The Copenhagen Test Showrunners CANNOT Stop Raving About Simu Liu's Performance | EXCL

The Peacock series The Copenhagen Test, created by Thomas Brandon, features an unusual premise. A spy named Alexander Hale (Simu Liu) has his mind hacked and must figure out who to trust in the process

of figuring out what's next. Brandon, who is also showrunner on the series with Jennifer Yale, talked with Zoom about creating a new genre, which they dub spy-fi thriller. The makers also discussed Simu's grounding performance, which is key to connecting with audiences. The duo also revealed how they made a few changes in the show after casting Melissa Barrera as the female lead.

Thomas Brandon and Jennifer Yale on use of AI in The Copenhagen Test

Speaking with Zoom, the showrunners explained how their series incorporates AI (Artificial Intelligence) into the show. Brandon shared, "We're thinking about how right now, what we're thinking of as AI in our world is really predictive engines. They're algorithms that are predicting what comes next. And what we found was really interesting in our show was we were using humans as a predictive engine. Like the character of Parker, her job is to predict what is this guy going to do? This is something we just pushed ourselves to [include] something delightfully old-school and tactile about the show.

He continued, "There's a lot of books and paper. Later, there's a little Morse code. So we kind of wanted to take ourselves away from a lot of what we've seen in spy shows right now, which is a lot of screens and a lot of typing and a lot of computers. And how can we make it feel like something that throws back to the Cold War paranoia that we loved from the 60s and 70s."

New genre spy-fi thriller

Creator Brandon also pitched the show as a spy-fi thriller, and Yale revealed they were hoping this new take catches on in the future. She said, "It's fun and gives the espionage genre this extra twist. And we made a point to really make sure that the sci-fi element was grounded so that we could elevate the espionage but that it felt familiar yet new for viewers when they're watching it."

Brandon added, "And it also probably mirrors what actually happened in the real world, which is like our US military had the internet called DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] back in the 70s. So a lot of times these jumps in technology are actually pioneered by the military or by the clandestine services, by intelligence agencies. So they have access to these technologies that we don't really have yet, but you just don't see that in movies and TV. So it's kind of fun to do something that felt like, oh, this is actually what it would be like. This is where the cutting-edge technology is actually happening."

How actor performances enhance The Copenhagen Test

Yale revealed that once the cast was on board, there wasn't much they had to change. In fact, she shared that scenes between Parker (Sinclair Daniel) and Melissa Barrera's Michelle were increased. The showrunner said, "A lot of their scenes were supposed to be on the phone, and they had tremendous chemistry between them that we ended up rewriting scenes so that they could be in them together because they just played off of each other so well." Brandon praised Marvel star Simu Liu for conveying the real message of the show, which is trust. His character Alexander often doesn't know who to trust even the good guys that he works for in the government. He stated, "It was really important for the camera to feel like it made us feel like we were him. And that we did know who to trust, and we weren't sure what to do. And that balance, I think, is handled so well because of who Simu is as a performer. And one of the things we talked about is the premise of the show is the bad guys can see through his eyes and hear through his ears, but the only thing the audience gets to see is his face. And that's something that the bad guys don't get to see. And so we spent a lot of time making sure our directors were right there with him in his face." Yale also shared that they have planned the show as an ongoing series. The Copenhagen Test releases internationally on Peacock on December 27. In India, it releases on December 28 on JioHotstar.