After four seasons of solving mysteries, the final episode of Nancy Drew airs tonight (August 23) on The CW with a finale called “The Light Between Lives.” To promote this episode, KSiteTV’s Craig Byrne spoke with Executive Producer Larry Teng, who directed the first episode of the series back in 2019, and Co-Executive Producer Amanda Row, who helmed tonight’s finale, for some insights into our final mystery in Horseshoe Bay. The last episode of the Kennedy McMann-led series airs at 8PM ET/PT on The CW.
KSITETV: Going into this finale, if people haven’t been caught up with season 4, what do the fans need to know?
AMANDA ROW: Oh, gosh. Well, they have to catch up!
Nancy and Ace are star-crossed lovers, and Nancy is a strong, independent woman who has been trying to find herself over four seasons, and is running to the ground in order to do so.
LARRY TENG: I think this has always been Nancy’s journey as the tip of the spear. Life’s mysteries as a whole, I think, have always befuddled her, and I think that that’s been her vulnerable journey, and we’ve all connected to and related to that. Sometimes you can’t figure it out. This last season kind of closes that arc for her, and for a lot of her found family. Coming into this year, they’ve all taken major steps in their lives, moving on into different growth potentials, and we really get to play that out over these last 13 episodes.
KSITETV: Can you tease some of the challenges that the “Drew Crew” may face in this finale?
AMANDA ROW: The stakes are higher than ever, and Horseshoe Bay is under a bigger threat than they’ve ever experienced. Nancy has to face her identity in a much larger way than she’s had to in the past. It’s kind of everything that she’s been contemplating for the entire four seasons. That’s all I’ll say.
KSITETV: This question is for Larry: What made Amanda the right director for this episode?
LARRY TENG: We hired Amanda in Season 1 on Episode 6, and it was just a tremendous meeting. [She] had certainly everything that I was looking for when I was looking to hire other directors. She understood the way that we wanted to make the show. I think part of the fun of the show has always been horror, And the resourcefulness behind making those gags work. I think we prided ourselves on doing things practically and Amanda really understood sort that home brew “film school” aspect of it all, where we could try anything and make it work.
We never had a lot of money to make this show. And after she directed her first episode in season one, we gave her another one in the back, and then she became the obvious hire to take over for me as the producing director on the show in Season 2. I think between the two of us, we’ve directed over a third of the episodes. So,who better to do the last episode than Amanda Row?
KSITETV: For Amanda: how did it feel to be able to be the one to direct this finale?
AMANDA ROW: Nancy Drew was my first CW show, four years ago. I was coming up as a television director. By being able to do that series, and by Larry putting trust in me, and Melinda and Noga putting trust in me, and the cast putting trust in me, [that] since then I’ve been able to do [so much]. I’ve done Star Trek, and Doom Patrol, and Chucky… all of these awesome shows… and Nancy Drew gave me the start on it.
I’ve always said to them, ‘I can’t quit you guys!’ I just love this crew and I would always make room to be able to come back to them. And so, to be the one to send it home just feels like poetry. It just feels really, really nice. And to be able to see how the cast has grown, has been just an insane privilege that I will never, ever take for granted.
KSITETV: Is it odd to switch from like the mode of a show like Strange New Worlds or NCIS: Hawai’i and then go back to the world of Nancy Drew?
AMANDA ROW: For me, I basically exclusively work in genre, so I get to go from one story to another one. So it certainly wasn’t strange for me. It’d probably be weird for me to go to NCIS Hawai’i after Nancy Drew.
I don’t know. I’m curious about your answer, Larry.
LARRY TENG: I sort of authored the creative look and style of the storytelling on this show, and going back to it, it’s just like riding a bike. The process makes a lot of sense to me. Honestly, as directors, you know, we all have a style that we eventually grow into, and even on NCS Hawai’i, although not obvious, there are similar things between the execution of both shows, at least for me as a director, where I can seamlessly sort of translate back and forth. I think the big difference is that there’s way more money on NCS Hawai’i, so we’re doing way much bigger gags, so going back to Nancy Drew, I will always challenge my resourcefulness and my ingenuity in trying to pull the show off and making our small budget look like a big budget show.
KSITETV: Sometimes the show does big gags, such as the giant “ghost spider” in “The Web of Yesterdays.” Can you talk about that?
LARRY TENG: Sure. I think sometimes, you get scripts, and you read them, and you try to sort of see it in your head. That was a particular script that just kept getting bigger and bigger as every act went on.
[As if] showing two different timelines wasn’t big enough. they had to fight this, this tremendous spider inside the Historical Society. So I think a lot of it was figuring out how we could pull this off, and figuring out what’s the most effective way of doing it. I think working with with Tom Mahoney at CoSA VFX and Tony Lazarowich, our effects coordinator, all of those elements came together.
The shot I’m most proud of is the spider moving through the space and how, in one shot, we were able to create a lot of practical destruction, and then add the spider to it. The actors really had a sense of how to move and how to react to it. They knew how big it was. They could see furniture flying, and holes and walls being created. We were doing all that live, so it was really a beautiful mix of what the show does best, along with how the visual effects really help enhance storytelling.
KSITETV: I saw you have a short film called Cupcakes that you worked on with some actors that KSiteTV readers really like, like Nancy Drew’s Leah Lewis and Matt Barr & Philemon Chambers from Walker Independence. Is that out yet?
LARRY TENG: It’s in the festival circuit right now. It’s directed by Brit Morgan, who is also my girlfriend, and I produced it along with Jared Padalecki and some other people. I think it’s been accepted to eight or nine festivals at the moment, so it’s not out yet publicly, but hopefully soon.
KSITETV: What was it like to be a part, or to have been a part of the series that was just so well received and embraced by its fandom?
LARRY TENG: It was really special for me. It’s like your first kid. You get really emotionally attached, and as the seasons went on, and the fan base grew with it. [I think being] released on HBO Max had a tremendous part in that as well, because I can definitely feel a noticeable reaction to the episodes, starting in Season 3, and especially in this year.
It means a lot to be able to tell stories that really affect people. I think oftentimes what we do is to help articulate feelings that we sometimes can’t quantify with words, so we tell stories, and people can relate to it, and people can learn about themselves from it. I know [stories] did that for me when I was growing up. So just to be part of this business in general, and this art form, and in storytelling, is super special.
AMANDA ROW: I think that anyone who decides to be an artist, their motivation is really, at its core, to connect with people. To have an audience, and to let people know ‘I’m here too! We’re all in this together. We’re all human beings, all having a human experience.’ And so, you know, as much as the Internet can bring a lot of negative things or whatever, it’s also given the ability to watch people watching what I make, and listen to what I make, and as a creator, it is the most rewarding thing ever. They’re so grateful for this wonderful thing. that Larry, Melinda, Noga, Josh, and Stephanie created.
I can’t describe what it is to know that what we are creating is being absorbed and actually healing people and helping people. That is, in my opinion, what art is for.
KSITETV: On the subject of fans, I have to ask this question: How likely is it that the Nancy and Ace death curse might be lifted by the end of the series?
AMANDA ROW: I’ll only say that Nancy and Ace come to a conclusion, for sure.
KSITETV: How hard was it to say goodbye to Horseshoe Bay and the sets and the people who made up Nancy Drew?
AMANDA ROW: So hard. [It’s a] family of people who have all been in the Horseshoe Bay universe for so long. We actually scheduled for the last scene of the episode, for all of the the actors to be there together, so we could all say farewell together.
The whole time we were shooting, everyone had a little pep in their steps, because we were all so grateful to be there, knowing it was our last little bit, but when I finally called cut, and said ‘that’s a series wrap on Nancy Drew,’ everything came out and it was a really beautiful moment, because like I’ve said, so many people had stuck on since Season 1. You’ve got them in front of the camera, but then there’s a hundred people behind that camera, a lot of which have been there since the beginning It was just really, really a very special moment that I’ll never forget.
LARRY TENG: It was incredibly hard to me. It was hard that I couldn’t be there. I was on another job at the time. To not be there killed me, but knowing that Amanda was there to direct the last one gave me a tremendous amount of relief and joy. Every aspect about making this show was special. I’ve been so tethered to it for all four of its years. It was just an incredible group of people to create with. The crew, the producers, the writers, the actors… it’s shaped me tremendously.
The Nancy Drew series finale airs tonight on The CW. See some photos from the episode here!
