Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles Creator Josh Friedman On James Cameron, Cancer, And Cancellation

Sarah Connor was dead. Or was she? Well, yes, according to 2003’s Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines – but death can’t compete with TV (or, indeed, 2019’s Dark Fate). It was 2006 when Josh Friedman, who had co-written Steven Spielberg’s War Of The Worlds, was approached by Warner Bros. Television to write what would become The Sarah Connor Chronicles. A series picking up from where James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day left off, it followed Sarah (Lena Headey) and her prodigious son John (Thomas Dekker) as they, along with Cameron (Summer Glau), a protector Terminator, continued to battle Skynet and evade murderous cyborg stalkers. Launching in January 2008, it enjoyed two seasons until it was, in April 2009, abruptly… well, terminated.

Fifteen years on, we speak to Friedman (who went on to write on the Avatar films, Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes and The Fantastic Four: First Steps) about legacy, cancer, and Shirley Manson disguised as a urinal.

When you were hired to write this show, Terminator 3 had come and gone. Is it fair to say that because that didn’t make a massive cultural impact, you could just go, “It doesn’t matter, let’s make a sequel to T2 anyway”?

Yeah. In Terminator 3, Sarah dies, but we wondered if we could skip over that, maybe with time travel. It seems inevitable now, that every single bit of IP would be squeezed for every single ounce of economic blood that it has. But back then it was more surprising. It was like, “Oh, wow, you’re gonna try to do this?” I was terrified of the idea of trying to do it. The ‘why’ was always important for me, beyond just, “I love Terminator.” I wanted to make sure that whatever we did, there was a reason to do it.

Did you feel like you had the opportunity to do what you wanted?

I felt that way. The nature of the material allows for a lot of exploration. There are little gaps of time that weren’t explored. Being able to explore the [Connor] family, that family dynamic, from the Terminator mythology side, and from the metaphor side… what is it? This is how we used to pitch it: Every parent thinks their child is the Messiah. Every parent thinks their child is the most important thing in the universe, and that the death of that child is the death of the world.

Well, you literally say that in the first episode. That it’s akin to a holocaust.

Yeah. And I had an 18-month-old when I was pitching. Also – and I say this in the best of ways – it’s sort of glorified, expensive fan-fiction. It was an opportunity to play in the universe that I loved, and to do different things. I was terrified of creative boredom. I was terrified that it was going to become like an episodic ‘Terminator of the week’ kind of thing. We had some big, broad ideas. It felt a little high-wire, especially on a network schedule. We were writing with production running up our ass, we’re handing in scripts and they’re being shot five days later. But that’s fun. I miss that.

I was always saying, “What are we doing that no one else can do?”

It must have been an enormous challenge to do something on a substantially smaller budget than the movies, but wanting it to still feel like Terminator.

Yes, the good and bad of that was, you’re forced to write a different kind of story. We were never going to out-Jim Jim [Cameron]. That would have been an insane proposition. The budget was $2.65 million an episode for the first season.

That’s big.

No, it was not big. Warner Brothers had four new shows that year: Sarah Connor, Pushing Daisies, Chuck, and Big Shots, which was like a corporate law show. And every one of them had the same budget, $2.65 million.

And most of those do not involve Terminators and liquid metal.

Most of them do not, which was my argument to [Warner Bros. TV exec] Peter Roth every week: if we have a bar fight, we have to put people on wires. Someone’s going through a wall, someone’s going in the air. It’s not like, we punch a stuntman and they go to the ground. And it was a struggle at that budget. But also it left us doing things that were more dramatic and emotional and conceptual, sometimes. I mean, shooting a sequence from the bottom of a swimming pool was just something I wanted to do. I had an idea one day: “Wouldn’t it be cool to do one of these kind of classic raid scenes. This Terminator shoots everybody up, but what if we just filmed it from the bottom of the pool and have everyone [fall] in, and we can put it to a great piece of music?” I was always saying, “What are we doing that no one else can do? We have Terminators. If we’re not leaning into what makes them special or interesting, then why do we exist?”

With Cameron, you made a more human Terminator than we’d seen before. She had, I guess, more evolved AI.

A more evolved AI, and a bunch of writers who really liked writing for [actor] Summer Glau. In the first few episodes, there’s that sense of a fish out of water, an alien who doesn’t understand idiom, and stuff like that. Over time, the emotional component grows, because I think that’s what makes her good at her job. There was so much meat on the bone in terms of someone who didn’t understand everything or did things a little differently. How does a Terminator think differently than a human? And also I was just learning who Summer was as an actor, and realising that that sort of odd, out-of-step, almost alien quality was something she did really well, and she could be funny.

It was done again in Dark Fate, where Schwarzenegger was much more human, as he’d just been living here as a guy for a long time.

Yeah, Jim [Cameron] is an emotional, warm, kind of raw guy who’s not afraid or embarrassed by earnestness and emotion and relationships in his work. If you look at the first two movies, the first is a love story, and the second one is a father/son story, with the [Terminator as] protector. And I thought, “So what’s the story that hasn’t been told?” And that was with a Terminator as a romantic interest, as the third part of an emotional triangle, with mother and son. With John Connor growing up, what is it that is always dangerous to a mom, besides, “My kid is going to get killed?” The real problem parents have is that the child is going to emotionally individuate from them towards somebody else, and often that’s a girlfriend or a boyfriend. And so I was like, “The protector should be a love interest.” It felt like the thing that hadn’t been done, but also felt like very much within the tradition of how Jim writes stories, which is as much an emotional journey as anything else.

Yep.

Also… I had the idea [for the show], and I sold it, with a protector Terminator as a romantic interest and, them jumping forward in time to clear the decks and give them some space. And then five days after I sold it, I got diagnosed with cancer. With kidney cancer. I was 36. So I had to delay writing it and go get surgery and, recover. And I went to a therapist who specialised in cancer patients, and one of the conversations I kept having with her was, “I don’t know that I can go and write this TV show.” I always would call it like the scary robot show. Like, “I don’t know why I’m writing the scary robot show. After going through what I’ve just gone through, I don’t know if it’s what I feel like I can do right now in my life.” It just didn’t feel right to me. I didn’t really understand it. And one day she said, “Well, look, you sold it. So sit down and see what comes out.” And eventually… I remember sitting at a desk in my office, and I had no idea what I was going to write, but I knew I was starting with a Sarah Connor voiceover, over the road. It’s not the one that’s in it now. It was in it until about a week before we aired – the first sentence of the show I ever typed was, “I will die. I will die and so will you. Death gives no man a pass.”

Wow.

And I realised, “Oh, right, the Terminator is just inevitable. The Terminators, they don’t stop, they don’t sleep. They want to kill you.” They are death, right? They are the four horsemen. They are these avatars for mortality and death. And when I wrote that voiceover, I went, “Oh, [Sarah] is going to get cancer, although now I’m going to have her jump over her death date. But is it still in her? Is it not in her?” Which, by the way, is all I ever think about. Once you’ve had it... And, you know, Sarah jumps over it, and then she and her family are just being chased by death. I was like, “I don’t know if I’m going to explain it exactly like that to the people at Fox, because maybe that’s going to terrify everybody.” But from that point on, I felt like, “Oh, this is exactly the show.” She goes and gets a scan, she thinks she’s stepped over it. But in season two, at one point Cameron carries her and says, “She’s lost weight.” There are these hints that the cancer is chasing her, in the same way the Terminator is chasing her. At that point, I knew what I was doing. It freed me, in many ways, to write a lot of other stuff in the show, fun things and other things, because I had a core understanding of why I was there, and what we were doing. That kind of made it easy.

That must have been a revelatory experience for you, as a writer, to think, “Well, the cancer I have doesn’t compare to this robot show, but they’re not necessarily mutually exclusive.”

They’re not mutually exclusive, and also I thought, “This is what writing is for, and we can explore these things.” I was a pretty challenging showrunner for the studio, the network. Part of that was maybe just chemical, but part of it was, I felt so sure that I knew what I wanted to write about. And that can be a great thing, but also it could be a problem – if someone is trying to make your show into something that doesn’t line up with the reason that you’re there, then it’s hard. The best people are able to balance those things, and I’m not the best at that. But I think it’s one of the reasons maybe that people still appreciate the show. Someone said to me the other day that the show was ahead of its time. And I said, “That’s always the best way to say you got cancelled.” But it was, in some ways. It was a bit of a slow-burn show. I always hoped that Jim didn’t hate it. But I didn’t find out for years what Jim thought about it. I worked with Jim on Avatar for years, and we never, ever spoke about Sarah Connor. At the time.

Jim was like, “Oh, well, I’ve seen almost every episode of the show.”

Did you just not want to bring it up, or were you concerned?

Yeah. The first time I ever met him I was in his office down in Manhattan Beach, and he was giving me the pitch for Avatar in terms of what he wanted to do, which was to put a writers’ room together and write three movies. We ended up writing four, really. But I remember being like, “He must not hate it if he’s seen it, because I’m here. Okay, that’s good enough for me.” And when he and I were talking that first day, at one point, he gestured behind me and said, “Oh, you would like this.” And I looked over my shoulder, and it was the Terminator endoskeleton that was used in the original Terminator, it was about three feet high, it was fantastic. And I was like, “Oh yeah, that’s awesome.” And in my head, I’m like, “Is he saying that because of Sarah Connor, or just because it’s cool?” That was as close as we ever got to talking about Terminator, until a few years later, when I was working on Dark Fate.

And then what did he tell you? Did he tell you what he thought?

So, on Dark Fate, we were doing a writers’ room. It was a very big, loud male room. And on the first or second day, people were talking about things that maybe we’d want to do, and in my head I was like, “Yeah, we did an episode about that idea.” But I didn’t say anything. And I went home to my wife and I was like, “This is really weird, because I’ve done 31 hours of this world.” In some ways, I’ve actually done more sheer story hours than anyone has.

Including James Cameron.

Including James Cameron. Just in terms of filmed hours. I said, “Stuff keeps coming up that is territory that we covered in the show, and I don’t really know what to do. Should I say something?” And my wife is like, “It’s an elephant in the room, you’re gonna have to talk about it.” So the next day or two, something comes up and it’s in that vibe, and I said, “Okay, guys, we all know I made two seasons of a show, and a lot of these ideas that we’re talking about are things that I have some experience with on some of them – do you want me to reference my experience should I bring it up? I just feel a little odd.” And Jim was sitting right across from me, and he went, “Oh, have we never talked about this?” And I’m like, “No, we’ve never talked about this.” And he’s like, “Oh, well, I’ve seen almost every episode of the show. Do you want to know what my thoughts are?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I guess!” There were ten people in there. I was thinking, “Do I? I’ll roll the dice I guess, finally, after all these years.” And he then proceeded to break down the episodes. He put them in different categories. He was like, “A certain number of them, you explore these great ideas, you did a great job with them. Then there’s a series of episodes where you explored great ideas, but you didn’t maybe have enough money to pull them off. And then there’s a few that just convinced me, those aren’t areas we need to be going in. Those are the three categories.” But you know, two of the three categories, most of the episodes, good! So I was like, “Great. Okay, let’s not talk about it again.” And then a week or two later, something comes up, and I start referencing an episode of the show, and he interrupts me and says, “That’s not right, Josh. Actually, what happened in the episode was blah, blah, blah.” And I realised that he was right. I was misremembering my own episode, and he corrected me on it. Which is just like the most Jim thing.

Did Arnie’s humanity in Dark Fate come from what you’d done with the Cameron character in the show? Was it something you’d spoken about to Jim?

No, I think it was something he always wanted to do. And I think if you think about these things enough, there is an inevitable overlap of, “Oh, well, we should explore that.” It feels endemic.

I’m assuming Cameron was named after James Cameron.

Yeah, and it’s so embarrassing. I just thought it was fun to do that. Probably at the back of my head, I was nervous about doing Jim’s stuff. I just thought it would be a cool thing to do. It sort of embarrasses me now that I know him. He and I have never talked about it.

Were you prepared for the show’s cancellation? What were your thoughts about suddenly having to end it?

I wrote the season two finale, and I thought there was a good chance that that was going to be the end. I wanted to write something that sat astride an ending, emotionally, and yet would allow us something to do if we did get a season three. I wanted to write an episode that was like, ‘Be careful what you wish for’. John loves Cameron, but it’s like Pinocchio, she’s not a real girl. So okay, well, what if he met the real human [that the Cameron Terminator was modelled on]? John never likes being John, he doesn’t like the burden of the mantle. So, what happens if he gets his wish? He shows up in the future, he gets to meet his dad, meet the girl he couldn’t have, but in human flesh. And nobody knows who he is, so he has no pressure. So it felt like it could end there, but that it wouldn’t. I was sad that we were cancelled. I wanted to do more, but I also felt satisfied personally. I didn’t want it to just feel like the needle had been pulled off the record suddenly. I wanted it to feel like the song had ended. Even if the album hadn’t.

We can’t end this interview without talking about the fact that you cast Shirley Manson as a Terminator. Who once disguised herself as a urinal before killing a guy. Where did that come from? Because it’s insane.

I liked the idea of – maybe this is just a male thing, but of how vulnerable one is standing at a urinal. And also the number of apocryphal stories we hear about, like, snakes coming up in toilets, and baby alligators, and whatever things come up. And also, the vulnerability of the person who’s gonna get zapped is awesome for me, in a campfire story kind of way. But it was about, “What’s the most unexpected way we can do these things?” My memory is that there was some vague pushback about that idea. But... we did it. And Shirley was certainly happy to do it.

It must be the only time in the history of television that such a scene took place.

I hope so. I love when we think of something that I feel comfortable has never been filmed before, certainly on television. It’s a joy if you can find something that someone watching it is like, "What the fuck?" But yeah, it’s weird. I haven’t really thought about that in a long time. I’m still friends with Shirley, and a lot of things about working with her stand out to me, but I don’t think, "Oh yeah, and she was a urinal."

How did she get to be in the show in the first place?

She was a friend of mine, I met her through my wife. The year before the first season of the show, I would see her sometimes and we would joke, “Oh, you should come play a Terminator.” She was like, “I’d love to be a Terminator. I want to kill some people.” It was a joke, but in my head, I was like, "Okay..." So when second season came around, and I created this character, I said to her, “Do you want to come try?” I said, “You’re going to have to audition against other actors,” and she’s like, “Fuck, let’s try it." She said, "What if I’m shite?" And I’m like, "It depends in which way you are shite. But let’s not worry about your lack of experience – the character doesn’t exactly know how to be a human, so that may work for you, let’s just see.” So she, along with 50 or 100 people, read for the part. She got down to the top three, and then you work with the actors before they come in to audition for the studio.

The show was a little maverick. We pushed stuff.

Who were the others?

The other two were very experienced, professional, great actors. And Shirley came in and she was terrible. She was nervous. She was shite in a bad way. And she left the room, and the president of the studio was like, "Oh, that’s so disappointing. She clearly doesn’t have it. She’s never getting this. But because she’s a rock star, the network wants to meet her. So we’re going to bring all three to audition for the network.” And then within ten minutes, Shirley called me and says, “I was fucking terrible.” This was 10am. I said, “I’ve seen you better. But the good news is, 3pm this afternoon, you’re gonna be at Fox doing it again. And here’s what I’m gonna ask of you: Forget everything that we worked on. You’re Shirley fucking Manson. Just come in and be Shirley fucking Manson.” So then, 3pm, Shirley comes in. She sits down in a chair in front of the head of Fox, the head of Warners, and she stomped her foot, almost like she was starting a motorcycle. I don’t know why. And she just tore through the scene better than she had ever done it, ever, in rehearsal and anything. She crushed it, and just got up and walked out. And the head of Warners, who had said, “She’s never getting the part”, looked at me and whispered, “Who was that?” And I said – and you don’t get to say this very often in your life – I went, “That, my friend, was Shirley fucking Manson.” And the head of Fox went, “Well, someone go get her and bring her back in here to tell her she got the part.” She came in, and everyone gave her an ovation.

What a turnaround.

It was incredible. And months later, I found out that between the morning bad audition and the afternoon Shirley fucking Manson audition, she and her record label had gotten into a disagreement about her album that she’d been working on, and they said, “We’re not going to release it,” and dropped her from the label. So Shirley had had a shit audition, got dropped from her label, and then came in and just blew the doors off of it.

It’s a pretty maverick performance, her doing that character. It fit the spirit of the show.

Yeah. I’m glad you say that. The show was a little maverick. We pushed stuff.

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