re: Boardwalk Empire Season 3, Episode 12 Finale Thread: Margate Sands

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How did you decide not to show the failed hit, and simply have Owen entering the steam baths, and the next we see him, he's in a box?

We originally were going to show the actual hit gone wrong inside the steam baths. This was just a bizarre, fortuitous mistake that happened. The day we were going to shoot the steam baths, there was a problem with the location. It was a very old building in Brooklyn, and a plaster rosetta that weighed about 30 pounds in the vaulted ceiling, fell down and crashed about three feet from a crewmember. We had already shot the lobby scene and pulled the plug and thought, "We've got to rethink this," and in the discussions after this, I think it was Tim Van Patten who said, 'Do we really need to see this? Wouldn't it be better if we didn't see it?" And I thought about it and decided to wait to get the cut of the episode back to decide, and it was so much more powerful without knowing in advance, and we ended up leaving it. You almost forget in the episode, 'Oh, right, Owen's off doing that.' So many people were surprised he was in the crate. That episode on the set made the episode a little better, and probably saved us a little money.

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Well, that's sort of what happened. The bigger question is season 4. We're already working on that. There are ways to integrate her character back into Nucky's world. So stay tuned for next September. It is a challenge. It's very similar to the challenge of writing Carmela Soprano. Realistically, this is an intelligent woman who is questioning what she's doing with this brute — why wouldn't she just leave? Psychologically, sometimes people just stick in their situation even if it's bad for them. In the case of Carmela, it was increasingly challenging to have her complaining and have her in danger, and then the same thing with Margaret. You would think, "Just pack up and go." Then they're off your series, of course. But people do stay in relationships for all kinds of reasons. This season was a journey for Margaret, seeing the woman fly away in the plane, asking what's her journey, and she finds a cause that's worthy of her time and ambition

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That remains to be seen in season 4. All of what you've said is true: he's a fan favorite, he's a favorite of ours. You do want to see more of him, you do want to see him and Nucky together, and we're well aware of that, and possibly that's what'll happen in season 4

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Does Gillian die from the heroin overdose?
No. You're not the first person to ask me that. She does not.

So if she's not dead, then I imagine she is not going to be happy to find that her grandson has been taken from her.
Probably not.

That certainly could have been an easy way to kill her off. Why did you decide not to?
I guess we just felt there was more story to tell.

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Not in terms of story points, like how Rothstein died and the basic circumstances surrounding it. Lucky's arrest is a good example. He did get arrested, he did give up his own heroin to get himself out. I took those basic facts and said, "What happened when they gave up the heroin? Who were those cops who arrested him? Were they dirty or clean?" Those were the things I played with in terms of the fiction of it. But the general timeline and historical points of their lives, I won't change. Luciano was arested in 1923 on a drug charge. If we were in that zone in our time frame, it had to happen. I won't ignore it.

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Yeah, it actually happened. This is all based on a real incident in, I think, the Atlantic Highlands. It was basically a gang of bootleggers who realized this was a small Methodist town, quiet little place where nobody paid attention to anything, and it had its own beach access to the ocean. The whole thing culminated in a giant gun battle on the beach on, I believe, July 4, 1923, I believe in the middle of the day, with guys running into water with machine guns. That was the inspiration for this. We thought it was a great, forgotten historical story and we thought it would be fun to do.

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We originally were going to show the actual hit gone wrong inside the steam baths. This was just a bizarre, fortuitous mistake that happened. The day we were going to shoot the steam baths, there was a problem with the location. It was a very old building in Brooklyn, and a plaster rosetta that weighed about 30 pounds in the vaulted ceiling, fell down and crashed about three feet from a crewmember. We had already shot the lobby scene and pulled the plug and thought, "We've got to rethink this," and in the discussions after this, I think it was Tim Van Patten who said, 'Do we really need to see this? Wouldn't it be better if we didn't see it?" And I thought about it and decided to wait to get the cut of the episode back to decide, and it was so much more powerful without knowing in advance, and we ended up leaving it. You almost forget in the episode, 'Oh, right, Owen's off doing that.' So many people were surprised he was in the crate. That episode on the set made the episode a little better, and probably saved us a little money

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Yes. Extroadinarily dissapointing to me. The character is so boring to me that I have been fast forwarding through her scenes lately. I cringe every time she comes onscreen.

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