Ponies: How Susanna Fogel and David Iserson Turned Cold War Espionage Into a Modern Story of Female Friendship

Peacock’s Ponies (Persons Of No Interest according to the Master International Spy Manual) may be set in the shadowy world of Cold War espionage, but at its core, the television series on Peacock is something far more intimate: a story about female friendship at a moment of personal reckoning and redefining. Created by longtime collaborators Susanna Fogel and David Iserson, who co-wrote The Spy Who Dumped Me, the show blends period design, emotional stakes, and a tonal blend of drama and comedy.

Moscow, 1977. Two “ponies” work anonymously as secretaries in the American Embassy. That is, until their husbands are killed under mysterious circumstances, and the pair become CIA operatives. Beatrice “Bea” Grant (Emilia Clarke) is an over-educated, Russian-speaking child of Soviet immigrants. Her partner, Twila Hasbeck (Haley Lu Richardson), is a small-town girl who is as abrasive as she is fearless. Together, they work to uncover a vast Cold War conspiracy and solve the mystery that made them widows in the first place.

Bea and Twila find themselves thrust into espionage at the exact moment their imagined futures collapse. What follows is less a traditional spy fantasy than a female character-driven exploration of grief, reinvention, and the unexpected power of female friendship and partnership between two women who are more alike than they think.

From The Spy Who Dumped Me to a Whole New Organism

Fogel and Iserson first teamed up as friends and colleagues, supporting each other’s careers before deciding, almost on a whim, to write something bold, fun, and action-packed together. That impulse resulted in The Spy Who Dumped Me, a project born out of wanting to make the kind of movie they weren’t being hired to write.

That experience cemented what excited them creatively. They loved exploring female friendship and international travel, but they also wanted to push deeper toward real-world stakes, deep emotional grounding, and an evergreen story engine that could sustain a television series.

Susanna Fogel. Photo by Roger Kisby and Getty Images for Disney

While Ponies shares some DNA with their earlier work, Iserson is quick to define the show as its own entity. Rather than pitching it as a mix of past success to studios, the creators approached it as something that grew naturally out of their longer collaboration, informed by projects that never made it to the screen as much as those that did. Nor was it pitched as an extension of The Spy Who Dumped me meets Cold War.

“It became its own thing entirely,” Iserson explains — one shaped by character arcs, grief, inflection points, and the messiness of real lives. It wasn’t simply their next project. “This just sort of feels like part of our longer arc as writers and collaborators,” Iserson notes.

Same, But Different

Iserson contends that spy stories typically play out along similar tonal lines “with drama, some comedy, and high stakes.” Many films and television shows were set in the British or American Embassies in Moscow during the 60s through 80s. The duo maintained the essence of that familiar spy canon, but leaned into what made it different.

It was important to capture the spirit of a world that felt “lived in.” “We went in talking a lot about the music, the look and the feel,” recalls Iserson.

Why the Cold War?

For Iserson, the Cold War was more than a backdrop — it was an obsession. Years of travel through former communist countries, combined with an interest in the aesthetics, culture, contradictions, and the emotional see-saw of the era, led him deep into studying memoirs and histories centered on embassies, surveillance, and failed intelligence operations.

What fascinated both creators was how high the stakes felt during this period, and how untapped it seemed onscreen — wedged between the more frequently dramatized spy stories of the 1960s and 1980s where missions either succeeded or failed. The era also offered a key narrative opportunity: struggling American intelligence agencies forced to think outside the box.

That motivation made the story feel plausible, specific, and alive. Once the aesthetic, music, and visual language clicked into place, Ponies found its distinct spy identity.

Courtesy of David Iserson

Period Story, Present-Day Resonance

Though conceived as a historical piece, Ponies began to feel uncannily current as the many development years passed by. Fogel notes that this is the second period project after A Small Light (about Anne Frank’s family in Amsterdam) she’s worked on that transformed from “time capsule” to cultural mirror by the time it reached audiences.

What once felt like a distant era of surveillance, border checks, and intrusive state control, now features loudly in contemporary life. The Cold War lens allows viewers to engage with heavy and uncomfortable political ideas — police states, nationalism, loss of privacy — using entertainment as a point of entry.

For Fogel, that resonance has even become personal. The show has given her a creative vehicle to discuss current events with people in her life who might otherwise avoid political conversations or aren’t sufficiently well-versed in it. The past, expressed through story, becomes a vital tool for understanding the present.

Two Women, One Complete Agent

At the heart of Ponies are Bea and Twila, women who are frequently described as polar opposites, yet are deeply intertwined. Together, they form something whole; something bigger than the sum of their parts. They contradict, yet complement each other.

As Iserson explains, this idea is stated almost as a throwaway line by Moscow station chief, Dane Walter (Adrian Lester). “Together, they make one good agent.” Beatrice brings structure, discipline, and academic excellence, but lacks street smarts. Twila is fearless and physically bold, driven more by instinct and impulse than planning. Their strengths and weaknesses collaborate and clash in ways that make them both effective and vulnerable. This creates symbiosis and roots in their relationship.

This dynamic is also how the CIA initially views them — useful, but disposable. The series pushes back against that notion by investing deeply in who these women are when no one is watching except themselves. They are their own cheerleaders.

Dane (Adrian Lester) and Twila (Haley Lu Richardson) Photo by: Katalin Vermes/ Peacock)

Running Toward vs. Running Away

Beatrice is someone who always followed her life’s plan. A model student and self-described rule follower, she imagined a future neatly mapped out through marriage and career advancement — only to see it evaporate. Now, she must confront the question of who she is without the structure she relied on.

Twila, by contrast, has always been running from her life. Her marriage offered escape, travel, and distance from a small town life she wanted to leave behind, without ever stopping to ask what might actually make her happy. When that off ramp disappears, she is forced to sit still and find herself for the first time.

Though they arrive from different emotional places, Bea and Twila find themselves at the same inflection point. Espionage becomes the arena in which they risk their lives, not just for a mission, but to discover what kind of futures they want.

Writing Women as People, Not Archetypes

For Iserson, writing female characters is not a novelty or a challenge — it’s a constant. Much of his career has centered on women, driven by a desire to write characters who feel fully human rather than symbolic.

Together with Fogel, he approaches Bea and Twila. not as feminine archetypes, but as people shaped by loss, contradiction, hope, and longing. Their friendship isn’t decorative or secondary — it’s the heartbeat of the show.

 The Spy Story Beneath the Spy Story

Ultimately, Ponies uses Cold War espionage as a heightened metaphor for a universal experience: the moment when life refuses to follow an expected plan and forces you to consider new pathways.

Beatrice Grant and Twila Hasbeck are not just navigating surveillance, danger, and international intrigue. They are confronting the far more destabilizing question of who they are when the future they imagined disappears.

by Staff Writer

From our in-house editorial team.