The ‘Narcos’ Showrunner Is Ready to Tackle a New Drug War
Eric Newman didn’t set out to be a writer. In fact, segueing to writing, much less showrunning, wasn’t even his idea. The veteran producer, whose résumé was lined with films like Children of Men and Dawn of the Dead, was down in Colombia making Narcos when, he says, Netflix urged him to take the reins. “It was out of the absolute chaos of Narcos‘ first season that I became a showrunner,” Newman explains. “It was Netflix that said, ‘Hey, you’re down there holding it together. You do it.’ “
Nearly a decade later, he has multiple projects in various stages of development and moves fluidly between behind-the-scenes roles. His reputation for getting stuff made earned the 52-year-old father of three overall deals for film and TV at Netflix, where he’s also produced The Watcher, Bright and, soon, Painkiller, a Peter Berg-directed drama about the opioid crisis. Zooming in from his Grand Electric production company’s Santa Monica offices in early August, Newman opened up about navigating the dual strikes, dramatizing drug wars and why he chose not to follow his dad, legendary songwriter Randy Newman, into the music business.
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You spent many years as a producer before segueing to writing. What took you so long?
Yeah, the first 20-odd years. I wish I had done more [writing] sooner, but the producing part came sort of easy to me. I don’t want to say that it’s easy because it’s incredibly hard, but I like even the bad days as a producer about as much as one can. I appreciate the challenge, and I kind of like bad behavior when I encounter it. Obviously, I don’t like to see people victimized by bad behavior, but I’ve often been on the other side of a lot of just batshit-crazy rants from people, and it’s very hard for me not to smile. Some of them have been with cast in costume, which is a phenomenal experience.
Why do you think that is? Or rather, what prepared you to be able to withstand or laugh it off?
Growing up in show business, I certainly saw a lot of it. If I were to pay myself a compliment, I have a lot of empathy generally and I’m fascinated by people and their complexity. I’d say I like the company of complicated people in the right dosage.
Growing up, did composing or songwriting hold any appeal?
I grew up in a family of musicians and with a father who’s incredibly talented but I didn’t look at what he was doing and think, “Wow, he looks like he’s having fun.” In fact, it looked sort of terrible.
How so?
He was sort of tortured when he did it. He was very close with all of his children and very loving, but when he was working — and he had a studio at the house — you just didn’t want to go and interact with him. I loved movies. I wanted to be Brian Grazer or Jerry Bruckheimer. That [job] doesn’t really exist anymore, but when I was in my 20s, I met with all those guys — Brian, Scott Rudin, Eric Fellner, Neal Moritz, Lorenzo di Bonaventura. I’d ask them all, “What’s important?” They all said the same things.
Which were?
First, continuity of a relationship with a studio, which I had at Universal for a number of years, then lost, and then I kind of got back at Netflix. We’ve done well for one another. Second, inventory, as in, having a lot of stuff. And I learned that in the 2007-08 strike: Breck Eisner and I were about to make Creature from the Black Lagoon and the rewrite took forever and it came up against the strike and they canceled the movie and I had nothing else. I said to myself then, “That’s never gonna to happen again.” And the third one was the team, they’ve all surrounded themselves with amazing people. I am not a great manager in that way. I think I’m much more in my own head. Anyway, it was all very interesting but then the business changed completely. The big gross deals are gone.
How do you describe the throughline in your more recent work?
I gravitate toward what I call aspirational crime. It’s not a bunch of goons in the back of a pizza parlor breaking legs but a world you would want to be — if not in, you’d like to witness and then go about your life. You don’t want to live in the world of narcotics traffickers, but there is something transportive about it. And there’s something truthful in the things that I’m drawn to as well. Painkiller is interesting because there’s a message behind it and a public service component about the drug war. And Narcos was an idea I had carried around since I saw a 60 Minutes piece in 1995 or ’96.
Is there anyone in your life who is like, “Hey man, can’t you just work on some, like, light, happy rom-com?”
It’s funny, I think anyone who would’ve said that has since given up. I started in comedy and there are moments of humor in Painkiller, there are certainly lots in Narcos and in Griselda, but comedy’s not really my thing. I mean, I love it, but I don’t think I could do it as well.
With Narcos, the timeline was edging closer to modern times with at-large kingpins who are very dangerous. Frankly, I would have been terrified. At any point, were you?
No. I really wasn’t. And not that we’d ever pander to them, but what filtered back to us is that they liked the show. They appreciated the representation of what was, to us, an indictment of a failed policy, a law enforcement action that should be a health care one. Drugs are a major health care concern, and this ridiculous supposition that you can attack the supply and somehow that’s going to reduce the demand is so misguided. Also, a drug dealer is a bad guy, but a drug dealer doesn’t pretend to be anything but a bad guy. When you get into something like the Sacklers and the OxyContin epidemic, these are people who are doctors and so there’s a betrayal of public trust. But, making Narcos, I never felt in danger — three years in Colombia, three years in Mexico. It’s gotten a lot worse. It’s not why we stopped making it, per se, but I definitely do feel like they’re in a period now where it would’ve been harder. What happened and what always happens is that a new strain of trafficker emerges that communicates through violence in a way that the old guys didn’t.
I recall Danny Strong saying that he heard “no” a lot of when he was shopping Dopesick because the subject matter was so bleak. Did you face similar resistance with Painkiller?
I didn’t. I’m very fortunate and I know it’s unique but I’ve had a relationship with Netflix where they’re incredibly supportive of me creatively, in terms of what I want to do, and they loved the idea of this. I will say that what may have mitigated it slightly was that the writers, Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster, and Pete Berg and I were very conscious that we did not want to make grief porn. And there’s a fine line because you don’t want to make the OxyContin musical either.
Were there any concerns about having to follow Dopesick?
No, it’s not like we’re two giant asteroid movies. (Laughs.) Danny Strong did a great job of getting Dopesick out there, but this is a story that needs to be told as many times as possible, as loudly as possible. [The opioid crisis] is not over. My stepbrother died a month ago from opioid abuse at 47. He’d struggled with it for 20 years, and the real tragedy is that no one was surprised.
Have you heard the Sacklers’ footsteps? Any legal letters?
I think I’ve been protected by Netflix’s legal department. If certified mail is showing up, it’s not reaching me. I took a course in defamation — and obviously Narcos was complicated because dead people can sue you in some parts of Latin America — but to prove defamation, you have to prove that you hurt somebody. It’s almost impossible at this point, given their reputation, for our little old show to hurt them.
Your next show, Griselda, centers on Griselda Blanco, a notorious cocaine trafficker played by Sofia Vergara. It’s similar subject matter to Narcos and comes from many on the Narcos team. Did you consider sticking Narcos in its title and making it part of that franchise?
It can’t help but be a bit of a cousin. It had a lot of the elements and felt like Narcos to us but we also wanted it to be Sofia’s party. She’s so good in it and it’s something that she’s been carrying around. To go back to your question about what appeals to me, or what the throughline is, it’s that kind of passion. There’s always someone in the equation — and I’ve been the person and I’ve also facilitated for the person — and here it was Sophia who was like, “I want to do this. I don’t know that I can do this but I want to try.” And I knew she could.
It’s a real departure from Gloria on Modern Family…
It’s funny, she got really mad at me once early on in the process, which, like I said, I can take it and in this case she was right. It was a schedule thing and, remember, she’s an industry, similar to Kevin Hart [who Newman has also worked with], so it’s not crazy to wander into a 23 hour day accidentally. Anyway, one day, she just let me have it, and this was before we even started shooting, and I remember looking at her, and she’s pissed, and I’m like, “Oh, that’s Griselda. Okay. You can do this.” (Laughs)
You have a ton of other projects in the works. I’m curious how the dual strikes have impacted them.
We stopped American Primeval [his Western with Taylor Kitsch and Betty Gilpin] on day 96 of 100-some-odd days, and then Zero Day [starring Robert De Niro], which I’m as excited about as I’ve been about anything I’ve done, got shut down on our first day.
How concerned are you about a post-strike production and scheduling scramble akin to what the industry experienced post-pandemic?
The land rush — oh, we’re talking about it. Everybody is because you might not be able to get the resources you need to start. I can’t even speculate as to when this will end, but obviously anyone who knows anything about production knows you need, like, seven to eight weeks to ramp up. I don’t know how much gets done before the end of the year. I’m supposed to have six releases between now and next fall, and I’m trying [to remain calm]. I was really pissed off for a while and nervous, and then I just decided I have no control over it.
That’s probably a healthier mindset…
There’s a book I read every couple of years called The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman about the origins of the first World War. And it feels like we’re kind of there, where no one’s really talking to each other, they’re just projecting outward to their echo chamber and no one even remotely sees the other side and there’s technology that we don’t understand, even if we think we understand. In the Tuchman book, we’ve whipped each other up into this thing that culminates in the Battle of the Marne, where we meet the machine gun for the first time, and you realize like, “Whoa,” and 40,000 guys are dead in two days. And I’m not an alarmist but it’s hard not to see that unless everybody starts talking again, holy crap, we’re in trouble.
How much do you worry about projects going away or the budgets soaring as a result?
I don’t worry about either in this case. With American Primeval, we’ve shot 85 percent of the show. And Zero Day is a really important show to them and it’s relevant to what’s going on in our world right now and the dangers of tech. So, those two feel pretty safe. But, trust me, I’m a worrier, and I look at things and think, “Oh man, at some point they’re gonna blow the whistle and come take all my toys away.” And I also have [the Zack Snyder Netflix movie] Rebel Moon coming at the end of the year. And, fortunately, we were completely done with that one.
Have you already filmed both installments?
Yeah. And it’s funny, what I’ve loved about TV writing and showrunning is it’s afforded me a different kind of control that you don’t have as a movie producer. You’re the facilitator for others, and unless the [director] is a genius, like Alfonso Cuaron [with whom he made Children of Men] or someone like James Gunn [with whom he made Slither], Zack Snyder [Dawn of the Dead] or Joe Kosinski [Spiderhead], the job is a real slog, and you’re just like, “All right. I guess, if that’s what you wanna do.” But I love working with Zack, and the movies are great, and I think people are going to really love them.
How would you characterize the appetite at Netflix right now? There are rumblings that they haven’t greenlit a movie in at least six months.
I haven’t paid too much attention to what they’re buying out in the marketplace but I’ve made six or seven movies there — or maybe seven or eight, I guess there are a couple I’d like to forget — and there are definitely things that they’ve told me they want from me next year. But obviously there’s going to be a massive backlog of stuff [once the strike is over.]
Speaking of, you were doing business with Netflix early on, when Hollywood was still salivating at those big upfront paydays in lieu of real backend. Now, as streaming residuals have become a key issue for the WGA, do you have any regrets?
Narcos was licensed by Netflix from [studio] Gaumont and me and a few other participants. It ran for six seasons. Had the show not worked, we would’ve all made next to nothing. I have since segued into a different deal that has no ownership in my shows, trading it for the premium that streamers offer in advance. I can’t say which is more remunerative, and to be honest, I won’t know for a long time. I do feel, though, that I have been fairly compensated. But I’m in a unique and fortunate position and support a wage increase for the people, writers and cast, who are instrumental in making these movies and shows.
This interview, coordinated through Newman’s personal PR in accordance with the WGA strike rules, was edited for length and clarity.
A version of this story first appeared in the Aug. 9 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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