{"id":1916,"date":"2026-06-11T17:13:36","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T17:13:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=1916"},"modified":"2026-06-11T17:13:36","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T17:13:36","slug":"the-audacity-creator-jonathan-glatzer-on-finding-the-right-tone-and-performers-to-tackle-the-world-of-tech-titans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=1916","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Audacity\u2019 Creator Jonathan Glatzer on Finding the Right Tone and Performers to Tackle the World of Tech Titans"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<!-- do not apply CSS styles to this element! --><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>\nJonathan Glatzer has always been fascinated by the personalities that come out of Silicon Valley \u2014 and not just the ones you\u2019d expect.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=1914\">Alliance of Women Directors and Starz Reveal Creative Leadership Lab\u2019s Inaugural Class Designed to Support Female TV Directors (EXCLUSIVE)<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\tSure, the tech billionaires that now dominate our lives and our headlines come with plenty of drama to mine. But for Glatzer, he tells <em>Variety<\/em> For the Love of the Craft, that he was interested in those \u201cbelow that echelon of the known\u2026 those who want to get to that very, very tippy top, and there\u2019s just not enough room for them, so the wannabes, the also-rans, were the ones that really made me curious.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tSo when AMC Global Media chief content officer Dan McDermott approached Glatzer about doing something in the tech space, the writer had the idea for \u201cThe Audacity\u201d in mind. Glatzer immediately brainstormed the character of Duncan Park, the insecure CEO played by Billy Magnussen in the series.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tBut AMC and AMC+\u2019s \u201cThe Audacity\u201d isn\u2019t just about looking at the tech world through the lens of an infantile tycoon. Glatzer says his main entry point for the show is through Orson (Everett Blunck), the 15-year-old who moves from Baltimore to Silicon Valley to live with his mother JoAnne (Sarah Goldberg), a psychiatrist to business titans like Duncan.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cOrson was somebody who was really based on me,\u201d Glatzer says. \u201cI grew up with a therapist mother and a psychiatrist stepfather. Both of them had offices in the house hauntingly similar to the set that we built for them. Every 50 minutes, somebody new was coming in and people leaving, and it was people frequently that I knew from our little town in New Jersey.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tOrson is right at that impressionable age where he\u2019s going through puberty and he\u2019s pressured to fit into a new, strange community \u2014 which Glatzer says supplies the emotional heart of \u201cThe Audacity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cThen you add to that the fact that this age group is the target demo for most tech, and that kids his age have been handed tablets from birth, practically,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s a data footprint that I think most parents don\u2019t quite realize that\u2019s being created on every single one of these kids.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe \u201caudacity\u201d of the series comes from the adults in the show who are mostly cravenly greedy, ambitious and self-obsessed. That includes JoAnne, whom Duncan discovers is doing some insider trading based on the privileged information she gleans from their therapy clients.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=1912\">Here\u2019s How to Watch FOX Sports Online for Free<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s nothing more fun than writing a character\u2019s reasoning for doing what they\u2019re doing,\u201d Glatzer says.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tAs for Duncan, Glatzer found in Magnusson the idea actor to play Duncan\u2019s insecurity, and how it fuels the character\u2019s arrogance.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cFirst time I saw him was on \u2018The Leftovers,\u2019 and he was arresting to me,\u201d Glatzer says. \u201cBilly has this antenna as an actor that just pulls in everything that\u2019s applicable.. he\u2019s able to do that in a way that I\u2019ve never seen quite like anybody else. And so it\u2019s terribly exciting, and then you combine that and scenes with Sarah Goldberg, who is a fucking rock.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tAlso in the cast is \u201cThe Big Bang Theory\u201d alum Simon Helberg, an inventor with more of a moral center as he attempts to create an empathetic AI. \u201cWe\u2019re always looking for the perfect combination in these people in the tech world,\u201d he says. \u201cLike Sam Altman, for a while was somebody who we were like, \u2018oh, there\u2019s a good guy\u2026 oh shit, he\u2019s not.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tIn casting performers with comedy backgrounds \u2014 Helberg, Rob Corddry, Lucy Punch among them \u2014 Glatzer (whose credits include \u201cSuccession\u201d) says he\u2019s been impressed when comedy actors are given a dramatic role. \u201cThey infuse that with a much rounder humanity,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\u201cThe Audacity\u201d takes place in Silicon Valley, but it isn\u2019t really a character in Season 1, as Glatzer preferred to stay intimate with the characters. \u201cMy approach was to make sure that the tech world remained as a backdrop,\u201d he says. \u201cThe foreground was always these characters. The first few episodes we are asking the audience, \u2018can you care and get intimate with nine to 11 characters?\u2019 Because that\u2019s the size of the world. It\u2019s not just tech, it\u2019s the private school that they all send their kids to, it\u2019s the therapist\u2019s office, it\u2019s these guys coming in from DC, it\u2019s Orson coming in from Baltimore.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\n\tIn creating the pilot for \u201cThe Audacity,\u201d Glatzer said he was inspired by his \u201cBetter Call Saul\u201d boss Vince Gilligan, whose AMC pilot \u201cBreaking Bad\u201d is considered flawless. \u201cIt\u2019s very rare for a pilot that also is trying to build a world that you\u2019re perhaps not familiar with,\u201d Glatzer says. A lot of protein needs to be chewed in the pilot, so that was the hardest thing for me to do. I was gratified that it essentially communicated across the goal line what I needed it to, The pilot is always the one that\u2019s shown to audiences, and it\u2019s been really gratifying to see all of those things seem to be hitting and in the right spots, they\u2019re laughing at the jokes, not at the dramatic bits, and that\u2019s really what you want!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=1910\">Dwayne Johnson Reveals Cancer Scare on Day of \u2018Jumanji\u2019 Press, Admits He Wanted an Oscar Nom and Explains Why \u2018I\u2019m Keeping My Politics to Myself\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AMC&#8217;s &#8216;The Audacity&#8217; creator Jonathan Glatzer discusses finding the right tone and performers to take on the world of tech titans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1915,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[1648,1649,1650],"class_list":["post-1916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv","tag-for-the-love-of-the-craft-amc","tag-jonathan-glatzer","tag-the-audacity"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - 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