This article contains light spoilers for season 1 of Furious and Lucky.
Two of this summer’s most visually stunning shows share a cinematographer. The wild part: They couldn’t look more different.
Doug Emmett shot both Hulu’s Furious, a noir-inspired New York police drama, and Apple TV’s Lucky, a blood-soaked and sun-drenched crime caper set throughout the American Southwest.
These critically acclaimed shows display a few similarities, such as their broad cat-and-mouse conceits and leading ladies with the biggest, most soulful eyes you’ve ever seen. But otherwise? You would never guess that Emmett was behind their divergent looks.
“I’m a little bit of a chameleon,” Emmett tells The Contending. “I don’t have a certain style that I apply outright to these projects. I love to reinvent myself and be motivated by other work that I see.”
Answered Prayers
Emmett grew up in Scituate, a small fishing village in Massachusetts. Think recent Apple TV breakout Widow’s Bay, down to Emmett’s childhood house that he swears was haunted by someone—or thing—walking back and forth across the attic floor every night.
He left New England to study film at New York University. Since then, Emmett has amassed a 22-year resumé that includes television, music videos, and film work such as 2012’s Paranormal Activity 4, 2016’s The Edge of Seventeen, and 2018’s Sorry to Bother You.
But as an 18-year-old NYU student, Emmett would often stumble across Hollywood productions on New York City streets and wonder when his time would come.
“I would just lust after those sets and pray that someday I would find my way onto a film shoot even half that size,” he remembers. “I got that with both these shows.”
Furious especially scratched that itch for Emmett. Creator Liz Meriweather’s show about troubled FBI agent Alice Black’s (Emmy Rossum) efforts to find serial killer and fellow abuse survivor Catherine Grace (Lola Petticrew) was shot throughout the Big Apple.
At one point during our Zoom interview, Emmett produced a thermos adorned with the caterpillar decal from Catherine’s sticker collection.
“It really closed that loop for me,” he says of his Furious experience. “And it was a good as I thought it was going to be!”
Tone Pieces
Furious maintains a consistently grimy aesthetic that Emmett explains was inspired by New York City crime stories ranging from Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver to Jane Campion’s In the Cut. He was thrilled when someone described the show as “feeling wet” all the time.
Lucky is an entirely different ballgame, at least visually. Creator Jonathan Tropper’s adaptation of author Marissa Stapley’s 2021 novel tracks Luciana “Lucky” Armstrong (Anya Taylor-Joy) after she’s abandoned by her husband following a high-profile heist.
Though Emmett didn’t have as many specific visual inspirations for Lucky, he realized eventually that the largely Nevada and Southern California-filmed show contained clear DNA from Tony Scott action-thrillers such as 2001’s Spy Game and 2004’s Man on Fire.
While both shows are propelled by life-or-death stakes, Lucky’s recently completed seven-episode run was a generally lighter watch than Furious’ sometimes ultra-serious disposition.
Furious can be quite funny, even when delving into heavy subject matter such as domestic violence and sex trafficking. Lucky is a slick operator with occasional hints of sentiment, mostly generated by Lucky’s bond with her con artist father, John (Timothy Olyphant).
For Emmett, ensuring a project’s visual language plainly communicates its thematic intentions begins on the page.
“What you’re trying to drill down on is crafting the mood and tone of the piece,” he says. “That will indicate to me on a deeper level, how dark do we go?”
Reward Originality
You know what makes any cinematographer’s life immensely easier? When much of a shoot is pointing a camera at Rossum and Taylor-Joy’s faces and simply letting them cook.
“They have movie star qualities, just visually,” Emmett says. “It’s so nice as a cinematographer to work with people who have that quality where you can sense their emotion without doing much work with the camera. You can do very little and get a lot.”
When problems arise, Emmett puts his problem-solving skills to the test.
For example, Furious’ Alice first spots Catherine in a waiting-room mirror. Emmett and the production team transformed a former rectory into a lobby area, added walls to make it feel smaller and found a mirror that accentuated Alice’s shock via a distortion effect.
“Using the lens to shoot Alice’s perspective in the mirror and allowing Alice to walk into her own perspective and join Catherine was really fun,” Emmett recalls.
Lucky presented another set of challenges. Its protagonist could be anywhere from a Las Vegas casino to wandering the desert from episode to episode. Emmett consulted each installment’s director, who advised his approach but gave him permission to experiment.
“It almost felt like we were shooting a completely different piece [from episodes 1 to 2],” Emmett says. “It was different enough that we found ourselves needing to reinvent a language.”
Emmett clearly had a great time on both shows and loves that they found devoted fan bases. When asked to pitch 2027 Emmy voters on why they should remember Furious and Lucky this time next year, he pointed toward an inherent quality they both exemplify.
“It’s proven time and time again that audiences are still looking for really good original IP,” he says. “Fresh voices, storylines that we haven’t seen yet. I think audiences are thirsty for that sort of thing. And we have that in spades with both shows.”
Furious streams on Hulu; Lucky streams on Apple TV.
