He is the creative mastermind behind hit comedy series like King of the Hill, the U.S. version of The Office and Parks and Recreation. These days, Greg Daniels continues to bring the memorable laughs to our screens as the creator, writer and executive producer of Upload.
Set in the near future, Upload, which is premiering its third season on Prime Video, revolves around breakthrough AI technology that can upload our consciousness to live on forever in a rather limitless virtual community known as Lakeview.
With the obvious parallels of advancing technologies within our real world today, what is most surprising is that Daniels began brainstorming this larger-than-life concept nearly three decades ago.
Daniels told me, “I was a writer at Saturday Night Live and I was walking around, trying to come up with ideas. I had this notion of if you could digitize your consciousness the way people can digitize their music libraries, and you would be able to sort of have no body, but you’d be in this virtual game world. I did more work on it during the last writers strike in 2008, and eventually, sold it in 2015.”
On Upload, characters between its real world and its virtual world are able to communicate and even physically interact with one another. Even with this being a fictional comedy series, there is no denying the relatable themes surrounding AI and the evolving ways we connect as human beings during these modern times with tech.
“I think that’s what’s so fun about the show,” Daniels said. “It’s got a lot of different elements – there’s romance, there’s mystery, there’s satire, there’s a lot of philosophizing. Because it’s set in the near future, we [writers] do all this research and trying to figure out what new technology is coming and preview it in the show with a comedic sort of angle of like it’s going to be sold to you as something great, but it’s not necessarily going to turn out great.”
Daniels went on to say that third seasons are usually his favorite seasons in a series. “It’s like everybody kind of knows what they’re doing, there’s enough room for the side characters to have their own stories and it’s still exciting. I’m very proud of this season. I think it’s a great one.”
Regarding the future of Upload beyond season three, Daniels said he definitely wants another season, but is uncertain if he and his creative team will have more Upload stories left to tell beyond that.
“I’m hoping that the writing staff will get together and we will generate something great for season four and then we’ll see where we are, and see if it needs another one or not. The people at Amazon are very supportive and this is the most-viewed half-hour show that they have, which is a good sign for being able to end the story on our own terms, I think. So far, it’s just really fun. I love the cast. The cast is so great. I am so lucky to have them.”
With the SAG-AFTRA strike continuing on, as no agreement has yet been made with the AMPTP, Daniels’ cast of actors (which include Andy Allo, Robbie Amell, Allegra Edwards, Kevin Bigley and Zainab Johnson) remain unable to promote season three with him.
Daniels said of him having to lead Upload’s third season publicity circuit, “I’m not the one that should be the face of the show. These [Upload actors] are so charming and attractive and funny. I was thinking Well, hopefully they’ll be done in time to promote this. We’re on a different schedule this year, where we’re dropping two episodes a week for four weeks. We’re starting Friday and I’m still holding out hope that SAG[-AFTRA] gets resolved before the end of the run, so they can get some of the attention that they deserve.”
Fortunately, with the WGA strike recently ending after 148 days of picketing and negotiations with the AMPTP, Daniels and his fellow writers have been able to return to work. So, I wondered what his thoughts are on getting to create again and his takeaways from the agreement made between the WGA and the AMPTP, which include a minimum weekly pay for writers increasing more than 12% over the new deal’s three-year duration and a major boost in residual payments.
“I was very proud of the writers for sticking together,” Daniels said. “It was a long, difficult strike and people really hung together, which is important if you’re in a union. I think we did a lot better than people thought we were going to do in the beginning, and hopefully, the companies will figure out that SAG[-AFTRA] deserves a good, fair shake, as well.” (I reached out to the AMPTP for comment, but have yet to receive a response.)
Beyond his focus today with Upload, there have also been talks reported that Daniels’ The Office series, which ran for nine seasons on NBC between 2005 and 2013, could see a reboot of sorts ahead. So, I decided to go right to the showrunner source to see what validity there is behind these much-talked about rumors.
Daniels said, “It was really interesting to see that one comment in Puck blow up like that, and I think it’s kind of cool in the sense that the fans still really care about the show, which I obviously do, too. When there’s something good to announce, I’ll announce.”
With the television landscape changing quite dramatically over the past ten years, with video streaming options expanding more and more, far beyond the traditional broadcast television ways that so many of us remember, I asked Daniels how these changes in our society and how we watch content have affected the types of comedies being created today and the trends we should expect to see in the business of it all moving forward.
Daniels said, “From my perspective, I feel like a lot of these new streaming companies came in and a little bit sold people this bill of goods, in the sense that they were like, ‘We have all this technology. We can make shows that are more efficient or whatever’ and I think they used up a lot of investor money, making tons and tons of shows. Then, when it sort of hit the fan and they had to actually make shows that returned on the investment, I think it’s going to go actually backwards and start to look a little bit more like ‘old TV,’ in the sense of there are going to be more ads and they probably won’t be able to fund these extremely lush productions that don’t necessarily hit a lot of viewers.”
Circling back to Upload, the series has become somewhat of a family affair for Daniels, as his son Owen not only writes with him on it, but he also plays AI Guy on the series. So, even after Daniels has already brought some of the most beloved comedies to our screens for decades, I wondered what he is enjoying most about his ongoing time and efforts on Upload.
Daniels said, “I feel like when The Office ended, I sort of had the perfect experience in show business and got to do everything I wanted and end on my own terms and had the best cast ever. It was really, really fun and I didn’t necessarily feel like I needed to do something else right away. My son was writing screenplays and I just kind of got back [in it]. We had one project together and just getting back to that joy of doing joke writing and comedy writing with a person, it’s really my first love.”
He added, “From the standpoint of having all the toys to play with on Upload, it’s really fun to have the visual effects and the great cinematographers that we work with and the resources. I’m really enjoying that. I love the cast and I have a lot of really great writers I like working with. I feel really blessed that I’m surrounded by these creative people and it’s still fun for me to work on it.”
With the expanding ways of AI remaining the central topic on Upload, I was curious what personal thoughts Daniels might have on AI within our real world today, and if he sees these latest advancements more of a blessing or something that we ultimately need to strive to control.
Daniels said, “Listen, I think that we’re not going to be putting it back in the box, you know? I think it’s out – and to me, the biggest issue is one of the storylines that we’re doing this year, where in our world, the AI Guy has outgrown being programmed by the engineers. Now, the machine is learning from people.”
He added about AI in our state of the world, “If we don’t worry about the morals and we give it huge amounts of data from Twitter or X or some place where there’s tons of misinformation and bigotry, then the AI is not going to be a great AI.”
As I concluded my conversation with Daniels, I left him with one final question – Is Lakeview and this fictional AI universe seen on Upload actually not so far off from what our real world could soon achieve?
Daniels said, “I do feel like we’re getting closer. It seems very hard still because I don’t think we know a tremendous amount of how the brain works.” He continued, “Certainly, the technology raises a lot of questions. It could be used to solve climate problems and invent new drugs. Let’s hope that’s what it’s used for, but if you look at human history, it will probably also be used for a lot of selfish, crappy things.”
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