Journal Zero

It is with great pleasure and a greater smile that I welcome Jezebel back to Night Zero. She’s one of my favorites in our post-apocalyptic world, both on and off the camera. Her origin story you already know, at least to some extent, but her origins as a character are just as engrossing.

It amuses me that, even though it was produced and aired nearly a year before this scene and takes place as a prequel to the serial story, the Jezebel vignette is actually a spinoff of from this very scene. What you’re seeing now, here with the truck at the docks, was the first (and at the time, only) scene written with her character. After floating around in Alexander’s brain for who-knows-how-long she arrived in the first released draft of Episode Three, delivered to the production team in early November ‘08. She was immediately notable for her opening character description, which was a full paragraph instead of the usual line or two, and revealed a complex character as well as the basic aesthetic notes. Even though she wasn’t going to be seen for a year, her mannerisms, costumes, and motivations were already an engaging topic of conversation amongst the production team members.

A few weeks later, as November turned into December, the scheduled production of the untitled vignette faced repeated postponements due to a series of snowstorms, and as the remaining pages of Episode One made their way online, it became clear that there would be a vacancy between it and Episode Two. We were ahead of production on the second serial by the usual amount, and could have burned hard to follow immediately, but I wanted the precedent of breaking between episodes for one-offs and vignettes. I was challenged to conceive a story that could be fully produced in a matter of weeks, regardless of weather conditions. The seeds on inspiration grew, and from a dialogue-based story to a garage safehouse to a few friends being trapped on the night of the apocalypse, the concept started coming together. What it needed next was a set of characters.

When developing vignettes, one of the biggest questions is whether to use existing characters from the story (”Sisters”) or develop your own set of one-time characters (Untitled). My initial planning was in favor of a new set of characters, as much to bring some fresh blood to the production as to expand the fictional world a bit more. As I thought of how the vignette characters would interact and what they would show from the experience, a nugget came to mind: instead of taking an existing character from the story, I could develop a character from the future of the story as an independent character. Immediately I saw the advantages on both ends of the equation: from the vignette’s perspective, including a character from the story provides a backdrop to frame against, a set of known rules and characterisms that can help shape the action; and from the serial’s perspective, developing a vignette about a character that hasn’t appeared yet provides a head start to establish and inform the character, so that when they DO appear in the serial story, the reader already knows who and how they are. Despite the detailed script notes that described Jezebel as a character, the growth and exposition of her personality were only in small portions across multiple episodes. ‘If I can nail her personality in a vignette’, I thought, ‘then when Episode Three comes around she won’t NEED an explanation. The moment she shows her wicked smile, everyone will know her, hate her, and love her.’

My first step was to call Alexander and get his consent to transplant Jezebel from his story to mine. With him on board, I asked for anything he could tell me about her: any fragments of future scenes or blips of unwritten dialogue, anything that informed who she was that wasn’t already in the Episode Three script. I planned to invest some of my own development into her as well, but wanted to ensure that any designs of mine would not conflict with her creator’s intentions. After some positive discussion and a mutually approved gameplan, I set to work on a story with the underwriting purpose of establishing Jezebel unequivocally as the femme fatale you love to hate. As I anticipated the reader reaction to her appearance here in Episode Three, I made sure to give nothing away that we would see or hear of her again. The first draft of the script was completed on the 13th of December, unimaginatively dubbed the “untitled garage vignette”.

It was important for her character to be Jezebel through and through, even at this early stage of the Night Zero canon. In the serial episodes, on more than one occasion the skullhunters’ nicknames are dropped or forgotten (reminding us that this is a world in transition and that not everybody takes nicknames seriously), but it was important that Jezebel never be called anything but Jezebel. She could have nothing behind her to make her any less the evil that she is, so it came naturally that her name would simply be omitted from the dialogue. As this liberated the story from risking her mysterious nature, it also provided the perfect title for the vignette itself. She is never referred to by any name nor provides one on her own, but the reader is naturally compelled to name her, and whether the title of the vignette is seen as a proper noun, an adjective, or a literary allusion, it’s the perfect fit for her.

At the same time as this was all going on, I was building out a cast portfolio for the upcoming roles in vignettes, Episode Three, and beyond. It was in this cycle that many of our new faces were cast, including Christian (as Edge) and Fern (as West), and one actor that I was very keen on bringing to the project was Sidney. I first saw her in a play directed by Katrina (who had been playing Marion for a year already), and when I inquired, Katrina assured me that Sidney was “a lot of fun to work with” and “a joy to be around.” In the first week of December, Sidney was added to our talent file as a strong candidate for the role of Jezebel, and it would have been a record for us in terms of advance casting (filling a role a year ahead of need), except that the following week brought Jezebel to the forefront of the production schedule. As the vignette developed and her character grew more and more well defined, I became confident that Sidney was the perfect one for the task, and the combination has been flawless..

It’s also interesting to me that, while this scene is the first written appearance of Jezebel, this photo shoot was her fourth with Night Zero… not to mention the numerous conventions and special events at which she has made appearances. When people see her in person at our photo-booth, or talk about the vignette (some referring to her by name, others by wonderfully malicious adjectives), I see that Jezebel’s impression to fans is exactly what we were going for: they hate her, yet they love her, and they hate her even more because of it.

Me? I’m just happy to have her back.