Posted in: HBO, Movies, TV | Tagged: lanterns

Lanterns Writing "So Layered and So Beautiful": Poorna Jagannathan

Lanterns' Poorna Jagannathan on the writing on DC Studios' Aaron Pierre and Kyle Chandler-starring series and the characters fans can expect.

Set to hit screens in 2026, Chris Mundy (True Detective: Night Country, Ozark), Damon Lindelof (Watchmen, The Leftovers), and Tom King's (Mister Miracle, Supergirl) Green Lantern series Lanterns follows new recruit John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) and Lantern legend Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler), two intergalactic cops drawn into a dark, earth-based mystery as they investigate a murder in the American heartland. So far, we've been treated to a look at Hal and John minus Green Lantern suits (but with a nice tease of Hal's ring) and some new insights into what's to come from Mundy (more on that below). Now, Poorna Jagannathan (Zoe) is opening the door a little further in terms of what the series will have to offer.

"I couldn't love the writing for Green Lantern more… Like 'Deli Boys,' Green Lantern series is a superbly written script and my character is superbly drawn out. I have to do very little work. I just have to get out of the way of the script to make Green Lanterns work,"  Jagannathan shared about the DC Studios series during a recent interview in support of her Hulu series, Deli Boys. "The way I describe every character, it's all the characters you love and you know. The Lanterns, the Guardians, and the Sinestros – all that world is still intact, and yet everyone is presented as hero and villain at the same time, and that's what makes the writing so complex and so layered and so beautiful."

Here's a look at Jagannathan's interview late last week, offering some personal insight into HBO's Lanterns:

Lanterns: Chris Mundy Shares New Details, Insights

At the end of February, Vanity Fair ran a profile article on the upcoming DC Studios and HBO series, with Mundy offering some new insights. In terms of the series, it's noted that Chandler's Hal is a "seasoned Lantern approaching retirement" who is training Pierre's John to be his replacement. The pair investigate a murder in Nebraska – one that "leads them to still darker mysteries, as well as reckonings." For Mundy, it was the challenge of taking a part of the DC Comics universe known for being universal in size and finding a way to also make it feel grounded and relatable. "I was drawn by the challenge and fun of creating something really grounded inside this big, amazing mythology," Mundy shared. "From the beginning, all we talked about was how can we take all the things we loved about the source material and turn it into a layered, human HBO drama? Just the idea of trying to pull that off was exciting to me."

As Mundy sees it, if they've done their job right, then viewers will appreciate the story being told no matter how much they know about the Green Lantern Corp. "Our Lanterns have the rings and all the power they bring, and other characters and aspects of the lore are going to show up or be name-checked. But it's a series that explores who these guys are when they're on the job and when they're out of uniform," said Mundy. "It's designed to be accessible for people who don't know the mythology, but hopefully really satisfying for people that know it backwards and forwards." To that end, don't expect to be seeing other folks from DC Studios co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran's New DCU showing up. "We're not part of a larger storytelling plan right now. Season one is designed to be its own, complete season of television that, hopefully, will become many seasons of television," explained Mundy.

In terms of the show's leads and the iconic comic book characters they're portraying, Mundy shared what they were looking for in terms of their Hal Jordan and John Stewart. For Hal Jordan, Mundy shared that they were looking for someone similar to Chuck Yeager from The Right Stuff. "Kyle has that quality in spades. He's been so ridiculously good in so many things. He's also very funny, in a dry wit way, which is important for the character. He's perfect for the part, and he's going to make us all look really good, basically," Mundy said. As for John, it was about someone who could strike the right balance between being a military man and an artist. "Aaron is a serious theater actor, yet he also looks like he was built in a lab to be an action star. Those two qualities spoke to me. He's an extremely thoughtful performer with a huge range and the ability to be many things at once, which you need for John Stewart," he added.

Now that we know that the first week of production on Lanterns has come and gone, Mundy has some promising words to share in terms of an update. "The scripts are done, and James [Hawes] is killing it in terms of directing for this first week. We're getting the scope that we were hoping to get. And Kyle and Aaron are just great together. Their chemistry on screen is fantastic and they set a great tone for excellence and camaraderie on set. We know we have to deliver great stories for this audience, and what I've seen so far bodes well," he revealed.

Along with Pierre and Chandler, the DC Studios series stars Garret Dillahunt (Fear The Walking Dead), Kelly Macdonald (Boardwalk Empire, In the Line of Duty), Poorna Jagannathan (Never Have I Ever, Deli Boys), and Ulrich Thomsen (Counterpart, The Blacklist). Helming the series are directors James Hawes, Stephen Williams, Geeta Vasant Patel, and Alik Sakharov. Based on the DC Comic Green Lantern, the series is executive produced by Mundy, Lindelof, Gunn, Safran, King, Hawes, and Ron Schmidt.

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