An Interview with Amit Bhalla & Lucas Jansen, the Creators and Showrunners of ‘Hello Tomorrow!’

Amit Bhalla and Lucas Jansen are a pair of talented writers and producers that have worked together on several projects now, and their current endeavor is to show serve as Showrunner, Executive Producers, and writers on the Apple TV+ series, Hello Tomorrow! And we here at NTG were fortunate enough to sit down and speak with these gentlemen about the genesis and meaning of this creative new show.
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John Betancourt: Let’s talk a little bit about each of your role in bringing this show to life.

Amit Bhalla: You know, we work very, very collaboratively and have for a very long time. And the show began with conversations with a good friend of ours, Ryan Kalil, who's a producer on the show, who showed us these videos of 1950s salesmen, their salesmen training videos, and they're kinda like, “Oh, shucks, you know, Mr. McKenna, If I sell five more station wagons, will I become assistant manager?” “Well, you're right, Jimmy, you know, you can make it all the way to the top, you will be the president this company one day,” and you know, in those is this beautiful, naive optimism that, you know, makes America run. And it's also this really dark, you know… “that’s not gonna happen for you, Jimmy!” It’s more like, you know, “what about all the dark shit that's gonna happen in your life that you have to deal with?” You know, and this isn't gonna solve that problem for you. And kind of in that paradox have a kind of optimism tied to a realism or a cynicism or whatever you want to call it, the tone of the show was born.

Lucas Jansen: You know, it struck us that as a fascinating thing, we became fascinated with the idea of the salesman, and the idea of the salesman, who is kind of the “first dupe” if you're going to use a cynical expression, because they, in this case, in the case of Jack Billings, certainly deeply believes in every promise he's making to his customers. And that kind of belief, that kind of hope, that kind of ability to dream on the part of a salesman to us is this sort of unique, sort of tragic aspect of the American spirit. And it also makes for a character who could be incredibly charming and incredibly persuasive. And Billy Crudup is absolutely all those things on the screen in this show, but also who lives a very precarious life because… they, it's easy to become lost in your own dreams. And the consequences are, well, exactly the drama of Hello Tomorrow!

John Betancourt: Now, speaking of uniqueness, the setting and environment of this show is unlike any other. What went into the decision to set it in this world that we… know but we don’t.

Lucas Jansen: Exactly it's a world we know, we don't… it's like a part of all of our collective unconscious. And we think it is because it's a dream, we were all sold. We all know what a jetpack is, they just haven't showed up yet. Because we were told that when the future came, everything would be better. And it would be ours. But you know, in a show about delusion and about dreaming and about people who are desperately hoping that tomorrow is brighter. We set it in a delusion, we set it in a sort of collective dream about a brighter tomorrow. And what happens when you inhabit that delusion is you see, oh, it's actually full of human flaws. The robots that are going to pour our coffee in the morning, can't help but spill little motor oil in them. And all the things that we thought were going to make our lives seamless and smooth. Well, our human burdens remain and with our families with ourselves. These things are unsolvable riddles, and thank God they are because you know, even if the robots take out the trash, we still have to live with our own souls and our own spirits. And that's, that's where the show lives in that distance between the sales pitch and the inevitable reality in which we are forced to live.

John Betancourt: Now this show also does an incredible job of presenting hope in a different light. What went into the decision to present hope as this wondrous but also horrific thing at the same time?

Amit Bhalla: I mean, that that's very well put, and we've been thinking about that very idea for a very long time now. We think a lot about what happens when you hope so hard or dream so hard that it actually changes the reality around you. Weirdly, you know, we dream really hard to make a TV show. And selling a TV show was a lot like selling lunar timeshares, because you know, they can't see it, when you're selling it.

Lucas Jansen: I SWEAR! It’s gonna be good! (Laughter from everyone.)

Amith Bhalla: And, you know, you end up here, but you also… here we are. And you know, that hope for so long, got us up in the morning, it got you out of bed and made you made you live your life. But it was also a hope that you might destroy you, you know that if it didn't, you know, there… there is a paradox in it. And I think when it's sold just as the optimism without this layer of complexity to it. You know, it's a bit of a con, you need to appreciate that, that at the end of the day… that hope isn't gonna solve the problems of your daily life, or maybe not even of your daily life but of an unrequited love, or an addiction run awry, or a life left behind, you know, the deeper issues in your… you can only hope so far. And then at some point, you know, it hits you and you got to act. And again, that's kind of in that weird, uncanny valley between those things is where the show kind of lives.

John Betancourt: What do you hope audiences take away from this season when it’s done?

Lucas Jansen: Well, you know, we always talked about when we were writing the show, we would talk with the writers about thinking of characters in terms of not their motivations and their plans in the world, but their delusions, what are the stories they're telling themselves in order to live, about who they are and what the world is. And, you know, delusion is a powerful and a terrifying thing. And but it's a very human thing. And, yes, you know, delusions do make us susceptible to the next guy coming around telling us he's gonna make our lives better tomorrow, whether it's on the moon or what have you. But it seems to us that the same, the same muscles that help us believe in those delusions, those are the muscles that at the level of spirit at the level of the human heart, cause the heart to open in delusions, grand illusions, like love, and fell of feeling and forgiveness. And, you know, we all like to flatter ourselves that we know the difference between what's true and who's running a game on us, but the heart doesn't seem to make those distinctions quite as well. And we would hope that this show brings us all to, to a little more peace with the idea that we are creatures of delusion that our lives are negotiations we're always making with our fantasies, and for better for worse, you know, that's what makes us human, and we're glad to share it with the people around us.

Amit Bhalla: You know, I would say… you know, we, we really love these characters. And that's not true, always, you know, people have contempt for characters, they lie and put them through stuff. But like, we deeply care about them, we see them as full, rounded, flawed, interesting people worth spending time with. And that's what I want. That's what I hope that somebody watches it says, “oh, man, I want to like hang out with Costopolous more, or I want to like meet you know, like, or like Herb and Jack and  Myrtle” like, you know, my deepest hope is that people want to spend more time with these people you know and see themselves and their friends and their family members in them.
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This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

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