‘Constellation’ Season One Finale Post-Mortem Interview with Series Showrunner/Creator Peter Harness

Key Art for ‘Constellation’ Courtesy of Apple.

Caution: This interview contains spoilers for the Season One Finale of ‘Constellation’.
 
After eight weeks of guessing and wondering, we finally know what happened to Jo in the hit Apple TV+ series, Constellation, and with season one now come to a close and answers in hand, we here at NTG had the honor of sitting down with the show’s Showrunner and Creator, Peter Harness to discuss the finale and so much more. 
 
John Betancourt: I would love to know to start off with what it means to you now to have that complete story as you envisioned out there.
 
Peter Harness: It's… it's very interesting it's very kind of, I mean, it having lived in my head for so many years, and, and it's taken a very long time to make it and, get it out there. It feels, it feels a bit surreal. And actually, it's, you know, it's always very, very stressful when something is kind of transmitting, because it's very hard to enjoy it. Because it's like kind of sending one of your children out off into the world. And you cannot really stop worrying about it for the whole time that it's happening. So, it’s very nice to have it out there. And also, I’m slightly trying to kind of keep off the internet and things. While things are going out. I know, I know that kind of, you know, as a professional I should. I should be taking the temperature of things but it's a bit scary and horrifying. 
 
But I'm aware that there's you know, there's a there's a huge kind of Reddit subgroup that I found out about over the weekend. And they've got so many theories, and they're making so many spreadsheets. And, they're really obviously having a really fun time, going back and watching all the episodes again and looking for all the Easter eggs and trying to work out how everything connects, I think that's lovely. It's very rewarding when people are engaging with it, and people are kind of, you know, giving it its own its own life in a way. Yeah, so, that's lovely. And I really hope that people continue engaging with it and, and trying to figure it out and, and kind of living the imaginative life with it in that way. That's really nice. 
 
John Betancourt: Speaking of that ending, what an ending that you put together, I was not prepared for this to be a story, so grounded in… I don't want to call them simpler concepts, but more endearing concepts, such as, you know, accepting the hands that we’re dealt, accepting the life that we lead, what went into the decision to use a multiverse concept to express those, those very downhome themes?
 
Peter Harness: I don't know. It's, it's, it's not… a kind of multiverse. It's… a kind of mirrored realities, really. Because I think that kind of the multiverse, which is very exciting, but it's very kind of open ended. And it felt like kind of… it was really an exploration of, what it was to be separated from somebody, and what it was to kind of come back together in a kind of imperfect way, maybe. And that, I think… well, I mean, I wish I wish my brain was organized enough to think of these things from the beginning. Because kind of this was a this was a kind of backstory in a framework to the series, which develops over quite a long time. But I think that just having two sets of characters who can maybe crossover with each other in certain circumstances, every now and again, that enables you to really focus on the emotional journey of that and kind of play, play the whole like, It's a Wonderful Life version of reality.
 
Which I think, you know, taking a mother out of the family and, and really watching how it goes for, for those who've lost her, and, and how it goes for a family which is trying to kind of reassemble itself after, after a series of traumatic events and having been apart for so long, I think I it lets you, it lets you kind of close enough doors, to really kind of bed down into those characters and, and their choices and how the kind of path we didn't take might have turned out. And its really just kind of telling that emotional story of, of the mother and the daughter and you know, her two daughters really. And, and grounding that was kind of what organizes everything and dictated the choices we made. Because it was, I think, more important to me than anything else that that we really told that emotional story of parent and child and that was the thing that you ended up caring about. And the thing that was moving about it, because I'm very, you know, I'm aware that sci fi can often be very conceptual, and a bit cold sometimes. And, and I really wanted this to have a lot of emotion in it.
 
John Betancourt: Ultimately, I think you’ve written nothing short of a sci fi epic, something people will continue to pour over. When all is said and done, what do you hope the legacy of this show will be? 
 
Peter Harness: I don't know. I mean, I hope we will get to, I hope we will get to carry on telling the story. I can't, it feels rather kind of vain to talk about the legacy of something that I've written, but I think that it was, it's really great to have gotten an original idea off the ground and made. I think I'm very, I'm very proud of that. And it's been a very, it's been hard work, because it is very hard work to get original things made. But I kind of decided a few years ago that it wasn't really kind of worth being a writer unless I was going to try and tell you know, original stories. So, I kind of hope that if it's a success, and if it goes well, that it says you know, it's okay to do things which are not kind of, you know, preexisting. And, because that's, that's where the surprises are really and stories need to keep on surprising us and taking us in, in unexpected directions. And I think, you know, like I said, I wanted to do, I don't really kind of think of myself as a sci fi writer, or kind of, you know, any specific kind of writer really. But I think it's important that these, these kind of high concept shows do have kind of heart. And what I really liked doing, I think is taking a weird situation, and a very kind of unusual situation. And, and really actually kind of digging down into what I think real people would do in it. 
 
Because I think often in in shows, and in films, the characters kind of know that they're in a story. You know, they've got an awareness that they're kind of -- that they've got a part to play in, in telling the story. And I like just to kind of, you know, stop that impulse a little bit and allow the characters just to kind of act as randomly or as irrationally, or as you know, unexpectedly as human beings do. Because I think if you let your characters do that, then that can take the story in all sorts of interesting directions, because they're kind of charging off with the story and taking it to a place that they want to go rather than the place where I've decided it's going because it's act three of a sci fi, um, blockbuster or whatever. But as far as legacy goes, I mean, you know, that's just the way that I do it. So, everybody does it in their own way. So, you know, I hope people will carry on watching it. And I hope that kind of people will be drawn to it by the kind of enthusiasm of the people who have, who have engaged with it, and that people carry on making their own theories and, you know, their own spreadsheets and pie charts and things. It's, you know, it's really lovely to see that.
 
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. 

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