TV Jots

New Adventure Drama Emphasizes Giving

NBC has another new series premiering tonight, June 24, at 10pm, the adventure drama aptly titled The Philanthropist. To help spread the word about the show, which was notably filmed in locations all around the world, executive producer Tom Fontana and star James Purefoy recently set aside time to answer burning questions. I don’t think I or the others present during the interview realized just how informative the session would turn out to be.

Emmy and Peabody Award-winning Fontana is well known for his creative efforts on influential television shows like St. Elsewhere, Homicide: Life on the Street, and Oz, while English actor Purefoy is probably best known in the United States for his role as Mark Antony in the acclaimed HBO historic drama Rome.

In The Philanthropist, Purefoy plays cocky, globe-trotting billionaire Teddy Rist, who loses his son and eventually decides to devote himself to bettering the world because doing so is the only thing that makes him feel again.

Joining Purefoy in the regular cast are Jesse L. Martin (Law & Order) as Rist’s business partner, fellow billionaire, and friend Philip Maidstone, and Neve Campbell (Party of Five) as Philip’s wife Olivia, who manages the charitable foundation the two billionaires established. The 4400‘s Lindy Booth, The Wire‘s Michael Kenneth Williams, The Starter Wife‘s Krista Allen, and newcomer James Albrecht also star.

During the Q&A, both Fontana and Purefoy gave up the goods on the show’s premise and the main character’s motivations, in addition to the origins of The Philanthropist and its relationship to real-life entrepreneur and philanthropist Bobby Sager, who, along with his family, travels the world in order to help ordinary people achieve great things.

So, grab a cup of coffee or whatever refreshment and enjoy the following interview. It’s on the long side, but it’s also one of the best I’ve ever had the privilege to participate in.

Incidentally, I’ve watched the pilot episode, enjoyed it very much, and highly recommend The Philanthropist to anybody looking for one more entertaining series to add to their personal summer lineup. A bonus is the series’ underlying positive message.

The character of Teddy Rist seems like sort of a novel approach at presenting a sort of a modern-day “do-gooder” or modern-day sort of hero, action hero. What do you like about the character? James, from your perspective as an actor, and Tom, from your creative point of view, where did the idea for this guy come from?

TOM FONTANA: Well, first of all, the role that James is playing is inspired by an actual philanthropist, a man named Bobby Sager who was a businessman, earned a lot of money, and at one point decided that he was going to go all over the world and try to fix things. And the character that James plays isn’t actually Bobby.

We obviously fictionalized the circumstances of his life. But the heart of what Bobby believes and Teddy Rist believes is that the solution to the world’s— A lot of the world’s problems have to do with generating for people who are living, you know, below standards, that they should have a certain sense of dignity about their lives. And that the best way for them to have dignity about their lives is through them creating a situation where they can either create a business or have jobs that generate income and also, you know, benefit the others.

Bobby’s line to me when I first met him was, “Yeah you can teach a man to fish, but if you teach a man to fish, all he’s going to eat is fish. But if you teach him how to package the fish and market the fish and ship the fish, he can also get some potatoes and some meat and some other things.” So, at his heart, he’s a capitalist, and this is true of Teddy Rist, a capitalist who is trying to fix the world in an innovative way.

JAMES PUREFOY: Yeah. That’s kind of it really. You know, to me, playing the part only really made sense to me when I met Bobby Sager and spent a bit of time with him. And this is a man who, as Tom has said, has made a great deal of money but now spends ten months of every year flying around the world to invariably very poor places because his money can work best and have the greatest effect in those places. But he also demands a very high return.

It’s not just about charity. He doesn’t just give money away; he invests in projects. So, for an example, he has invested in microenterprises in Rwanda, where he’s brought women whose husbands are in prison for the genocide together with women whose husbands were killed by the genocide and created a microenterprise with those women.

So, he brought two very polarized communities together and created a business with them of making jewelry, weaving baskets that he will then help market and sell overseas or [in] local markets or local capital cities, whatever. So, that actually has a massive effect on that group of women in Rwanda.

And, also, he talks about very just similar, small things. It’s about looking people in the eye and engaging with them and making people who feel often quite invisible, make them feel visible and seen.

So, you know, it’s what he calls concrete baby steps. And that’s a shot all the way through the show. Teddy Rist does concrete baby steps all the way through. And they may be tiny small things or they may be very big things, but they’re always conscious things.

I’m a big fan of Jesse L. Martin and Neve Campbell. What’s it been like working with those two?

JAMES PUREFOY: Well, great. They’re very, very committed to the job and they’ve been out with me and the rest of the cast in, you know, South Africa and Czech Republic; for seven months we’ve been out there. And I think it has all had to all of us a profound change on our lives because this wasn’t a series that used Africa as a backdrop. Or it wasn’t just, you know, nice scenery. It was about those people right there on the ground.

So, those are the people we were engaging with on, you know, a very, very personal level. And so a philosophy as a series shot through us, as well, so that we would try and make sure production left things often for people that improve their lives. So, just by us being there, there would have been something that would’ve happened in the very small, often rural communities that we were in where we would’ve left something behind. I think we’ve had schools built, for example.

I know we’ve had schools built because I helped. I’m very heavily involved in getting those done. Or very small things, you know. We were filming in a little man’s house one day. He had a rolled up mattress on the floor, and our art department created a very small rural hotel there.

And he had two kids. So, in the room that we were filming, which was a three-bed room, we made sure production left behind the beds and the wardrobes. That made a massive difference in that man’s life. You should’ve seen the look on his face at the end of the day. Fantastic.

Is all the action going to be centered in Nigeria?

TOM FONTANA: No, no, no. It goes all over the world. We have episodes set in Paris, Kosovo, Kashmir, Haiti.

JAMES PUREFOY: Burma.

TOM FONTANA: San Diego, California. Brahma. The idea is that Teddy is a character who will go anywhere, partially for business reasons and then partially because his heart goes where the rest of him goes.

James, you do a lot of your stunts yourself, a very physical role for you.

JAMES PUREFOY: I was until I was banned by production from doing any more because I kept hurting myself. I really did injure myself. I had a seven centimeter tear in a hamstring, which forced the hamstring into a rather unsightly bulge behind my knee.

That was rather unpleasant. And then I had a— And then I was running across a frozen road in a street in northern Czech Republic about 2 o’clock in the morning, slipped on black ice. All the tendons on my ankle came off with bone attached. And so that had to be operated on, set right and then, you know, I was wound up and sent back into combat.

TOM FONTANA: And I have to tell you James did the most extraordinary thing. We needed to do some reshooting, and he was in London having his extremities taken care of, and he very voluntarily, very willingly came back to South Africa to do this week of reshoots when he should’ve been on his butt taking care of himself.

He came back to shooting, and it was a remarkable thing because it would’ve put the production very, very much behind and very much over budget if he had been the least bit of a diva and said, you know, “Screw you guys. I’m staying in London.” But he got on a plane, flew with a bad leg, worked the week.

JAMES PUREFOY: I got injections in my stomach. If you’ve just had an operation, you have to have— It’s very dangerous to fly, so they are worried about you getting deep vein thrombosis. So, one of the scenes we would often have is my lovely assistant Renee just going like, “Come on, James, come on. It’s time to have your injection.” And I’d have to lift up my shirt, and she’d ram a hypodermic needle into my stomach.

TOM FONTANA: The only sad part is he wouldn’t share the drugs with the rest of us.

If you had unlimited funds, James, you personally, like this character, what would you do? What would you do with it?

JAMES PUREFOY: You know if I had unlimited funds— I’ve been so affected by what Bobby does and what the work that Bobby does, and if anybody gets a chance, go to www.teamsager.org and just have a look at him. There’s lots of video on there of him. He’s an extraordinary man. And I would love to imagine that I would embark on an adventurous life like he’s had.

Because it just makes sense, so much sense what he does. And it takes a man with a huge and elephantine heart to do what he does. And in a hard, tough world that we live in, for a billionaire to spend ten months of his year in the most inhospitable places on earth, on his own, often dealing with the shit— He’s, you know, breathtaking, really breathtaking.

How did this project originally come about. Did Bobby come to you guys? Did you go to him?

TOM FONTANA: Bobby is friends with Charlie Corwin, who’s one of the other executive producers, and Jim Chovenin, who also was one of the co-creators with Charlie and I. And they had an idea that this might work as a series. And Charlie, who’s an old friend of mine, came to see me, and he knew I had written this pilot for NBC many years ago about a charitable organization loosely based on the American Red Cross.

And he said, “I know you’ve always wanted to do something about charity and giving.” And he said, “Let me tell you this idea.” And, I don’t know. He may have gotten five words out of his mouth where I went, like, you know, “Holy shit! That’s an idea. I was completely wrong with my other idea. This is the idea to do.” And from that moment on I was totally committed to doing the show.

Teddy’s described as sort of an adrenaline junkie who puts his money skills to good use bargaining with drug barons and whatnot. Throughout the season, what kind of situations will we see him in? He’s not just dealing with drug barons all the time, is he?

JAMES PUREFOY: No, he’s not just dealing with drug barons. One of the most extraordinary things that happened when we were shooting is there is an episode that [takes place in] Burma. And he is accepting, as you do, a Man of the Year award and thinks he is going to get a bunch of sophomore questions from the floor. And a rather attractive journalist that he picks on because he’s shallow like that— He [gives] this girl the last question, and she accuses him of doing business in Burma.

And the British Human Rights Charity is going to put him on the “dirty list.” And he goes back into the office the following day completely [nonplussed] by this and finds out that in fact, yes, his company, through a Chinese residuary company, has been doing business in Burma.

Olivia, played by Neve Campbell, who is a kind of a moral conscious in the company, says that it’s disgusting that we’re doing that. And I say okay, hang on. What about if I were to go to Myanmar, go to Yangon, and if I were to break into the leader of the Democratic movement’s house, who is in real life known as Aung San Suu Kyi, but on our show is Mai Lynn Wei.

But it’s very, you know, thinly disguised, fictionalized account of that. What if I was going to break into her house and ask her whether or not we should be doing business, American companies should be doing business in Burma. So, if that happens, we do the episode. He nearly gets caught. He gets chased away by Burmese soldiers.

Two weeks later from when we actually wrapped that episode, that gentleman — John Yettow, I believe his name is — did break into Aung San Suu Kyi’s house. And he’s now standing trial with her for that crime.

TOM FONTANA: This was the first time in the history of television where we were— The story is ripped from tomorrow’s headlines.

JAMES PUREFOY: Yes, we stole this lot from tomorrow’s headlines.

TOM FONTANA: It’s going to look like we stole the plot, but the truth of it is we’re thinking of suing the guys for plagiarism for going off and doing our idea.

JAMES PUREFOY: Yeah, we’re kind of convinced he’s actually an agent of the Burmese government.

You know, [Teddy] goes into those situations, and he tries to deal with the moral dilemma often. And, yes, it’s drug dealers. I mean if a drug dealer can get him and some vaccine to a village, he has no qualms at all about using that person because of the greater good that that person’s helicopter can give him.

JAMES PUREFOY: And because…

TOM FONTANA: …in his experience, he can also meet with a leader of the country who is just as corrupt as a drug dealer. So, he doesn’t make any moral judgments about the people that he comes into contact with. He just sees them as an opportunity. If he can use them to do good, then he interacts with them. And if they get in his way, then he figures out a way to get over, up, or around them.

What is the reality level of the tone of the show? Homicide: Life on the Street was obviously very, very realistic. The Philanthropist is based on a specific person but sounds like it may have a slightly more adventurous tone.

TOM FONTANA: Well, I would say besides the fact that the character Teddy Rist is inspired by a real human being who does go out into the world and puts himself in jeopardy constantly to try to do good, we’re not using actually any specific incidents in Bobby Segar’s life to do this in the show. But the level of danger that he puts himself into is much more than I would do, so it is realistic in that regard.

And the other thing that’s realistic about it is all the stories we’re doing are stories about what is really happening in these countries right now. So, [Teddy] doesn’t visit, you know, mythical countries like, you know, Fergustan, or where, you know, [we just made] something up and then just kind of fashioned a reality for Teddy.

And, so, in that regard, it’s also realistically based. The specific incidents are things that are possible. Whether they would, you know, happen in the sequence that we lay them out? I don’t know. But I never can tell that anyway. It’s as realistic, if not more realistic than Oz was.

JAMES PUREFOY: I think the other important thing is that, you know, in terms of, you know, the economic temperature that is around in the world at the moment. This is not something that is ignored in any way, shape, or form. There are constant references to bailouts [and] to credit crunch, too. You know, Teddy, do you really need to take the jet? You know, does he pay for it himself? I mean it’s very much rooted in the financial, economic reality that is present right now.

What is the key to playing the character?

JAMES PUREFOY: I think probably the key is that Teddy is totally unafraid about looking people in the eye. Now I know that sounds like a really small thing, but it’s about engaging with every single person that he meets on a very conscious level.

And it doesn’t matter who it is, whether they’re the leaders of the country or the generals of the country or the poorest people in the country. It’s about his heart being open to every single one of these people that he comes across and dealing with them in a very immediate way. So, that’s, I think, probably for me the key.

It’s also to do with, you know, the massive amount of pain that he was going through at the beginning of the series. He’s lost his son before the series starts, and he has this gigantic void where his son was and his love for his son. And it was a void that a lot of people when they go through grief, they try and deal with grief by burying their feelings under drugs and alcohol and womanizing and that kind of thing. And that’s what he was doing.

And then he found something that made him feel good, and it just happened to be helping people. And Bobby talks about it. He says this is not a huggie, hippy feeling. It’s about how he feels when he does it. It’s entirely selfish with Bobby. He does it because it enriches his life. It makes his life better, and it makes him more interesting and more valued and more textured and just better. And that’s, I think, a big part of what Teddy’s about. Because it makes him feel good, what he does.

When you are filming on location and you are filming real-life crises and poverty and things like that, how do you avoid what could be viewed as exploiting the situation? How difficult is that to hit the right tone when you’re looking at and dealing with real life, reality?

JAMES PUREFOY: Well for me, you know, I mean because I’m not a producer on the show, I’m not responsible for where the money goes, where’s it spent. But for me it’s just about being present, present on set. Talking to people, not behaving like a big TV star. And you imagine a big TV star might behave: locking themselves in the trailer and only coming out for their scenes and treating people with selfishness and disrespect. It’s about going to the set and engaging with every single person that you meet in front of that camera.

Or going and knocking on their trailer door and asking if you can go through the scene with them. It’s, you know, it’s just again is, you know, my whole experience on this job is shot true, was shot true with Bobby’s philosophy of being open-hearted and being non-judgmental and taking every single person as they come and listening to their story and listening to them and working with them rather than at them.

TOM FONTANA: Well, I would say that we did everything we could to make sure that we left as small a carbon imprint as we could. And also, you know, as James was saying, treat people with dignity and respect. We did a screening of the pilot in…

JAMES PUREFOY: Caleche.

TOM FONTANA: Yeah, and you want to talk about that, James, because you were there?

JAMES PUREFOY: Peter Horton, he directed the episode of the pilot, and a big chunk of it was shot in Caleche, which is a huge informal settlement on the edge of Cape Town. About one million people live there, mainly in shacks. And they have an extraordinary sense of community.

They were unbelievably helpful to us. And when we finished the pilot and we finished cutting it and putting it all together, we had a screening of it in a— I’m going to say church hall, but that is not going to give the idea of what this place was.

It was more just like a very big shack that was used as a church. And we had about 150, maybe 175 people come. We just put up notices around the place, around where we’d shot, and said please come if you were involved in this. And they came and they enjoyed it immensely.

I mean it’s slightly troubling for me because every time— The closer I got to death, the funnier they found it. Bites I got from snakes, that just rocked their socks off. They thought it was hilarious.

But, you know, I think that it was just us going back there, even though we’d only been here, you know, we’d been there six months previously. And it felt like maybe we’d just gone, and we’d arrive one day, we shot for a few days, and then we left. Well, we didn’t. We went back and showed what they’d done. And I think just tiny little things, you know, that, again, concrete baby steps about making people feel not ripped off but valued and thanked.

For a viewer, obviously, the first goal of a TV show is to entertain people. But it sounds like you do think that viewers can take away a larger message and perhaps be inspired to create change in their own community and their own environment. Do you think there’ll be a larger message people might take away from a show like this?

JAMES PUREFOY: Oh, I really hope so. I do hope and I think it’s time for a TV show like this. I’d like to imagine that your president would very much approve of this show. I would like to imagine that President Obama would be very happy about the engagement process that this show is talking about. About, you know, about lots of different countries that Americans may not be that familiar with. And there are problems and people in those countries that have problems just like people in America do. And anything that brings us together rather than polarizes us has got to be a good thing.

TOM FONTANA: I agree with everything James just said. I don’t want people to think that this show is preachy because we have really gone out of our way to not be preachy. The heart of this show is its humanity and its humor. And it is embodied in Teddy Rist.

JAMES PUREFOY: When most of the things that happen on this show, when they happen to Teddy, they’re happening for the first time. It’s not like he knows what’s going to happen. So, it’s not like he’s got any position to preach from.

TOM FONTANA: Right. And his character is so flawed that he doesn’t feel he has a moral high ground to preach to anybody. He’s experiencing it, as James was saying, he’s experiencing it, and he’s trying to assess it himself. So, it’s not like, you know, a show like Touched by an Angel, which I’m not criticizing. I’m just saying that was a show that very specifically had, you know, things to say.

Whereas this speaks much more about the search in each of us to be the best human beings we can and do as much as we can. At one point, Jesse Martin’s character says, “You know, there are things to be fixed in Nigeria, but there are also things to be fixed around the corner.” They live in New York. And I think that’s the heart of it. Any of us can— You don’t have to be Teddy Rist, you don’t have to be a billionaire to affect change. All you have to do is want to affect change and you can.

You were just mentioning the different things you guys did on shoots: the screening, providing beds for the villager, those kinds of things. Did being on location make you feel more giving than ever?

JAMES PUREFOY: I swear. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. I was talking to Neve about it the other day. A fund that we’d just given, between a whole bunch of us, like three or four of us, we raised like $8000, which would have bought four school rooms. Because, much to my astonishment, in Cape Town, in South Africa in general, when they have winter, they really do have winter. It’s not like “African-style” winter, but it’s winter. And it rains, and it’s windy and misty and cold.

And a lot of kids just go to school in a field or in a yard. And there are no rooms and there are no walls and there is no protection. So, yeah. We were doing that. And we’ve done a whole bunch of other things. And I said, “You know, I think I might actually be going home making a loss on this show.”

I’ve become very heavily involved in a charity there for street children for the MyLife Project, which, again, is not really a charity. It’s a movement about giving street children dignity back and visibility back and trying to create leaders out of them. And a bunch of those kids have come out of that project and were now grips and sparks on our show and the hardest working, the best grips and sparks on our show.

And it was only us talking to them that I found out about where they come from. And a lot them were doing glue and crack and God knows what else and drinking the cheapest alcohol and living a hand-to-mouth existence.

Teddy is sort of a philanthropist, but he’s not quite the definition of a normal, ordinary man in an extraordinary situation. He’s kind of an extraordinary guy in a very different situation. So, from both James’ point of view as the actor and Tom as the overseer, is Teddy really a hero?

TOM FONTANA: A hero is a word that I always have a tough time with. I think that Teddy [probably isn't] a classic television hero, but maybe a hero for the age of Obama, maybe a hero for, you know, 2009 because he, you know, he’s not a guy who gets into fights. He doesn’t shoot a gun once during the entire series. He’s not a classic television hero.

What makes him — and I hesitate to even use the word “heroic” — but what makes him maybe courageous is that he has this willingness to try anything to get the goal that he’s set for himself accomplished. And the goal that he’s setting for himself is to help other people. But as James said earlier, it’s also, you know, there’s a certain amount of selfishness involved in it. So, I think one of my concerns about this show is that it doesn’t play by the same kind of television rules for a hero…

JAMES PUREFOY: We’re hoping that we’re creating new television rules though, aren’t we?

TOM FONTANA: Yeah, that’s the attempt. It’s just that I get nervous because I think that some people might watch it and go, “Well, wait. He’s not a doctor, he’s not a lawyer, he’s not a cop.”

JAMES PUREFOY: And where’s the gun?

TOM FONTANA: “Where’s the gun? Where’s the stethoscope?” So, I don’t know.

JAMES PUREFOY: I’ve got something here right in front of me, which I love this quote. It’s Nelson Mandela. When he was asked about who his heroes are, he said, “My hero is not necessarily the president of a country or a prime minister. It is somebody who is prepared to give human beings hope that there is a future for him or her. Those are my heroes.”

TOM FONTANA: Wow, that’s great.

So, from that perspective, since you have said Teddy is a little bit self-serving in a way, is he still the protagonist?

TOM FONTANA: Yes, hopefully.

JAMES PUREFOY: Well, hopefully, yes. You know, it’s not about vanity for him. It’s not about having his name in lights. He seeks no publicity at all for what he does. So, he’s doing it kind of undercover in a way, and it’s self-serving in the sense that it makes him feel good.

What made you, Tom, decide that this was the time to take on a show like this, with this sort of heart and kind of a different tone to it?

TOM FONTANA: Well, I think, you know, you probably know my work well enough to know that I’m always doing something that is going to get me into trouble and not be exactly what people expect. So, when I first heard about Bobby Sager and what he does and the places he goes and the people’s lives he touches, I just thought, you know, if that isn’t a great character to put on television, then I don’t know what a great character for television is.

Often with North American or British productions or Western sort of thinking, we tend to simplify things, and not in a way that favors us. We tend to go into it with the attitude that just by the accident of our birth in the West, we somehow are morally more bankrupt than other places in the world, and that other people in the world who struggle somehow just are sort of automatically more noble. Is that something you accept, or do you play with that at all to understand that there are good people and bad people in the West and there are good people and bad people in every country you go to, as well?

JAMES PUREFOY: You wait. Just watch every episode. You’ll see plenty of bad people in those countries that we go to. Plenty of them.

TOM FONTANA: Yeah. I think that part of this is that Teddy definitely learns something about himself through interacting with the people he comes into contact with, both the good people and the bad. But he also does teach, you know, in the sense that he leaves something behind that is intrinsically American capitalism. I mean, you know, his background is commerce, and nobody does that better than us, [although] I think the Chinese might be catching up.

JAMES PUREFOY: But he also uses his commerce imaginatively. One of our episodes is set in Kosovo, which is a very, very complex situation. But what he does — and he’s none to popular when he suggests it to the local population — in Kosovo there is a mineral called Halisite, which is used to make crockery and crash helmets and pills, you know, tablets for taking pharmaceutical drugs. And in Kosovo, there is a gigantic deposit of Halisite to make these things with. And it’s quite rare in the world to have a big deposit in any one country.

He goes there. There’s a 59.5 percent unemployment in the place that he goes to. And the people there are the Serbian Christians and the Albanian Muslims who obviously had a very nasty war against each other for a long period of time. So, there’s a great deal of animosity and polarization between them.

And he calls a town hall meeting and he says to them that he will help supply electricity, because they don’t have much, and fresh water, which they don’t have much, and flushing toilets, which they have very few of. And you help them with their housing by starting up a mine, which will bring the Halisite out of the ground. But he will only do it if they work together.

So, that’s the kind of thing that Bobby does all the time, where you go into a community which is very, very torn apart and polarized and try and bring people together through the business of actually what they’re going to do with their lives, the actual business of their lives, their employment. And he says, “If you don’t like it, I can get on a plane and piss off right home right now.”

I guess that speaks to his character, and it’s how you sort of sell it, as well. About the first 2/3 of the first episode, I wasn’t 100 percent sure I liked Teddy.

JAMES PUREFOY: No, I don’t think you should. I think that he’s a growing character who’s finding out about himself. He’s incredibly arrogant. There are moments in the first episode where I wince. Where I go, “Oh, Jesus Christ, that is such a rude thing to say to somebody.”

I think he’s sitting there chatting to Dr. Chim Abollo, trying to get her involved, and he’s just sort of ignoring her and ordering more bourbon and that kind of stuff. But, you know, if we don’t start from a point of view that he is, you know, a brash Western capitalist going and thinking he’s got all the answers. But, of course, the answers don’t lie with him. They lie often with the people on the ground. And, you know, there are some bad people there and some good people there like anywhere.