Justin Marks on the 'counterpart' finale, and why unsexy is the new sexy

It’s a science fiction story that re-examines the Cold War spy thriller genre, where instead of the Berlin Wall being a physical construct, it’s a metaphysical one: the Crossing, a rift between two parallel dimensions. But in Sunday’s season finale, diplomacy finally fails and the Crossing is closed down, stranding each version of Howard Silk (both played by J.K. Simmons) on the other side. (Another complicating factor: Nearly every character has a doppelgänger.)

In its first season, which ended Sunday night, “Counterpart” explored heady, existential questions about the nature of identity and what it means to confront one’s self. That’s not to say the show is without its shocking twists, sexy scenes and sudden violence — it’s just meted out more judiciously than one might expect for a prestige cable thriller.

“We had this phrase that we wrote on the white board,” Marks said. “'Unsexy is the new sexy.’ I really believe that if you get audiences addicted to cocaine, you can’t ever offer them a glass of wine. It works better the other way around.”

Before flying back to Berlin, where the show takes place, Marks discussed how Season 1 came together and what fans can expect from Season 2, now in production.

Q: This is a show which would benefit from freeze-framing, especially when it comes to the Crossing. Or even with the zany Management setup in the finale.

A: I really hope people do freeze-frame. I want to invite people to watch it on that level of detail. I wanted the show to feel like a Robert Altman version of science fiction more than Fritz Lang. Altman left all these windows open where you could see Lyle Lovett wandering around in the bushes back there, and you’re like, “What is he doing and why is he doing that?” It feels like the frame is alive more than just its four borders. One of my favorite things to look at in freeze-frame are all the Interface documents, all that code. That’s the kind of stuff we really live for, because the weirder, the more out there, the more zany the concept is, the more rigid the execution has to be.

For the Crossing, everyone wanted to turn the lights up and let it be seen. I said, “No, let’s pull out all of these lights, and make it really dark, and leave people craving more detail.” If you freeze-frame it, look at the dead center of the Crossing the details on the walls speak to the origins of the Crossing. Management, we had so much fun with that. We found the two strangest, most brilliant actors to play the respective Operators on either side in the finale. What kind of governing body protects the Crossing between two parallel worlds? The second season focuses in large part on the history and origins of Management.

Q: This is a spy story, for the most part. And in some ways, it’s a spy story about spy stories, and about women in spy stories — the femme fatale, the sexy assassin, the doting wife. Were you trying to upend these tropes?

A: It’s something we worked really hard to do, because women don’t traditionally belong in this genre of British spy fiction, outside of the cowering prostitute in the shower, or the one who got away. We wanted to introduce them in that context, but turn them inside out and make them three-dimensional women. If it had been left to me, I don’t think Baldwin would have survived that fourth episode, but the women in the room really fought for Baldwin to stand on her own two feet. This is a woman who doesn’t have to be defined by, “Oh, she’s just a sexy assassin.” We can tell the story of a woman who, in this moment of existential crisis, decides to escape the confines of her own identity. And it became a coming out story, because I don’t think sexuality was something that Baldwin ever saw as a two-way street. So by the final episode, she survived, but quite scarred and quite damaged.

Q: The reveal that Claire Prime had taken this deep cover assignment to impersonate Claire Alpha was a major shock, not least of which to her husband, Peter Quayle, which continues that theme of men underestimating women.

A: I don’t think there’s anyone less qualified to have the job that he has than Peter Quayle. The person whose job it is to look for people who’ve infiltrated the organization doesn’t realize the woman he’s been sleeping with (is a mole). There is a black comedy here, in Peter Quayle’s character, because Quayle — this philandering, underqualified, good-looking young guy — is a manifestation of privilege. We get to turn that inside out. And in the satirical manner of the last episode, Peter Quayle gets everything he ever wanted at the worst possible time.

I want to fill in Mira, the woman who trained Claire at the Indigo school for sleeper agents, because their ideology is a very important story for us in Season 2.

Q: What about Emily Alpha? She figured out all the intrigue before anyone else did, and then spent the season in a coma. But now she’s starting to wake up.

A: There is always a temptation when you have that wife in a coma to idealize her, which is a little misogynistic, too. The only way we could convince Olivia Williams to do this show was to pitch her the two-season plan of who both Emilys are, and that the woman in the coma is in fact much more complex than any other character. Both Emilys, those are job descriptions that are typically reserved for the George Smileys of the world, the James Bonds of the world. (During filming) Olivia was walking through one scene with another male character, whose position is actually underneath her in the hierarchy of the show, but even then, the background actors look at the male she’s walking with and sort of nod, “Yes, sir” to him, not realizing that she’s the one who’s actually in charge in that scene. The clichés that abound, they speak to a certain gender norm that we didn’t want the show to reflect.

Q: Between Quayle and Claire and Howard and Emily, this is also a show about marriage. Does the writers’ room feel like a therapy session sometimes?

A: All we do is therapy on this show! We spend most of our time talking about ideas of identity and relationships. Emily Alpha has her own flaws, and own methods that she’s gone through that are less wholesome, let’s say? But Howard Alpha is aware of that, and that’s okay. This is a contract that they have as husband and wife. So we wanted to be able to invert that and be able to create a marriage that felt very human, and very true to the marriages I know. Two of our writers are actually married. Which two writers, I will leave for their own privacy, but they met in the room as well, so you can imagine it brings us all into very close proximity with each other, when it comes to being honest and vulnerable.

Q: You play a character as well, as a cameo.

A: The smarmy teenager who walks Stephen Rea’s dog! We love Stephen Rea, so all I will say is that despite Alexander Pope Prime’s death, he’s already popping back in certain ways this next season. But my own character, oh yeah. I’m flying out to Berlin to shoot another one of those. More than anything, I wanted to play a character who had to clean up after another character’s poop. As a showrunner, as a writer, it fit. (Laughs.)

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.