The Peacock three-part event series The Continental: From the World of John Wick delves into the origin behind the famous hotel for assassins in 1970s New York City. In search of his brother Frankie (Ben Robson), a young Winston Scott (Colin Woodell) finds himself entangled with a dangerous underworld where he must overcome his past, in order to become the man familiar to the John Wick universe.

During this 1-on-1 interview with Drumpe, executive producer Albert Hughes (who also directed Night 1 and Night 3) talked about what makes the world of John Wick so interesting, the flavor of the seventies setting, the most fun aspect of playing in this particular sandbox, how the three-part story structure is like orange juice from concentrate, collaborating with stunt coordinator/action director Larnell Stovall, why he thinks it would be cool to explore the eighties in another season, and the toughest thing to pull off on this show.

Drumpe: What do you think it is about John Wick that’s not only led to the establishment of a franchise, but now a whole universe? Why does it work for you?

ALBERT HUGHES: I think it’s twofold. It’s an interesting new world that nobody has ever seen before. It’s not fantasy, but it feels like a parallel escapism world of a subculture of assassins. And they have these rules and gold coins, and they don’t ever answer the questions for you. You’re like, “What is that? Does that make sense? Does it matter? It’s cool.” There’s that, and that’s a big thing. And then, there’s the singular Keanu Reeves, as a man and as the character of John Wick. You put them both together, and that was the surprise of the decade, basically.

Are you surprised that it then also works, taking it outside of that? He’s not in this, and yet there’s still a really cool story that you can tell within the same world.

HUGHES: People talk about pressure and ask, “What were you thinking?” And I was too busy to think about that. I think the world stands on its own because it’s so interesting. Also, it has a great quality, in that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. It knows that it’s here to entertain. It knows that it’s having fun and winking and nodding at the audience. It’s like, “Come on, get away from your real world problems. Even though there’s violence in here, it’s like a ballet of bullets.”

What would you say is the key to creating something within the world of John Wick and that really feels like it’s part of that same universe while being its own thing? What are the biggest challenges in doing something where you are expanding on something that already exists?

HUGHES: The key is the seventies. Once you know that you’re set in the seventies, you can take on a different flavor, but be in the same world. I didn’t find it challenging. It was quite the opposite. There’s just a few rules to it, which are, don’t bore the audience, don’t have boring characters, have great locations, have great fashion, have great sound design and have great fights, or aspire to all those things. Those are the rules of the John Wick universe. Be mysterious, be enigmatic, and don’t give the audience all the answers. Let them figure it out on their own, which is very European, by the way, when it comes to filmmaking. Some think they want the exact John Wick thing, but they actually don’t. Chad Stahelski does such a fantastic job at it with Keanu Reeves. Why would you do a disservice to that, when they are still making them, and try to copy it? You just need the feel of the world.

You directed two of these three episodes. What was it like getting to play in this sandbox? Did you have a favorite aspect of what you got to do within this world?

HUGHES: I didn’t understand until I got into it, how much fun I would have, and that the world accepts wild. You keep throwing wild and wacky at it, and when you’re dealing with tone with anything, you always think, “Wow, shit, does this fit the tone?” Listen, this world accepts some wild stuff. I called up Basil Iwanyk, our producer, and I was like, “We just did this scene that was so wacky, and it just ate it up.” He went, “Yep, that’s what we found out about the John Wick universe. The more crazy you get, the better.” I was like, “Okay, this is very liberating.” That’s what I found. It was surprisingly liberating, as a filmmaker, to play in the sandbox.

Was there ever a thought of you doing all three of these episodes, or was it just impossible for one person to do all three of them?

HUGHES: Yeah, originally that was proposed to me, and I almost choked on my own tongue and thoughts. But then, I saw the schedule and it was very conducive to quality, which isn’t traditional TV, where you’re rolling into the next episode, week by week, with different directors. There was four weeks prep between two and three, and 14 weeks to prep between one and the rest. We brought in a very capable director in Charlotte Brändström, but there’s a challenge in that too. You have to maintain tone and style. I created a style guide, and you have to constantly stay in contact and look at footage and make sure there are no missteps, even though there will always be missteps. If you bring in the greatest filmmaker of all time, they’re gonna hit a bump in the road. You just gotta be there to help steer it right. If you look at traditional TV shows and premium cable, there are very few that can maintain a style. It’s very difficult. If you look at someone like David Fincher and Mindhunter, you can see that his fingerprints are all over the quality control. You look at A Handmaid’s Tale, which is wonderfully done, and it has to be a singular person because it’s so consistent. I love Succession, but they’re not leaning on a very distinct style. Their style is the acting and the story. It’s not so much the camera and the lighting, which is how traditional TV usually works. It’s a writer’s medium. We’re in this weird position where we’re a hybrid. I always say we have one pinky toe in TV, and the rest of the toes and the other foot are in the feature space.

Did you watch and rewatch the movies a lot, to prepare for filming this? Were there things that you wanted to make sure were in the series, that you for sure wanted to carry over, or was it not that literal?

HUGHES: It’s a bit of both. I saw them all in a theater as just a fan. And then, once I was on this, I had already bought an Apple TV and I sometimes sit and study movies. I love Scorsese. He’s my man. I always have a movie playing in the background, with the sound down. So, I did that. I was jumping back and forth between The Conformist and John Wick and Taxi Driver and Raging Bull and Casino and The French Connection, and my favorite films, Midnight Cowboy and Saturday Night Fever. I also put in Easter eggs from studying it. Certain lines, you don’t have to put in the character’s mouth, that you heard a character say in film three of the series, but you can make it a Marily Monroe movie title on a poster, or put it on a vanity license plate, nodding to an Adjudicator line from John Wick 3. There are a lot of fun things you can play with and go about doing in a reverse engineered fashion.

How was it decided that it would be a three-part event and that each night would be about an hour and a half apiece? Why did that seem like the best way to tell this story?

HUGHES: That’s an interesting question because it came to me like that. Kirk Ward, the showrunner and writer, was my partner in crime and I couldn’t have done it this job without him, and it was originally a 10-part series. I never got the full answer as to why they broke it up into three. They nodded to something that the British do. I don’t know if it’s common for the British to do a limited series, in a three-act structure of episodes. I found it refreshing because it’s like orange juice from concentrate. You’re able to focus on it and you don’t have to have filler episodes. We all come across those, in 10 episodes or 22 episodes, and we’re like, “Okay, you guys are jerking my chain right now.”

How did you approach working with stunt coordinator/action director Larnell Stovall on the action? Were there specific things that you told him you were looking for? Did he come to you with anything specific that really surprised you?

HUGHES: It worked both ways. Larnell would come with a ton of ideas, which is what they do at 87eleven. Chad Stahelski and David Leitch own that company and they have this roving band of warriors that are like a think tank of creative ways to design fights. We had this strange dance and partnership, Larnell and I, because he’s labeled the action director. You’ve heard of a second unit director. He’s a fight coordinator and fight choreographer. He had four hats on. What I did was shoot the intro of a scene, he’d come do the action of the fights, and then I would shoot the exit of the scene. Sometimes I’d be shooting downstairs and he’d be shooting upstairs in the building. I always have a very detailed shot list and sketches, and I talk to each department. It’s color-coded and when it came to the action beats, I would stop and highlight in red, which was his color code for stunts. I would say, “I’d like this scene to be a Jackie Chan fight scene, where he’s very playful and he throws objects.” There were just bullet points, and then they’d have all this wonderful stuff that they’d bring in. They would take these general ideas, and then do the stunt vis, I would watch it, and we’d start talking about camera and the style of the camera. That’s more of a bumpy process because any second unit director or action director has to adjust to whether a director has a style.

Most directors don’t have style. There are a handful that do. I would say 10 to 15% of directors working have a definitive style. Others lean on DPs. The challenge of the show was keeping the style consistent. If you notice, we start out a little bit more handheld, which is nodding towards some of the beautiful handheld work in the Wick films. But what handheld does is it gives you an escape route for actors that don’t hit their mark or stunt people that don’t hit their mark. It’s not a finite style of camera placement. So, I started moving away from handheld, and Larnell was kicking and screaming a little bit. And then, we got into the third episode and it was a very definitive style that was not handheld, and I think it’s some of the best work he’s ever done. Now, he has this highbrow camera style and his own DP that adhered to the style. When I saw the scenes in episode three, I was like, “Wow, I didn’t think they would turn out that well.”

I’m sure Peacock is very happy with what you guys did with this series. Do you see another season happening? Have you thought about where it could go next? If feels like one of those shows, by the time you get to the end of it, that it could jump in time and that would be interesting, or it would also be interesting if you continued to explore things where you left off.

HUGHES: Well, there’s the business and the creative. The creative side is that me and Kirk Ward, the showrunner and writer, would talk and daydream. We would always daydream because we had so much fun. We’d be like, “What about the early eighties.” And then, I’d start getting excited and be like, “Oh, my God, the second British invasion. Duran Duran, Adam Ant, Culture Club, and Sting or The Police. And then, you have Michael Jackson, Prince and Cyndi Lauper. You know, 1984 was one of the greatest years in American culture. There was not only the Summer Olympics, but Chicken McNuggets were introduced with only one dipping sauce, and it was the height of the British and the American pop music scene with MTV. So, of course, we’d daydream and talk about it. I still feel like I wanna explore the last bits of the seventies, and then move into the eighties.

And then comes the business. Usually, they trigger these things, if they have a successful first season. Then, it comes down to, can they make the deals with the actors and the director? Do they want Kirk Ward? Do they want me? Do they like me? It’s like a Sally Field moment on stage of, “Do you like me? Do you really, really like me? Or do you not?” There are all those variables and question marks. I will say this, I never thought I would consider a Season 2. In the filmmaking world, there’s snobbery about TV. But the landscape has changed. The best writing is in TV right now. The best acting is in TV. The best directors are going to TV. It’s not TV anymore. It’s streaming, it’s longer form, and it’s this and that. The world is wide open right now. I didn’t think I would consider Season 2, but when I think about the experience making it, I’ve never had so much fun and I don’t wanna close the door on an opportunity to have fun again.

What was the toughest thing to pull off, between schedule and budget and all the craziness you had with this?

HUGHES: It’s interesting, it wasn’t the fights. Staging the fights is the obvious thing, but I was well taken care of with Larnell and 87eleven. It was the typical thing of, how do you shoot 1970s New York? In New York, it’s hard. But to shoot it in Budapest, you’ve gotta bring in all these period cars. They had to source all these 1970s cars, which was very difficult and down to the last minute, and only some of them would work. And then, my wonderful costume designer, Sarah Arthur, had to fly to London and Milan and all kinds of places to find this fashion. There were some Communist secondhand stores that were very good for it because it used to be a former Communist country. If you’re recreating a period, one detail can throw it off in the background. That was the biggest challenge.

The Continental is available to stream at Peacock.