The Big Picture

“Upload” is a popular series on Prime Video that explores the afterlife in a digital world. Season 3 introduces new storylines and challenges for the characters, including the existence of two versions of Nathan (played by Robbie Amell). Creator Greg Daniels is optimistic about a Season 4 and discusses the impact of AI on jobs and entertainment.

First premiering on Prime Video in 2020, Upload is creator Greg Daniel’s exploration of the afterlife in a future where technology allows us to upload our consciousness after death to a digital world known as Lakeview. After two successful seasons as Prime’s “number one most-viewed half-hour show,” the series was renewed for a Season 3 that’s now available to stream. Ahead of its release, Collider’s Steve Weintraub spoke with Daniels about returning to the show after Season 2 was cut short by a pandemic, and how they’re approaching a possible Season 4 post the WGA strike and in the midst of the ongoing SAG strike.

In Season 2, Nathan (played by Robbie Amell) discovered some unhappy truths about his not-so-natural death. Now, dealing with that revelation as well as learning that his girlfriend, Ingrid (Allegra Edwards), is merely visiting Lakeview, Ingrid regenerates Nathan’s body in the real world while Nora (Andy Allo) and the Ludds drop his consciousness into his body, resurrecting him. Meanwhile, back in Lakeview, a new employee (Mackenzie Cardwell) restores Nathan, which means there are now two of him co-existing, albeit on different planes.

During their interview, which you can watch in the video above or read below, Daniels talks about his constant involvement with the series and why he didn’t direct for Season 3. He discusses whether they’ve planned ahead for a Season 4, when they could possibly begin shooting, and always leaving room in the story for more. He weighs in on The Office reboot rumors, which Nathan he believes is alive, and how the rise of AI within the industry could affect jobs and the content we watch.

COLLIDER: Congrats on Season 3. You know how much of a fan I am of this show, and it doesn’t slow down.

GREG DANIELS: Thank you so much. Yeah, I think it’s a great season. I love Season 3’s in general. I just think that, especially for character comedy, getting the other members of the ensemble to have enough screen time over the first couple of years where you totally like everybody involved and you understand where they’re funny and the cast fire on all cylinders. It’s just a good season, I think.

Image via Prime Video

Actually, what do you want to tell people about Season 3?

DANIELS: Well, I think that it’s got some cool, unique things in the sense that Nathan has been downloaded into the Real World, and he’s reunited with Nora, or united for the first time. Their relationship was very sort of digital, and now it’s real, and that’s got its own interesting wrinkles. Because he’s missing from the virtual world, the people at Horizon, the low-level employees, kind of panic, and they reboot him in the digital world from a backup copy that was made a few months earlier. So there’s a second Nathan now in the digital world with memories the same as the first up until a point, and then they stop. So, he’s unaware of a lot of things that happened at the end of Season 2. So that’s kind of an interesting scenario for the romance stories of all the different characters that now there are two of these guys, although they’re slightly different, and they’re just starting to diverge more and more.

And comedy ensues.

DANIELS: Comedy ensues, yes.

So Season 3 is eight episodes, which is different than Season 1 and Season 2. Was eight episodes a result of story or because Prime Video said, “We would like eight episodes?”

DANIELS: Well, Season 2 was shot, really, in the middle of the pandemic. We were prepared to go eight episodes, and then things started to get really bad in Vancouver, so we were like, “We have seven great episodes. Let’s stop now.” Eight is a more normal season, I think, for these kinds of shows, and they’re very jam-packed. Some of them have four or five storylines. I definitely feel this desire to put as much entertainment as I can because we’ve been thinking about the show for like a year and a half in between seasons, so you really wanna pack in a lot of fun and all the different genres, and make sure everything is hit.

Without spoilers, Season 3 ends in a way that you want Season 4 tomorrow. When you were writing the end of Season 3, was there ever a thought of wrapping things up, or was Prime Video saying, “You’re gonna probably get a Season 4. Let’s keep it going?”

DANIELS: Yeah, more like the second one. We’re actually the number one most-viewed half-hour show on Prime Video, so it’s kind of cool. They’re supportive of the show, and I’m pretty optimistic that we’re starting up Season 4 soon. So, hopefully. I wouldn’t want to end the show on such a note, it’d be a really incomplete feeling.

One of the things that I really liked is that Season 3, to me, feels like it’s wrapping up a lot of storylines that were set up in the first two and opening the door on a whole other thing. Is that the way you guys feel about it as well?

DANIELS: Well, I mean, I think it’s really what you do when you’re telling stories, right? You can’t tease people forever that nothing’s gonna happen. Something has to happen, but you don’t want to have this feeling of closure until you’re ready to close, right? So, you’re always starting up new, intriguing unanswered questions. If you’re going to close some things down, they should turn into something else that’s interesting. I think that if you care about the characters, which was always a big, important thing for me, then you’re gonna care about their adventures and what happens to them if it matters to them, you know? So, there’s still a lot that’s unanswered in the show. Then, obviously, that’s like story structure stuff, but on the level of fun and moment-to-moment, we’re trying to always have good jokes, good surprises, cool moments.

Do you know when you get to the end of Season 3 where Season 4 is gonna go or is that a thing that you think about once Season 4 starts being written?

DANIELS: Well, I’ve got a few ideas, but, I mean, the thing that’s fun about having a traditional television show with a room of writers and the time devoted to weeks and weeks of discussing possible stories and coming up with things is you wanna let that process happen. When I sold the show back in, like, 2015, I had two seasons worked out, but it was before casting anybody. When you cast people, you realize, “Oh my gosh, this person is hilarious.” Like for instance, Zainab [Johnson] was not a big character, you know, Aleesha, in my initial pitch out, but I just love watching her, so she’s become a bigger and bigger character. In Season 3, there’s a big storyline of Aleesha becoming responsible for taking the machine, learning AI, and giving it some kind of humanity and value system. So, that’s a really fun arc for her this season, and pretty timely, I think.

Image via Prime Video

Before the writers’ strike happened, had you guys been working on Season 4, or now you’re working on it?

DANIELS: We were supposed to be starting Season 4 in May. We had to not start the Season 4 writers’ room because of the strike, but, you know, everybody made sacrifices.

I’m just wondering, as a fan of the show, I’m just doing the math of, “Okay, well if the actors’ strike gets resolved this year, I guess they could be filming early next year,” you know what I mean? So, the earliest another season could be on the air is, like, 2025.

DANIELS: I don’t know. Boy, that’s a bummer. I think we’re gonna start writing in a week or two, so I’m not worried about the actors’ strike still going when we’re ready to shoot. But yeah, I mean, the hardest part about the actors’ ongoing strike is that I’m the only person from that original group to be able to do press, and they’re the charming ones. Do you know what I mean? They’re the ones that should be going out and getting recognition for all the good work that they did, and it’s very frustrating that they can’t.

When the strike is over, I assure you that I will be asking to do interviews, but for now, I am very happy to be talking to you. You didn’t direct any episodes in Season 3; did you think about directing?

DANIELS: I love directing the show, but it’s a bear to be the showrunner of the show. There’s so much crap for next week that has to happen that if I was not around for two weeks because I was just doing one episode, I would worry about things. I was able to write two episodes this year, and I would love to direct more. I directed the first two of this show, but then things start to roll, and it’s just really difficult. We have great directors, and I really enjoy the stuff that each of them brings. They all have a slightly different, probably more sophisticated than me, kind of talent that makes the show better. But I’m super involved in the post. The post is really where I have to put in most of the effort because it takes such a long time with all the visual effects, and you have to give rounds and rounds of notes to the artists.

So it’s a beast.

DANIELS: It’s a bit of a beast. I could maybe direct the last one because I wouldn’t have any more prep, but then we have to already be editing. You know, it would delay the editing.

The last time we spoke for Space Force Season 2—RIP, I wanted a Season 3 on that—we talked about a possible new version of The Office, and it’s come out that I guess you might be serious about a new version of The Office. Is that accurate, or is that not accurate?

DANIELS: Well, I think that it’s very speculative. The fact that it kind of blew up based on one line in a Puck piece was kind of cool, I guess, in the sense that the fans still care a lot. But the thing I would say is, when there’s something to announce, I will definitely announce it.

The thing is, it’s because, I think, that article happened during the writers’ strike. For me, maybe that’s something you and NBC have been talking about and waiting to announce after the strike, and so I think that’s what people are wondering.

DANIELS: Well, I mean, I’ve been talking about it with NBC for years as a potential because they’re into it. And I’m just gonna leave it at that. When there’s something to announce, some good news, I will announce it.

Image via NBC

Sure. The one thing I was thinking, though, if and when you actually do this is, how much social media has changed since The Office was on the air and what that can bring to storylines and everything, just how technology has changed in the way we all live our lives.

DANIELS: Yeah, it’s an interesting question. I mean, when you watch old movies, it’s like a game to identify what wouldn’t work when everybody had a cell phone, you know what I mean? Like all the story moves of people, like, “Oh, they just missed you! Oh, dang. Now maybe I’ll get on that boat and go to…” you know? It’s just like, “Oh, how frustrating. If you only had a cell phone.” So, I mean, that’s an interesting question for sure. The funny thing about technology is just like on this show, on Upload, it’s so much about technology, and yet the technology is still changing so fast. Do you know what I mean?

I was a judge in January at something called the AI in Filmmaking Hackathon at MIT. They did short films all using some aspect of AI like some used AI to write the music, and others wrote the script and all this stuff. And after it was done, I immediately wrote everybody I knew who worked at the Writers Guild to be like, “Guys, this is frightening. You gotta do something!” And that was, like, January of 2023. Then, in March, ChatGPT dropped, or whenever that happened. So things can be very rapidly changing for sure.

That’s something that I talk about with everyone, the fact that it’s not about what’s going on in AI today, it’s what’s gonna happen in AI in three years and five years with the exponential growth of computer learning because it’s frightening what it’s going to be able to do.

DANIELS: Yeah. The thing that I came away from being that judge was, I was like, “Okay, so what they’re gonna do is they’re gonna have every single thing, every job in Hollywood’s gonna be done by AI, potentially.” And also, when you combine that with, like, Netflix’s algorithm knowing what you like and which your favorite actors are, you’re gonna be given a very personalized movie, you know? And it’s gonna be all generated off scripts of stuff you’ve liked and sort of blended, and then they’re gonna have a way to take Tom Hanks and Bette Davis and just make them the same age and have them be in the movie together or whatever. It’s crazy.

Take this with a grain of salt, but I heard that one of the reasons why so many companies are going after life rights is because we’re reaching the point where technology—eventually, it’s not right now, but soon—we’ll be able to take, like, Humphrey Bogart from the ‘40s, combine him with Bruce Lee from the early ‘70s, and put them in a buddy cop movie or whatever the hell you’re looking for and make it so it looks like a movie.

DANIELS: Right. They’ll be able to do that, and I think they’ll also be able to say, “Wait, your favorite guy is Humphrey Bogart, and your second favorite guy is Bruce Lee? Let’s sort of mush them together and do some kind of Humphrey Lee mashup character that only you will see in this movie, and you’ll be so excited.” I don’t know. It’s such a weird thing. And then, on the other hand, I think there’s a lot of, probably, puffery to it, you know what I mean? I don’t know if it’ll ever work. I mean, it looks like it’s gonna work, but there’s so many reasons why big companies like Netflix want you to believe that they’re gonna be able to do this and have, like, a no-cost movie that people wanna see. It’s such a good story for their stock price that sometimes you gotta take it with a grain of salt, I think.

Like I said, I think that it’s not about what’s happening today, and it’s not what’s happening in a year, it’s the three, five, and 10 years from now. Just look at what an iPhone used to do and what an iPhone can do now. It’s really that simple, and that’s what’s going to come to AI.

DANIELS: Well, I mean, it’s interesting to see where SAG is gonna end up because I feel like if they don’t regulate it, then it’ll be on everybody’s individual contracts, and all of the new actor contracts will probably have some language in it that says, “Oh, by the way, if something happens to you, we get to make this character forever using that.”

Image via SAG-AFTRA

That’s the whole thing, and that’s what I was saying about likeness rights because there are people going around trying to get likeness rights for life.

DANIELS: Yeah. Well, we did that with the show. There’s a character, like a sort of not-too-successful actor named Boris Netherlands, and he is the basis for the AI guy character in Upload. He was paid $1200 back in the day, and they scanned him, and he gets nothing, and he’s really bitter about it, and it’s just like, “Oh my god, that’s what they’re striking over.”

I just want to ask you one last question about Upload. What I’m curious about is you have Horizon, and so in Horizon you have the Grey Zone, and my question is, are the Upload companies all existing in—this is real geeky—one sort of afterlife world or does each company exist in its own place, sort of like the way NFTs are where they’re not really connected?

DANIELS: Obviously, it’s all fake, but my imagination is that the Grey Zone is pretty much cyberspace, and so if it’s all on whatever the World Wide Web is, then it’s gonna be on the Grey Zone if that’s the system that’s being used, you know? So if you’re digital yourself and you can somehow crack out of Horizon and just walk through this undifferentiated nothingness, that is the experience that people used to have when they walked off a Call of Duty map in nowhere land, you remember? Then, eventually, you’d stumble into the Apple version, Apple’s Cove, and it would be different. It’d be a beach theme, and the whole thing would be there, but you could walk into it in the same way you walk out of The Wizard of Oz. If you walk out of Oz, you go through a desert, and then you get to the Real World eventually.

The reason I asked this is because I was wondering if eventually, whether it be Season 4 or down the road, Season 5, of the possibility of going to another place like Horizon from another company. The only issue, of course, is literally budgets and building sets and things like that.

DANIELS: That’s a great thought, and we’ve discussed it in the room for sure.

Upload Season 3 is available to stream on Prime Video.