‘3 Body Problem:’ Emmy-Winning Composer Ramin Djawadi Shifts From Dragons to Physics, Aliens, and Massive Human Emotions

Ramin Djawadi may literally have changed my life.

Somewhere, there is a short list of the greatest television theme songs to have ever been composed. His main title theme for HBO’s historic, Emmy-winning smash Game of Thrones is on that list. High, high, high on that list. It’s one of my personal favorite pieces of music I’ve ever heard. It so immediately brings to mind the locations, the scope, and the majesty of the series.

This year, Djawadi returns to a close collaboration with Thrones show runners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss on Netflix’s acclaimed 3 Body Problem. A massively complex undertaking, the drama series introduces viewers to a world in which a lonely and bitter woman makes contact with an alien race, inviting them to come to take over Earth and correct all of our problems. Along the way, the aliens, collectively known as the San-ti, continue communications with humans on Earth until they become convinced that humans are liars and cannot be trusted. Will they come to Earth to help humans or wipe them out? Will a group of scientists find a way to save humanity? Amidst complicated and fascinating concept, these are the very questions that 3 Body Problem, based on the novels by Liu Cixin, sets out for itself.

So, how does a composer provide the proper orchestral support?

Here, in an interview with Awards Daily, Emmy-winner Djawadi breaks down his score, starting with its main title theme that connects with several complex and emotional beats within season one of the series. He also wants you to know that, no, there aren’t hidden alien messages embedded within his score.

Awards Daily: You won two Emmy awards for Game of Thrones, one of the most iconic television soundtracks in history and one of the most beloved main titles in history. Now, you’re back working with Benioff and Weiss on 3 Body Problem. How did Game of Thrones prepare you for the challenge of 3 Body Problem?

Ramin Djawadi: The way I treat a main title intro, I think it maybe goes back to my childhood. When I was a kid, the main title was always the calling card of your favorite show. If you’re in another room and the TV’s already on and you’re just waiting, that’s the “Get ready! Your show’s coming on” moment. So that always stayed with me. That’s how I treat it nowadays for my own work. I feel like the main title needs to capture the overall mood and essence of what the show is about. Obviously with 3 Body Problem, there are so many things, right?

With David [Benioff], Dan [Weiss], and Alex [Woo], we always talked about that it needed to be emotional. There’s that scientific aspect to it. There is the adventure aspect. There’s the danger. There’s the unknown. So with all of that, I somehow had to combine into a one minute and 15 seconds piece.

It was really nice to have worked with David and Dan for such a long time on Game of Thrones. Here, we approached the music the same way where we would talk about character. We would talk about story arc. It was great that the most of the episodes were available to me actually when I started writing, so we could see a lot of it. So that was really great to approach it that way and be able to just do it all in one go.

Awards Daily: So, how did you do that?

Ramin Djawadi: I don’t know. [Laughs] I wish I had a formula to it that would, I think, make my life a lot easier. It’s really started out of conversation with [Benioff, Weiss, and Woo] in this case. Then, the visuals really inspire me too. We have these beautiful visuals that gave me a nice guideline, which is that we start very, very small and then zoom out further and further. We see humans, we see buildings, and then it zooms out into space. So, the scope just gets bigger and bigger.

That actually helped me with shaping the piece by starting out simple. In this case, we start out with the rhythm of the piece. Then, the melody comes in, just simply on the piano, and then expands with the sound palette. Then, the orchestra comes in, and it grows and gets bigger and bigger.

Awards Daily: One of the unique things about this series is its balance of very complex, scientific jargon with action sequences and with real human emotion. None of this would work without that human connection. How do you balance all of that within the score? 

Ramin Djawadi: That was something that was very important to us. With the score, there’s the two aspects. For the scientific aspects, I would do more abstract sounds or sound design, synthetic sounds, but with the human emotion, we wanted to ground it with really basic, well-known organic instruments. In this case, it was the piano and strings or, sometimes, some harp. I tried to keep it really simple and just really get the emotion across.

Awards Daily: The character of Will, played by Alex Sharpe, most specifically represents the emotional impact of the series. How are you representing his emotional journey through the score? 

Ramin Djawadi: Yeah, because our scientists don’t really have really individual themes where, with him, we had more of the love theme. It was really great to be able to see that arc. That’s what I loved about the show, too, because it is so scientific. It has a horror aspect, but ultimately there’s also this love story that carries through the show, and it was really nice to set that up.

The first time you really hear the theme might not be until the origami boat [episode four] because before it is really so subtle that we decided to not even thematically hint at it so much. It’s just really nice to be able to forget about the science of it all and really just go with the heart and the emotion that those two characters give us.

Awards Daily: Forgive me for asking, but I was so transfixed / horrified by the visuals in the Judgement Day sequence [episode five] that I couldn’t remember how much score you employed there. Is there score for that sequence? 

Ramin Djawadi: That scene is another good example of where we would purposely dial back the score so that it doesn’t get in the way. There is actually score there, not throughout the whole thing but the setup has score just leading up to it. There’s this underlying tension, and then we start out with a cacophony of sounds to just set up the horror of what’s happening.

Once the boat starts getting destroyed and the people on board getting killed, that’s when we actually pulled out score because the scene is so horrific. We felt it was even more powerful to just let just the sounds and the creaking and everything breaking be the storytelling. There was no need to enhance anything there.

Awards Daily: Setting the human elements aside, how do you represent the alien race, the San-ti, through your score?

Ramin Djawadi: It’s interesting because we don’t even see them, right? So here we have a whole season needing to establish something musically that we don’t even see. So, I tried to create something that raises a lot of questions, something that doesn’t really musically reveal too much. Then, the other thought we had was to have almost like a communication in the music. It’s like an element of Morse code. So a lot of times in the score, there will be patterns that are not literal, but it’s not really saying anything in Morse code language. It has a repetitive pattern in the score, creating tension. It’s the idea of communicating as we see in the show, how we’re trying to communicate with the aliens.

Awards Daily: Now you’re going to have all kinds of people going back and listening to the score and looking for secret clues about some sort of secret alien communication.

Ramin Djawadi: [Laughs] It’s really not saying anything. In fact, I tried to create patterns that don’t really repeat.

Awards Daily: What was the most challenging moment within the first season to score?

Ramin Djawadi: The end of the first and second episodes I thought were exciting but also challenging to score. In the first episode, we see the stars blinking. We have this big question mark of what’s going on here? We need answers, and we’re not getting them. In the second episode, when Ye Wenjie decides to actually answer to the aliens, that’s obviously the whole setup of what, what is to come.

Especially in the second episode, there’s the emotional aspect to get across — her decision-making or everything she has gone through of why she’s making these decisions. So, to have that emotional aspect there, to have the Morse code communication patterns in that piece, to set that up and create enough tension and anticipation without giving too much away just yet was very exciting to write but very tricky.

Three Body Problem streams exclusively on Netflix.