We’re going even deeper into the Shadow and Bone Grishaverse as host Brandon Jenkins sits down with the ultimate heist crew from Ketterdam -- The Crows -- played by Freddy Carter, Amita Suman, and Kit Young. The actors share how they brought their characters to life and stories about one of their favorite guest castmates, who truly is the G.O.A.T. We’ll also hear how showrunner Eric Heisserer put together his own crack team of writers to combine the worlds of the Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows books.
We’re going even deeper into the Shadow and Bone Grishaverse as host Brandon Jenkins sits down with the ultimate heist crew from Ketterdam -- The Crows -- played by Freddy Carter, Amita Suman, and Kit Young. The actors share how they brought their characters to life and stories about one of their favorite guest castmates, who truly is the G.O.A.T. We’ll also hear how showrunner Eric Heisserer put together his own crack team of writers to combine the worlds of the Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows books.
Ben Barnes: Listen to this podcast at your peril because spoilers lie ahead. Make sure you've seen all the episodes of Shadow and Bone and welcome to the Grishaverse.
Leigh Bardugo: I, growing up, did not have the kind of household that I think a lot of my friends had.
Brandon Jenkins: This is author Leigh Bardugo.
Leigh Bardugo: I was raised by a single mother. We lived with my grandparents for a time. My mom worked full time my whole life. And we didn't eat dinner together. Everybody fought at holidays, the few holidays we had. And I didn't really find my people until I went to college. I didn't find the people that I connected with and who got me and who I think to this day, have my back.
Brandon Jenkins: Leigh wanted to write about this kind of thing, of finding your crew as a young adult. She had already achieved success with their books about Alina Starkov, the Sun Summoner.
Leigh Bardugo: I had written this Chosen One trilogy, and I really wanted to write a story about the people who aren't chosen, the people who are the worldviews is expendable, the people who don't have royal blood or grand destinies and how they can still carve out a place for themselves together.
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Brandon Jenkins: And those people became the Crows. They're a trio of outsiders who form a crew to pull off heists and crimes, but they become more than that to each other.
Freddy Carter: I sort of discovered, as we were filming, it became clear that none of these people were half as powerful alone as they would be together. You take one piece out of the puzzle and the whole thing kind of falls apart.
Brandon Jenkins: Freddy Carter plays Kaz. The leader of the Crows, the other members are Jesper and Inej, and they are beloved by the readers of Leigh's books. Just listen to what we heard on YouTube when Netflix dropped a teaser for the show.
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Speaker 1: I'm like stopped on Kaz's face. I just love his cheek bones!
Speaker 2: The first one of the Crow's we see is Jesper. He definitely embodies that sly, flirtatious personality.
Speaker 3: Oh my God, Inej looks so fucking good. Look at that fucking smirk. That's a smirk where she knows she's about to kill somebody and you know what, good for her.
Brandon Jenkins: Welcome to behind the scenes. This season, we're going deep into the world, characters and locations of Shadow and Bone, the new Netflix fantasy adventure series, based on the novels by Leigh Bardugo. My name is Brandon Jenkins. I'm your host and I'm also a longtime fan of all things fantasy. Today on the podcast, we meet the people who brought the Crows to life and we impact the idea of having a found family, whether you're a heist crew, a band of actors or you're in a writer's room.
Oh yeah, and we've got to talk about that goat, so let's get started.
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Brandon Jenkins: On our last episode, we found out how the writers and the actors brought the story of Alina Starkov to life. Now we do the same with Kaz, Jesper and Inej, the Crows.
Amita Suman: Hi, my name is Amita Suman. I've played in Inej in Shadow and Bone. Inej is an assassin with a conscience.
Kit Young: Hey, I'm Kit Young and I play Jesper in Shadow and Bone. He's a sharp shooter and a gambler, a gunslinger, and he can never walk away from a wager.
Freddy Carter: Hi, my name is Freddy Carter. I play Kaz Brekker, who is a rising star of the criminal underworld in Ketterdam.
[CLIP of bustling Ketterdam sounds]
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Brandon Jenkins: Ketterdam is where we first meet the Crows. It's a bustling city filled with casinos, brothels and pubs. Think Las Vegas, if it was in Monaco, with a dash of Amsterdam's Red Light District thrown in. In episode one of the Netflix show, we enter a large smokey gambling den packed with people. Crystal chandeliers hang from the ceiling. Paintings of dancing women adorn the musty green walls. And barmaids bring drinks to gamblers who are convinced it's their night to hit the jackpot. This is the Crow club.
[CLIP]
Speaker 1: Hey, you take Zemeni coin, yes?
Jesper: Let me see that.
Brandon Jenkins: Sitting at one of those tables is Jesper, the wild card of the Crows.
[CLIP]
Jesper: Zemeni coin can take a bullet, but the knockoff.
Brandon Jenkins: He's young, unpredictable, and charming, and his weakness is gambling. You get the feeling he came to the Crow Club one day and never left. He's also a master gunslinger.
Kit Young: It's that classic American movie thing of "He's the greatest there is." And it's like, okay, well I've got to look all right then, don't I?
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Brandon Jenkins: Actor Kit Young had to make Jesper's gun twirling look easy, but it's a lot harder than it seems. And he had a steep learning curve when it came to handling the pistols on set.
Kit Young: We hadn't even started shooting yet, and I dropped one and it smashed. And the stunt team started ripping me, telling me that, I'd broken like the only pair, but then once we got the real guns, it came in this briefcase, you know like in pulp fiction, they have the briefcase that shines and you never really know what's in it, but you know? It was like that. And then everyone gets out their iPhones and is watching me hold these hugely heavy weapons. And they're like, "Go on, do it." And I'm like, "I don't think I can."
Brandon Jenkins: Jesper is the right-hand man to Kaz who runs the Crow club,
[CLIP]
Kaz: No loud noises at the table, Jesper. You'll scare off the pigeons.
Brandon Jenkins: Kaz is in control, just as a crime boss should be. One raise of an eyebrow can keep his team in check. Kaz also walks with a limp, so he always has his signature Crow cane by his side. It's something that gave Freddy Carter insight into his character.
Freddy Carter: So I sort of began thinking about the most efficient way of using the cane and then the most efficient way of using it as a weapon and most efficient way of walking with it. It was a real key in because the most efficient way is basically it's a kind of locomotion to be constantly moving. And then that sort of led onto me thinking that here's a guy who's constantly, even if it's mentally, sort of constantly in motion, constantly thinking about the next thing and the next plan, sort of the next heist.
Brandon Jenkins: Leigh Bardugo put some of herself into Kaz.
Leigh Bardugo: When I was writing Six of Crows that was when I was first starting to use my cane, starting to use a mobility aid. I have a degenerative bone disease, and I had to get over a lot of internalized ableism, a lot of ideas I had that I didn't even know I had about what it would mean for me as a fairly young woman to walk around with a cane. And when I wrote Six of Crows I created this ultimate bad-ass Kaz Brekker, who is this criminal superstar and who is terrifying to the people he meets.
[CLIP]
Kaz: Hello Inej. What information do you have for me tonight?
Brandon Jenkins: Inej is the third member of the Crows. We meet her in Kaz's office at the Crow club.
Amita Suman: A lead on a job, a big one. Enough money to change lives.
Brandon Jenkins: Inej is a petite woman, brown skin, black hair, and the look that says she could kill you in a heartbeat. Oh, and at any given time, she's hiding over a dozen knives on her. Amita Suman plays Inej.
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Amita Suman: And for me, what it came down to was, when she entered the room, how many escape routes are there? How many guards are there? Who can I take out? And at the same time, it's right. Who's in the room that I really care about. Who do I need to protect? You know, she's always 20 steps ahead of everyone else in terms of getting out, protecting and defending and attacking.
Brandon Jenkins: Inej spends her nights scaling the rooftops of Ketterdam, listening for secrets and tips that Kaz can use as leverage to get ahead in the criminal underworld. This benefits her personally, she needs his help to buy out her indenture to a brothel called the Menagerie.
[CLIP]
Inej: Kaz, I got this lead from one of the girls at the Menagerie. They tell me things in case you would buy them out like you did with me.
Kaz: I didn't buy you. I'm paying off your indenture.
Amita Suman: You know what I mean? This one girl Kesh, she has skill. She's like me.
Kaz: I only invest in a one of a kind. She isn't like you. No one is.
Brandon Jenkins: Okay. Here's the deal with Inej. She is Suli, a nomadic tribe known for their circus performances and acrobatics, which Inej has been doing since she was a child. It's the perfect training ground for a spy. Kaz noticed that about her right away. Also, he's falling in love with her, the hardened criminal, the bastard of the barrel, feeling for his silent spy. But that's another story for another time. As a younger person Inej was brought to Ketterdam against her will.
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Amita Suman: One day some slavers came and kidnapped her and she was taken away on a labor merchant ship all the way to Ketterdam. The owner of the Menagerie, which is a brothel house in Kerch, buys her. And Inej becomes indentured to her and is kind of forced to work in this horrible situation.
Brandon Jenkins: The Inej backstory opens a window into the underbelly of Ketterdam. It also shows how important her relationship is with Kaz and Jesper, who were helping her regain her freedom. It goes back to that theme of found family.
[CLIP]
Inej: What do you believe in?
Kaz: Myself.
Inej: Why did I even ask?
Kaz: And you and Jesper, my crows.
Inej: Because we flock to your bidding? Like the animals of vengeance you named us after?
Kaz: Crows don't just remember the faces of people who have wronged them. They also remember those who are kind. They tell each other who to look after and who to watch out for.
Shelley Meals: They're just all a bit broken, right? They're all a bit broken, but together they're able to feel more whole.
Brandon Jenkins: Shelley Meals is a writer and co-executive producer on Shadow and Bone.
Shelley Meals: They were all alone in the world until they found each other and they have found this way to co-exist. It just really works for all of them.
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Shelley Meals: And I feel like we got super lucky because the chemistry just sizzles on the screen. When Freddie, Kit and Amita met, they just instantly sparked with each other. And it felt like they'd known each other for years. And you can really sense that in their scenes together, which is just electric.
[CLIP]
Kaz: I don't know, in Kruger means to me, what does it mean to you?
Inej: Freedom.
Jesper: Fun. Like at least a few months.
Brandon Jenkins: It's that belief in each other that sets the crows off on the biggest, most dangerous heist of their lives: to kidnap the Sun Summoner. Now, before we run off to Ravka, let's spend some time in Ketterdam. In season one of Shadow and Bone, we only spend two episodes in Ketterdam, but that didn't stop the show's creatives from going all in on building the world that Leigh Bardugo had written in her books.
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Leigh Bardugo: It was inspired by the Dutch Republic of the 1700s. And it is a cosmopolitan city full of commerce and tourism and trade. But just as they're the hub of all legal trade, they're also the hub of all illegal trade. And the question I wanted to ask with Ketterdam was sort of what happens when you let capitalism run amok.
Brandon Jenkins: To build this city where capitalism has run amok, Shadow and Bone showrunner, Eric Heisserer and the art department started with the money.
Eric Heisserer: What does the money look like? And I said, Kruge, it's important. It's a cash currency, so it's paper. And then they started asking me questions about what imagery would be on the bills, are there figures, historical or otherwise on it? And what colors are used? Is it color? Or is it just in one color? What is the written language? They had assumed English, but as soon as I saw it, I went, "Hang on. This kind of breaks me from the idea that it isn't a fictional world."
Brandon Jenkins: They hired the guy who created the Dothraki language for Game of Thrones, David J. Peterson. He wound up creating multiple languages for the show, this level of detail extended throughout the set, from the money to the cards on the table, to the bottles of booze at the bar.
Eric Heisserer: The moment I saw a Hoyle deck of cards next to our fictional currency, I was like, "Well, this is not right." So my art department then had to come up with a brand new number system and what the numerals looked like, what it was based on, a set of suits that were still four suits, but that were not hearts, diamond spades and clubs. The labels on all the alcohol at the bar in the front. What were those bottles looking like, it couldn't be just one language because they had some imported stuff, from Ravka, Shu Han, Novyi Zem, what can we say about that history or that country by looking at what booze they manufactured.
Brandon Jenkins: Eric and his team jumped down a rabbit hole when building the Crow club and it made actors like Amita Suman feel more immersed into Ketterdam.
Amita Suman: And I just remember walking into this bustling kind of casino areas with these beautiful chandeliers and such rich colors and the vibrancy. And again, with the little details. We had Crows poker chips and every kind of alcoholic beverage or bottle had its own label. It was just magnificent. I've truly felt like I was here. And it was incredible.
Leigh Bardugo: When I first saw shots from the show, I thought, oh my God, it looks expensive, which is important. You know, fantasy is not just about the bloody battles or the magical powers. It's about that feeling of being transported. And you cannot transport somebody successfully if they're constantly thinking, well, I feel like I could get that to the mall, or I could order that online. They're instantly going to be pulled out of this world.
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Brandon Jenkins: We've met the crime family of the Grishaverse. Well let's meet the crew that created them. I want to take you inside the Shadow and Bone writer's room. It all started in 2019 in a room in Los Angeles.
Eric Heisserer: We had these two mobile whiteboards on wheels that we could just pivot around our big writers' room table that was full of snacks and toys. And the white boards were where we put magnetized cards on and figured out the story beats for the episode. And yeah, it was messy, but it was fun.
Brandon Jenkins: And right there in the room were gifts from fans, reminding the writers of their beloved Crows.
Eric Heisserer: We had a super fan who sent us these little customized Funko pop figurines of the crows. And so we had each of those in the middle of our table.
Brandon Jenkins: Eric got into his philosophy for staffing the Shadow and Bone writer's room with my producer, Melissa Slaughter.
Melissa Slaughter: Who are you looking for to come into this room, and what impact do they have when they do come in? Like how do you staff a writer's room?
Eric Heisserer: Very carefully is the answer. And it touches on something that I believe very passionately about this job, that is often said that the show runner is like the TV Auteur. That is, the singular voice that gives drive to the whole show. I did not agree with that position for the showrunner of Shadow and Bone. It is a world full of diverse cultures. Even, albeit fictional ones, but still inspired by real world and historical examples. And for me to be the lone voice in this world felt extremely limiting.
Shelley Meals: It was a fantastic writer's room.
Brandon Jenkins: Again, writer Shelley Meals.
Shelley Meals: The thing I really love about it is how balanced it was. You know, we had writers from vastly different backgrounds, different countries, genders, a broad mix of ages, sexual orientations. We even had a polyglot who speaks six languages. I mean, it was a genuinely, yeah.
Brandon Jenkins: Okay. Who's the person who speaks six languages?
Shelley Meals: Nick Culbertson, he co-wrote episode five. He's amazing. He gets his emails in Chinese, like just so he can keep up on it. I'm like, what? It’s nuts.
Brandon Jenkins: And Shelley has been mainlining fantasy and genre fiction since she could read and was especially thrilled to write for Inej and Alina's characters.
Shelley Meals: Magic, vampires, demons, that's all my jam. So as a black woman, I was often frustrated by the lack of diversity in the genre world, right? It's a fantasy world so why is everybody white? So the opportunity to be a part of this epic fantasy series with Eric at the helm, and Leigh's amazing books where the two female leads are women of color, I was beyond thrilled.
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Brandon Jenkins: And we met Christina strain in our first episode. Her personal experience helped mold Alina's character. And growing up on a military base gave Christina insight into how the Ravkan armies might function.
Christina Strain: PS. We're talking to different branches of the military. They should not be friendly. Like the four branches are friendly, but at the same time they have their opinions of each other.
Brandon Jenkins: There was also Canadian writer and co-executive producer Daegan Fryklind.
Daegan Frylind: Well, my wheelhouse is strong female protagonists that are reluctant heroes moving into a leadership role.
Brandon Jenkins: Daegan's time at boarding school keyed her into the experience Alina Starkov had at the little palace.
Daegan Frylind: Yeah. We would have to have dinner with our headmistress. So there were very specific rules around cutlery and how you ate, when you could sit down, and when you could eat.
Brandon Jenkins: In total, there were seven writers on Shadow and Bone and Eric chose them deliberately because they could bring multiple life experiences into the room.
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Eric Heisserer: To know that one of my writers was a refugee who escaped Sarajevo, I know that will come into play in a number of political moments within the world of Grishaverse. If I have half of my room as mixed race, I know there are going to be plenty of opportunities to talk about Alina, but also Jesper. We need as much representation on sort of the sexuality spectrum as well, because some of that is baked into the fiction, and also some of it is about getting to write a fantasy world that we haven't necessarily seen before, that breaks out of the hetero mold, had been turned off by that kind of fantasy fiction before.
Brandon Jenkins: The true test for this crack team of writers was having the Crow set out to cross the shadow fold. Remember this storyline does not exist in these books. That episode of the show was assigned to Daegan to write. She wanted that sequence to be a way of testing the crows, to see how they act under pressure. After all, they're in a broken down train with an untrustworthy conductor named Arken, being attacked by flesh eating Volcra.
[CLIP]
Arken: Stupid thing has impaled itself on a spike.
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Daegan Fryklind: We wanted to explore who these people are when they're in peril as well too. What does Kaz do when faced with death? What does Inej do? What does Jesper do? And so this is sort of why we had this sort of elements happening within the train that Kaz goes into kind of planning mode and Inej goes straight into her faith and Jesper is…
[CLIP]
Jesper: This is how we die.
Daegan Fryklind: We had this goat for him so that it was an exploration of Jesper who was always kind of carefree and fun. And then what does it look like for Jesper when he is actually facing death?
[CLIP]
Arken: Jesper, grab the goat.
Jesper: I'm not throwing out the goat!
Arken: Grab the damn goat! It's not bait. It's for you! I need you to calm down. Hug the goat. Shut the hell up.
Christina Strain: Milo, I love him.
[CLIP of goat sound]
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Christina Strain: So Milo was birthed by Daegan Fryklind. She loves goats. She has an affinity for goats.
Daegan Frylind: You know, I think it just sort of started when Arken is giving the list of things to do. And it was like, well, it just seemed like a fun beat for Jesper for Arken to kind of size up Jesper and say,
[CLIP]
Arken: A goat.
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Daegan Frylind: We were kind of playing on this misdirect that the goat might be a thing that can get thrown out as bait for the Volcra. The misdirect being that Arken's intention was never to throw out the goat, that it was always as a support animal for Jesper.
Christina Strain: And the second she made this joking pitch about like an emotional support goat, I was like, that goat's my favorite character on the show. And then I also named the goat Milo after Daegan's dog, because it was like, Daegan, this is your baby. We need to make sure Milo is eternal. So yeah.
Daegan Frylind: It's an homage to my well dirtbag rescue dog from Tacoma, Washington, Milo.
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Brandon Jenkins: But the reality of actually acting with a goat, wasn't so fun. First of all, on set, there was not one, but two baby goats to handle, which made shooting tough for Kit, Freddie and Amita.
Kit Young: They were called Ugri and Bugri, which apparently means running and jumping. Those are the goats’ name. What they really should have been called was screaming and pooping because when I had to pick one up or any of us picked one up, one of them was always the one that would scream, that kind of goat scream video,
[CLIP of goat scream]
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Kit Young: Like that.
Freddy Carter: Except you can't pause the video.
Kit Young: Except you can't pause the video. And one of them would be terrified at the fact that there's four people with weapons in a box of fire and would poo everywhere. And so we had to stop obviously to clean that up.
Brandon Jenkins: Second, the train they're crammed inside has a real fire burning in it and it's actually moving.
Kit Young: There it would be like two people, on either side of the scene, jumping up and down, making everything move. And it's just one of those things where you kind of have to look around and go, this is the magic of movies or filmmaking of television. Like this is the crazy stuff that people still do to get these amazing effects. Like we can create all these amazing things at CG and all these visual effects, but like those practical elements that it's just like a couple of your mates having a good time, like jumping up and down kind of makes the magic work, which is a crazy thing.
Freddy Carter: Sometimes you just need to shove a leaf blower in someone's face for it to look.
Brandon Jenkins: And finally, the train is compact. That means it's very tight quarters for four people and a baby animal.
Kit Young: It was three days basically of us going through this one huge sequence that was tricky to film, at best, because I've never had to shoot a gun more than twice. And now I'm shooting it like 12 times in one scene, and I've only got use of one hand because there's a goat there and I'm worried that the goat's going to kick me or Freddy's face cause he's next to me and Amita's there kind of holding a knife. And I'm like, if I trip, I'm going to fall into the blade of your knife. It was amazing and bizarre at the same time, and high-octane because we all think we're going to die. So, you know, good stuff.
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Brandon Jenkins: But if it could be up to writer Christina Strain, Milo would be back as a regular member of the Crow as found family.
Christina Strain: After Jesper has his relationship arc with the goat, I was just like, we have to bring this goat back. We have to bring this goat back. So when we found a way to bring him back and have Mal interact with him, I was super freaking excited cause it was like the goat. All I really want to write for the rest of my life is really difficult scripts to shoot with lots of animals in them. And this goat is going to be one of them.
[CLIP]
Mal: Wow. Thank you. You smell.
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Brandon Jenkins: By the end of season one, the Crows were on a massive sand skiff about to cross the fold again. Will they survive this time or get eaten by Volcra? Well, if they do, they're not going to cry about it.
[CLIP]
Kaz: No mourners.
Amita Suman: No funerals.
Leigh Bardugo: I was actually on set the day they sat no mourners, no funerals.
Brandon Jenkins: For Leigh Bardugo, the phrase has gone from the bond between the Crows to a way of expressing the bond between her and the fans of the Grishaverse, the road she created with her books. Now the series.
Leigh Bardugo: It was very special because I know how many readers have embraced those words and quoted those words back to me. It's our greeting to each other in the fandom and the way we say hello and the way we say goodbye. And also, I've seen the tattoos that have this on people and to then have people pick it up and make it their own is very meaningful. And then to see that echoed in the show and to know that when that show airs in living rooms all around the world, when they say, "No mourners," you're going to hear an echo of, "No funerals," was pretty cool.
Brandon Jenkins: Next week, we'll be exploring a different kind of relationship, the romantic ship. The kind that sparks instant attraction and the kind that can come from an old friend.
Leigh Bardugo: I mean, for me, the ship is always about the slow burn. Like I just love a slow burn. I want to be an agony before I get that first kiss.
Brandon Jenkins: This is the behind the scenes podcast, Shadow and Bone, make sure to subscribe, rate and review this podcast, so you don't miss a single episode. I'm your host, Brandon Jenkins. Till next time.
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