Interview: Wynonna Earp Creator Emily Andras

Wyonna Earp is back, with the Audible Original Wynonna Earp: Tales from Purgatory. At New York Comic Con, The Geeky Waffle managing editor Arezou Amin attended a roundtable with Emily Andras the creator, producer, writer of the television series Wynonna Earp.

Audible Original Wynonna Earp: Tales from Purgatory which picks up with Wynonna and her soulmate, the legendary lawman Doc Holliday as they hit the open road in search of the promised land: Dollywood. Naturally, the trail is bumpier than expected while Wynonna catches us up on many fan-favorite characters from the series through an anthology-style collection of stories from Purgatory. This scripted audio drama will feature original cast members Melanie Scrofano, Tim Rozon, Dom Provost-Chalkley, Katherine Barrell, Varun Saranga, Dani Kind, Martina Otiz-Luis, Greg Lawson, and writer Emily Andras. The Geeky Waffle was given the chance to participate in roundtables with Andras, Scrofano, Rozon and Barrell. Read on for the interview with Emily Andras below:

 Arezou: What is it about the medium of the audio drama where you're like, this is how we're going to make a set of these stories and these characters? 

Emily Andras: Right. Well, first of all, I was like, "This is terrifying. We're definitely not going to do this."

It was intimidating, to be honest, like. I don't know if you've seen these casts; they're pretty freaking hot and have incredible emotional abilities. You're taking away one of the biggest gifts you have in TV, which is like the performer's ability to show you how they're feeling. TV is literally show, don't tell, and audio is literally tell, don't show, right?

So, it was a completely different muscle memory as far as writing was concerned, which was really interesting. But then I realized you aren't constrained by things like your budget. Do you know what I mean? That was amazing, we got to sort of do things with these beloved characters with storylines. We would never have been able to afford on the show. So that became really freeing and we kind of just embraced it. But we had to be really disciplined about making sure that we were explaining the action, you can't write, somebody nods cheekily, no they don't, we can't like, we can't hear them nod. I can hear my mother nod, but that's a different story.

You know what I mean? You have to really be disciplined about how you write it, but I think they worked out beautifully.

Interviewer: The show ended and it was just all, everything was up in the air. 

Andras: It's the most cursed and blessed show of all time.

Interviewer: Just how in the world did you land here with Audible and the movie?

Andras: I must have done something right in my past life, for sure. This is my theory about it post COVID. We always have this passionate fandom, the Earpers, right?

They're loud on social media. They're extremely smart. They're very sensitive, savvy about having their voices known, right? Like they would write advertisers on Syfy to say, we love Toyota. Thanks so much. Like very, very smart. And I think as we've gone on, there are 500 plus scripted shows, you know, back in the day, audiences have become more fragmented.

So being able to deliver a passionate audience who are guaranteed to show up for something. It's really rare, right? Being able to kind of cut a path and knowing that you have fans that are being served. So I think Audible and Tubi very smartly were like, these people want more. Maybe it was cut prematurely and we know if we make it, they will show up. So I'm counting on them, but Earpers have never let me down.

Interviewer: I was wondering if you could talk more about, like, writing the audio drama and the things that you were able to do that you wouldn't be able to do on the show as far as, like, monsters and storytelling.

Andras: Oh, so fun. It kind of felt like a little bit of a marriage of fan fiction, everybody giggles, not that kind of fan fiction. Although we've all read that.  So glad it exists. It was sort of like when you have a family that's passionate, they're also going to tell you what you've missed, right? Like what plot holes, what, what characters they feel are underserved. So first of all, there was that kind of storytelling. For example, we have a plot line in season three. I'm so sorry. We're Waverly goes into a magical garden and is missing for 18 months. So Nicole Haught is left at home for 18 months without knowing if her love is like alive or dead.

So people were like desperate to know what happened during that time. So doing a story in that space, But more than that, we got to do things like Doc Holliday on a plane that's about to crash. Like his first plane ride is hilarious. And having a fear of flying, right? Like, we couldn't even shoot a plane like in the distance driving by on my show.

We'd be like, no, no, we can't afford that. Maybe a pigeon. So, just being able to do stuff like that was great. We went back to the Old West in one of them. So we tell a story with Doc Holliday and Calamity Jane and Wyatt Earp on a train. There's kind of a mystery. And so, may or may not turn into a Godzilla like giant.

Again, we don't always have the budget for it. We might be able to afford, like, six for two, but that's it. So, once I sort of got over my intimidation about making something that was purely auditory, I realized, oh my god, we can do things we could never do on the TV show. So that was really freeing.

Interviewer: So you have a lot of strong women.Can you just kind of expand on that? Why that was important to you?

Andras: Oh, thank you so much for asking that. I mean, it's always been important to me. Here's what I find, like, all the women I know are not one type of woman, right? But for so often in storytelling and the medium, I felt like the girl had to represent all the girls, right? Like, we all had to be princesses. Some of us were Chewbacca, but we'll talk about that later, right?  So I was always attracted to the fact that I felt like I know so many diverse women with their own strengths and weaknesses.

Often their strengths and weaknesses are the same thing. I was just attracted with cramming my shows full of as many different women as I could. In the same way, I would say even with the LGBTQ+ characters. I feel like some of the gays I know are not all the same, do you know what I mean? What a concept!

Like, different ways to portray sexuality and gender. I'm just always interested in the underdog, do you know what I mean? People who don't get to see themselves as a hero. I'm Canadian, I live in the shadow of the biggest juggernaut.

I think of myself as a perpetual underdog, and like, I just want to see myself represented on screen, right? And I feel like I was able to watch lots of genre growing up, and I can identify with Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones, so I believe that men can identify with all these strong women too.

A hero is a hero, and if they're written well enough, I hope that you will fall in love with them and that they will inspire you.

Arezou: You talk about this adjustment going from this like very visual medium to this purely audio medium and that having to be kind of like a hurdle to overcome. But I'm wondering if there was something that as you sat down to write this you went, this is so much easier than I thought it would be.

Andras: I think that, I don't want to be arrogant. I think it's really important when you're a writer to be terrified. Every time I open a blank screen I'm like, “How the hell did I do this before, right?” I think if you aren't scared, you don't care enough. But when I wrote it, I was so scared about the action.

I think just having the benefit of these characters, these jokes, these emotions, these relationships.

I wasn't actually building something from scratch, right? And once the voices started coming back to us, it did kind of flow like water. Also, being able to tell it in the anthology kind of world was really fun. Just being able to know they didn't really have to be linked. I wasn't writing a season of television, you know I was really telling vignettes and that was really beautiful.

Interviewer: How did you get Tim to write?

Andras: Tim has always been the Earpiest Earper who ever Earped. Like honestly, he kind of is.

He is definitely the number one Earper. And I know he'd done a little bit of writing, like very early on in his career. He's so casual and humble, he just casually like handed me a script that he'd written of Wyatt Earp and I was like, what? I was like what are you doing? I have to be forced to write by deadline.

He is an excellent writer and I knew he really wanted to. Also because he ended up writing such a Doc specific storyline about his friendship with Wyatt Earp and Calamity Jane. I really wanted him to have a chance at that. It felt pretty safe. Do you know what I mean? For him too. I was like, we're not going to let you fall down.

Whatever happens, we can fix this. We didn't need to fix it. It was beautiful. It was so perfect. And yeah, he did a wonderful job. Cause like, I really think these guys need credit for knowing their characters well after all these years and they should be rewarded as well for maybe telling a story in a way I wouldn't. That's surprising, but still very much in line with how their character would act. 

Interviewer: So there was a lot of visual comedy on the show. Which obviously you couldn't do with the audio. So how did you adapt to that aspect of it?

Andras: I mean, a dick joke works. You know, either way. So that's the, you know, you can picture whatever dick you want in your mind, really.

It's right. Yeah. Seriously. Please make it your own. Yeah, yeah. No, well, or whatever. But you know. Melanie in particular is such a great quipper. She's so witty that I feel like those jokes you have, you know, just having that kind of language made it easy. There are lots of visual jokes but there became almost a different type of comedy in almost some of the characters narrating what they're seeing.

Like there's a really funny episode where like someone becomes a giant and Jeremy is kind of narrating it and he's just saying like the craziest stuff and so that was a different type of comedy we had maybe you wouldn't be able to do visually. If the joke would be lost. Yeah. But I love finding different ways to do comedy, so it was fun.

Interviewer: In 1997, we had Buffy the Vampires Slayer. Do you feel that Wyonna Earp owes a nod and wink to Buffy?

Andras: A bit of it girl. Just say I ripped it off. That's okay. It's exclusive. Yeah, listen, I will tell you, it is so funny. I think Buffy has influenced so many writers. It is so influential, I think, in the way we tell stories. And I gladly will tell you that Buffy, there would not be a Wyonna movie without Buffy.

There would not be a Lost Girl without Buffy. Buffy really paved the way. And the most important thing I think that Buffy taught me is that in genre, the audience is already pretty open and friendly. And what I mean by that is, even if you can see the zipper up the back of the werewolf costume. If the characters are lovable, and the relationships sing, it doesn't matter.

Like, I get kind of weird about, like, the cheap special effects sometimes, but like, it doesn't matter. The audience is there for that. But the things they watch on YouTube over and over and over again are like, you know, the Buffy moments with Willow, and like, her sister, and like, same on our show. Those are the moments that people tune in for.

Not so much kind of the big supernatural stuff. The supernatural stuff is the conduit to get you to the feels. So that's what Bucky taught me more than anything.

Interviewer: What would happen if Wyonna met Spike?

Andras: Oh my god, so much drunk tank antics. Just so much leather being exchanged first of all. But I don't know.