Search for Solace

In the midst of a year-long pandemic that left people feeling isolated and disconnected, writer–director David Weil decided to do something about it.

He created Solos, a seven-part anthology of deeply moving one-act meditations on the human condition, which dropped in full on May 21 on Amazon Prime Video.

"I want Solos to be that treat at the end of the night — that beautiful short story you watch to help you reconnect, whether to the world, your loved ones or to yourself," Weil says. Under his overall deal at Amazon Studios, Weil created and executive-produced the series Hunters. Solos marks his directorial debut; he directed three of the seven episodes and wrote four.

"I've always wanted to do a series of monologues or duologues — something that can return us to the primal way we began to hear stories," Weil says. He recalls formative childhood experiences like "hearing my brother tell ghost stories around a campfire, or my grandmother tell stories about her life around the kitchen table."

The cast features Oscar winners Morgan Freeman, Anne Hathaway and Helen Mirren, as well as Constance Wu (Fresh Off the Boat), Anthony Mackie (Falcon in the MCU), Nicole Beharie (Sleepy Hollow), Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) and Emmy winner Uzo Aduba (Mrs. America). Six of the seven episodes are monologues; Freeman and Stevens star in the lone duologue.

The stories portray characters at various ages and at pivotal life junctures, each grappling with self-discoveries that are by turns transformational and life-altering. Each is set at an unspecified time in the future; all are tinged with sci-fi elements, especially technology, which can serve as friend or foe.

"The wonderful thing about future tales is that it gives us the freedom and opportunity to reflect on our realities of the moment," Weil says. "And it's less about what the technology is and more about, what are the human emotions generated by these pieces of technology and futurism?"

Each piece is titled by the character's name and begins with Freeman reciting a one-line statement. In "Tom," Mackie plays two roles in a poignant story that posits, "Imagine meeting yourself — who would you see?" In "Jenny," Wu plumbs serious emotional depths with the theme, "Do you wish you could take back the worst day of your life?"

In "Leah," Hathaway plays "a genius scientist trying to travel to the future, and we discover what's motivating her," Weil says. "Nera," starring Beharie, is "about a pregnant woman alone in a cabin with a child, but the child isn't what he seems."

From both a script and directorial standpoint, the series' biggest challenge was how to maintain audience interest in one location and one character who speaks for 30 minutes. "Every few pages there had to be twists and turns — not plot twists necessarily, but emotional twists, to ensure that audiences were excited and energized and didn't know what was coming next," Weil explains.

Weil, who worked closely with veteran director of photography William Rexer, compares his experience on Solos to a master class in directing. In "Sasha," the most pandemic-relevant episode, Aduba plays a woman who's spent 20 years inside an idyllic "safe" house in the woods; it's a shelter provided by the government as protection from a deadly virus.

"Every inch and iota of that set told a story," Weil notes. "It gave me the freedom to explore all the different angles — up close to get inside Sasha's psychology, her emotions and conflicts, and great wide shots to enforce her loneliness and solitude."

"Peg," the episode most personally resonant to Weil, finds Mirren on a celestial adventure; her only companion is the disembodied voice of the spaceship's computer system, which gently prods her to revisit key moments of her life. "There's something very universal about, what if we could go back in our lives and change something — would we, and what would it be?" he observes.

"I look at Peg, and I think about my mother and my grandmother and the sacrifices and choices they made.... Peg is a woman discovering the beauty and power of herself." Sam Taylor-Johnson, an executive producer and also the director of "Peg," marvels at Mirren's ability to convey emotion wordlessly.

"As soon as you turn the camera on her, you can't take your eyes off her," she says. "Every little arch of her eyebrows, every twinge of her eyelash told a bigger story."

The series was filmed in southern California, at Manhattan Beach Studios, under strict Covid-19 guidelines. Directors had one day of rehearsal built into a four-day shoot. Taylor-Johnson and Mirren spent a socially distanced day in the director's garden, breaking down the character of Peg.

"We didn't want it to be dour and unhappy," Taylor-Johnson says. "We wanted it to feel much more hopeful and positive, even though some of the things she says are heartbreaking and crushing."

Mirren's entire monologue was first shot in one take, to gauge the flow of performance and determine how to build shots. They repeated the process three times on each shoot day. "Then we'd work around cherry-picking which moments we'd need to do as separate pieces," the director recalls.

Taylor-Johnson also directed the final episode, "Stuart," in which Freeman and Stevens portray characters who meet on a beach in the future. "You have one character in his later years, the other who's much younger, and there's a reckoning within each of them," the director says. "We chose not to rehearse; it felt very much like a piece of theater." As with Mirren, the director found working with Freeman a revelation.

"Having Morgan Freeman is kind of mind-blowing. To work with him on something so intensely emotional, to absorb his face — to be able to keep looking into his eyes for extended periods of time and not cut away — felt like the most beautiful luxury."

Weil is proud of the result. "I think people will feel the intimacy and nuance of these stories and feel like they've met these characters one-on-one in real life, and are hearing them tell these stories around a kitchen table or campfire."

The executive producers of Solos also include Laura Lancaster; the writers also comprise Bekka Bowling, Tori Sampson and Stacy Osei-Kuffour; also directing were Zach Braff and Tiffany Johnson.

This article originally appeared in emmy magazine, Issue No. 5, 2021