SPOILERS: This post contains details about The Copenhagen Test, Season 1
The Copenhagen Test‘s eight-episode binge leaves a lot for viewers to digest as the show unpacks some topical issues through a thrilling spy mission.
For creator Thomas Brandon, he told Deadline that writing the show’s sci-fi mystery brought up “some weird consent issues” around its intelligence agent Alexander Hale (Simu Liu), whose mind is hacked by a mysterious enemy using the intel to bring down his top-secret government agency, The Orphanage.
“We had a shower scene,” he noted. “It was at the end of the pilot, and it was kind of indicative of him accepting the mission. He’s getting undressed to go in the shower … and then he just looks down.”
As The Orphanage keeps the hack open, Alexander comes to accept that both the enemy and his own superiors have full surveillance of his life until he can help them find the source, going undercover with fellow agent Michelle (Melissa Barrera) as an unwitting couple.
Brandon explained of the cut scene, “It was kind of a little too funny for the end of the pilot, but it what it spoke to was this larger thematic [element] of your question, which is, here’s a guy who is now in his effort to prove to his country, “I can be trusted.”
Melissa Barrera as Michelle and Simu Liu as Alexander in ‘The Copenhagen Test’
Peacock
Comparing the series to the paranoia of The Truman Show (1998), the fun of The Copenhagen Test comes with not knowing “who’s in on it and who’s not.”
As the show unravels the mystery behind Alexander’s brain hack, so does it explore the lives and histories of its characters, including those who built The Orphanage. Could a prequel be in store, in addition to a potential second season?
“There’s been a thought there, but it’s just thoughts,” noted Brandon. “But yeah, it was always designed as an ongoing series, so there’s plans and ideas and hopes for what a second season could be.”
Simu Liu as Alexander in ‘The Copenhagen Test’
Christos Kalohoridis/Peacock
Read our interview with The Copenhagen Test‘s creator Thomas Brandon, his co-showrunner Jennifer Yale and executive producer James Wan, below.
DEADLINE: You really create a sense of paranoia with the lack of privacy in his life as you start to realize more and more of what’s going on. So tell me what about the whole privacy element kind of intrigued you and made you wanna create the story.
JAMES WAN: Can I just ask you guys this? The whole time, obviously I’m thinking in my head, how does he go shower? Does he look down when he goes to the bathroom?
THOMAS BRANDON: We had a shower scene. It was at the end of the pilot, and it was kind of indicative of him accepting the mission. He’s getting undressed to go in the shower … and then he just looks down. And it was kind of a little too funny for the end of the pilot, but it what it spoke to was this larger thematic [element] of your question, which is, here’s a guy who is now in his effort to prove to his country, “I can be trusted.” They’re like, “Great, give us your entire life. Be a double agent in your life, sacrifice your family, your friends, your loved ones, your body, everything.” And he’s like, “OK” and he’s doing it to prove it. And the journey of the show is asking, “Should I be doing this?” What is the line of how much you give to your country, when you’ve lost a part of yourself? And that was one of the things that we were really looking at for the privacy aspect of it all. And the other thing we did stylistically was, a lot of times in the spy genre, there’s heavy use of shadows. Very noir-ish, the shafts of light, and what’s creepy is the things you can’t see. What we decided in our show is what would be creepy is the things you see but you don’t understand. So, that’s why we really see a lot of the architecture in our show. You see a lot of the things around Alexander, and he’s looking at these things, but the paranoia comes not from what I can’t see. The paranoia comes from what I can’t understand. And so, what we did is we made sure the camera really stayed with Alexander on him over his shoulder from his point of view, so you could see the workings of this Truman Show office and not know who’s in on it and who’s not, and that was part of what we were driving to do.
DEADLINE: It’s funny you mentioned that because that’s literally what I was thinking during the sex scene. I’m like, they know multiple people are watching this, right?
JENNIFER YALE: That’s why she says, “Are you sure?” And she turns off the light.
BRANDON: And those were some of the longest conversations we had in the writing room. It brings up some weird consent issues.
Melissa Barrera as Michelle and Simu Liu as Alexander in ‘The Copenhagen Test’
Christos Kalohoridis/Peacock
DEADLINE: On that note, I also love kind of the romantic comedy within the spy thriller, even though you soon figure out she’s just manipulating him, which is even more fun to watch. But tell me about balancing their chemistry with her manipulations.
YALE: I mean, we had a lot of fun, and this was also in the same conversations about, how do you have sex without them listening and watching. But we took a lot of time to make sure that we built up their chemistry before you find out that she’s manipulating him, because you want to want them to get together and to have that love affair. And so, that was why we took a lot of time to show you part of a scene, and then the audience is with Alexander. experiencing the scene, only to have the floor drop out when you realize that this is all a script.
BRANDON: Yeah, and that’s really fun in the second episode to unravel a lot of the intentional tropes we leaned into the first episode, which is like, you’re down on your luck and there’s a helpful sweet bartender who, this time it’s real. This time, she’s really attracted to you. And you start to realize like, oh, these are all the story that Parker is telling. She’s using these forms of these characters we think we’ve seen before, because she’s essentially creating this television show around him, and it worked on him. And part of the fun for him is realizing, “Yes, this worked, but I’ve understood that I’m still in The Truman Show.” And so him starting to begin to fight back and ultimately him telling the story back to the rest of them, where they’re not sure what he’s about to do.
WAN: Thee romantic comedic aspect also reminded me of things like Mr. and Mrs. Smith, just the interplay between the two of them, and it actually goes even further back to like your classic Hitchcock, just the really old-school sort of caper mystery between the two characters. And there’s always this tension between two, but there’s also a lot of romantic tension as well. And I think you guys did a great job pulling that into this modern setting.
DEADLINE: Michelle hints at her past, that she’s done something very bad and that’s why she’s here, and then by the end, Parker burns her file. She gets that fresh start. But I was curious, had you come up with a backstory for her that you told Melissa or something to keep in the back of her head?
YALE: Yes, that was one of the big things that we did with each one of the characters is, we had a backstory that each one of the teasers gave you a little bit more about each one of the characters and where they came from and where they were going. And we had shot a teaser that was Michelle, but we wanted to wait, because we thought it gave the audience too much information. And we do want to keep where she went at the end of Episode 8, and this idea that she wants to go home or have a life different, outside of this world. Is that really where she went? Or is she undercover still? Is she still in the game?
Simu Liu as Alexander in ‘The Copenhagen Test’
Christos Kalohoridis/Peacock
BRANDON: Yeah, and part of the kind of Russian nesting doll of Michelle is the fact that you never know if you’re getting the real her. And so, even though we kind of have built a backstory, the question is, is that real? Or is that the backstory that’s in a file somewhere, that is not the actual real story. Because to us, the most interesting aspect of Michelle is not, “Oh, what’s the truth here?” The most interesting aspect is, is there someone who’s played so many roles that she’s forgotten what the truth actually is? Has she really lost sight of who that person actually was? And could you ever separate out what’s real and what’s not?
YALE: And then playing with her relationship with Parker, and what she wants out of that relationship, and is that genuine in, the chemistry that they have and the friendship that they have, or did she just want Parker to burn her file?
DEADLINE: And that was another character I’m really intrigued by, Parker, just ’cause she relates to Hale so much or she understands him so much. And I’m wondering if that’s because they’re similar or because it’s her job, and she’s just very good at thinking ahead of everyone?
BRANDON: Yeah, that’s a great question. We wrestle with that a lot. I think there has to be some similarity. One, she is great at her job, and she’s great at figuring out—she is kind of the stand-in for the writer in the show, which it is my job to put myself in this person’s shoes and understand them, whether they’re like me or not. But there is a unique special power she has, which we hinted at the end of the second episode, when she has found his seven words and her words are similar. They’re not exactly the same, but she understands what’s driving him, because they have a similar drive, she’s able to imagine what is he about to do next. And like you, we love the character and thought Sinclair was fantastic in this, what could be a very dry person who stands and looks at a lot of monitors, and she brought such energy and empathy to that. And in the midst of a show that has a lot of action and intrigue and thought-provoking twists and turns, what we really liked is she gave us a chance for a kind of—they told me not to use this word because it’s too arcane—but Cyrano de Bergerac. It is a very unrequited love, right? She’s kind of slowly falling in love with her own creation. Through Michelle, she is romancing Alexander, and she has this parasocial relationship with him. Like all of us watching TV, we know that character infinitely and that character does not know us. And then, watching how the real life starts to fuse into her little hermetically sealed world she’s in was fascinating.
Melissa Barrera as Michelle in ‘The Copenhagen Test’
DEADLINE: Back to Michelle, I liked where that story went and how it teases the potential for a second season. So, I am curious if there are plans for that, but I’m also curious—because St. George’s love story was so heartbreaking and beautiful, and there’s all this backstory from how The Orphanage started—I’m curious if you have thought about doing some kind of prequel series or something.
YALE: Ooh, Peacock!
BRANDON: Yes. There’s been a thought there, but it’s just thoughts. But yeah, it was always designed as an ongoing series, so there’s plans and ideas and hopes for what a second season could be.
