Shawn Ryan On Why He Did Not Write Script For S3 Of ‘The Night Agent’, “Devastating” Trend Of Writers Not Producing & Pain Of “Buyer’s Market” For Talent

As creator of The Night AgentShawn Ryan, who adapted the Netflix series from Matthew Quirk’s novel of the same name, wrote the pilot script, which became the series premiere. He also wrote Episode 2 and co-wrote Episode 3 of the first season and also wrote the Season 2 premiere. But Ryan is not credited as a writer or co-writer on any of the 10 episodes from the upcoming third season, premiering Feb. 19, which is unusual as he serves as showrunner on the action thriller starring Gabriel Basso.

Ryan, a prolific creator/showrunner who has juggled multiple series at a time during his career, noted that he has done this on other shows and that he still does a lot of writing and rewriting on The Night Agent even if he does not do full episodes, something he felt was important to do in the first two seasons. Why did he opt out of writing episodes in Season 3?

“There are a couple answers. One is just time management. Two, I will just tell you honestly, I care a lot about my writing staff,” Ryan said during an interview tied to the Season 3 release of The Night Agent. “I asked for a big writing staff because the writers on my show, they produce their episodes, and if I take an episode that’s taking the episode away from somebody on staff. I work on an overall deal, so I actually don’t make any more money if I write an episode, whereas if they write episode, it adds to their salary. So it’s a little bit me looking out for my writing staff and giving them the opportunities for those script fees, and part of it’s just time management on my part.”

Circumstances were different between Seasons 2 and 3. The Night Agent was renewed for Season 2 a week after the release of Season 1. In part delayed by the strikes, Season 2 launched 22 months after Season 1. Meanwhile, Netflix ordered Season 3 four months ahead of the Season 2 debut for a quick turnaround, with the Season 3 release slated less than 13 months after Season 2.

“There was not very much time between Season 2 and 3; I was still heavily doing post work on 2 while we were writing Season 3,” Ryan said. “And I have a lot of faith and trust in my writers. I don’t feel like the ego that I need to have a credited episode. I polish and rewrite what I want, so I feel like I get to have my creative say without insisting on an episode.”

Back on the WGA negotiation beat

Ryan has always been an active union member and served on five consecutive WGA negotiating committees before sitting out the one for the 2023 studio negotiations that involved a strike. He is back on the WGA negotiating committee this year.

“Yeah, got sucked in again,” Ryan joked. “I was asked to be part of it three years ago but the final week of negotiations conflicted with my 25th wedding anniversary and a trip to Rome that my wife and I had planned. I didn’t know when I was asked that there was ultimately going to be a strike, I just knew that taking on a role on that committee is a very serious thing, and that you shouldn’t do it unless you’re committed to it, and I had to be committed to my wife, frankly, and our 25th wedding anniversary for that one. So, yeah, they asked me again for this negotiation cycle.”

Pandemic’s lingering effect on WGA

The Writers Guild is set to begin negotiating a new TV/Theatrical contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in March, ahead of the current contract’s May 1 expiration date. How does Ryan feel about the upcoming talks and the biggest issues the guild plans to address?

“I don’t want to preempt anything the WGA would say. I don’t think it’s a secret that the health plan is a big deal. I was co-chair of the committee in 2020 that was interrupted by Covid. There are a lot of things in the changing business that didn’t get addressed during that time, and I think that contributed to the likelihood of a strike in 2023 because there was just this buildup of things that hadn’t been addressed for six years at that point in a business that was rapidly changing.

“Many of those things got addressed — not necessarily as well as we might have liked them to be — and then some things didn’t get addressed because they all can’t get contained in one negotiation. So while the health plan is certainly paramount and important, and is something that I think our membership sees as an existential threat in many ways, there are other issues that are important that the guild will be laying out on the membership over these next few weeks. I certainly don’t want to get ahead of our message to our own members about what those issues are.”

As Deadline reported exclusively in December, the AMPTP, which represents the studios, was preparing to offer $100M infusion to the Hollywood guilds’ health plans if the unions agree to longer contracts than the current three-year length.

Why Writers Need To Produce Episodes

Ryan describes his role on the WGA negotiating committee as providing a showrunner’s perspective, and there is one issue that he is particularly passionate about.

“The last negotiation did a little bit in this regard, but the divorce of writers from the production cycle, I think, has been really devastating for TV,” he said. “I think it’s extraordinarily shortsighted. I think it’s stunting the growth of the future showrunners that are going to be relied upon to create the future hits of this business.”

With the proliferation of writers rooms as a development tool in the streaming era, many writers over the past decade would go from a development room to a development room, which typically wrap before a series is officially greenlighted, and would be moving up the producing ranks without ever having set foot on set.

The WGA made a move to change that in the 2023 negotiations and under the guaranteed “minimums” in the current contract, at least two writer-producers (in addition to the showrunner) must be employed post-greenlight for the lesser of 20 weeks or the duration of the production period.

“On The Night Agent, every single one of my writers goes to set and produces their episodes, we don’t need Writers Guild minimums to dictate it,” Ryan said. “It’s something that I’ve always had built into the budget of the show, and having those writers produce and prep their episodes, I believe, saves us money. The Night Agent comes in on budget. We’re not filming two extra weeks of shooting because production got screwed up, problems are solved in their infancy rather than late in the process.”

Ryan acknowledges that his clout and track record likely helps him secure the ability for all of his writers to produce their episodes, something less established showrunners may not be able to.

“I want to engage in education, not just with showrunners, but these companies are shortsighted to be divorcing the writers from the production process and to minimize the number of writers who are involved in production,” he said. “So, whether it’s through negotiations, whether it’s through some conversations with companies about best practices, whether it’s showrunners applying pressure as well or just changing their patterns, I think the budgets on these shows need to be altered to allow more writers to exist through production. It’s so economically beneficial, and it’s educating the next generation of showrunners.”

“It’s Hard Time In Hollywood Right Now”

As Deadline has reported, The Night Agent, from Sony Pictures Television, was originally commissioned under Netflix’s “network” model for more modestly priced dramas comparable to broadcast series.

Ryan declined to discuss the size of The Night Agent budget, which has not been made public, noting that, in success, actors get raises and the budget goes up, which undoubtedly happened with the action thriller whose Season 1 ranks among Netflix’s Top 10 most popular English series.

“But I will say that Season 1, certainly you see some network TV shows with bigger budgets than the one that we had in Season 1, true,” he added.

Season 1 of The Night Agent featured mostly less established and actors, led by Basso and Lucianne Buchanan. In Season 3, the series had its starriest cast to day, with Stephen Moyer, Jennifer Morrison and David Lyons among the new additions. How did the show manage that?

“Listen, it’s a hard time in Hollywood right now for a lot of people, it just is,” Ryan said. “That benefits our show but I know a lot of actors right now who are named people who are at risk of losing their health insurance because they haven’t worked.

“You look at the numbers, and there are many fewer shows being made now than when we were in the growth stage of streaming, by a factor of 200 to 250 fewer shows. I don’t know the movie stats, but it feels like there’s fewer movies, at least by the big studios in terms of how much they’re making. A lot of production is moving overseas and to places, so you’re competing with an international base of actors for some of these roles.

“We were very blessed with the actors that you named, with Stephen Moyer, with Jennifer Morrison, David Lyons, I would add Ward Horton and Louis Herthum , these actors that we got for Season 3. There’s a lot of pressure on these actors, they don’t have the same number of opportunities. And for a show like ours, it was a little bit of a buyer’s market. I feel good as a show that we’re able to assemble that level of talent, I also feel a lot of sympathy right now.

And it’s not just actors, it’s directors and writers too. There’s just notably less work than there was three-four years ago, and a lot of people are feeling that pinch. So it benefited our show creatively, but I can’t ignore the human element of the conditions that allowed us to assemble that cast.”

Season 3 of The Night Agent debuts Feb. 19 on Netflix.