Editor’s note: The below interview contains spoilers for the Murderbot finale. Over the course of Apple TV+’s Murderbot, its lead character (charmingly played by Alexander Skarsgård) has made no secret of its real feelings about humans, including their pesky and inconvenient emotions. Yet even after hacking the governor module that forces it to obey any command its clients may give, this Security Unit, or “SecUnit,” who dubs itself Murderbot in the process, still winds up doing exactly what it was programmed to do — protecting a small survey team from Preservation Alliance — while binge-watching episodes of its favorite long-running series, The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. What initially seems like a relatively boring mission turns into the uncovering of a much bigger conspiracy involving alien remnants and the sinister GrayCris corporation that will do anything to keep other teams from discovering them, including murdering any witnesses. The first season’s penultimate episode leaves Murderbot’s fate hanging in the balance, but the finale reveals the PresAux team going to great lengths to not only recover their friend but also restore its original memories after the SecUnit is unceremoniously wiped and reset. Ahead of the premiere of “The Perimeter” (but before the announcement that the show had been renewed for Season 2), Collider had the opportunity to speak with the cast and creatives behind Murderbot, including co-creators Chris and Paul Weitz. Over the course of the interview, which you can read below, the duo talks about the process of expanding on the world first introduced in author Martha Wells’ original series, how they landed on the aesthetic of Murderbot’s favorite show-within-a-show, Sanctuary Moon, why they were always open to collaboration in pivotal moments like that final exchange between Murderbot and Gurathin (David Dastmalchian), and more. COLLIDER: After I watched the first season, I went back and read All Systems Red because I always like to get a sense of what was changed, and it really feels like the show expands on a lot of what the book is somewhat confined to, which is Murderbot’s point of view. When you’re approaching adapting a show like this, how much of the process of breaking the season involved the question of, “We only get maybe a sentence or two here. How can we build this out into a bigger backstory?” PAUL WEITZ: That was the big thing. The first thing was Apple being okay with it not being an hour-long show, because almost all sci-fi shows are an hour long. So, that made it possible. The second thing in terms of adaptation was to keep really close to Martha Wells, who is very generous with her time and got a kick out of the idea that this was going to be sort of like fanfiction. For instance, in Episode 2, there’s something where Mensah comes across these alien remnants, and we had an idea of how to do that, but it wasn’t so great. We called up Martha, and we said, “Hey, we’re thinking of this thing.” She said, “Well, have you considered this other thing instead?” So, the idea of a ring of those hostile creatures surrounding some sort of alien remnant or force field was Martha’s idea. Beyond that, a lot of it was wondering why the characters of PreservationAux were acting the way that they were acting. There’s a lot of Murderbot’s voice in the book. CHRIS WEITZ: Murderbot’s not really interested in what’s going on inside the minds of its clients. So obviously, a big modification is the third-personness of some of the narrative. It’s still very heavily first-person in terms of Murderbot’s voiceover, but Martha is great in using somewhat light strokes to draw the human characters. So, trying to figure out why they’re there and why they act the way that they do, and building backstories and fleshing out the culture a little bit, which is stuff that comes in in later books, was a lot of what we were doing. PAUL WEITZ: And trying to find clues. In a later book, you find out that Mensah has been to therapy in order to deal with the trauma of the violence on this planet. That’s not mentioned at all in All Systems Red, but we were like, “Well, how would Martha feel about the idea of Mensah having panic attacks?” Not only being a worthy leader and being somebody really admirable, but also somebody who’s dealing with anxiety at the same time that they’re having to do these heroic things sometimes.
‘Murderbot’s Co-Creators Discuss Finding the Look of ‘Sanctuary Moon’

“Murderbot has a different sensibility than I might, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not worthwhile…”

Image via Apple TV+

Even that subplot culminates in one of my favorite scenes of the season, which is Mensah having a panic attack and Murderbot putting on the episode of Sanctuary Moon to help her through it. To a point, it feels like the two of you were plotting out two shows in one because you’re building Sanctuary Moon from the ground up. Was that also very collaborative with Martha, in terms of feeling out what the aesthetic of Sanctuary Moon would look like? CHRIS WEITZ: I think that Martha’s first notion of Sanctuary Moon was that it was more like How to Get Away with Murder in space. We were keen to use it in a way, first of all, as something to define what Murderbot, the show itself, wasn’t in terms of sci-fi, and also to have something very maximalist. So, we’re really grateful that she approved of our version of Sanctuary Moon, which is more defined than what she may have laid out in the books. PAUL WEITZ: Also, because we’re making a show as opposed to a book, it was fortunate to be able to do something that was almost like an argument for a certain type of show or a certain type of entertainment. I accept that Murderbot says it’s premium quality, and Murderbot has a different sensibility than I might, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not worthwhile. So, that’s why having people like John Cho or DeWanda Wise or Clark Gregg or Jack McBrayer, you can actually make a good show while having these extreme things, which, in the hands of some other actors, might really just be kind of schlock.

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‘Murderbot’s David Dastmalchian Explains Gurathin’s Shocking Finale Decision: “He Is Willing To Risk His Own Life”

He also discusses wearing his trademark black nail polish for the character, Gurathin’s relationship with Mensah, and more.

Looking at the original novella, there’s a lot that gets expanded on in the finale, not just in terms of what we see happening to Murderbot behind the scenes, but also, the relationships between the characters have really deepened. How did you want to use that episode to be both emotional and also set up more to come in terms of not just Murderbot’s investigation into its own memories, but this sinister underbelly of the Corporation Rim? CHRIS WEITZ: Up until that point, it has been pretty oblique, your sense of just how awful it is in the Corporation Rim, and how exploitative. This really allowed us to build out that world in a way that you will see more of, and you see more of in the later books. We love the ending of All Systems Red in terms of Murderbot walking off into the sunset — or riding off into the sunset, as it were — but we really wanted to amp up the sense that everyone was coming together, that there was this possibility that they would all go off together and have a nice life on PreservationAux, but that to do so, Murderbot would have to be giving up this sense that it had that it wanted to know itself, it wanted to define its own decisions. In the end, for all the best reasons, PreservationAux is making decisions on Murderbot’s behalf. That’s something that’s really resonant in the later books, as they come to grips with the understanding that Murderbot is who it is, so it felt like we wanted to see that possibility for later as well. PAUL WEITZ: It’s very clear that the Corporation Rim system depersonalizes people — normally, we say “dehumanize,” but in this case, because Murderbot is not a human, it’s a person — but also, there is a system of love that can depersonalize. They want Murderbot to come into their system of being part of their group. There’s a part early on where Murderbot is observing everybody, and it says it doesn’t want to get infected by their messy human emotions, and in a way, the end is it did get infected to some degree, but it’s not fatal, because they can still make the decision to go off and find out about itself.
‘Murderbot’s Co-Creators Had Faith in Their Collaborators for That Emotional “Check the Perimeter” Scene

“Knowing that enough would have been established for this to be conveyed with look and gesture…”

Image via Apple TV+

I love the final conversation between Murderbot and Gurathin. When I spoke with Alexander [Skarsgård], he mentioned that the original version of the scene was a little bit more dialogue-heavy, and the decision was made to cut it down to that “check the perimeter” line. In terms of the collaboration process with someone like him or Martha [Wells], how often was that the process — taking what’s written in the script and making adjustments on the day, or in the lead-up to filming a scene? PAUL WEITZ: That’s the good thing about directing your own stuff. You don’t have to look over at somebody and go, “Hey, is it okay if we don’t completely explain the subtext?” It’s also the good thing about working with really smart, creative collaborators, in the case of Alex and David [Dastmalchian]. CHRIS WEITZ: By that point, we were fortunate in shooting that at the end of the shoot, basically, so everything that’s gone into it up until then. I think that if we shot it as the first scene, we wouldn’t necessarily know that certain things would be implicit. Especially looking back, knowing that some of these things were shot out of sequence, to see how Alex was parsing out the development of his character is amazing. Knowing that enough would have been established for this to be conveyed with look and gesture, and the way that Alex is standing, and for David to do most of the talking in that scene, it’s great. PAUL WEITZ: You’ve got to have faith in your collaborators. Especially because, honestly, you can either be sitting over by the camera and listening, or you can have your face up against the monitor, but nothing is going to have the effect of watching the actual footage. You mentioned, at the beginning, making this a half-hour show instead of an hour-long show. In terms of the overall early pitch to Apple, was there a certain number of seasons that you envisioned to tell the full story? PAUL WEITZ: No, not really. Apple was well aware that there were other seasons because Jamie Erlicht is a big fan of the books. So, if they chose to, obviously, they can do more. CHRIS WEITZ: We’re actually quite jinxy, and we never assume that you’re going to get another bite at the apple. I’m not going to say we’d be happy if it ended at this point yet, but we knew that the ending of the first book was quite beautiful and harmonious. We definitely have notions of where we would go with this, but we haven’t gotten into specifics yet. The first thing we’ll do, if we do get a chance to have another season, is to go and get with Martha in College Station, Texas, and go back to the well, basically, and figure out how to adapt the next batch of books.