A Zoom-crammed day in the life of the Young Rock creator during hotel quarantine in Australia
Early morning
Woke up very jet-lagged in a quarantine hotel in Brisbane, Australia, several days into a 14-day quarantine. The day before, we had our first pre-table read with the Young Rock cast over Zoom.
7 A.M.
Individual notes session with [writer and co-creator] Jeff Chiang with all the castmembers over Zoom, ahead of our first table read the day after today.
9:30 A.M.
Call with Young Rock dialogue coach. Obviously we’re doing it in Australia, and we have a lot of New Zealand actors on the show, so we needed to make sure everyone speaks with an American accent.
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10 A.M.
Network set design presentation over Zoom, where our production designer, Michael Rumpf, presented his concept art to NBC. That’s a million people on Zoom and we all talk through it together.
11 A.M. to 2 P.M.
Initial Young Rock key art meeting, followed by page turn with Martin McGrath, DP, and Jeff Walker, supervising director and co-producer, to talk through all the camera stuff that we need.
2:30 P.M.
I needed a half-hour to get some fresh air and stretch, and just stared at the car park across the street [see photo below]. Luckily my room had a little balcony. You couldn’t open your door into the hallway, and they had guards at the end of the hall. It was pretty intense lockdown.
3 P.M.
Zoom meeting with wardrobe.
3:30 P.M.
Jeff Chiang and I started rewrites from the pre-table read. Dwayne [Johnson] was going to be there, we were going to have people listening in from L.A. — it was crazy.
Late Afternoon
Jeff [Walker] and Marty, who are now on location scout, are FaceTiming me to show me locations. First time I’ve ever FaceTimed on a location scout.
Evening
I start to think about dinner. You put your order in through Uber Eats or the Australian app Deliveroo. When food arrives, the front desk calls and says, “Your food has arrived, please wait 60 seconds after the knock.” You have to wait, so they can leave, then you can open your door. It was wild.
Late Evening
Jeff Chiang and I are in final draft collaboration over Zoom. We have to get the scripts out for the table read. Then I went through episode one, which I was directing, and did more episode notes and shot lists.
This story first appeared in the May 12 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
