HOMECOMING

Prime Video Release Date:

Friday, November 2nd, 2018

(Globally available in English, other languages to follow in 2019)

From director Sam Esmail, the visionary creator of Mr. Robot, and the creators of Gimlet
Media’s critically-acclaimed podcast Homecoming, Eli Horowitz and Micah Bloomberg, comes
television’s latest genre-defying psychological thriller.

Homecoming features Oscar-winning actress Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich) in her first
starring role in television as Heidi Bergman, a caseworker at the Homecoming Transitional
Support Center, a facility that helps soldiers returning home from war. She develops a complex
relationship with a young veteran eager to rejoin civilian life named Walter Cruz, played by
breakout newcomer Stephan James. Emmy-winner Bobby Cannavale (Boardwalk Empire)
appears as Bergman’s erratic offsite supervisor Colin Belfast, with Alex Karpovsky (HBO’s
Girls) as the facility’s life-skills coach, Craig. Oscar-nominated actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste
(Secrets & Lies) plays Walter’s mother Gloria, while Jeremy Allen White and Dermot
Mulroney (both of Showtime’s Shameless) fill out the cast as Heidi’s ex-boyfriend and a fellow
Homecoming veteran, respectively.

This narrative alternates with another, taking place four years later, when we find Heidi in a new
life as a small-town waitress living with her mother, portrayed by Oscar-winner Sissy Spacek
(Coal Miner’s Daughter). When a Department of Defense auditor, Boardwalk Empire’s Shea
Whigham, questions her about her departure from the Homecoming facility, Heidi begins to
question the narrative — and reality — she has spun for herself.

Each of Homecoming’s ten half-hour episodes were directed by Esmail and written by podcast
creators Horowitz and Bloomberg, along with David Weiner, Cami Delavigne, Shannon Houston,
and Eric Simonson. The series is produced by Esmail via his overall deal at Universal Cable
Productions (UCP) through his production company Esmail Corp; as well as Mr. Robot
executive producer Chad Hamilton of Anonymous Content; the podcast’s Horowitz and
Bloomberg; and Chris Giliberti, Alex Blumberg, and Matt Lieber of Gimlet Media. Roberts
serves as executive producer through her production company Red Om Films; her partners Lisa
Gillan and Marisa Yeres Gill are co-executive producers.

In creating Homecoming’s unsettling visual style and tone, Esmail reunited the crew from the
Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning Mr. Robot, which recently aired its critically acclaimed
third season on USA Network. Among Esmail’s key collaborators on Homecoming are Emmy
Award-nominated Director of Photography Tod Campbell, Art Directors Guild Award-winning
Production Designer Anastasia “Stasia” White, and Emmy-nominated Costume Designer
Catherine Marie Thomas.
Co-produced with Universal Cable Productions (UCP), Amazon Studios secured global rights to
Homecoming, which received a two-season straight to series order and premieres exclusively on
Prime Video on November 2, 2018.

Incubating Homecoming:
How a Scripted Podcast Became a Television Series

Homecoming’s journey to the screen began without any consideration of a screen at all.

“We actually had no idea what it was going be,” says Horowitz, a novelist and editor who in 2016
was charged with creating narrative content for the online podcast network Gimlet Studios. “All I
knew was that we were going to make an audio series and it was going to have episodes.” The
project was to be Horowitz’s first stab at a podcast, and his first-ever scripted effort as a writer.
“Just as a listener, I knew that podcasts can create a weirdly intimate relationship with the voice
in your ear,” he says. “It sucks you in in a way that almost no other medium can. I wanted to
create a fictional piece that had that kind of immediacy and authenticity.”

Horowitz knew he needed a collaborator. Enter veteran sound mixer Micah Bloomberg (All is
Lost, Christine, Obvious Child), who was referred to him by a mutual friend. “We talked on the
phone for like 90 minutes and kicked around some story ideas,” says Bloomberg. “He called me
back the next week and that was the genesis of our working together. We started with five
different podcast ideas, and one of those was for Homecoming.”

The two agreed early on about what they didn’t want in their podcast: neither narration nor
dramatic musical cues. “We just wanted people talking — almost like a found document,” says
Horowitz.

“My background is in TV and film, but also in playwriting,” says Bloomberg. “Often when you
write a movie, you’re thinking in visual terms. This was an opportunity to tell a story through
language, and through what characters weren’t saying. I was really excited about that.”

With acclaimed actors Catherine Keener, Oscar Isaac and David Schwimmer playing Heidi,
Walter and Colin respectively, Homecoming debuted on Gimlet Studios on November 16, 2016.
Fan response was immediately robust.

“I remember looking on Twitter,” says Bloomberg, “and people really wanted to know what had
happened to Heidi between the two time-periods!”

They quickly found another fan in writer, producer and director Sam Esmail, creator of the
Golden Globe-winning USA drama Mr. Robot.

“I’m a huge fan of the thriller genre in general, but the Homecoming podcast wasn’t about the
pyrotechnics of action or chase scenes,” says Email. “It was based in the reveals and twists of
what characters knew, what they didn’t know; how their relationships were either falling apart or
coming together.”

Esmail says he was particularly taken with Homecoming’s auditory elements.

“This was the first scripted podcast I’d ever listened to,” he says. “And you felt like you were
eavesdropping on these conversations. Whether between Walter and Heidi, or Heidi and Colin,
Eli and Micah really leaned into the sound of the phone calls; the sound of the tape recorder. It
put you in a voyeuristic mode. It was such a rare thing to find this in any format, let alone a
podcast radio play.”

It wasn’t long before the podcast had Hollywood buzzing In December 2016, Universal Cable
Productions purchased the rights to produce Homecoming, and Amazon Studios quickly gave the
series a two-season order. (Season two of the Homecoming podcast premiered July 2017 and ran
for six episodes.)

When it came to finding the ideal partner with whom to bring the series to life for TV, there were
numerous suitors. “We had all these conference calls,” Horowitz continues. “But the best one by
far was with Sam. What stood out was the way he responded to the mode of storytelling, which
was what we intended: taking character-based, dialogue-based scenes and putting them into a
thriller structure. That was encouraging.”

And Esmail’s support extended beyond just his wanting to bring it to life on-screen.

“From the very beginning, he was like, ‘You guys can do as much as you want. You wanna write
it, you write it. You wanna direct it, you direct it, I don’t care, do it all!’” recalls Horowitz.
“That’s very much Sam’s ethos. I think when he started Mr. Robot, in a lot of ways, he also didn’t
seem qualified. He had to fight his way up. Everyone involved in this process has taken pleasure
in the fact that Micah and I didn’t necessarily know what we were doing either!”

Crafting Homecoming’s Visuals

Esmail says he wanted to skirt one particular trope in adapting Homecoming to a visual medium.
“I did not want to make it ‘cinematic,’” he says. “There’s a tendency when you adapt something
for the big screen – whether from a book or a podcast – that it has to be ‘bigger.’ I wanted it to
stay as intimate and small as it was in the podcast because that was the heart of the whole thing.”

Horowitz says they had an acute question to answer in order to stay faithful to podcast’s structure
and tone: How do you execute long scenes that are very heavy on dialogue and very light on
action?

“We had to figure out how to make those scenes visually interesting,” says Horowitz. “Turn their
length into a strength and build a dynamic visual style, which is obviously something Sam excels
at.”

The team agreed that the narrative begged for a mix of “off-kilter images” within a sort of muted
“nothing-to-see-here” tone, one in which people are having very mundane conversations amid
bizarre situations.

The optics of Homecoming – like its aural elements – are deceivingly complex. “The inspirations
are Alfred Hitchcock and Brian DePalma— a throwback to character-based thrillers,” says
Esmail. “It’s Baroque and Pastiche without actually throwing it back into the past.” He says the
series simmers in visual language; it lets its moments linger, thereby allowing suspense to build
and ratchet-up with “one-take” shots.
Crucial to achieving these “throwback” visuals was Mr. Robot cinematographer Tod Campbell,
also a veteran of Showtime’s The Affair and Netflix’s Stranger Things.

About the Set

Adding to the novelty of the production was the fact that Homecoming was the first project to
shoot on Universal Studios’ newly-minted production facilities near Los Angeles. Designed for
added shooting flexibility, two stages were joined into one 36,110 sq. ft. production space whose
51 ft. grid height allowed for the series’ extensive two-story set. In addition, two four-story
production office buildings with 30,000 sq. ft. of dressing rooms, green rooms and office space
adjoin the stages.

“I wanted Heidi’s office to be built in a specific way—it’s sort of an octagon—so I could shoot
from any angle, do overheads shots, style the framing,” says Esmail. “That drove the shape of the
set and the fact that 70 percent of the show was going be at this location. We needed the utmost
control.”

Email continues: “I met my production designer, Anastasia “Stasia” White way back on the pilot
of Mr. Robot when she was an art director. What you need in a production designer is somebody
like her who gets the tone and vibe of whatever you’re shooting, and has great taste.” He says
White “never stops thinking, never stops coming up with ideas.”

“She also never stops subverting them, and she’s not afraid to go a little surreal,” says Esmail. “I
think the picture in everyone’s head when they’re listening to the podcast was a clinical
institutional, almost like an insane asylum. But Eli and Micah felt that it should actually be the
opposite, as if it’s a friendly environment. A building that’s been converted into this sort of ‘hip,
cool place’ where these soldiers are rehabilitated. But it’s just slightly off in their attempts at
being hip and cool. And Stasia killed it.”

One example of White’s nuanced approached to production design can be seen in the 2018-set
scenes that take place at the Homecoming facility. During that time, all of the facility’s “exit”
signs are bathed in green light.

In the 2022-set scenes, toward the second half of the season, they are red.

“It’s rare to find a production designer who wants to show off those little flourishes and subtleties
in ways that disobey reality and groundedness,” says Email.

“We knew that at the center of this story was Heidi and Walter’s relationship, and then Heidi and
Colin coming into conflict,” says Bloomberg. “In a podcast, it’s difficult to have more than two
people talking at the same time. You can’t see them, so they kind of need to say where they are.
For TV, we were able to explore smaller characters and different worlds, like Walter’s mother
Gloria, and Craig, the life-skills coach at Homecoming. We were excited to communicate these
things to Stasia and ask: What does this world look and feel like?”

Narrative Imagery

Horowitz says he and Bloomberg were amused by the idea that whoever built Homecoming’s
fictional structure, he or she was charged to make it “fun and lively.”
“What was their inspiration?” says Horowitz. “They probably had a mood board and thought,
‘Oh, it’s Florida so we’ll do a retro-seaside theme, it’ll have a great contrast to all these dark
colors and heavy wood.’ Stasia took that approach times 100 and then added pineapples —
everywhere.”

“The pineapple is something that one of the veteran characters, Shrier, played by Jeremy Allen
White, fixates on in episode two,” says Bloomberg. “He sees it as one type of lie and deception.
But there’s another kind of deception hidden underneath. In a weird way, the pineapple comes to
represent the layers we’re talking about. And it’s a completely innocuous, friendly object.”

More broadly, says Horowitz, the ubiquitous pineapple is one way the production design creates a
juxtaposition between the surreal and mundane.“I feel like that’s a pretty common part of our
experience, just as human beings in this social and political climate – seeing these obvious
absurdities treated as normal reality.”

Signature Sounds

One crucial element to selling Homecoming on the screen was its singular approach to sound
design.

“Sound is as important – sometimes more so – than visuals,” says Esmail. “One thing I pitched
early on was keeping some of the voyeuristic elements. So even though we’re not actually taping
the phone conversations, the sound design is still going to be ‘futzed.’ Traditionally in movies
and TV shows, you hear each person on a phone call just fine. Here, we kept the tone where
everything’s futzed; a little off and a little strange. That’s what re-creates the voyeuristic feeling
that you had when you listened to the podcast.”

It’s also impossible to ignore one of the series’ most powerful sound-design elements: the fish
tank in Heidi’s office.

“In the podcast, we wanted each location to have a certain kind of audio fingerprint,” says
Horowitz. “For Heidi’s office, we wondered: What can give it that sound? A white-noise
machine? But that didn’t really sound like anything. So we wrote in the fish tank, just to have a
little bubble sound — but then it grew into a whole plot element, and now it’s even an important
visual piece too.”

Fans of the podcast will recall another pronounced aural cue, which returns in the TV series.
“These people can’t just talk on and on, so we wanted some sort of outside vector, some force to
shake it up, so that became a bird call,” says Horowitz of the avian noise that Heidi and Walter
hear during their first sessions. “It’s a limpkin in the podcast, but apparently limpkins cannot be
taken out of the wetlands for various legal reasons, so in the series, it’s a pelican named Peggy.”

Saying Yes to Homecoming:

Julia Roberts on Her First-Ever Starring Role in TV

For Homecoming’s lead, signing onto the project – despite it being her first ever lead role in a
series – was a relatively easy “yes.”

“I was really taken with the podcast,” says Oscar-winning actress Roberts. “The characters were
terrific. [Actress] Catherine Keener is a friend of mine— she played Heidi in the podcast— and
she was fantastic. I was listening to it with [a TV series] in mind. The audio, the sound
production, the fish-tank bubbles… it was all so visual. Micah and Eli know this material inside
and out.”

Esmail’s track record of executing complex, visually-stunning material for the small screen
allayed any reservations Roberts may have had about transitioning from film to TV.

“He’s is an incredible intellect and has such a very specific vision,” says Roberts. “I come from
film where there’s just one captain throughout. And I know from friends and family who work in
television that there’s a changing-of-the-guard in every episode, which I’m unaccustomed to.”
Homecoming was just so “surgical” in its complexity, says Roberts: the different time periods, all
the different characters – they required a need for one voice behind it the whole time. “I said from
the beginning that I really wanted one person to direct all the episodes. And if that person wasn’t
Sam, then I probably wouldn’t do it.”

Roberts echoes her collaborators’ enthusiasm about Homecoming’s nimble set design. “They built
it so that we could do these incredible camera maneuvers,” she says. “I think there are days when
we’ve done 11 pages of dialogue in one camera move up and down hallways, down stairs,
through huge conference rooms and cafeterias— it’s pretty amazing,” she says. “It’s been pretty
challenging. The show could be renamed, No Easy Days, because there were none! But my
collaboration with Sam has been so joyful. We’re just two peas in a pod. He’s very specific and
clear in his direction. It’s been relatively effortless.”

Bobby Cannavale on Homecoming’s Timely Themes

Cannavale, a stalwart of indie cinema (The Station Agent, Blue Jasmine) and an Emmy winner for
HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, reflects on his turn in Homecoming – as Heidi’s boss Colin – and the
series’ important overarching themes.

“The subject matter of returning war veterans is very timely,” says Cannavale. “We’re also in the
midst of a time in America in which we don’t really know what’s going on. There is a fomenting
of an atmosphere of suspicion. What is America’s role right now? The idea of the Homecoming
initiative – that it’s possible that could re-deploy veterans after we’ve erased their memories –
isn’t that outlandish an idea. I wanted to play somebody like Colin who’s gung-ho about this an
initiative because really there’s no such thing as a ‘bad guy’ when he’s someone who really
believes in this idea.”

Like Roberts, Cannavale says the series’ lynchpin was Esmail, with whom he first collaborated
on season three of Mr. Robot. But his fandom started before the two met.

“I became a fan of Sam when Mr. Robot first premiered,” he says. “He really is a master at
creating an atmosphere of suspicion that asks: What exactly is memory? How do we know what a
‘real’ memory is? While I was listening to the podcast, I was actually shooting Mr. Robot. I came
in after the weekend and asked, ‘Anybody listen to this podcast? Anybody?’ I asked Sam, who
said he already had the deal in place to make the series. I thought, ‘Well, that’s a perfect
marriage!’

Cannavale says he was particularly taken with Esmail, White and Campbell’s bag of production
tricks. “First of all, the set is massive. It’s the largest indoor space I’ve ever worked on,” he says.
“All the stuff that happens before Heidi intakes the drugs happens in a wide screen: 6:9 aspect
ratio, bright colors. And then when we’re in the future, when she doesn’t remember, everything is
shrunken down to this square aspect ratio; the colors are darker, there’s a fogginess and a limited
scope. It’s such a great way of translating the theme of memory loss to the screen.”

Homecoming’s Breakout: Stephan James

Few contemporary young performers have made their mark as powerfully as Ontario, Canada
native James, who earned wide acclaim for his breakthrough performance as Olympic runner
Jesse Owens in the 2016 feature Race.

He says he needed to understand Walter on two levels in order to translate the podcast to
television, a process that made him even more intrigued to dive into the role.

“Walter is eager to get his life back in order. He wants to get back to being a young man; to
having fun, getting to see his friends and his family and feeling normal again,” says James. “I had
a certain perception of him from listening to the podcast, but he definitely has a lot more
personality in the script. You find out a more about his backstory and about his mom. Seeing that
he had more color to him in the script drew me to the role.”

James says his work in Homecoming was more compelling by the fact that most of Walter’s
scenes are spent with Roberts’ character Heidi.

“Their relationship is really interesting,” says James. “It begins like most therapist-to-client
relationships. They’re both a little bit ambivalent about getting personal at the beginning, but as
time goes on, Heidi gets Walter to loosen up and, and vice versa. And their relationship into more
of a friendship; they grow to have a real endearment towards each other at the end.”

Collaborating with Roberts, James says, has been decidedly unique compared to most inaugural
on-screen partnerships.

“We have a lot of long scenes together— like six or seven-pages long— just locked up together
in a room!” says James. “You have to be really good at what you do to survive those. Julia is
really an actor’s actor. She’s such a great scene partner that sometimes I’m taken aback by her
performance. It’s been incredible working with her so far.”

Homecoming’s Key Cast and Characters

Julia Roberts is “Heidi Bergman,” a caseworker who helps military veterans return to civilian
life. Her relationship with one soldier, Walter, leads her to think differently about her work.

Bobby Cannavale is “Colin Belfast,” the ambitious off-site supervisor of the Homecoming
Initiative and Heidi’s boss.

Stephan James is “Walter Cruz,” a young military veteran with a quiet sense of humor who
begins treatment at the Homecoming facility and is assigned to Heidi.
Sissy Spacek is “Ellen Bergman,” Heidi’s mother who is no-nonsense, somewhat crabby, but
fiercely protective of her daughter.

Shea Wigham is “Thomas Corrasco,” a Department of Defense auditor who questions Heidi in
2022 about her departure from the Homecoming facility.

Dermot Mulroney is “Anthony,” Heidi’s ex-boyfriend who is eager to please but needy, and
grows increasingly frustrated with her lack of deference to their relationship.

Jeremy Allen White is “Shrier,” a soldier who fought in the same unit alongside Walter and is
also a client at Homecoming. He grows skeptical about the facility and whether he and his fellow
soldiers are being told the truth.

Alex Karpovsky is “Craig,” who works at the Homecoming facility and helps clients re-enter
civilian life by coaching them various real-life scenarios and improvisations as part of their
rehabilitation.

Marianne Jean-Babtiste is “Gloria,” Walter’s mother, a college professor. She opposed Walter’s
enlistment and is reflexively suspicious of the military.

Episode Roster*

101 – “Mandatory” by Micah Bloomberg and Eli Horowitz

102 – “Pineapple” by Eli Horowitz
103 – “Optics” by David Weiner
104 – “Redwood” by Micah Bloomberg
105 – “Helping” by Cami Delavigne
106 – “Toys” by Shannon Houston
107 – “Test” by Eric Simonson
108 – “Protocol” by Eli Horowitz
109 – “Work” by Micah Bloomberg
110 – “Stop” by Micah Bloomberg and Eli Horowitz

*All are directed by Sam Esmail

PR CONTACTS:

Morgan Ressa Lilly Rolnick

Lead Publicist, Amazon Studios PR Specialist, Amazon Studios
Morgan.ressa@amazonstudios.com lilly.rolnick@amazonstudios.com
o. 310.573-2896 o. 310.573-2442

Jonathan Fieweger
Manager, Communications, Universal Cable Productions
Jonathan.fieweger@nbcuni.com
o. 818.777-9775