With For All Mankind Season 3 debuting around the world this Friday on Apple TV+, I recently got to speak with Ronald D. Moore about making the new season. As I have said many times, if you’re not watching For All Mankind, you’re missing out on one of the best shows airing on any channel. And while both Season 1 and Season 2 were phenomenal, Season 3 might be the best one yet.
I got to watch eight out of the ten episodes of the third season, and it takes everything you love about the series and amps it up several levels. And it’s not just one episode that’s fantastic. It’s every episode. The season starts off with what would be a finale on another series and then keeps going.
If you haven’t seen the trailer, For All Mankind Season 3 takes place in the 90’s and features three players (the United States, Russia, and a private company) in a dangerous race to be the first to land on Mars. Eventually, the Red Planet is reached, which opens the door to even more danger.
During the interview, Moore talked about the making of Season 3, their original seven-year plan, the growing popularity of the series, when we might see a starship, the status of Season 4, the time jumps between seasons, and the challenges of editing the opening montage of the first episode of Season 3. In addition, he talked about the status of A Court of Thorns and Roses at Hulu, if he’s interested in working on as Star Wars project (he recently signed a deal at Disney), and more.
For All Mankind was created by Emmy Award-winner Ronald D. Moore, and Emmy Award nominees Ben Nedivi & Matt Wolpert. Nedivi & Wolpert serve as showrunners, and executive produce alongside Moore and Maril Davis of Tall Ship Productions, as well as David Weddle, Bradley Thompson and Nichole Beattie.
The ensemble cast returning for season three also includes Joel Kinnaman, Shantel VanSanten, Jodi Balfour, Sonya Walger, Krys Marshall, Cynthy Wu, Casey Johnson, Coral Peña and Wrenn Schmidt, along with new series regular Edi Gathegi who will play Dev Ayesa, a charismatic visionary with his sights set on the stars.
Check out what Moore had to say below had to say below.
COLLIDER: I've seen the first eight episodes of the new season and it’s incredible.
RONALD D. MOORE: Really? Oh good.
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It's so good. If I remember correctly back when we first spoke about the series and I could be wrong about this, I want to say you guys talked about having a five-year plan. Am I wrong about this or was that really the case?
MOORE: Seven. We talked about having a seven-year plan.
As you write any show, you were obviously going to deviate from the plan that you originally created. So how has the trajectory of the show now that you're in season three, how has it followed that original timeline and how has it changed?
MOORE: It's basically followed the general outlines of the plan we laid out at the outset in terms of jumping ahead a decade each time, what are the big landmarks that were going to happen in those particular seasons? I think the individual storylines have changed and evolved, certainly. I can't remember what Ed Baldwin's storyline was at this point in the original document. Karen Baldwin, I know has gone through a whole thing. That was something we evolved during the show, but the basic format is the same. The general path of from here to here, to here, to here is still being followed. So, it seems like it was a good plan that we always felt the freedom to sort of evolve and reinvent along the way.
I obviously don't know anything about the ratings at Apple, but are the executives happy? Obviously you've gotten to season three, but as a fan, I want it to keep going. So, is Tim Cook watching the show? What can you say in terms of the Apple executives and their happiness?
MOORE: They are very happy. I was pleasantly surprised and pleased that people at the top, I'm not going to name names, but people at the top of the Apple corporate ladder are fans of the show. You know? And they've told me how much they like the show personally. And I'm always sort of, "Wow, holy cow, that's really cool." The audience is built over time and it built kind of steadily over the first two seasons. And second season, it definitely had a jump up just in terms of actual audience members and also penetration into pop culture. It's been great. You have a sense of people finding it and people really enjoying it.
What do you want to tease people about season three?
MOORE: Well, we know people generally know that this is the Mars season and it's a race to get to Mars, which is different. And that sort of, I think, sets our show apart from ... A lot of movies and TV shows have done things about getting to Mars and ours is setting it in a different context as a race, and also incorporating a private entity for the first time. But it's not all about the race, because we will get to Mars this season. That's not a spoiler. But this story after you get to Mars, I think is really compelling and really surprising. And the season ends in a lot of surprising ways for a lot of characters that I don't think the audience is going to see coming.
I asked you this question a while ago, I'll ask you again. Season three introduces three versions of how you can get to Mars, but it's all building towards the Starship. So, what season do we get ... Do you have the Starship in mind? And is it like that's the end of season seven and they're all taking off to go to warp speed?
MOORE: I have some thoughts about the Starship, but I'm not going to say when we get there. But yeah, it's certainly something that rattles around in my head.
I mean it has to be something like it's-
MOORE: Oh, sure.
You mentioned you had a seven-year plan, so do you guys still have an idea of where and when you envision in an ideal world, how the show would end, or is that a moving target where it could be a few things?
MOORE: Yeah. It's become more of a moving target. And even seven years is not written in stone because we've talked about ... Now we've gotten to the point where we've seen potentials for what's past season seven. I could see what season eight is and nine. Not to say that we have those pickups yet, but there's an idea of how you could continue the show even past what we thought was sort of the logical ending of it. And it is a bit of a moving target right now.
I have heard through the grapevine that season four is moving along in pre-production. How important is it to deliver the show every year at a certain point? That's the thing I really like about it is that it's like every year you get a new season.
MOORE: I like that. I think Apple likes that. It's a complicated process because some of it has to do with literally scheduling and some of it has to do with production and visual effects, and some of it is just the difficulty of making a show like this because you're reinventing the show every season. So it's hard to just, "Oh, let's just get back down to the sound stages." There's a whole design and construction element that has to come in just to create that new world. But it is nice to have somewhat of a regular annualized experience for the viewer. So we try to maintain that as best we can.
It's basically a 10-year jump in between each season. Do you envision that time jump remaining a constant for every possible future season? Or could there be a larger time jump say from three to four or four to five?
MOORE: We're open to those possibilities. I mean, that's not the plan yet, but we have talked about things like that. I'm pretty certain that there'll always be a jump. We haven't really talked about a format where the show stays in the '90s or stays in the 2000s for more than one season. I think conceptually, we want to keep moving forward and we try to be a little flexible about what is the time period. So far, a decade has felt right, but there's certainly circumstances. And we have talked about scenarios where a different timeframe would work as well.
The opening three or four minutes of episode one has that sort of 10 year catch up on all the things that have happened. How much time do you guys spend on those three to four minutes? Because it's very dense with information to the point where I rewound it to watch it again, to try to pick up little things that I missed. I'm curious what it's like putting that together.
MOORE: It takes an inordinate amount of time to do the montages. It tortures our valiant post-production team to no end because it takes a huge amount of time to come up with the clips. Some of the clips have to be altered. They have to go through legal vetting. There's arguments about that. It's finding the clips, it's processing them, it's working out creatively with the writers what works for the show, what did we already establish. It's really a bear. Again, our post-production team deserves all the credit for delivering those things and it tortures them every single year.
One of the things that is really cool about the show is that it started slow at the beginning. I appreciated that you're building the infrastructure. You're figuring out how to go to the moon and it takes time to do that. But each season has been progressively getting faster, two and three, because you've built the infrastructure, you know the characters. Are you enjoying more now that you're in almost motion or did you enjoy that inception period where you're building things from the ground up?
MOORE: I enjoyed both. I mean, I really did like the beginning because I, as a student and fan of early NASA and the Apollo era was fascinated with the idea of, well, how would this have worked? How could they have gone forward faster and had bigger dreams? I really dug the research of the time of looking into ... There were all these alternate plans that NASA had come up with all these white papers of ideas of spacecraft. I mean, Sea Dragon comes directly out of an actual rocket design. And oh, what would they make the first moon base out of? Well, what if they repurposed Skylab? I loved all that. I thought that was really interesting.
And I thought it was important to have a very grounded, believable foundation for what was going to be a fantastical journey into a history that never happened. I thought it was important to really say to the audience, "No, everything we're about to show you as these seasons go on, is built on a basis of reality." This really could have happened. And by implication it still can happen because it's all based on things that are really possible.
I know you're a big fan of Disney, obviously. And I know you're a big fan of Star Wars. Have you been noodling in your brain ideas for a show or a movie or is that on such a back burner?
MOORE: It's always there. It's something you always think about because I've been a lifelong Star Wars fan too, but it's certainly nothing that's on the front burner at the moment. But yeah, you never know. It'd be fun to play in a galaxy far, far away.
Are you directing A Court of Thorns and Roses?
MOORE: No, I'm not directing it. We've developed it and it's for Hulu. I probably will not be showrunning it directly, but I'll be supervising that project. Sarah Maas, who's the author, is also attached to the show. We have not been given the green light for pickup, but Hulu likes it very much. And hopefully, we'll keep moving forward.
It's a mistake on IMDB.
MOORE: No, I'm not directing it.
I'm glad to have that clarification. I've been given the wrap up signal. I really want to say a sincere thank you for, For All Mankind. It's one of the best shows on TV. I really appreciate the hard work that you guys put in.
MOORE: Oh, I really appreciate you saying that. And I hope you enjoy the rest of the season.
I'm willing to bet I will. Listen, always great to talk with you. Thank you so much.
MOORE: Thanks.
For All Mankind Season 3 starts June 10th only on AppleTV+.