HBO: Can you talk about your role? How many hats do you wear on a given day?



Halle Phillips: Because Westworld is such a large show with many moving pieces, it takes a village to produce it. Which is great, because it means a lot of responsibility and involvement in many aspects of production. We have to make sure communication between [co-creators] Jonah Nolan and Lisa Joy and the various departments are tight, especially since there are continuity traps everywhere. It’s making sure everyone is wearing their right costume, people have scars on their faces when they need to and just generally making sure what’s written on the page reflects what production is building.

I was bumped up to producer on this season of Westworld, which means a greater chunk of responsibilities across the life cycle of the show. In production, I focused a lot on casting. Aside from our many series regulars, we have to populate the world with a ton of day-players. That whole process involves running through auditions, helping make selections, making sure actors get through the costume department — and that was a small portion of it.

A lot of my job lies in preparation. In TV, you’re prepping an episode while you’re shooting an episode. It’s an overlapping series of production meetings and concept meetings. Then once the camera is rolling, I step back and the writer of the episode steps on set to control tone.

I also have a large role in the marketing campaign for Westworld. This isn’t necessarily new, per se — the writers and I had a large hand in establishing the website and all of the in-world twists and turns of the digital campaign — but with the second season, this has been expanded considerably as more Westworld finds itself in more places. I feel like the US Ambassador to Westworld. We at Kilter Films really make a point to make sure that all of the branching verticals for Westworld feel true to the show. We know people don’t want to be marketed to. I don’t want to be marketed to. So we don’t approach it that way. We want the world of Westworld to creep beyond the TV screen into the real world, and we want the experience of engaging with those aspects to be as meaningful as possible.