Today, Apple TV Plus premieres its new series, Hello Tomorrow! The series, which is set in a retro-future, centers around ambitious traveling salesman Jack Billings (Billy Crudup), who, along with his team, is selling timeshares from the moon. His faith in the future inspires his fellow BrightSide coworkers and excites their customers. However, Jack will learn that hope can be a very powerful thing, but it can also be very dangerous. 

According to Lucas Jansen, who along with Amit Bhalla created the series, the idea for it first came when producer Ryan Kalil showed them vintage training videos for salesmen from the 1950s. “They were full of these hokey reenactments,” he told SciFi Vision during a recent interview. “…They were so innocent and sort of inspiring in that way. They're just like a pure lucid encapsulation of this American Dream, that we work hard, and we sell each other things, and we all get happier. But at the same time, [it’s] also really eerie and grim, because these people are completely deluding themselves that they're not caught in the gears of this sort of hulking capitalist thing that’s going to maybe…[wring] all of the joy and humanity out of you. So, that paradox to us was inspiring. Like, what does the salesman tell themselves to make themselves a great salesman?”

During the interview, Bhalla talked about the retro look of the series and making it feel lived in. “The actual design of the world, it was desperate for us to make it [feel] lived in to feel practical, that the robots made mistakes, that they didn't really help you that much in what they were supposed to do,” he explained. “There's a little bit of rust here, a little bit of motor oil there. Even in art direction, that meant the carpets needed to be aged down, because the world that we were sold, that this world is based on, comes from advertising, and it comes from advertising the early twentieth century, all the way through kind of midcentury. It's what created the American Dream and the white picket fence. In that world, everything worked and everything was shiny, and in the world of tomorrow, it's its own thing. But what happens when you land in it?…That was important to us in drawing the world, and we think gives it that texture that makes it fun to be in but also able to resonate kind of dramatic scenes on top of.”

“We were fascinated with the idea of setting a show in a delusion in a fantasy that was sold to us by advertising,” added Jansen, “because this is ultimately a show about a group of delusional people, or dreamers, you could call them, or optimists whose delusions are so desperate and so potent that they have the power to sort of change the very fabric of the world they're living in.”

For more, watch the full interview and read the transcript below. The first three episodes are available to stream now on Apple TV Plus. 



***Edited for clarity and length***

SCIFI VISION:   Can you start by talking about where the idea came from originally?

LUCAS JANSEN:   We were interested in a lot of things. We were watching the Maysles’ Salesman; we were reading Arthur Miller again. Then, one day, we were with Ryan Kalil, who's a good friend and a brilliant producer on the show, and he showed us these vintage training videos for salesmen. They were teaching you how to be a great use great car salesman in the 1950s. They were full of these hokey reenactments where the kid would be like, “You're telling me if I get Mrs. Bartlesteen in the new wagon (Volkswagen), maybe one day, I'll be assistant manager just like you?” “That's right, son.” They were so innocent and sort of inspiring in that way. They're just like a pure lucid encapsulation of this American Dream, that we work hard, and we sell each other things, and we all get happier. But at the same time, [it’s] also really eerie and grim, because these people are completely deluding themselves that they're not caught in the gears of this sort of hulking capitalist thing that's going to maybe…[wring] all of the joy and humanity out of you. So, that paradox to us was inspiring. Like, what does the salesman tell themselves to make themselves a great salesman? That's where we came up with the character of Jack Billings, who is the greatest salesman, because he believes deeply in the promises that he's making to you. 

SCIFI VISION:   The other thing, and you kind of touched on this, and Amit, I’ll let you talk about this, if you could talk about sort of the style. I mean, you've gone with the retro look, and I think it's really cool. I was surprised too that even some of the technology is kind of retro, as much as it's in the future. Can you just sort of talk about that? 

AMIT BHALLA:   There's dreaming back to something that's going to save us and there's dreaming into the future of something that’s going to save us, and it turns out, we might just be stuck here in the present. The actual design of the world, it was desperate for us to make it [feel] lived in to feel practical, that the robots made mistakes, that they didn't really help you that much in what they were supposed to do. There's a little bit of rust here, a little bit of motor oil there. Even in art direction, that meant the carpets needed to be aged down, because the world that we were sold, that this world is based on, comes from advertising, and it comes from advertising the early twentieth century, all the way through kind of midcentury. It's what created the American Dream and the white picket fence. In that world, everything worked and everything was shiny, and in the world of tomorrow, it's its own thing. But what happens when you land in it? What happens when you've lived in it for twenty years, and your hover car drags a little on the on the curb, or whatever? That was important to us in drawing the world, and we think gives it that texture that makes it fun to be in but also able to resonate kind of dramatic scenes on top of. 

SCIFI VISION:   Yeah, I love the look. Lucas going off what you said though, I assume that the whole idea to make it retro came from those training videos in the beginning? 

LUCAS JANSEN:   Yeah, we were fascinated with the idea of setting a show in a delusion in a fantasy that was sold to us by advertising, because this is ultimately a show about a group of delusional people, or dreamers, you could call them, or optimists whose delusions are so desperate and so potent that they have the power to sort of change the very fabric of the world they're living in. When we were writing our characters in the writers room, we would say, “We're not talking about their motivations or their plans in life. We're talking about the stories they're telling themselves about what their lives should be, or are. We're talking about the fictions that they need to get out of bed in the morning.” This show asks the question of what's life like when that sales pitch, when that fiction, meets the inevitable lived reality? 

SCIFI VISION:   Right, hope it is a very powerful thing. 

LUCAS JANSEN:   And a very dangerous thing.

SCIFI VISION:   That too. 

AMIT BHALLA:   Very dangerous. 

LUCAS JANSEN:   You can’t have one side of it without the other, and it's so wonderful that that's coming out of the show for you.