Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Spoilers follow for all eight episodes of3 Body Problemon Netflix.
The secret to condensing a galaxy- and dimension-spanning sci-fi series into watchable television?
According to David Benioff, lots and lots of Zoom calls.
The more exciting a sequence is on film, he jokes, the more hours of boring meetings.
Benioff, along with hisGame of Thronespartner D.B.
The leads of the various books dont really intersect with one another, even though they exist contemporaneously.
It felt like they could be safely uncoupled in a way that would make sense.
We decided,lets make that character into Wills oldest friend.
We knew Willhad to buy the star.
Im curious about choosing London as the primary location for the events of your adaptation.
TheChinese-language onedoes take place in Beijing.
Plus, theres our casting director, Nina Gold, and great local acting there.
Woo:Now that you mention it, theres something nice about how London is gloomy.
If it was happening at Caltech, everything would be warm.
It wouldnt feel quite the same.
I think the mood, shooting it in the U.K., actually helped a lot.
We made the decision early on to make it feel like a truly global show.
Its set in England, but most of the characters are not English.
London attracts immigrants from all over the world because there are a lot of opportunities.
In this setting, you connect things back to the Cultural Revolution throughYe Wenjiein a different way, too.
Having the contemporary scenes somewhere else makes the show less about contemporary China, as the books are.
And you give Ye a more personal relationship to the younger characters.
Its hugely important to have Jin there so that you see the shock on her face.
It means something because this is a character weve established a relationship with.
She was orphaned, she had no family Ye was her family in England.
Obviously, moving it to a different country means something different.
Now, Yes not a person who has persevered and is succeeding in the Peoples Republic of China.
She is an immigrant.
That is a theme we were able to play out that doesnt appear as much in the novels.
Everyone in our story has emigrated to London.
They are coming from somewhere else.
Even the actual Brits come from working-class Manchester.
Wade is coming from Ireland.
We managed to craft a different story to take advantage of the setting we were in.
Early on, you must have had to think about how to adapt scenes inside the video game.
Its like a full-body Oculus Rift situation.
We immediately knew we didnt want to do that because it was hard picturing that visually.
We had a much easier time picturing a really striking graphic headset.
Somebody getting into a giant techno garbage bag would not be nearly as exciting.
Woo:We iterated the San-Ti dehydrating and rehydrating several times.
It had to look as good or better than what you were imagining when you read it.
Why go with San-Ti?Benioff:Honestly, it sounded better to us.
It was just a taste decision.
There was something nicely ominous about San-Ti, as long as it doesnt sound too much like Santy Clause.
Weiss:Its funny, because on the page, Trisolaran looks fine.
Thats a creation that figures more into the later books and is also very hard to imagine onscreen.
It really freaked me out!
Weiss:Getting the design right on her costume was one of the trickier things we did.
Michael Wilkinson, our costume designer, was more than equal to that challenge.
She needed to have clean lines.
Even her hair is very austere and severe and slicked down.
In the book, those scenes are not actually a conversation but a dossier of information.
Benioff:Im pretty sure that scene doesnt happen until the second book.
When we were trying to recruit Jonathan for this, Dan and I were walking through Hyde Park.
There is another voice coming, but theres no one else that we see.
Its almost a monologue and its all you.
With a sigh of resignation, he agreed to work with us again.
Benioff:Then he had to run down corridors when hed just had hip surgery.
She was working with the props team and the VFX team.
Some of the things are being cut practically, but a lot of it is being cut by VFX.
They gave us and the cast little Cliffs Notes on physics 101.
In the book, its a slightly different suicide.
We were looking for something highly visual that would take place in and around the environment of an accelerator.
More important than that, it was about needing to feel a sense of urgency and propulsion.
Eight episodes always felt right to us, at least for this season.
Its not a superfast burn.
The rest of it … there are three books, so that seems to suggest three seasons.
Its hard to know until you get there.
I really liked the first book.
But books two and three I loved.
As the story goes on, those things increase both in number and justwhat the fuck?intensity.
Were very hopeful we can get there, because it just gets wilder and wilder as you go.
The three of us would love to tell the story to its glorious culmination.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
