‘Long Bright River’ Co-Creator Nikki Toscano Talks Directorial Debut

Nikki Toscano has a long resume filled with many high-profile TV shows including Revenge, Bates Motel, Shades of Blue, Hunters, The Offer and American Gigolo. But nothing has delivered the “unique excitement” like her latest, Peacock‘s Long Bright River starring Amanda Seyfried.

That’s because the eight-episode limited series marks her first creator credit (in tandem with Liz Moore who wrote the novel on which it is based) and her first time in the director’s chair. It’s a leap that came just at the right time for the veteran writer-producer who jumped behind the camera to direct the episode “Hereditary” which is full of reveals for its central characters.

Long Bright River, which debuted March 13, casts Seyfried as Mickey, a police officer who patrols a Philadelphia neighborhood hard-hit by the opioid crisis. When a series of murders begins in the neighborhood, Mickey realizes that her personal history might be related to the case as she remains on the hunt to find her sister Kacey.

Below, Toscano talks to The Hollywood Reporter about the creative journey five-plus years in the making, how she navigated those reveals and what the future holds for her directing career.

First off, congratulations. How are you feeling now that your show’s out in the world?

I’m feeling really good. I’m happy with the response. It’s a little bit of a new experience for me. I’ve launched a lot of shows, but I realized over the past few days that I’ve never launched a show with a female lead, which is really fun and exciting. It is just wonderful to see all of the support that’s been coming in about the show. But it’s ultimately nerve-wracking at the end of the day.

I can imagine. Let’s stay on that for a second. What other feelings are coming out?

What’s wonderful about it for me is that Long Bright River is a story about sisters. I sort of feel taken by the sense of sisterhood, the response and the way that people are watching it and how they’re reacting to some of the more emotional components of the show. That is unique and interesting. We had a largely female cast. We had all female directors. We had a female [director of photography]. We had a female production designer. It was lovely to be a part of this womanhood. That’s been, I think, where a lot of this unique excitement is coming from.

Was it intentional to have a largely female creative team?

Yes and no. The way that the cookie crumbled was that the most qualified people were women for the jobs that we were hiring for. We met with a lot of women, a lot of men, and [we hired based on their] specific body of work that could bring something unique to Long Bright River or it was because of something that they said in the interview about the narrative and the scripts that pulled them in and what they could bring to the production. It sort of was serendipitous.

How did that impact the set?

To be honest, it wasn’t that different. When you embark on creating a safe space for your production and a place where people can safely take swings and have the opportunity to experiment, you sort of set the first day you get out there. You’re setting the tone for what’s acceptable and what your set is going to be like, and everybody else gets on board. When you’re leading with love and confidence and the ability to swing and everybody’s trying to bring their A-game, it just creates a space where everyone has the ability and promise to do their best work.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is the first time you’ve been in a writers room adapting a writer’s work and having that writer as a part of the creative team. What was it like to have Liz there every step of the way?

First and foremost, it was a wonderful experience. From the early days, Liz and I had very frank conversations about the things that were pulling us in about the book, the things that could be easily adapted, the things that were going to be our North Star and all of that. We poked the tires ad nauseam on the things we wanted to include and the things we were willing to walk away from. By the time we got a writers room going, we had already written three scripts. We wrote a series bible that was the size of a [Marcel Proust] novel. There had been a ton of conversations, and then became about setting the tent poles for the season for the writers. It was honestly a very open, very collaborative space. Liz was not interested in doing a direct replica of her novel. She knew that changes needed to happen. She was game for changes to happen. She was pitching changes that could happen, and I think that her being so open really helped us to find the best path forward.

Let’s talk about you because you jumped in the director’s chair for the first time on this show. Everyone knows what a Herculean task it is to be the creator, executive producer and showrunner. Why did you decide to direct and when did you raise your hand?

It is something that I’ve wanted to do for a really long time, and I just felt like this was a situation where I did want to finally raise my hand. I didn’t want it to get to a place so late in my career that I could never do it. There was a part of me that was a little bit scared. I brought it up after we had been greenlit. When we started having initial conversations about directors, I sort of raised my hand. I talked to the producers about it, I talked to Liz about it, I talked to Sony about it and I talked to Peacock about it. Everyone was supportive — from the production teams to the creative teams and all the way through. I’m kind of kicking myself that I didn’t do it earlier in my career because so much of being a showrunner, at least the kind of showrunner that I am, is that you’re there every day on set so you’re already part of the experience. You’re part of key decisions. You and the director are largely collaborating. Yes, there’s a lot of free rein that they have to do their thing, but it was just nice for me to have this more direct relationship with the actors because ultimately you’re the one helping create the choices that they make.

Had you gotten close before or had you raised your hand in previous years?

No, I had never raised my hand before. Sometimes that was because the production was challenged in a certain way and I didn’t want to be adding an extra layer of challenges to the production or maybe I wasn’t ready. But yeah, this was the first time that I raised my hand and I’m happy that I did. I want to do it again.

Why did you raise your hand for the episode “Hereditary”?

I wrote it. It was a very important episode. As far as the series goes, there’s a ton of reveals in that episode, so I wanted to make sure that those were handled the right way. Being on the inside of it, having written it, I knew all of the character motivations, I know what brought them to this point. The biggest landmine that I was trying to sidestep is the fact that it was an episode of reveals and I didn’t want that all to have to fall on the shoulders of [Amanda Seyfried and Ashleigh Cummings].

Knowing what you know now, if you could go back to the day before you started shooting “Hereditary” and making your directorial debut, what would you say?

The beauty of running the show and directing an episode is that I really didn’t have any to second guess. I was pretty buried. We were finishing episode five, shooting episode six and weighing in on decisions for episode seven. There was a lot of chaos and because of that, I didn’t have the opportunity to second-guess myself. So I think that that was awesome. But what I would tell myself if I had had the time to slow down and think about it? Just enjoy the ride. There’s something about directing that forces you to be so present in every moment. I don’t think that life is like that most of the time. You could be thinking about all these other things you could be while you’re focusing on the task at hand, and this really makes you just focus on the task at hand. There’s beauty in that.

What was the most challenging scene?

The most challenging scene was probably the scene where we discovered that Kacey’s pregnant because the space was very, very small. I was trying to do the Lord’s work with some mirror reflections, not to mention this entirely emotional scene that was happening between these two actors. We wanted to keep their spirits up and keep their energy levels up in order to continually deliver that performance. I would love to be able to take credit for that. I was there for it, but they just hit it out of the park and surprised me beyond my wildest expectations.

You said you hope to do more directing. What do you hope that looks like for you?

There are conversations that are already happening. I only have an interest — right now at least — in directing things that I write. We’re having those conversations in TV land and in feature land as well, and what that might look like. Is it something that I’ve already written? Is it something that I’m about to write? I’m figuring out what works best and keeping my eyes open where those opportunities may arise.

Coming off of a show that’s airing right now and is still fresh, how are you feeling about the appetite around town for new projects and just being a creative in this town right now?

I can’t say that I haven’t noticed the difference and the distinction from other years. That being said, I’m super excited to bring things out into the town. I do think I’m feeling a change. I’m feeling an era of optimism, and I’m super excited to take something out. I just haven’t yet.

Are you happy with the fact that Long Bright River dropped all at once or would you have preferred a weekly rollout?

I’ve had both. One of the surprises about the binge-drop is the fact that I really haven’t had too many experiences [in my career] where somebody has said that they’ve watched all eight episodes of a show that I spent years making in one day. That’s kind of a trippy experience. Having come up at a time with the whole HBO/Showtime appointment television, there’s something about that that I really respond to and as well. But this has been a fun ride in seeing so immediately what people think of your whole entire series. It’s also scary and daunting as well.

How are you engaging with the reaction? Are you on social media reading it?

I’m a little bit superstitious, so I let people send me stuff. I’m not oblivious but I can’t say I feel like I wouldn’t be doing anybody a service if I were online all day every day watching every comment that came out about the show. I don’t think I could do that.

Long Bright River is a story about sisters, and about the bond that exists when one doesn’t give up on the other as a result of her substance abuse. Have you received a lot of responses from the recovery community, sober people or sober women?

We were hoping that the focus was on not just the compassion, but the resiliency of this community and what it means not to give up on somebody. We had a lot of conversations with people that were working within this particular community in Kensington to inform our thought process on everything, from how we were writing it to how we were shooting it. You will notice, I think, that we see the community of Kensington and those that are struggling with substance use disorder from Mickey’s point of view. And because of that, we’re witnessing it with compassion and humanity and not horror. We wanted to make sure that we were constantly gut-checking ourselves on that portrayal at every turn, no matter how hard it was or how tired we were.

Anytime that it was on screen, we wanted to make sure that it was authentic and that we were also governed by the heart of this story and this love story that did exist between sisters. Mickey’s character is somebody who, at the beginning of the series, believes that she’s made all of the right choices in her life, and her sister has largely chosen wrong. It’s only through realizing that her sister was born addicted that she realizes that her sister did not have a choice. It brings the two of them together like a magnet. We start off the season with Mickey as the hero and Kacey as the victim. At the end of the season, it shifts. It was always our desire to upend both the hero narrative and the victim narrative.