Amid a brutal totalitarian dictatorship that has enslaved the people of Earth, there exists a secret group of rebels (known as interrogators) who seek to both free the population from the grip of tyranny, and ultimately, to overthrow the corrupt government that has oppressed them. Their adventures come to life in the exciting action/sci-fi thriller INTERROGATION, now streaming all 7 episodes of its first season on its official Youtube page.
Written by Britain Valenti (also series star) and co-produced by Valenti and Alexander Garcia, INTERROGATION focuses on the efforts of a group of 6 skilled individuals who attempt to bring the enemies of freedom to justice in a series of harsh interrogations. Little do they know, though, that their every move is being watched by a mysterious individual who threatens to destroy their operation, and quite possibly, their lives.
The series stars Valenti as Breyson, the tough as nails leader of the group who oversees the interrogations, and possesses an uncanny ability to manipulate every villain she comes in contact with.
Her cohorts include Anders (Halcyone Rapp), who, along with the physically imposing Tiger (Nancy Greco), team up to penetrate heavily secured government offices, and to capture those who will soon find themselves as subjects of Breyson’s latest inquiry.
INTERROGATION’s talented ensemble also features Scott Rosendall as Mikey, the group’s shy lieutenant and tech guru, plus Mallory Kay Nelson as Lana, an amputee who serves as the group’s ballistics specialist. In addition, she’s designed and built a powerful, yet deadly weapon that’s guaranteed to take out the government’s thugs – a “crutch gun”.
Rounding out the cast is Jake Lane Bassi as Darren, a civilian who, unlike the rest of the unit, never served as a soldier. Nonetheless, he witnessed unspeakable human abuses by the ruling totalitarian regime. Though essentially an “unpaid intern”, he strives to help Breyson and the rest of the team end the government’s iron grip on society.
The enormous popularity of sci-fi, along with Valenti’s desire to create a show that would feature realistic portrayals of female characters, the disabled, and other minorities not properly served or depicted through mainstream entertainment, was one of many factors that led her to create INTERROGATION. The end result was a blend of traditional sci-fi character types, but in a completely different and refreshing style.
“I know when I was building the team, I looked at some classic sci-fi groupings, and was like, ‘who are the archetypes?’ There’s always the mechanic character, there’s the wise-off, there’s the jokester, there’s the leader, and I just filled those roles with little girls instead of guys, typically,” Valenti adds.
Citing the popular FXX animated comedy ARCHER and its goofy, yet fun and ultimately heroic spy protagonist as her main inspiration for developing INTERROGATION’s team of rebels, Valenti sought to create characters who were both highly relatable, as well as incredibly badass.
“I wanted to write characters who love cursing and drinking and having sex, and think that their job is cool, and not have these characters that are over their shoulder. Women you really want to hang out with, who can also kill you.”
Girl power is a major theme throughout INTERROGATION, and so too are the deeper issues that the series’ characters face throughout each episode.
“Most of the show is just about characters who happen to be female, dealing with science fiction problems,” Valenti adds. “There are problems with morality, there are problems with what it means to be human in this world. I think they all at some point had PTSD, because they’re all warriors. They’re all soldiers in this war that’s going on.”
While Valenti, her cast and her crew had worked together on a series of films that they shot every 6 weeks, it was a fateful decision on their next project that would soon set in motion the development for what eventually became INTERROGATION: the web series. “The head director wanted to do a sci-fi, and so I knew the actors that we had in our group, and so I basically wrote for them a short little 8 page script that became episode 1,” she recalls.
The show’s cast also saw the potential for INTERROGATION as an episodic sci-fi series. “At the end of the shoot, everyone was like, ‘you know, we really like our characters. We think there’s more to this story, and there’s more to this world, let’s extend this into a web series’, and then, basically we just took what we had just shot and we became our own group, and just spent the last 8 months shooting that,” Valenti adds.
Having worked alongside the series’ main cast for a considerable length of time on those previous films, Valenti knew exactly who to turn to when the casting process began.
“It was a group of people we had been working with for about 6 months, so we just knew everybody’s strength,” she says. “We knew what everyone was best for. We wrote for them, and then we found our guest stars, sort of outside this group.”
As cameras began rolling on each episode, Valenti took a distinctively TV-like approach to producing INTERROGATION. With the scripts having long since been completed and ready for filming, Valenti knew that creating a quality product required much more than a typical web series production style.
“The production schedule was sort of more like a TV show than a typical web series, because web series are basically like some guy and his roommate get together. One person directs all the episodes, and one person stars all of them,” she says. “We made ours sort of more like a TV show, in that we had a different director every episode. I acted as the show runner, and that it all sort of went through the filter of me, and the editor.”
While INTERROGATION was produced on a shoestring budget, Valenti, Garcia and their crew went out of their way to give each episode a high level of production quality.
“We do stuff on location. I build all the props. We’ve got all these lights that blink, and buttons you press,” Valenti says. “We tried to create as much as a world as we could. It looks a little large scale for what usually ends up on the internet.”
Another key aspect that sets INTERROGATION apart from other sci-fi movies and TV series is its emphasis on diversity – both in its characters and in all aspects of the show’s production itself.
While Valenti and Garcia hope to produce a second season of the series, their goals of shattering the typical stereotypes that are commonplace in movies and TV series, plus achieving inclusivity for people of color, the disabled and other minorities is the biggest one of all.
“We really strive to try to include a healthy amount of diversity behind, and in front of, the camera,” Valenti says.
“We really strive to cast disabled actors playing disabled characters, and we want to do more of that, to a bigger extent. That would be the goal of season 2, doing more of the great, socially conscious stuff that we’ve been doing.” Garcia concurs. “We’re representing the full spectrum of humanity, and not just what you see on TV every day.”
Thanks to its realistic characters, and its strong emphasis on diversity and inclusiveness both on and off camera, INTERROGATION is bound to attract a wide range of sci-fi/action fans – especially those who like to fight the system. “Basically, if you want to see awesome people on screen, a female fronted cast kicking ass, and basically raging against government that is very, very flawed, then this is the show that you’re going to want to watch,” Valenti says.
Overall, the theme of INTERROGATION is one of rebellion, as depicted by 6 highly flawed, yet incredibly skilled people who join forces to achieve a universal goal – saving humanity. As described by Valenti: “These characters like being rebels. You can see through the series that they’re not always 100% good people, but I think that they sort of really enjoy their roles in being against the government, and being these forces of nature that can take people out.”
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/user/InterrogationWeb
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/InterrogationWebseries
Episode 1 of INTERROGATION can be viewed here:
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