An Interview with Arika Lisanne Mittman, Creator/Showrunner of ‘The Irrational’

THE IRRATIONAL -- Pictured: "The Irrational" Key Art -- (Photo by: NBCUniversal)

Arika Lisanne Mittman is an accomplished producer and writer, that currently serves as the Creator/Showrunner of The Irrational on NBC. And in anticipation of tonight’s season one finale, we had the chance to sit down with Arika to discuss her journey and to look ahead to tonight’s finale and season two.
 
John Betancourt: I would love to know what inspired the creation of this series.
 
Arika Lisanne Mittman: Well, I actually was approached by Mark Goffman. He and Sam Baum had initially had a notion that there could be a show about Dan Ariely. Mark Goffman had been friends with Dan for many years and felt like there was something inspiring about his work and, you know, persona, that would be interesting for a series and they came to me the idea of making a series inspired by Dan and his book Predictably Irrational, and I at the time knew nothing about behavioral economics, or Dan Ariely or any of this, and Mark asked me, you know, Mark, and I knew each other because our kids went to school together. And he said, “Take a look at this book, take a look at these TED Talks”. And, you know, once you start down that rabbit hole, like, you know, you can't get out of it, it's so interesting. And I was fascinated by it. And I really liked the idea of taking the sort of traditional, you know, case based procedural, and, you know, putting a psychological spin on it, and the spin of behavioral economics and being able to solve cases using, you know, behavioral research, and using the notion of this is what people do, and understanding human behavior, to understand how to solve crimes and other puzzles. And, you know, it kind of went from there.
 
John Betancourt: Now this is a show full of incredible plots, incredible complexity, and I love that. But I'm curious as to what kind of challenges you ran into as a showrunner in assembling stories that are so wonderfully complex?
 
Arika Lisanne Mittman: Well, it takes a team that's for sure. I have a wonderful writer’s room. And, you know, television writing is a very collaborative medium, you know, and so, you know, we're all in the room together, breaking new stories, and, you know, like, 10 brains are better than one, you know? And so, you know, we put everybody's brains on it, and, you know, maybe that makes us, half as smart as the character of Alec, that's the challenge. The biggest challenge is always for me, you know, I've written for other characters. I’ve written on Dexter, I wrote in Elementary and always the hard part is like, “God, these people are so smart. How do I be as smart as my characters?” And the answer is 10 brains.
 
John Betancourt: To follow up on that a little further, the characters are also just as complex as the stories, and I’m curious how you all created such amazing characters.
 
Arika Lisanne Mittman: Well, you know, the characters initially, like that was, you know, the, the creation of these original characters came before the room started and they, they evolve and what's nice about characters is, you know, you come up with the basics, you know, you're writing this pilot, like, obviously, the character of Alec was inspired by Dan Ariely. He's not Dan, there's some very significant differences between the two. But, you know, Dan's approach to life, Dan's approach to human behavior was the original inspiration for Alec. And then what happens is you create these, you know, these sort of bases for characters in the pilot. And then once you cast them, the actor brings something unique to each of these characters that the characters ultimately become this amalgamation of the, what you put on paper and what they bring to it, you know, and I think that's one of the other things that's really special about TV, the episodic medium that we have, that these characters can grow and evolve, and change in a way that you don't get in too many other mediums. Because the show keeps going, because it's a series and you gradually find yourself writing to what the actors are doing even more than -- they are performing the character that you created, and then you start writing to the character that they have created from your character.
 
John Betancourt: Now, speaking of progression, first… congrats on a second season. Second, what it meant to you to be granted another year of storytelling?
 
Arika Lisanne Mittman: Just a wealth of opportunities, it means opportunities to tell more stories, because we certainly felt like after those 11 episodes, that there were absolutely way more worlds, and way more psychological mysteries to explore after that, and so it just gives us more opportunities, and we're very grateful, you know, getting 18 more episodes, you know, it's… we feel kind of like a unicorn these days, because, you know, so much has been distilled to the 10 episodes at a time, you know, 10,12, 13, kind of format, and, you know, being able to do, case after case, you know, I think… I think procedurals definitely lend themselves to these longer orders more so than serialized shows do because it is really hard to come up with, you know, 18 episodes on a serialized arc. But you know, when you have a procedure like this, and the show that we get fresh new characters and new worlds every week, you know, there's really almost endless, you know, episodes, you can write with them. So, I'm very grateful. I'm very grateful for season two.
 
John Betancourt: Now in looking ahead toward tonight’s finale, what are you most excited for audiences to experience this evening, without spoilers of course.
 
Arika Lisanne Mittman: I'm excited for fans, fans who've been really paying attention to this little serialized thread in our story, will get the satisfaction of closure to, to that mystery. So, I'm excited for the fans to be able to feel like they have answers, you know, and like they haven't been strung along, we are giving them answers, we are going to solve this case. And, you know, I hope they enjoy the resolution.
 
John Betancourt: Also, what can you tell fans to expect in season two, without spoilers for that as well.
 
Arika Lisanne Mittman: I mean, well, I can say, you know, just quite simply because we are still in the process of breaking Season Two as we speak, you know, the very beginnings of it. But that there will definitely continue to be these fun, episodic “case of the week” stories that they've come to expect last season, and we will get to explore lots of new worlds, and lots of new characters in season two.
 
John Betancourt: This year featured a lot of great lessons about our minds and who we are, what do you ultimately hope people take away as kind of an underlying message of season one.
 
Arika Lisanne Mittman: Oh, wow, underlying message of season one, I mean, I don't know that there's one specific message that I want them to take away. But I do hope that we all, that the audience, looks at a little bit more at their own behavior. I feel like, you know, one of the magical things about this show is that, you know, we explore these different aspects of human behavior that are true, but we don't think about them all the time. And I find myself, you know, randomly, you know, spouting phrases like paradoxical persuasion or outcome bias or, you know, things like that, then that I'm now I'm much more self-aware of things that I'm doing and I hope the audience, like, comes away a little bit more self-aware about the decisions we make and why we make them.
 
John Betancourt: The last question that I have for you today. What are you most proud of when it comes to your work so far on the show?
 
Arika Lisanne Mittman: I would say I am proud of you know, being able to weave these psychological concepts into, weekly mysteries, because it's a bit you know, it's obviously it's a challenge. It's not, you know, a way that we're used to approaching these cases we're used to, we're used to approaching all of these cases from a, you know, when you've done procedurals before, from a simple path of clues, you know, evidence-based answers. And like, you know, we find the DNA here. And you know, and being able to weave our way through cases, from this both behavioral standpoint, from the psychological standpoint has been a challenge. And it's a testament to the great room that I have that helps me do it. And so, I'm very proud of being able to, you know, take this format that we've seen 100 times, and do something different with it.
 
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

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