‘Command Z’: Steven Soderbergh, Kurt Andersen Explain Secret Series

SPOILER ALERT: This interview discusses the events of “Command Z,” now available to purchase on its official website.

AI anxieties are only getting higher. Global temperatures are skyrocketing. Billionaires are challenging each other to mixed martial arts duels. Like everybody else, Steven Soderbergh and Kurt Andersen are wondering how to hit “undo” on the trajectory of civilization.

Available to purchase for $8 on its own official website, Soderbergh and Andersen’s “Command Z” begins in the year 2053. The story follows a trio of jumpsuit-sporting time-travelers (Chloe Radcliffe, Roy Wood Jr., and JJ Maley), who influence the minds of the inhabitants of 2023 to nudge the world’s most powerful individuals into pumping the brakes on their world-dooming habits. The wisecracking coworkers are employed by deceased billionaire Kerning Fealty (Michael Cera) — or, at least an eldritch hologram AI with his likeness that doesn’t exactly scream collective interests. Sound familiar?

The conspicuous timing for the themes of “Command Z” aren’t lost on executive producer and writer Andersen, whose 2020 book “Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History” explores how the wealthiest people in the U.S. played a self-serving long-game over the past 50 years to hoard money and power. Soderbergh contacted the journalist and author after reading “Evil Geniuses”; in its end credits, “Command Z” cites itself as being “suggested by” the book.

“With the release, the climate cooperated in terms of being unequivocally weird and terrible right now,” Andersen says, speaking to Variety on a video call. “The two biggest tech billionaires in America — Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk — continue to be like characters in a satire. We lucked out.”

Indeed, the pair of CEOs — who both rank among the top seven wealthiest individuals in the world, per Forbes — have challenged one another to a “cage match.” Perhaps it’s all a social media stunt, but the rivalry has attracted the involvement of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and rumors of the Colosseum in Rome as a potential venue.

“This is the death of metaphor,” says Soderbergh, who directed all eight episodes of the series. “I don’t know how else to describe this upcoming event if it takes place. Creative people should be terrified.”

Even if metaphors do wind up extinct, it’d be difficult to imagine Soderbergh stumped on how to continue telling stories. After a college try at filmmaking retirement, the Oscar-winning director is now more prolific than ever. The romantic dance fantasia “Magic Mike’s Last Dance” hit theaters in February, putting a cap on the Channing Tatum trilogy he started over a decade ago. And just this week, Max dropped the finale of “Full Circle,” a suspense series that Soderbergh helmed each episode of.

Now, there’s “Command Z” — a project that the public didn’t even know existed more than two weeks ago. Shot last summer, the self-financed production largely pulled from New York talent and kept things hush-hush through filming. In fact, Soderbergh played it so close to the chest that he shot in his own residence: the spiral staircase that serves as the climbing entrance into the time-travelers’ workplace can be seen behind the director during his Zoom with Variety.

Before releasing “Command Z” online, the series pulled back the curtain with a surprise July 16 screening at the Metrograph cinema in New York. After the theater’s online ticketing system recovered from crashing, admissions were sold out within 20 minutes. The event also featured a Q&A with Congressman Maxwell Frost of Florida, previously the national organizing director for the student-led gun control advocacy group March for Our Lives. He’s the first member of Generation Z to be elected to Congress.

“He really did a great job of demystifying the process of getting politically engaged,” Soderbergh says. “Our default mode now — generally, in this country — is overwhelmed… Just pick one thing that you’re interested in and want to participate in. Of the myriad problems that we’re all confronting, you don’t have to deal with all of them. If you just pick one and do something, that’s fantastic.”

That’s the structuring sentiment of “Command Z,” which follows its characters tackling one issue at a time in comic vignettes. Through a brisk 96 minutes, the series dips its toes into mega-churches, energy bills and corporate greed. That philosophy of improving the world one issue at a time is also key to the series’ release — all proceeds are being donated to Children’s Aid and Boston University Center for Antiracist Research.

During their first interview together, Soderbergh and Andersen discuss keeping “Command Z” a secret, their original plans to distribute the project on TikTok and whether it matters if billionaires are good people, as long as they’re not destroying the world.

Promoting “Full Circle,” Steven, you shared that you had two projects on the horizon — one a comedy. Was this that?

STEVEN SODERBERGH: No! That’s next spring, I hope. This was something that I kept holstered as long as possible and tried to be schtum about the whole thing. I’m glad, ultimately, that it worked out this way. It fits the intention.

How did you two decide on an independent online release being the appropriate distribution plan for this project?

SODERBERGH: As we looked at it in something approaching its finished form, it was obvious to us that this was not a movie and not a series, in the traditional sense. Having a traditional buyer or brand present didn’t seem perfectly aligned with our intentions. That started to bug us — the idea of a giant company’s logo on this thing.

KURT ANDERSEN: I love “Black Mirror.” But in this most recent season, there’s an episode about a Netflix-like company being evil. I guess that’s kind of funny as triple-coated irony, but we have this political message.

And yet, the series is called “Command Z” — though maybe you’re both just used to Macbooks.

SODERBERGH: I think so. The good news is that that giant corporation has enough of a footprint that it’s generally understood. Like Kleenex.

Steven, in your Reddit AMA promoting the series, you shared that it was originally shot as a group of videos intended for release on TikTok. Were you coming into that medium as outsiders?

SODERBERGH: Yeah. Ultimately, I felt that I was putting on the clothes of a young person that I can’t really pull off. There’s a very specific grammar to that world that we were trying to ape. You’ve got to be really fluent to make sure those things land and have the immediate reaction that allows them to survive in the TikTok ecosystem.

ANDERSEN: There are many TikToks that I think are brilliant, but writing one-minute stories is certainly not my strong suit.

SODERBERGH: There are actually a couple of images in the series that are from the TikTok videos that we shot. You see Mike Birbiglia briefly, and a couple other people. Those were repurposed visual material.

ANDERSEN: I love that they’re there as part of the general speedy clutter of the mediascape of 2053. Chef’s kiss.

There’s something very disheartening about imagining what an internet post in the future would like.

SODERBERGH: Did you see that picture when the AI text-to-image thing first came out? Somebody said, “Show me the last selfie ever taken.” You ever seen that image? It was truly disturbing.

Were these videos supposed to be TikToks made by characters in the series? Or was the show itself edited and formatted for TikTok?  

SODERBERGH: It was things made by these characters. We described them as visual leaflets that were dropped from the future.

ANDERSEN: To be clear, we didn’t say it was TikTok. We were going to put them on TikTok.

SODERBERGH: What we gained from that first iteration was what we didn’t want to do — which is often as important as figuring out what you do want to do. It also established a rapport that would serve us. It’s not always happy when you’ve done something and you throw that away, but I’ve been through enough to know that when you’ve got to do that you’ve got to do it.

ANDERSEN: It’s not as though we made a hundred of them. Maybe I just put a happy spin on things, but I don’t even think of it as a failure. You workshop it. It was an indispensable phase.

I imagine that’s the advantage of being a self-financed production.

SODERBERGH: Under normal circumstances, you’d be burning a lot of calories trying to explain to people what you’re doing or what you’re not doing. It’s why I continue to self-produce and produce things for other filmmakers, where I’m protecting them from having those conversations. The danger­ of this type of production is creating an environment that turns into an echo chamber. I try to surround myself with people who make that impossible. Of course, there are days where I go, “Wow, can people stop telling me the truth for 10 minutes?” But having a brain trust in which people can speak frankly and stress-test ideas — that’s how you get to the good stuff.

Would you two consider making more episodes?

SODERBERGH: My gut reaction is that if we were going to continue these ideas that we’d probably try to find a new context. Still, I would hope for humorous. Humor is a wonderful delivery system.

One of my favorite running jokes in the series is the recommendations for additional viewing that appear at the end of each episode. “For more information about dogs, watch ‘Hotel for Dogs.’” “For more information about Wall Street, watch ‘Wall Street.’”

SODERBERGH: That was a late addition. They needed some kind of button. They’re half-serious.

ANDERSEN: I love them so much. At first, I saw them and went, “Really?” But I learned to trust the master. The Metrograph screening was interesting; they got laughs. There was talk about a serious, two-minute “to learn more” thing about these various issues. I’m not glad we didn’t do that, but I love that we did what we did. It’s not like, “Oh, now comes the homework part.”

SODERBERGH: There was an article today about the fact that scientists are becoming convinced that the Atlantic Ocean’s currents are going to be completely altered, as is theorized in “The Day After Tomorrow,” which is one of the films that we urge people toward. It’s funny, but also we’re kind of onto something.

ANDERSEN: There’s a film called “Contagion.” I don’t know if you’re aware of it.

Yeah, I lived it. I still see conspiracy theorists like Jude Law’s character online.

SODERBERGH: That was a lack of imagination on our part. Jude Law’s character was just this one note in a chord — we never would’ve imagined that he would be the President of the United States.

ANDERSEN: The book I wrote, “Fantasyland,” was written before Trump was nominated or elected. I thought, “Is anybody really going to get this? Am I overdoing it by calling the Republican Party the fantasy party?” Well, no – that’s the answer.

It’s about trusting your ability to read the room.

SODERBERGH: You’ve got to have your antenna up. One of the reasons I initially reached out to Kurt was that if I’m having this idea, somebody else is having this idea. I’m not under the illusion that I think of things first; what I can do is act quickly and decisively. All these themes are out there being addressed. Is there a new wrapping that we can put around them to make it distinct?

The series ends on a bit of a sick punchline. The AI incarnation of Kerning Fealty orders one of the time-travelers to inhabit the 2023 Fealty’s body to help him get laid. The story concludes with a reveal that this 2023 Fealty sent this group of employees into the future, wiping their memories in the process. It’s a revelation that underlines that this group’s ability to improve the world was only possible because of the technological apparatus and selfish intentions of their boss.

ANDERSEN: Is that true though? The rich and powerful do control much of technology. Certainly, they shouldn’t. But Kerning, as some billionaires do, tries to do a few good things to assuage his guilt… It’s not that only wealth allows them to do good things. In our system, where the very wealthy exist — and will no doubt continue to exist — it’s better that they should do good. And let’s not leave all the good up to them. In the end, all three team members basically say “Fuck you, billionaires! We can’t depend on you.”

Why don’t you think there are billionaires who are interested in devoting their resources to resolve the world’s most obvious issues?

ANDERSEN: Well, there’s George Soros. Bill Gates, you could argue has devoted his life and billions to improving the world.

SODERBERGH: George Soros has tried to dedicate himself to being on the right side of social and progressive issues. As a result, his life is hell. The lives of his family are hell. Nobody wants to withstand this jet exhaust that happens when you put yourself out in front. There used to be an argument in the show that got cut. It was about whether someone’s intentions really matter. I certainly fall on the side of it being past the point where we have the time to parse people’s intentions. We need to pay attention to what they actually do, and hold them to account for that. I don’t care if they’re doing it for a tax break or to get laid — as long as they’re doing something helpful.

Even if they’re openly courting a positive brand for the history books.

ANDERSEN: Who isn’t? I grade everything in the world on a curve.

SODERBERGH: There’s no reason anymore to be ashamed of one’s activist motives. We did this thing that’s designed to get people activated in some way. We’ve got to start doing stuff. The people pushing shit in the wrong direction aren’t ashamed about what they’re doing.

ANDERSEN: They’re the ones that have been saying for 20 years, “We have a sense of humor.”

[Andersen begins gesticulating his arms.]

“Duh-duh-buh! Liberals, they have no sense of humor!” We’ll fight that battle.

Was that a Trump impression, Kurt?

ANDERSEN: No. That’s just an asshole impression.

This interview has been edited and condensed. The conversation with Kurt Andersen was organized by contacting him directly, in accordance with WGA strike rules.