In the Booth: Lesley Kinzel & Emily Boucher
In the Booth is a new blog series where we go behind the scenes and chat with the folks that make How it Ends. We asked our team a series of questions and let them choose which resonated most, so expect to see some variance in these features. Join us as the creators, cast, and crew members share their experience working on the show. Get ready to meet our talented team and maybe even hear a few secrets behind its gripping conclusion!
Please note that some answers may contain spoilers for How it Ends Season 3, so read at your own risk.
Lesley Kinzel and Emily Boucher are two crew members that have special roles in How it Ends-and our hearts! Lesley, a long-time media darling and writer on MST3K, acted as a sounding board for the show's first season. Emily is our Artist-in-Residence, as she is the maker behind all of our physical props (yes, a podcast that has physical, in-canon artifacts.) that bring characters into the real world.
Lesley, as she often is in most settings, is a veritable font of knowledge and provided valuable feedback when we were plotting out our overall story. As women/non-binary creators, jumping headfirst into a male-dominated medium (or, hell, any medium at all) often creates unhelpful imposter syndrome thoughts. Lesley was the person we went to when that annoyance began to rear its ugly head. She was a huge part of why we kept going when we hit tough moments and for that we are forever grateful.
In How it Ends, Nolan is known to be a multidisciplinary artist, tinkerer, nature lover, and all around maker. If you follow Micah on Instagram (@zorroyoso), you most certainly have seen Emily's work. If you haven't you can find a sneak peek of it here. Since the show has a hyper-meta approach to its story, we asked Emily to help bring some Nolan's best attributes to life. She's provided still life and figure drawings, sketches, and ink shape studies. But there is one artifact that is most important to Nolan-and to us. His journal. You can find photographs of Nolan's journal on Micah's instagram. Emily's creative approach to aging a brand new book, filling it with sketches of flora and fauna, plans for furniture builds, and even some of young Micah's attempts at being an artist-just like her dad-made for an authentic, beautiful look inside Nolan's mind.
Lesley, you're a veteran in the journalism and media industries and you've been on plenty of sets before and Emily, you’re an artist that does… everything. (Yes, she’s talented like that.) What was unique about working on a project like How it Ends?
Lesley Kinzel
Creative Consultant
Emily: Something I learned by being connected to the project is the power of working with good people. I was lucky enough to have been brought into a production meeting for a preview of Season 2's plot structure. I was absolutely amazed not only at the level of detail that had been considered, but also at the energy in the room as they told their story. Passion and love were palpable. It was such a great day; I feel like I left the room glowing with energy! I'm a sucker for community, and this group of creatives has an incredible amount of passion, creativity, and empathy-- there's no way I was going to say no! Plus, it was most fun to see my work attributed to one of the show characters. It made me feel... sneaky... ;)
Lesley: Right, I've worked in media for a long time but this was my first audio drama. Ultimately, dedicated people who really want to make their own story and share it with the world will find a way to do so, and that's kinda inspirational. The coolest part of being able to be a part of production on any show is having the opportunity to hear multiple takes for a certain bit of material.
The different approaches are a reminder that narrative media is a collaboration between writers, performers, and directors, and sometimes you may expect a performer to deliver a line in one way, and then they surprise you and take it in a whole other direction. Sometimes it's a good direction and sometimes not, but getting to see all those varieties is really neat. Also, being able to literally see the performers acting is also wild, because they do act physically and facially, even if no one not in the room ever sees it.
Emily Boucher
Artist-in-Residence
Emily, your role in How it Ends is an untraditional one for a podcast. Nolan’s life remains a mystery for the majority of the series, as the audience only knows what Micah and a couple other folks can remember.
You were tasked to step beyond that and create artifacts that he actually “owned,” that would enhance the narrative but never reveal too much. Can you tell us how you approached Nolan's art?
Creating Nolan's journals was wildly fun. I'd always been an artistic kid and was recognized at a very early age for having skills beyond my age group. I was perpetually the "class artist" by default, but as a nervous kid that translated into a pressure to always be "the best" at art in any and every context. I felt threatened by the idea of "failing" at art and became perfectionistic about it. In middle and high school, I dabbled in acting. Pretending to be someone else felt like an exciting and freeing permission slip out of my anxiety and into my feelings, but I didn't pursue it. I studied art in college and, through doing so, explored and began healing my relationship to art-making. Making Nolan's journals felt similar to how I felt when I tried acting as a kid. It was a container to make choices outside of my identity: permission to put on a disguise and play.
Micah and Stephanie described Nolan to me as the parent figure largely by emphasizing Micah's foggy childhood memories of him, so I wanted to make artifacts that helped Micah feel seen and celebrated by her father so she could appreciate his care. When filling the pages with Nolan's notes, I thought a lot about my own childhood experiences with my uncle and my father, a carpenter and a self-taught mechanical engineer respectively. Nolan's careful pattern-detecting observation skills, mathematically-wired mind, love for nature, big heart, and love for his daughter reminded me of these men from my life.
I remember recalling that my uncle used to help split firewood in my backyard for our wood stove before the winter cold rolled in every year. One year I remember my uncle calling me over and teaching me the different varieties of trees that the logs had come from based on how the split wood smelled. He would slice a log in half with an axe (impressive in itself to a young kid) and then walk me through the different notes in the scents from one log to the other. It felt like magic to be using my nose to investigate information so hidden in plain sight. I also recalled when my dad had drawn my sister and the neighborhood kids a treasure map of our backyards. He had stained the paper with coffee and ketchup and singed the edges with his cigarette before burying it under a cinderblock for us to find.
My dad had an impressive way of loving people: almost like a kid himself, he lived his life inventing ways to love people. I imagined Nolan having the same bright, wild, and endless compassion. There's a popular quote, by an artist I love, that I thought about as I prepared figure drawings and made small sketches.
“Drawing is looking, and looking is loving.”
I thought about that quote, and everything I was making, and asked myself: How would someone, who automatically loves, draw this?
Separately, making the scribbles and drawings in the journals in young Micah's hand was outlandishly freeing. Sometimes I made marks with my left hand to try to embrace the fun of "making a mark" and release my adult intentions of "making a symbol." It sometimes felt like giggling in light-up sneakers, and at other times felt like the memory of being knee-high and reaching up to hug my dad.
Have you considered making new pieces for the show? If so, what are some of your ideas?
I think I'd make something for the show that was created by young Micah. Maybe something like a cardboard and construction paper park ranger ID badge-something that she may have made as a way to be more like her dad. Or a half-finished, hand-made wildlife encyclopedia. Picture a lot of papers folded in half and stapled like a book that described in her little kid voice how to stay safe in the forest and identify animals and plants. And if it was something to symbolize her, I'd hand-make stuffed toy fox. She's Kit, after all.
- You can view Nolan’s journal and other artwork in this gallery.
Lesley, like Chris, you've voiced a few background characters during How it Ends Seasons 1&2. Is voice acting something you've been interested in?
No! I am not a performer -- I honestly kind of hate performing because I am just not capable of being present in the scene and I overthink every word as I am speaking it. Honestly I think my willingness to even do bit parts is evidence of how great this drama is, since it actually got me to participate as an actor.
Come on... Let's be honest, tell us how you really feel about Shirley?
I feel like these exchanges were super awkward -- I blame my own performance anxiety for some of that -- but also it felt like they SHOULD be sort of socially strained and weird. It's a bizarre situation. I imagined Shirley thinking "why on earth would this east coast city person come all the way to Wyoming to drink a cup of coffee and ask a few questions?" and went from there. It helped that I'd actually been to Devil's Tower/Bear Lodge not long before we did these scenes.
Do you think your voiced characters are as they appear? Just in the background and appearing for a quick plot delivery? Or do you think they have secrets? Maybe there’s more than meets the eye… the ear? Whatever, you know what we mean. Feel free to speculate.
Ehhhh... I'm a writer, so if you give me a page with only a name and a couple other words on it, I'm going to fill in the rest of the space myself. I think Shirley chooses to live in Wyoming because she loves the space of it, this massive landscape, but also the isolation. I think she's got a secret in her past that keeps her nervous. Maybe she poisoned a husband, or embezzled millions of dollars. Whatever she did, she had her reasons.
What was your biggest takeaway from being a part of How it Ends from the beginning?
Emily: Micah and Stephanie have a forward-thinking approach to equity and voice for this collaborative project. I've found it wildly inspiring to be able to watch them organize and orchestrate this work! I'm so grateful!
Lesley: I love being a part of small productions that come from the heart, and are fired by a deep need to tell a story. Watching the story unfold behind the scenes and then seeing it told in the podcast was really special.
Tell us about a moment during production that stands out in your mind who you think is the funniest person on the show.
(We’re going to get to the bottom of this one eventually!)
Lesley: The memory that stands out the most is recording the window slapping scene -- it seemed funny on paper, but then in actual production, it was surprisingly intense and kind of scary even to be a part of, which I think came through in the episode. As for the funniest person? Impossible answer, everyone on the show is brilliantly witty and hilarious.
Real quick, as a final thought: Favorite character or line of dialogue?
Emily: Elia because I am always enchanted by her determination. She's such a force!
Lesley: Every mention of GORP.