Interview With No Ordinary Family’s Greg Berlanti

Greg Berlanti is the co-creator and executive producer for ABC’s upcoming superhero family drama No Ordinary Family. An acclaimed television veteran with credits including Dawson’s Creek, Everwood, Dirty Sexy Money, and Brothers & Sisters, Berlanti’s upcoming films include serving as co-writer and producer on the upcoming Green Lantern movie.

After the NOF panel at the Comic-Con International in San Diego, KSiteTV was one of the outlets that participated in roundtable interviews with Berlanti.

Here’s what he had to say about the show, which premieres Tuesday, September 28 on ABC and is well worth taking the time to watch.

Please do not duplicate this interview onto other websites. Instead, just link to KSiteTV! Thanks! Questions are in bold; answers are not. You can read more No Ordinary Family interviews, including some dialogue with stars Michael Chiklis and Julie Benz, here on KSiteTV.

Can you talk about how some of your previous experience came into play when creating the Powells for No Ordinary Family.

I definitely drew on a lot of the family show experience. I wouldn’t want to do another family show if you couldn’t have really honest conversations between the characters. I think everyone, even if they’re younger on the show, they should be as emotionally intelligent in their own way, and as interesting and as rich as the as the adult characters. That was definitely a standard. And then coming from two years of doing multiple drafts of Green Lantern, there was a lot of experience with writing set pieces and trying fun things. Then there was just a whole slew of other comic book stuff that I never had gotten to say or do, that I thought “Oh, okay. I’d like to try this,” or “what would it like to be like to write for a character with speed,” or “what would it be like to write for a character who is a super-genius, or telepathic.” So it was sort of a fusion of all of those things.

Is the talking to the camera/confessional going to continue in the series beyond the pilot?

We end it after Episode Two, in kind of a fun way. We’re on a network where there’s a lot of people talking to the camera, so I think we want to keep distinguishing ourselves, even on that network. There are even more new shows with people talking to the camera on that network. So, we voluntarily said we don’t have to be the fifth show with people talking to the camera. Our hope is to pull back on that.

Are the super powers a way to have more chances to have honest conversation, especially when you have someone in the cast who can read minds?

Definitely there’s that, and rules have to be established in the house about when to use your powers and when not.

I think with network TV, it’s really hard to do straight dramas anymore. What I saw in this was that we’ve got all of these great set pieces and action and visual effects that are fun to watch, but you also can have these conversations in between, and you get a version of both that can hopefully bring more people to it. So hopefully, this is a new way to package something like that.

Was there ever a question about the show’s title, since ABC also has the similarly-titled Modern Family on your schedule?

You know, that never came up. Our title was always No Ordinary Family since we handed in the pilot script. And we thought that maybe at some point it might come up, but I think since that show’s working great, I think if they could call it Modern Family 2, we would call it that. [laughs] No. It does have Family in it, but hopefully, again, it’s its own kind of unique show that over time distinguishes itself.

Obviously there’s going to be a comparison between your show and Heroes. Heroes was quite dark and your show seems to be more on the light, airy, fun side. Is that a tone that the show will continue to carry?

Yes. We have some dark moments still, and I think from episode to episode, even in the pilot, there is that kind of darkness; but I definitely feel like in the world of superhero films, there’s Dark Knight and there’s Spider-Man. They’re very different. We’re probably closer to Spider-Man than we are to Dark Knight.

What comic book conventions will you be exploring throughout the series?

My favorite section of comic book movies is the first 45 minutes, when they get their powers and their life’s first starting to change. To me, that’s this whole season. It’s all a training period for them. There’s so much they don’t know, and I really don’t want to miss a beat with any of that. So, from episode to episodes, you’ll see things like as Jim tries to improve, and even the kids at school, or Stephanie in her own way — really exploring these different new things. That’s the great thing about a TV show. You can do something new every week, so it doesn’t get boring.

Are there people who are let in on the Powells’ secrets?

Obviously we have George (Romany Malco) and Katie (Autumn Reeser) at first. But that’s really a jeopardy for the show; the people around them that start to get a sense of what’s going on. It comes up in the first couple of episodes. Are the kids allowed to tell somebody, because the parents told first? And how hard it is for the kids to not tell. So we deal directly with that, pretty soon.

Did you and the writers try to come up with powers and situations that are different from what we’ve seen before in other TV programs and movies?

I think it’s sort of similar to all of the vampire things that are out there; you really try to find ways to distinguish yourself. Ultimately, it’s more in the personalities of the characters than in their powers. We do have a lot of R&D with our digital effects supervisor about what we haven’t seen before; even in [Stephanie]’s running on the freeway in the pilot. Moving to Flash-time, as it were, and bouncing back and forth. Just things like that. We do try and ask ourselves that, but hopefully what makes them different is the character.

Had you been familiar with the work of the No Ordinary Family actors before?

I hadn’t watched much Dexter, but I saw some of Julie [Benz]’s stuff. I remember her all the way back on Buffy. I was a fan of The Shield; I’ve seen everything that Michael’s done. We felt really lucky to get both of them. Michael came first, and when you get someone like Michael Chiklis, it makes the rest of your casting process go a lot easier, because everyone wants to be in a TV show with him. Casting the kids was fun. It’s always fun casting kid because you’re sort of starting someone’s career out, and trying to cast actors who can act opposite adults and really hold their own. And Romany [Malco] was incredible in 40-Year-Old Virgin, and we really wanted a sense of humor, and that was really important to us, and he brings it in spades, as does Autumn Reeser.

Do you plan on directing for the series at any point?

I’m supposed to direct one of the first 12 episodes. It’ll be a whole episode in the house. No powers. Very easy. [joking]

No Ordinary Family premieres Tuesday, September 28 on ABC. You can read more information about the show here on KSiteTV! Thanks to Greg Berlanti for taking the time to participate in this roundtable discussion, and be sure to check out the show when it hits the air!