By Iain Blair
The trippy Emmy-winning Netflix show Russian Doll is back for a second season — great news for anyone who’s interested in the space-time continuum but who also loves surreal comedy-drama. Natasha Lyonne created the series with Leslye Headland and Amy Poehler. Lyonne stars as Nadia, a jaded New Yorker who is caught in a time loop, dying and then coming back to relive the night of her 36th birthday. Her friend Alan (Charlie Barnett) is stuck in the loop with her.
Todd Downing, ACE
The second season is set four years after Nadia and Alan escaped mortality’s time loop together. Now they are delving deeper into their pasts through an unexpected time portal located in the NYC subway.
Todd Downing, ACE, who was nominated for HPA and ACE Awards for Season 1 of Russian Doll, has returned as editor for Season 2. I spoke with Downing, whose credits include Difficult People, Generation, Younger, SMILF and Mrs. America, about the editing challenges and his workflow on this scripted television show.
Your collaboration with Natasha Lyonne has been so successful that she made you a co-producer on the second season?
I think the title was out of gratitude for the synchronicity of our editing styles more than any actual producing work. We have a really good way of bouncing ideas off each other, so I think it was just appreciation. I have no desire to be a producer.
What were the main challenges of cutting the new season?
First off, it’s a much bigger swing, I think, artistically. But I don’t think we approached it like, “It has to be this bigger, better show now that it’s Season 2.” The big challenge was just making it its own world and able to stand on its own.
The characters have to be the same from Season 1, and while it’s not a completely new aesthetic, it is different. And while Natasha was central to Season 1, she’s even more involved in all aspects of this season. She wrote more shows, directed more and was the showrunner as well.
Fair to say, the first season was very self-contained?
Yes, I felt it was very neat, and in a good way. This felt more like what David Lynch did with Twin Peaks, ripping it apart and going so much deeper into the characters.
There are only seven episodes, compared to eight in the first season. Did that make it harder or easier?
I think it was harder in a way. First off, you have all the pressure of the success we had with the first season, and then you’re trying to take it to a whole other level, and it had to be that much tighter without losing that sense that anything might happen. On top of New York, we also shot in Budapest this season, so the whole scope got far bigger.
Tell us about the workflow in Season 2. Where did you edit and do the post?
I started editing at home on Avid Media Composer while they were shooting in New York City, assembling dailies and doing the editor’s cuts using Jump Desktop to access the media at the production company, Jax.
Then after they wrapped, I went to LA to work in person with Natasha at Animal Pictures in Studio City, which Natasha owns with Maya Rudolph. That’s where we did nearly all the post, and it was great. They brought in all the gear, and we turned the pool house into an edit suite. The Avid Nexis was located in a back room there. Sara Schultz, one of the assistants, would use Jump Desktop to work off that computer and transfer media.
How did COVID impact post?
It was this very safe post bubble. Everyone there was working on the show all day every day, and no one got sick. But the whole season got pushed back a year because of COVID. In the end, editing took about seven months, and then we spent another couple mixing and doing the color, plus we also had a lot of VFX work, so it was quite a long post. And it was very intense.
How closely did you work with Natasha? I assume she’s very hands-on?
Very. She loves being in the edit room, and I really don’t think we could have done it remotely because she digs so deep into the material and likes to try out so many things. And I think for a show like this it was important for us to work together in person.
What was the most difficult sequence to cut and why?
It was probably Episode 4 in Budapest, where she goes to the party and smokes DMT and “falls into the rabbit hole” sort of thing. It gets quite trippy, and it was difficult to cut because it could easily have become “too cool” too quickly, like a music video. Even though it was this surreal narrative, we wanted to keep it balanced.
The first episode was tricky too, as you have to bring everyone back and lead them in the new direction. Finding the right tone took a very long time. She’s already died a million times, so is she freaked out by all this? It took a lot of versions to get the emotional tracks of the characters just right.
Tell us about the role sound and sound design plays in the workflow.
I was very involved, and I feel that as editing has evolved, studios expect more and more sound design to be done in the offline. It used to be more like “the sound team will do all that,” but now you really have to create a temp version of it, and I love working with sound. It’s half the show, and I had layers and layers of soundtracks going on. Natasha’s very into sound too, and we worked really hard on it.
Then our sound mixer and sound supervisor, Lew Goldstein at Parabolic, took over, and he’s amazing. He was on Season 1 too, so while cutting, we could go to him for sounds he created in similar scenes. I’d do a rough sound design pass, and then he’d take it up to another level. We had the same composer from Season 1, so I’d use temps from him too. We did an offline mix in LA, and then Lew did the final mix at Parabolic in New York.
There are a lot of VFX. Did you use temp VFX?
(Laughs) No, I’m terrible at it. Some editors have a background in After Effects, but I’m not one of them. We didn’t have a VFX editor per se, but two of the assistant editors — Sara Schultz and Corry Seeholzer — would do temp ones for us until we sent stuff to Break + Enter, the VFX company we used. Corry is really good at handling VFX temps.
Your background is in documentaries. What did you bring from that to this show?
That background is very helpful for a scripted show in moving beyond the script. You don’t get so bogged down, and you feel freer in terms of digging deeper into the material and moving stuff around and putting things where they weren’t intended.
Of course, every editor does that, so it’s not like some special skill, but I do think you’re more apt to do that when you have that background. You’re used to not having a total plan, so it’s very liberating to feel that you can just pull things from wherever you want.
Will there be a third season?
Yes, I think so. Natasha always planned to do three, and she’s not short of ideas. Hopefully there won’t be such a long gap the next time.
Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.
