LAUNCH

BY

PETER RUBIN

PHOTOGRAPHS BY

MICHELLE GROSKOPF WITH RON MOORE’S SPACE-RACE DRAMA

FOR ALL MANKIND,

IS BETTING ON 2 1 APPLE 7 1 MARQUEE NAMES AND _ LUSH PRODUCTION TO GET ITS TV+ SERVICE OFF THE GROUND. LAUNCH CAN IT ACHIEVE ORBIT? _ Sequence

BY

PETER RUBIN

PHOTOGRAPHS BY

MICHELLE GROSKOPF T H tent—good content—of itsown. way we consumecontent, could finally make con maker ofsomany devices thathave redefined the ing service. We were going to find out if Apple, still ­ behind the scenes of a show it was making for its years ofanticipation, Apple was about to take us was also a touch allegorical. After what felt like for thedozensofjournaliststhere thatday, butit cles were a necessity. The downpour was bad luck spheric river settled over vehithose Los Angeles, a particular Saturday in February, while an atmo are thecustomary mode—even onsunny days. On Building to Stage 15, golf carts and Sprinter vans If you needto get from, say, theJimmy Stewart less oblongs, and even more distance between them. acres oftheSony Pictures lot. That’s a lotof window sprawlbuildings andsoundstages across the44 MORE mysterious, stillunnamedsubscriptionstream A N 50 - - - - ­ Ronald D. Moore project. A veteran ofmul to be expected. After all, we’re standing ina custom-­ glasses. Even theceilingtiles have been craft into orbit.Rotary phones. Horn-rimmed Saturn V rockets powering the Apollo space buttoned BOOSTERconsolesthattracked the strewn onlongtiers ofdesksto themillion- utter replica, from the soft packs of Kools almost 8,000 square feet ofStage 15,isits Hollywood version in front of us, taking up reopened to the public earlier this year. The NASA in its original Houston location and known, was painstakingly refurbished by Manned Spacecraft Center circa 1969. walked into thecontrol room ofNASA’s in Hollywood.) maintained, Dryness we likestill leasessoundstages everyone else a near-trillion-dollar market cap, but it Showtime’s plex isalsohometo HBO’s tled thegroup to Stage 15.(TheSony com camera-­ to Apple staffers to be taped up with Such millimeter-perfect verisimilitude is Mission Control, as it’s more commonly After thejournalistshandedtheir phones made to match theonesinHouston. blocking stickers, the vans shut Ray Donovan . Apple may have Insecure and - - - - ­

Courtesy of Apple (film stills) 50

Courtesy of Apple (film stills) _ KINNAMAN BELOW, ACTOR JOEL OF ROOM FROM THE SET ASTRONAUT MEETING FOR ALL MANKIND ALL FOR . the simulated nerve center for thezero-g Winfrey. And Mission Control is more than projects from Steven Spielberg andOprah vice, a multibillion-dollar pushthatincludes the (now named) Apple TV+ streaming ser show isoneofthefirstseriesappearingon ier thananything Moore hascreated. The though, past spawns a new future. ing ambitionby how imagining analternate tic, a journey thatundoesdecadesofdeclin never ended.It’s atonceruefulandoptimis society mightlook today hadthespacerace called ized characters. This newest project, a series lously designedandpopulated by fully real television, creating worlds thatare meticu Moore isknown for paradigm-busting genre mid-’00s spaceopera ous other shows, includingthebeloved tiple Star Trek seriesandcreator ofnumer CEO in2011, Apple hadthrust mostofits wink at Apple’s cycle ofsecrecy andsurprise. line becameJobs’ catchphrase, theshowman’s construction stuck.For thenext 12 years, the translucent iMacs he announced—but the lime, and strawberry, the colors ofthenew more things—blueberry, grape, tangerine, Francisco that January. It was actually five his Macworld Expokeynote speech inSan more thing… T but there’s room amongthestars. NBCUniversal). The landscape is crowded, totrying muscle in(Disney, Warner Bros., but also with theoldhandsthatare now the streaming wars (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon) not just with theupstartsthatinaugurated entertainment studio,onethatcompetes and very expensive—attempt to becomean TV+ isthecompany’s highly anticipated— windfall asa manufacturer anddistributor, So, afterof services. Apple’s two decades of own admission,involves beinga purveyor incremental; partofthepathforward, by its ket saturation anditsupdates increasingly crossroads, itshardware approaching mar own moonshot. The company sitsata Mankind space walks and lunar landings of For allitsattention to thelittlethings, By thetime Tim Cook replaced Jobs as Cupertino, we have liftoff. ForMankind All ForMankind All . It’s alsothelaunchpadfor Apple’s the way thepublicsaw Apple. words,simple Steve Jobs changed YEARS AGO WENTY read thescreen attheendof Battlestar Galactica , imagines how, imagines our is bigger andrisk is , with three, with 0 For All 8 One One 9 ------, after the pitcher of mojitos was drained,” wrote Variety. Among a sea of headlines like “I Watched Planet of the Apps So You Don’t Have To” and “Apple’s Planet of the Apps Is Even Worse Than You Thought,” Variety’s IF APPLE WERE A PERSON— was one of the kinder sentiments. IF IT TRULY TOOK MORTAL Carpool Karaoke: The Series landed on iTunes and Apple TV shortly thereaf- FORM—THAT FORM MIGHT BE ter, and while it didn’t invite the same RONALD MOORE. rancor as Planet of the Apps, it also did lit- tle to distinguish itself. The original talk- show segment relied on Corden’s ability to bridge the gap between viewer and celebrity; Apple’s version simply put two celebrities in a car and turned on the dash- best secrets into daylight—iTunes, iPhones, legend Dr. Dre (cofounder of headphone cam. Seth MacFarlane and Ariana Grande? iPads—but one rumor Cook could still dance maker Beats, which Apple bought in 2014). Billy Eichner and Metallica? When Apple around was the company’s plans for tele- The show, which reportedly contained renewed the series, TechCrunch went vision. (Apple had released a Macintosh sex and violence, would be watchable via with the headline “Sorry, Apple’s Carpool back in 1993 that could display a TV feed, iTunes and Apple TV boxes. Soon, Apple also Karaoke Gets a Second Season.” but the curio lasted only a few months on developed a Shark Tank–style reality show What’s more, the company’s content the market.) Industry watchers had long called Planet of the Apps, which the com- trouble extended beyond ill-conceived wondered what the company might have pany began casting in the summer of 2016; reality shows. As The Wall Street Journal in store. “Intense interest” became Cook’s then a series based on Carpool Karaoke, a would later report, Apple scrapped its plans favorite side step—as in, TV was “an area perma-viral segment from James Corden’s for Vital Signs around the same time. The of intense interest for us.” In those days, he late-night NBC talk show. issue was Tim Cook’s discomfort with the was referring to the experience of watch- In October 2016, during a quarterly show’s graphic content. Violence and sex ing television. The Apple TV set-top device, earnings call with investors, Cook’s rheto- might have been a ratings-boosting recipe which launched in 2007, was beginning to ric finally changed. When an analyst asked for HBO or Netflix, but Apple was trying to gain some sales steam by its third genera- him about the productions, he responded: be a content company that was also depen- tion, and the company was widely believed “I think it’s a great opportunity for us both dent on its consumers continuing to buy to be prototyping an Apple-branded TV set. from a creation point of view and an own- phones and computers. Prestige was fine. Over the years, though, Cook’s intense ership point of view.” Mostly tap dancing, Prurience was not. interest began to shift. According to The to be sure, but “creation” and “ownership” Wall Street Journal, Apple approached were new words in Apple’s vocabulary. And Time Warner about acquisition in mid-2016; none too soon. Not only would Apple miss its EN DAYS AFTER Planet of the Apps some even suspected the company might own revenue target in 2016, in large part due premiered, Apple announced make a bid for Netflix. Neither happened, to slowing sales of iOS devices, but its share T that it had hired two television but by then what was once called “web tele- of the movie-rental market—which, thanks veterans to head up “video programming vision” had come into its own, and stream- to iTunes, had been more than 50 percent— worldwide.” Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van ing content took on a new urgency. Amazon was tumbling, cannibalized by smart cable Amburg had been copresidents of Sony had won multiple Emmys for its original boxes and Amazon. Apple’s services division Pictures Television for a decade. The two show Transparent, and Hulu had evolved needed an extra boost if it was going to help were known for rescuing the division from from a platform that just delivered the pre- the company offset such setbacks. early-2000s dreck like Shasta McNasty vious day’s cable shows to one with its own Planet of the Apps premiered on June 6, and Madigan Men, replacing it with shows slate of original programming. 2017. In it, contestants were given 60 sec- that fit the burgeoning age of so-called Apple seemed ready to jump into the onds to pitch their app idea—while on a prestige TV: Breaking Bad, Community, pool. Cook began trumpeting the perfor- moving walkway—to a panel of judges that Damages, Masters of Sex. At Apple, report- mance of the company’s “services” divi- included Jessica Alba, will.i.am, Gwyneth ing to the company’s head of services, sion, which included iTunes, Apple Music, Paltrow, and tech entrepreneur Gary Eddy Cue, they would try to help one of the Apple Pay, and the App Store. Services were Vaynerchuk, author of such books as Crush richest companies in the world do televi- by then second only to the iPhone in gen- It! and Crushing It! The ensuing reviews sion the right way. erating revenue for Apple, and Cook said also crushed it, the “it” in this case being Though the timing of Apple’s announce- he saw more growth for that group ahead. any hopes of a second season. “Apple’s first ment seemed comically coincidental, Erlicht Part of it, it seemed, would come from tele- offering … feels like something that was and Van Amburg had been talking to Apple vision; Apple quietly began filming Vital developed at a cocktail party, and not given for some time. In its quest to develop con- Signs, a show based on the life of hip hop much more rigorous thought or attention tent that could hold up to fare from Netflix 0 9 1 and Hulu, the company had been discussing and wondering why he couldn’t see Neil possible partnerships with numerous stu- Armstrong up there. As a teen, he planned dios, including Sony. “Obviously we were on entering the Navy and applying to flight intrigued,” Erlicht says. At the time, “there test school to be an astronaut himself. “Then wasn’t an agency, production company, or I started wearing glasses,” he says now, sit- studio that wasn’t trying to hunt down what ting in his office outside the Mankind writ- Apple would be doing.” When they were ers’ room. “And poof, it was gone.” eventually offered the job (and accepted), We’re in an unassuming, dated-­looking, one of their first calls went to Van Amburg’s three-story stone building on an even old friend: Ronald Moore. less assuming street in that liminal space If Apple were a person—if it truly took between Los Angeles and Burbank, Moore mortal form—that form might be Ron sporting the habitual mane of hair and Moore. Like Apple, Moore has created open-­collar shirt that make him look like epochal works that improve on the halt- he stepped off the cover of a romance novel ing steps of their predecessors. And like for the bookish. His office accoutrements Apple, he imagines a future that meshes evince a similar flair: a framed shot of Errol with how humans actually behave and what Flynn from 1938’s The Adventures of Robin they expect. Apple might call that Human Hood, an Apple IIe just like the one he wrote Interface Design; Moore has called it “natu- his first Star Trek spec script on, old maps ralistic science fiction.” and employee patches from Disneyland. The concept began with Moore’s “Star Trek, Disneyland, and NASA,” he says, Battlestar Galactica miniseries. That four- ticking off his obsessions. hour show ran on the Sci-Fi Channel (now Those obsessions informed Battlestar’s Syfy) in 2003 and updated the single-season­ atmosphere, but it was Moore’s prioritiza- 1978 cult classic into an epic for the 21st cen- tion of soul over special effects that helped tury. Like the original, it focused on the last the show entrance both fans and critics over vestiges of humanity fleeing murderous its four-season run. The crewmembers of the robots called Cylons; in the Moore mini­ Galactica weren’t archetypes—they were series, the Cylons looked just like those they people (and Cylons) who knew trauma and stalked across the galaxy, infusing a fusty anxiety, who knew jealousy and pride and _ premise with simmering dread. The mini- deceit and redemption. In a decade that NASA’S BACKUP series ended on the holy-shit cliff-hanger began with The Sopranos and would end with CONTROL ROOM revelation that a crew member was actu- Mad Men, Battlestar told human stories that FROM THE TV ally a Cylon. So the network green-lit a full felt, in spite of their cosmic setting, grounded. SHOW’S SET series, and Moore articulated his vision in the show’s 49-page bible:

We take as a given the idea that the traditional space opera, with its stock characters, techno double-talk, bumpy-headed aliens, thespian his- trionics, and empty heroics has run its course and a new approach is required. That approach is to introduce realism into what has heretofore been an aggressively unrealistic genre.

Indeed, Galactica felt as if it had beamed down from the Enterprise itself. Not Jean- Luc Picard’s—though Moore had cut his teeth on Star Trek: The Next Generation— but NASA’s. Gone was the stilted pseudo- science of Trek; in its place was an analog, organic, inhabited sci-fi. This was space as humans would really live in it, with dirt and claustrophobia and hard, hard drinking. Much of the sensibility, if not the drinking, was steeped in Moore’s lifelong fascination with the US space program. As a 5-year-old in 1969, Moore had stood in his backyard in Chowchilla, California, looking at the moon It also rocketed Moore squarely into Sought-After Creator territory, and in 2010, after BSG ended, he signed a development deal with Sony Pictures Television—bringing him into Van Amburg and Erlicht’s orbit. The juiciest fruit to sprout, in 2014, was an adap- tation of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander fan- tasy novels, now heading into its fifth season on Starz. It was during Outlander’s early days that Van Amburg approached Moore with the idea of doing a show about NASA in the ’70s for NBC. Moore figured it was a “momentary blip” that would never get made; then Van Amburg and Erlicht got the job at Apple. They officially began in August 2017, at which point Van Amburg called to see if the premise still held interest. “I still think about that NASA-in-the-’70s idea,” he told Moore. “What do you think about doing a Mad Men sort of thing?” As much as he was captivated by the thought, Moore quickly realized: This has a fatal flaw. By the 1970s, the space program simply wasn’t inspiring. “The Apollo mis- sions were over,” Moore says. “There was this broken-dream quality to it, and that’s not a heroic adventure. It’s a sad story of declining ambition.” Instead, he said to Van Amburg: What if NASA had kept going? Van Amburg countered with his own question: Why would NASA have kept going? Moore THE FIRST SEASON, didn’t know, but he thought his friend SPANNING FROM Garrett Reisman might. The two had met back in 2008, when 1969 TO 1974, Reisman was living 220 miles above Earth. WOULD UNSPOOL As an astronaut on the International Space Station, Reisman could request a call from WHAT MIGHT HAVE anyone—and he chose the creators of his HAPPENED HAD favorite show, Battlestar Galactica. That vid- eoconference across orbital altitude began THE SOVIETS BEATEN an exchange program of sorts. Moore invited APOLLO 11 Reisman to the BSG set for the series finale; Reisman invited Moore to Cape Canaveral TO THE MOON. for the launch of the space shuttle Atlantis (upon which Reisman rode). By the time Moore called Reisman about the new Apple idea, the astronaut was the director of space operations at SpaceX. Moore paid him a visit at the company’s Southern California head- quarters that August and, over lunch, laid out his quandary. “You could do the his- torical version,” Moore said, “but I’m really intrigued by this other version. Why couldn’t we have kept going in the ’70s?” Reisman responded by telling Moore the tale of a failed Soviet lunar mission. “Most people don’t know how close they came,”

0 9 3 he said. The Russians had denied it for years, VEN THOUGH For All Mankind seemed, the company was going to give the but if the development of their rocket had feels like the most Apple of Apple public a taste of what was to come. gone just a little bit differently, he explained, E shows, it was actually the third Not so. Instead, Apple opted to talk. they might have gotten to the moon before show that Van Amburg and Erlicht green-lit, Celebrity after celebrity—Spielberg, Kumail Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. after a reboot of Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Nanjiani, Abrams, Oprah, Big Bird—walked Moore had his why. For two months, Stories and The Morning Show, a drama out from the wings to the stage, where, to a he and his writing team plotted the arc of starring Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer one, they described their Apple TV+ project, For All Mankind. The 10-episode first sea- Aniston. Many more followed in rapid suc- how thrilled they were to be working with son, spanning from 1969 to 1974, would cession: a fantasy epic starring Jason Momoa the company, and how excited they were unspool what might have happened had and Alfre Woodard called See; an adapta- for people to get to see it. That was it. Not the Soviets beaten Apollo 11 to the moon. tion of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation; Servant, a single frame of footage, save a quick-cut Congressional hearings, for one, which a psychological thriller from M. Night montage that revealed precisely nothing. young senator Ted Kennedy attends in the Shyamalan. J. J. Abrams and Oprah signed No details about how the service was going summer of 1969—meaning he doesn’t go to on to executive-produce projects. There to work. Stranger still, no one mentioned Chappaquiddick, meaning he runs against were documentary series too, like one about For All Mankind, and Moore was nowhere to Nixon in 1972. For another, the government spectacular houses and their designers. With be seen onstage. It wasn’t until June, when goes all-in on establishing a foothold on each new acquisition or order throughout Apple released a trailer for his show, that the moon, meaning that the US pulls out of 2018, Apple’s stockpile looked more robust. anyone who didn’t obsessively read trade Vietnam in 1970. Maybe not as vast as Netflix’s, but enough publications knew the series even existed. But that wasn’t all that was in Moore’s to compete. The company originally appeared ready head. Around Halloween, when he pitched But trouble wasn’t over. Maybe because to launch Apple TV+ late in 2018. The goal- his story line to a small group of Apple exec- of the same content conservatism that had post then moved to before the March 2019 utives in the company’s Culver City outpost, scuttled Vital Signs, executives report- event. Yet, through the summer of 2019, Van Amburg was shocked by the way Moore edly asked Shyamalan to remove cruci- uncertainty lingered. All the while, other launched headlong into the show. “When fixes from his characters’ houses. Some new streaming services were promoting you’re making television shows, the idea high-profile staff departures also created high-profile acquisitions and too-good- of something is usually much greater than an air of uncertainty. Amazing Stories to-be-true pricing. For $6.99, the new the execution,” he says. “But Ron hadn’t and The Morning Show lost their original Disney+ service would offer massive con- just thought about what the first hour of TV showrunners due to what Variety termed tent libraries from Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, was—he had thought about hour 40.” “creative differences.” The actress Kristen and its other IP empires—as well as develop On the wall, a series of timelines and char- Wiig dropped out of a project because of a numerous original series and movies, many acter profiles helped illustrate how the show scheduling conflict. of which were unveiled to a rapturous crowd might progress over the seven seasons that In March 2019, scrutiny accumulating, at Comic-Con International in San Diego. Moore and his writers had broken down. “The Apple sent out invitations for a “special event” NBCUniversal paid $500 million to regain level of detail was overwhelming,” Erlicht to be held at the Steve Jobs Theater, an iPod the streaming rights to The Office, famously says. “Every aspect of the butterfly effect that Nano’s throw from the colossal circular build- the most-watched show on Netflix, for would happen from the slightest change in ing at the center of the company’s Cupertino its own forthcoming streaming service. that event.” The executives walked out into campus. “It’s show time,” the invitation said, WarnerMedia shelled out $425 million to the hallway, grinned at each other, and nego- below a flickering countdown film leader. It do the same with Friends. tiated which one of them was going to give was the perfect opportunity for a course cor- For two decades, Apple had single-­ Moore the good news. rection. After nearly three years of secrecy, it handedly changed how people consumed entertainment. The iPod made listening to music a playground of infinite playlists; iTunes took lethal aim at Blockbuster long before Netflix finished it off; the iPhone ignited whole new categories of experi- APPLE HADN’T INVENTED MP3S ences. The company hadn’t invented MP3s or smartphones. Rather, it had found a way OR SMARTPHONES. RATHER, IT HAD to do them better, to change the landscape FOUND A WAY TO DO THEM BETTER, around those businesses. But in the time it took Apple to draw up plans for original TO CHANGE THE LANDSCAPE content, the landscape had changed around AROUND THOSE BUSINESSES. them. Even without Disney+ and other new- comers, Apple was stepping onto a battle- field full of experienced fighters: Netflix was focusing on an ever-expanding global reach, Amazon offered its programming as yet another perk for Prime members, Hulu had developed live-TV func- tionality that made it an all-in-one replacement for cable. All of a sud- COLOPHON den, the well-worn Apple Way—keeping quiet until a world-changing device or service was ready for consumers—looked like a road to ruin Facts that helped get this for the company’s newest product. issue out:

ND YET. YET! This is Apple. Even as business and entertain- A supernatural ability for searching the FAA da­ tabase is key to breaking news on criminal inves­ ment pundits wondered aloud why the company seemed tigations; the US uses about as much electricity to be floundering in its attempt to go Hollywood, Ron for air-conditioning as Africa uses for all purpos­ A es; Marie’s Crisis Café is the best place in New Moore kept his head down, working to make For All Mankind into York City; napkin-hoarding pays off eventually; it’s possible to make a cookie so delicious that if an unrestrained, uncompromising thought experiment. Not just the everyone on Earth tasted it, it would bring world Mad Men stuff, either—the accuracy of the ceiling tiles, the exhaus- peace; September is never too early to start listening to Bach’s Christmas Oratorio; she is tively researched period clothing. He was consumed by how the an accomplished pianist and singer, has terrible handwriting, has been to the Academy Awards, made world might have become better than the one we have today. and will keep you calm and procedural in a crisis; Battery research pushes solar energy into the mainstream. NASA most books are not fact-checked; Wikipedia is not a source; be prepared to show your notes; starts recruiting women astronauts earlier, putting them in space her relationship with cheese is complicated; sea otters spend about five hours a day on hair care; and turning them into global icons. The US sets up a lunar base as stone-fruit season is the best time of year; the early as the 1970s. An alternate history in progress, one rooted in a conversation is over when anyone says the word lawyer; maybe one particular elite Los Angeles fundamental optimism. “It’s an aspirational show,” Moore says. “It private school was better when it was two elite says, ‘Wouldn’t this have made us a better country and a better world private schools; Joanna Pearlstein has been a champion of wired for the past 16 years! if we had done all these things?’ Not just more Apollo missions, but wired is a registered trademark of Advance the way we treated one another as human beings.” Maga­zine Publishers Inc. Copyright ©2019 On September 10, Tim Cook once again took the stage at the Steve Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA. Volume 27, No. 11. wired (ISSN 1059– Jobs Theater for Apple’s annual iPhone event. 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Manu­scripts, photo­graphs, artwork, and other materials submitted­ must be accom­ issue 27.09. panied by a self-­addressed, stamped envelope.

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