Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall are the stars, writers, and creators of Colin from Accounts, streaming in the US on Paramount+. The banter on display here is what the show is known for, and it is partly taken from their own lives. They detail how being married and living together makes their writing better. Then we learn how fame is affecting Colin himself.
Awards Daily: A lot of people have commented that the chemistry between you is so great because you are married in real life. So where do the parts where the characters annoy the heck out of each other come from?
Patrick Brammall: Great question. I think our chemistry is something that was a lucky thing. I don’t think you need to be married or together to have good chemistry on screen. You just have to have a good script and be good actors.
Harriet Dyer: We had chemistry before on other projects before we were together. I think you just have chemistry with some people, and with some people it’s harder and feels more fabricated. But we are lucky, and it’s also very handy for talking to people like yourself or other kinds of press requests that we live together and are married. This whole Colin machine is a lot smoother because we can just be together.
Brammall: That’s true, and also because we write the show we write it for our voices and for the things that tickle us. We don’t steal that much from our own lives even though people feel like they’re getting that at times. But one of the things that we do have in life that the characters have as well is this similar frequency and the banter that they operate on. So we do exploit that for the show and to good effect I think.
Awards Daily: I agree, and one of the things I like about the show is not just your guys’ banter but the banter with the entire cast. As well as how quickly within the first two episodes you get a lot of the dynamic of the characters in that banter. Thinking about when Gordon first talks with Chiara, and Ashley with her mother Lynelle. We get their history almost within those first interactions. How did you come up with the dynamic between those characters?
Dyer: I think what we did was we didn’t spell it out. It was enough to say, ‘Mom, what are you doing here?’ And then she just takes over, and you get the entire dynamic that she is the star of her own movie and everyone’s pain is her pain. We just let the audience play catch up. In terms of his relationship with Chiara, she didn’t have to leave the scene by saying, as your long time friend and co-owner of this bar with you. We tried to imagine the audience finding these characters in their days without a lot of exposition and we did that very deliberately. Because you can always kind of smell that, it feels very TV, or a note from an executive saying that we need to spell out that relationship a bit clearer. We don’t, people will figure it out.
Brammell: What has helped, too, is that as long as a character is well defined (and by that I don’t mean that we know where they came from and have all these details that are unimportant in the moment), but in terms of their point of view. I think as we write these characters those points of views emerge, and so as we’re meeting them in the show they respond to this situation as the audience is seeing Gordon and Ashley and this dog, and trying to figure out if they’re together, if they’re not together. It is through these reactions and responses we learn about them. The first thing Brett says is how much of her boob did you see? Then you’ve got Chiara going, “Brett, I’ve never seen you this interested in anything, and there was a car on fire outside last week.” So we are getting her point of view. We get Lynelle saying, “I’m coming over because your old friend has been raped,” and Ashley doesn’t remember, and she says that she’s from second grade. So you’re getting all these people and if we’ve written them properly it’s funny, but you recognize someone in that like it’s like someone you know.
Dyer: She is saying so much about herself about what she thinks of Gordon. She’s asking if he has a good job, does he have good tech. We also learn things about Gordon from Lynelle’s questions and the fact that Ashley doesn’t have the answers.
Awards Daily: Like Gordon’s last name. That was another great moment.
Dyer: That’s right!
Brammell: In fact, we watched episode two for this screening the other night in LA, and it was great and we hadn’t watched episode two in a while, especially with a crowd. There is a moment when Lynelle’s checking out the kitchen and she mentions, I had to pretend to like Italian cars to land my ex. Ashley responds, that it’s not your ex, that’s my dad, and realizing we have never met the dad. Even in season 2 the dad has not shown up. So that’s something that’s just hanging there waiting to bear fruit later on.
Dyer: That’s the thing. We’ve done another eight episodes that are airing in Australia right now, and we have met Gordon’s family in the next season but haven’t met her dad. I love that there’s just this stuff waiting on the tree to be picked. We haven’t even mentioned if Ashley has brothers or sisters! She could! Her dad and her brother could just show up, and that would be completely within the world of Colin for the audience to play catch up. Because they haven’t seen every conversation Ashley and Gordon have had.
Awards Daily: As funny as the show is, there are some very serious issues going on with the characters that we slowly find out through the season. Gordon has had cancer in the past, and he obviously has not been in a relationship for a while, and his ex is this crazy vet. Ashley is suffering from a breakup, and she definitely has trauma about her dad leaving and issues with her mother. How do you guys prepare taking on those serious moments compared to the humor?
Dyer: I think that it’s just grounded in reality and the fact that everyone has trauma, the dark side of their public persona. So if we can write the scenes in which that stuff exists and then play it with a light touch, it works.
Brammall: We find the best comedy comes out of the darker stuff. Sometimes that darker stuff helps sharpen up the comedy as well. The comedy and tragedy masks exist next to each other, and it is the best stuff to watch.
Dyer: The darker it can get the funnier the relief moment gets too.
Brammall: We wrote that Gordon has this low-key gambling addiction. It does not pay off in terms of plot (that’s another piece of fruit waiting to be picked). But we like to punctuate the world with real things that may not be the most efficient barebone story but it is fleshed out in a way that it feels real.
Awards Daily- You mentioned working together previously and that you also wrote on No Activity and Summer Love. Did those experiences help you write this show, or was it just a totally different beast for you?
Harriet Dyer- All different! No Activity I got a writing credit on but it was a largely improvised show. It was Patrick and Trent’s (O’Donnell) show. I got a writing credit because I provided material. Summer Love we wrote together when we were in the middle of writing Colin. Summer Love was shot just after the first season of Colin, and Colin really informed that. Except because it was just one episode we split up the scenes instead of separating up episodes.
Patrick Brammall- To your point, it all informs. Everything informs how we write. We work together, and even just sitting down now and talking about it with you, the idea of Ashley’s dad is in my mind. I will make a little note about that after this for season 3 maybe as a thread to pick up. Because we are married and we live together these threads are always there. So it is all in the stew. Over time it just gets more and more interesting.
Awards Daily: How do you guys write the show? Do you do it together or divide it up? What is your process?
Dyer: I did odds and he did evens for this first season. Then we flipped that in the second season. But we definitely pass them back and forth and note them in different colors for our notes. Like for ideas for new lines done in a way that we can approve or not have them. We were rushing to get season one made a bit more. We had a brand new baby and so changes were made, and we weren’t checking them as much. Whereas for season 2 there was more space to write, and it was more like, what do I think of that change? Can we build on that? It was more of a conversation, whereas there was more straight-up rewriting in season 1. Really both of our names should have been on the scripts in season 1 with the amount of work we passed back and forth. Season 2 had a little more separation. But we are similar writers, there’s not much to it. I think Patrick is more elegant storytelling and with jokes because you’re more like a man.
Brammall: Come on, manly man.
Dyer: But we do share
Brammall: We do share a lot. In the first place for both seasons we sat down and tried out ideas and plotted the entire season together. We start with what makes us laugh. What do we want to see the characters do? Then we’ll start to find a place for it. Like, okay that makes sense here in the timeline for the season. Once we have plotted out the whole season then we divide up the episodes, go and write them, then pass them back and forth with notes.
Awards Daily: So I think the important question now is, how is Colin taking the fame?
Dyer: Yeah, it is an important question–glad you asked.
(Both laugh)
Brammall: He has no idea he’s on TV, no idea he’s loved around the world, he has no idea he’s being exploited, and that his trainer is earning money, but I think all he gets is turkey treats, and that’s all.
Dyer: He is a popular young guy.
Brammall: He is a good boy. We never have to go again for Colin.
Dyer: Our friend Kirsty [McGregor] casts the show and was walking down the street of Melbourne and saw a man walking a border terrier, and that is the breed Colin is. We thought he was just a scrappy everyday breed. Kirsty went up and said, “Oh, my God, he looks just like Colin from Accounts.” This guy goes, “He is.” Kirsty said, “Oh, is it Zach or Buster?” Because she knows the show and we use two dogs. He was then, like, “Ah, uh. I just meant the same breed.” Then scurried away. So that’s how famous Colin is in Australia. People are passing off their border terriers as him.
Awards Daily: Any final thoughts?
Dyer: If you haven’t checked out the show, check it out. It is on Paramount+, and it’s a good investment because there’s another eight episodes coming soon.
Brammall: One of the other things that always delights me is talking to industry people who it is their job to watch shows. Quite a few times I have gotten back that Colin was one of those shows that was like comfort food. That the show is many people’s comfort food, and that is such a fine complement to us. People are loving it and responding to it. We really appreciate the word of mouth it’s getting around. It is delightful to us.
Dyer: It means a lot to us.
Colin From Accounts is streaming now on Paramount+.
