID, or does this feel like the show that you would have made either way?
SCHUUR: That is such a great question. I haven’t thought about that, but I think it would have been basically the same show that we would have made. I think COVID certainly is a factor and it’s part of the fabric of the show and the reality of the time and the place that we’re telling it, but it’s not really about COVID at its heart. Those are practical touches that enter in at times, like when you’re watching Eladio do his virtual sessions or why Brooke is sitting in her living room with a patient versus her office in Santa Monica. It’s a logistical reason. At its heart, it’s about so much more than COVID. It could have been done with or without the pandemic, but I’m really glad that the pandemic made HBO interested in revisiting it.
Because you spend so much time in one room of the house, did you think a lot about wardrobe and furniture and what you could have occupy that space?
SCHUUR: Absolutely. It had to be visually interesting. Even though we were just going to be bouncing between these two characters the whole time, we put a lot of thought into that. We thought, “This is going to be airing at a time when we’ve all started to maybe peek our heads out of our homes and we don’t want to be in some dark, book-lined traditional therapist’s office with dark furniture. Brooke has this gorgeous view. She has the sun from L.A. We wanted to make it something where, even though the subjects that we’re talking about are sometimes difficult and challenging, the actual aesthetics and palette of the show are very warm and inviting.
ALLEN: That was the fun part. There’s nothing on that set that we hadn’t had meetings about and talked about. That was sometimes a welcome relief from, “What are these people talking about?” I was like, “At least I can decide on a color for that throw pillow.”
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How much thought went into figuring out that balance of the patients — how they would interact with Brooke and what each of them would be able to talk about?
SCHUUR: That was the core and the crux of what we talked about, leading up to the actual physical writing show. That’s the most important thing, talking about how much of this therapist’s personal life we were going to see, and would be seeing that take away from her work with her patients. There was this delicate balance that was always at play for us. At the end of the day, each of those characters got to talk about really important things and also really emotional things for them personally. And then, we also got to talk about very serious issues and emotional issues for Brooke herself.
Were there patients that you had thought about developing, but they ultimately didn’t work out, or was it always these three?
SCHUUR: When it started, the pool was a little bit larger. When you first start kicking around ideas, it can be anything and anyone. But the more we honed in on who Brooke is, the more these three characters rose to the surface of what they could do, in relation to her specifically. Very early on, they became our best and most beautiful options, so we ran with that.
Joshua, when you created the character of Dr. Brooke Taylor, how did you envision her? Was it anything like what Uzo Aduba has done with her interpretation? What’s it like to see that marriage of actor and writer?
ALLEN: I created the character in the summertime of last year, in the early summer, I did not have Uzo in my head. First of all, I didn’t even believe she’d be available and I didn’t believe she would care about doing the show. I didn’t think she’d be interested. It just wasn’t even in my head. But I knew that I wanted this therapist to be a Black woman, for a hundred different reasons. There comes a point where you hand off the character. You’re like, “We’ve written her, but you have to embody her, so she’s yours now.”
The thing about working with Uzo is that she’s so about realizing the intentions of the writer. We were like, “No, do what you want. You’re Uzo. Do what you want, it’s going to be brilliant.” She would ask maybe two questions per episode, and they would be about the smallest things. It just flabbergasted me, but it’s who she is. She got to where she is because she’s meticulous and she honors what’s on the page and she brings all of herself to it. She is just phenomenal. I would happily hand off any character I write to her, any day. I feel like part of the challenge as a writer, especially when you’re lucky enough to get an actor like Uzo, is that you write just enough so that you leave room for her to come in and add her stuff. You don’t want to override it to the point where you’re directing on the page. You want to leave room for her, so that was always what I hope we were doing.
SCHUUR: The thing that amazed me the most, watching Uzo day to day, was the sheer amount of material. She was in every scene of every episode, and we were shooting these episodes in two days each. She was churning through 13, 14, or 15 pages a day, but she was bringing such an emotional reality to it. With each patient, she’s a little different. That’s how intuitive she is as a therapist, but she’s bringing a slightly different side of herself to each of her patients. It’s always very professional and you feel good about these patients being in her hands. And then, when you get into our personal life, she allows herself to be so vulnerable, as an actor. It’s pretty spectacular. I still don’t know how she did it, but I’m glad she did.
What is it like to work on a schedule like this, where you were shooting each episode in two days?
SCHUUR: It was unlike anything else. I’ve been writing for a long time. I’m a writer and producer, and I’ve never experienced anything like it. There were certainly moments of real challenge. One of the great things about shooting a COVID production was that a lot of people were available because Hollywood had shut down, so we got to surround ourselves with the best people in the business. I think that’s the only way something like that gets done and actually comes to fruition. The lineup of directors we had are people that I have wanted to work with my entire career. We had actors that could do that volume of work, day in and day out, because of their skill set in theater and beyond. It took a very large village. Actually, it wasn’t even that large of a village, but it took a village. We managed to just keep pushing forward, knowing that we were making something that we were all really proud of.
ALLEN: It was an experience. Before this show, aside from a Netflix show, I had only worked in broadcast television, where you have eight days to shoot and let’s say 42 pages. On this show, we had two days to shoot 20 some-odd pages, so that was tough, but luckily we were able to attract actors who had a wide range of theater experience. They were trained and they knew how to learn pages upon pages of dialogue very quickly because we just didn’t have the time. We were able to do really long takes with them, which was such a blessing, because we just didn’t have the time to chop it up too much. And then, there was the pandemic, where we all had to mask up and wear shields. When the actors had their masks off, because we shot the actors without their masks, we all had to be in masks and goggles and shields, and we all got tested so many times a week. That was hard to deal with sometimes, but the actors were troopers and it was just a magical experience.
Were there ever any actors that you had to talk off the ledge of nerves because they had a moment of panic over doing this?
SCHUUR: Honestly, I wish I could say yes because that’s probably what would normally happen. I think everyone knew what they were getting into with this. Everyone, even Quintessa [Swindell], our actor, was such a professional. They showed up prepared, ready to do the work, and excited to do the work. Certainly, there would be conversations about the nuances of the scripts, but not in any way where it felt like we had to cheerlead them into making it happen. They were excited to do this. It’s different than anything else most people get to do in television.
Did this always feel like a show that also really worked well when it came to addressing current issues?
SCHUUR: I do think everybody would find themselves with moments of being overwhelmed with the sheer magnitude of everything we’re dealing with, whether it be the pandemic, or racial injustice, or any of the topics we touched on. It was very moving and cathartic to watch people talk about these issues in a deeper, more meaningful way then you get the opportunity to do very often in television. We’re all struggling with the same things. We’re all just human at our core and we all sometimes need help.
ALLEN: The genius and the brilliance of the original three seasons ofIn Treatmentwas that they were able to get into big issues through personal issues. You were able to get into issues of fertility and infertility through the very personal experiences of a married couple, and you were able to get into issues of what it means to be a soldier in a war and drop a bomb on people. You’re able to get into these broader things through the very specific lived experiences of the people who are sitting across from the therapist, and we tried to honor that and continue that in what we were doing. If you get too preachy and too, “This is how this show feels about the patriarchy and race,” and you’re just screaming it at everyone, that doesn’t move people. The beauty of television is that you are unwittingly inviting people into your living room and into your home, and you’re just hearing their experiences and witnessing their experiences, and then little by little, you go, “Hey, maybe they’re like me. Maybe they feel some of the same things I do, even though they don’t look like me, they don’t love like me, they don’t dress like me, they don’t spend money like me.”
Was it also challenging to figure out how to balance these therapy sessions with Brooke’s personal life?
SCHUUR: You worry whether you’re giving too much behind the scenes of a therapist’s life, but we had Joel Kinnaman and Uzo Aduba. To not let them really go at the heart of a relationship together would seem like a waste. We wanted to ask them to do as much as anybody else was doing in this show, and be as truthful and real and honest about life in that relationship, as they could possibly be.
ALLEN: There were moments where we would look at each other and go, “Did we give Brooke too much? Is she dealing with way too much?” But ultimately, we balanced it all, I hope. One of the points we wanted to make was that your therapist doesn’t just think about you. Your therapist is good with you, hopefully, or find a new therapist, but your therapist is also a person who is dealing with things that they don’t know how to navigate themselves. In a once in a century pandemic, the whole world is going through it and your therapist is no exception. It’s just a matter of how anybody chooses to go through it. When your job, day in and day out, is to help other people work through what’s going on with them, it’s understandable that you might neglect what’s going on with you.
This is also a lot of episodes to do for a season. Do you feel like you still have more story to tell and is that something you’d like to do?
SCHUUR: I think there is plenty more to do with Dr. Brooke Taylor. There’s a road to walk with her that could be long and fruitful. What’s great about theIn Treatmentformat is that another season could showcase three new patients who are talking about things that reflect that time and that place. There are endless possibilities and we should be so lucky to get to do another version of this. I would love to be a part of that.
ALLEN: There is room to continue her story. Part of our challenge was finding a way to make the end of the season satisfying, but also enticing people to wonder what’s next for her.
Do you know where she’d go next, if you get to do more?
ALLEN: There are a couple of ideas that have been bounced around, but they’re just very vague ideas. Frankly, we haven’t had a whole lot of time to think what’s next.
In Treatmentairs on Sunday and Monday nights on HBO.
KEEP READING:‘In Treatment’ Star John Benjamin Hickey on Why Taking on the HBO Drama Scared Him
