Interview: Guillermo del Toro, Carlton Cuse and Chuck Hogan on FX’s The Strain

For The Strain, Guillermo del Toro’s first foray into the world of television, he used his own fascination with vampires to inspire the story he first collaborated with Chuck Hogan on almost half a decade ago. Daily Dead recently chatted with del Toro, Hogan as well as The Strain’s executive producer Carlton Cuse about their collaboration on FX’s newest series.

Check out the highlights from our interviews with the trio below and look for more on The Strain in the upcoming preview issue of DEADLY - Horror & Sci-Fi Magazine this September. The Strain airs on FX each Sunday at 10 pm EST/9 pm CST.

Carlton Cuse on Creating A New Vampire Television Series: Well, the appeal to me was the fact that The Strain subverts the vampire genre. I think we’ve had enough of the romantic, brooding vampires and so this idea of upending the genre and returning to the roots of vampires, which makes them scary and these evil parasitic creatures for audiences, was great. I felt like that concept, working along with Guillermo’s ability to create creatures and tell amazing stories, and then my own confidence in my ability to be able to turn this into a really good television story- those were the elements that excited me the most.

I’m also drawn to the genre-crossing ideas as well. The very first show I ever did was The Adventures of Briscoe County Jr.,which played with the western genre. Then I did Lost, which was an adventure show mixed with a lot of science fiction elements, which, again, I really enjoyed. I think the cross-genre elements of The Strain are really effective, so making this more about epidemiology at first felt like a  great way to introduce these vampire creatures as something more than they have been as of late. Then, we’ll eventually transition into this place where it’s the humans versus the vampires and I think that’s going to be a lot of fun for viewers.

Guillermo del Toro on Making Vampires Scary Again: Well, I’ve been dreaming of the idea of this vampire ever since I was a teenager. I have collected a lot of vampiric lore over the years, in fact. I realized that what interested me the most was not that the vampire was romantic, but the idea of this hollow corpse that was inhabited by an unholy will. When the vampire was first birthed by John W. Polidori, in his story, the vampire was birthed as both a romantic hero and a monster at the same time, so there is room for both versions in entertainment. Because to me, either obsession with the vampire is correct. But since no one seemed to be doing the idea of the brutal vampire, I wanted to do it just because it’s what fascinates me most as a fan.

Chuck Hogan on the Differences Between The Strain Novel and Television Series : They have kept me very involved with the story elements for the television version of The Strain. A lot of what’s in the book will be in the series, but you can expect to see some changes and maybe some character arcs you weren’t expecting. This whole experience has been very different for me because I’ve never been in a writer’s room before. My first professional collaboration ever was with Guillermo for the books, so this new experience has been great for me.

I really loved writing the books and creating this world, so now being able to revisit it and mix it up a bit has been a really special experience. We knew we wanted to start it like the book and end it somewhat similarly to the book, but everything in the middle was up for play. It felt like the other writers at first would sort of ask my permission to make some of the changes, but I was always for it. We weren’t here to film the book. We’re here to create something beyond that on a visual platform.

Guillermo del Toro on Creating the Visual Palette of The Strain: Every single special effect on The Strain goes through me first and every single make-up effect goes through me too. That’s how important all these elements are to me. I do the final color correction on the cinematography for all of the episodes myself because I wanted to give everything in The Strain a sense of uniformity.

The way I tried to design the look of The Strain was to go with super-saturated colors that almost felt like you are watching a comic book. I even color-coded the show so that there are two colors- cyan and gold.  One thing I said early on was, “No use of red,” except if it’s in the real world, like a fire extinguisher, because I want to reserve the red for the blood. And even if you don’t notice it, The Strain has a style and that’s the first thing I focused on.

The second thing I tried to do with The Strain was to give it a cinematic look and give it a sense of scope. We did it for the budget and we did it for the schedule that FX gave us, but we still wanted to make it feel ambitious as well. I think the biggest challenges were to try and do spectacle and big visual effects within the budget and the schedule, but we did it somehow (laughs).

Chuck Hogan on How Long Fans Can Expect to See The Strain on FX: Well, with the books, there is a beginning, a middle and an end, so I’m very confident that this series will have the same arc. It won’t just go on and on for the sake of going on and on. We’ll get to do a lot of fun things in the meantime, but this story does have an endpoint already in place and that’s a good thing.