HBO’s Silicon Valley reveal what they learned on their research trips to Silicon Valley.
HBO’s hit TV series Silicon Valley has become a hit series across the Bay Area and it turns out that the truth behind the show is actually a lot stranger than the fiction displayed in front of the camera. In fact, writers have discarded real-life events as plot points to make the show seem more realistic.
In a recent interview with the New Yorker, the show’s producers, writers and cast discussed what it was like creating the show. Apparently, the show’s development team spends a lot of time researching the series. For example, HBO hired former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo to consult to ask questions like “where would the most powerful person in a boardroom sit?”
But, sometimes what they discover on their research trips to northern California are too outrageous to be used in the show. For example, there is a first-season montage inspired by a TechCrunch Disrupt – an event where founders pitch their ideas to investors. Then this happened:
After the scene aired, viewers complained about the lack of diversity in the audience. Berg recalled, “A friend of mine who works in tech called me and said, ‘Why aren’t there any women? That’s bullshit!’ I said to her, ‘It is bullshit! Unfortunately, we shot that audience footage at the actual TechCrunch Disrupt.’”
Then there are times when Silicon Valley is too weird for network television. Writer Carrie Kemper described an embarrassing meeting with GoogleX Astro Teller:
Teller ended the meeting by standing up in a huff, but his attempt at a dramatic exit was marred by the fact that he was wearing Rollerblades. He wobbled to the door in silence. “Then there was this awkward moment of him fumbling with his I.D. badge, trying to get the door to open,” Kemper said. “It felt like it lasted an hour. We were all trying not to laugh. Even while it was happening, I knew we were all thinking the same thing: Can we use this?” In the end, the joke was deemed “too hacky to use on the show.”
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