How Ozark Creator Bill Dubuque Wrote The Premise Pilot For “M.I.A.” and Then Handed The Reins To Showrunner Karen Campbell

Peacock’s M.I.A. is hard-hitting crime drama created by Bill Dubuque (Ozark, The Accountant) and showrun by Karen Campbell (Outlander, Raised by Wolves). It tells the gripping story of Etta Tiger Jonze (Shannon Gisela) who’s drug-dealing family is blown to smithereens by the Rojas drug cartel. Etta eventually finds herself in Miami’s palm-lined, neon-lit underworld determined to exact revenge on her family as she tracks down the killers one by one.

Bill Dubuque and Karen Campbell share their insights with Creative Screenwriting Magazine on how they worked together as creator and showrunner.

Pitching M.I.A to Peacock

Dubuque begins by explaining how they pitched the show to network executives.“We broke it up into different roles, and explained to Peacock how we saw the characters, where we saw the season going, so they knew that it had legs beyond the first season,” Bill recalls.

The Season Structure of M.I.A – Pilot + Remaining Season

M.I.A. has a unique structure which few crime shows follow these days. Typically, the pilot episode starts with some backstory in the first act leading to the critical scene which propels the narrative into the rest of the season. More backstory and charater revelations are peppered throughout the season to add character depth. M.I.A is different, in that the entire backstory is front loaded into the first episode. The season begins in earnest in the second episode.

This technique is similar to how Dubuque structured Ozark. When he initially pitched Ozark, some streamers asked him to dispense with the pilot and have Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman) start in Missouri. Bill refused this suggestion. “There’s a self-fulfilling prophecy where people are afraid that their audience is going to get bored and click onto something else if you don’t keep them engaged the entire time, or if there’s not constant propulsive action.”

“Audiences click away because they’re not invested in your characters. If you don’t get a viewer to connect with those characters in a relatable way, they’ll watch until episode two or three and they’re gone.” Etta certainly has a riveting introduction that keeps audiences hooked throughout the season.

Karen Campbell took over the reins as showrunner the pilot was sold, while Bill worked on other projects. They had already discussed a robust season arc and Bill was always available for consultation.

Leah (Danay Garcia) & Dan (David Denman) Photo by Jeff Daly/ PEACOCK)

Bill Dubuque and Karen Campbell’s Writing Collaboration

After Karen read Bill’s  pilot, they discussed the series to ensure that Bill’s original vision aligned with Karen’s while she ran the writers’ room.

“After the pilot was sold, Karen and I spent a week in a room going through the skeleton of Season One talking about these characters,” recalls Dubuque. He respects Karen’s “eye for character” and didn’t see the need to read every script. “I needed a showrunner that I could trust to take that pilot and build on that for the rest of the episodes.” And she delivered.

Although Bill and Karen have written on different types of shows, they both share the same “fundamental DNA” of telling character-driven stories. “There are high stakes involved, and they’re told in a world that audiences want to escape into,” Campbell states. Over time, the duo have built a writing shorthand.

Inside Karen’s writers’ room, it’s extremely collaborative. “It’s assembling other writers who love character and fleshing out their emotional journeys that we need to span all episodes. We’re also building in incredible twists and turns along the way, and delivering on the propulsion and the thrill that Bill gave to us in that pilot,” Campbell mentions.

Introducing A Motivated Main Character 

Etta is an ordinary person who ran alligator tours before being propelled into an extraordinary journey to Miami.

She’s alone – no money, no friends, and no resources beyond her own smarts. In doing so, she forges a new identity. “She inadvertently builds her found family, because subconsciously, there’s a real desire for that family connection in the wake of that massive loss in the first episode,” Karen continues. Her thirst for revenge is underpinned by an emotional context.

“There’s a real human need to belong, to have people that you love and care about. That’s the emotional core of this initial season. Etta has a dark agenda, but it’s very much about building her found family, Claude Louis (Selase Botchway), Lovely (Brittany Adebumola), and Stanley (Dylan T Jackson) along the way,” Campbell continues.

Similarly, the Rojas crime family lose their patriarch Isaac (Edward James Olmos) in the first episode, so that family is starting to unravel too. The season unfolds juxtaposing Etta’s found family with the Rojas family.

Etta (Shannon Gisela) & Lovely (Brittany Adebumola) Photo by Jeff Daly/ Peacock

Writing A Crime Queenpin vs Kingpin

Many films and TV series are structured around a male kingpin lusting for power, wealth, loyalty, respect, family, and legacy. More recent TV shows have seen the emergence of female crime bosses in series including Griselda (about Griselda Blanco) and Queen of the South (about Teresa Mendoza).

Bill and Karen comment on this gender swap. Do female crime bosses behave differently than men?

“Character-wise, it’d definitely be different,” Bill asserts. “An audience has a certain expectation of a man who’s going on a revenge journey. Who’s he going to kill? There’s a certain degree of muscularity, physical power, and immediate weapons in male characters. Whereas with Etta, a woman who’s younger, she’s going to really think her way through this. She’s going to be clever. She’s going to rely on other people.  That’s more interesting in this type of revenge story across multiple episodes,” Dubuque elaborates.

Bill Dubuque compares Etta’s character to Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders. Tommy is always trying to strategically figure out what to do next. “I want to see a female character that has the same type of dialogue to as Tommy Shelby.”

“Etta’s initial agenda is needing to hold these 12 men responsible for killing her family accountable. That’s a very strong personal drive. But she’s also a young woman who’s 21 years old. We’ve seen in the pilot that she has a knee-jerk reaction to protect the vulnerable, which differentiates her from the Tony Montanas,” Karen points out.

“It’s the heart that this character has and the fact that she is willing to take a step back in some instances, to put her agenda to the side, to show up for someone else that she cares about. Etta is a killer who still cares for other people. That sets her apart from other crime bosses in a lot of ways,” Karen adds.

Samuel (Gerardo Celasco), Vida Rojas (Sonia Braga) and Mateo (Maurice Compte) Photo by Jeff Daly/ Peacock

Developing The Main Character’s Season Arc

Etta, is a whip-smart woman raised in the Florida Keys who grew up on the water. She has a sharp intellect and a wry sense of humor, which makes her a challenge to outwit. Her recall is near perfect, and her curiosity insatiable. She has ambitions to do something meaningful with her life… she just hasn’t quite figured out what that meaning is yet. Notably, Etta isn’t simply a mindless killing machine. She’s still searching for her place in life. This character development calls for more nuanced writing.

“You don’t want to move a person along too quickly because then you lack believability,” Bill says. “I also don’t want to judge my characters,” We start with Etta as a person who’s very smart with a very strong memory. She’s creative. She doesn’t know where she wants to go in life. Her parents recognized something special in her so that if she were going to get into the family business, she’d be a real force that scared them.” These character traits of parents protecting their children from their potential are familiar and relatable – especially to Bill and Karen.

A recurring theme in M.I.A. is that killers are made not born. The series grapples with this question with respect to Etta. Does her killer instinct lie dormant and activated when required, or is it a response to a situation.

“I think that Etta has that capability inside of her, but had she not seen her entire family slaughtered in front of her, she would not have gone on the journey,” Campbell suggests. “She’s a character who dances with the flame. She’s baiting alligators. She has the capacity to flirt with danger and be really comfortable with it. However, had her family not died so brutally and suddenly, I don’t think that she becomes someone who pursues the agenda of avenging her family.”

Aside from being blocked from working in the family business, Etta is filled with anger. By the end of the season, she’s also dealing with immense grief as she processes that she’s killed people and loved ones have died because of her. She’s irrevocably in a very different emotional and spiritual space.

“She is also much the same in terms of her value system that counterintuitively had been put in place by her parents who were drug runners. The value of a hard day’s work, work ethic, treating people like you want to be treated. I like the juxtaposition of that push and pull of that gray moral area,” Bill opines.

Despite her outward toughness, Etta is tender and thoughtful.

In the opening scenes, Etta’s parents Dan (David Denman) and Leah (Danay Garcia) are arguing about Etta’s future. They don’t want her to be part of it because she would excel and enjoy it – like Don Corleone in The Godfather, who realizes his youngest son has something special in him to take over the family business, but Don doesn’t want him to.

“By the time we get to the final episode, Etta’s realized that she’s capable of more than what she initially thought. We’re starting to see an expansion of her ambition as well. Not only do we have that emotional journey for her of building her found family, we’re seeing her become what her mom was scared of,” Campbell notes. “Etta ponders the collateral damage she’s caused and decides to become a lone wolf.”

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by Staff Writer

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