How Amazon’s new show The Consultant, starring Christoph Waltz as ‘the boss from hell’, satirises toxic post-pandemic workplaces
- The Amazon series, about the evil boss of a tanking tech firm, aims to keep viewers ‘off balance’, with Waltz by turns charming and menacing
- Its release comes at a tumultuous time for companies like Google and Yahoo, and plays on the idea that the workplace is no longer safe after the pandemic
Think your boss is bad? The one in new TV series The Consultant phones his workers in the middle of the night, ends all remote work, fires people with long-term illnesses, invites himself to after-work staff drinks and clips his nails at his desk. He might also be a murderer.
That’s what awaits the anxious employees of fictional Los Angeles-based gaming company CompWare every day as a new consultant steers the firm through tough economic times. The new boss is weird and secretive, and might throw a gagged person into your car and tell you to just drive.
“There is a sense of just being off balance the entire time. You never know what to expect,” says executive producer and director of the show’s pilot episode, Matt Shakman.
“You don’t know what to expect character-wise, story-wise, or even tone and style[-wise]. And that’s what really drew me to this. This felt like a world and a show that I had never seen before or been a part of creating before. It feels wholly original.”
The show’s creator and executive producer Tony Basgallop originally set out to make a work-based thriller, and someone recommended American author Bentley Little’s 2015 novel The Consultant.
The pandemic hit soon after Basgallop started adapting the novel into a TV show script, at which point he was left wondering if he’d started work on the project too late. Was anyone ever going back to work? Would anyone want to see a TV series about such a terrible work environment?
“I was thinking, ‘This is crazy. I’ve actually taken on something that’s never going to get made.’ But then I just made the choice: You know what? When we go back – if we ever go back – it’s going to be worse than it was before,” he says.
“So I took very much the premise of the book, very much the feeling of this evil presence lurking over everyone and no one knowing whether he’s the devil or just the boss from hell.”
The cast seems to have had a good time working on the project despite its subject matter. “For making a show about such a toxic work environment, it was actually probably the most lovely work environment I’ve ever done,” Wolff says.
The workers at CompWare are feeling the strain, and are obliged to do as the boss demands no matter how inconvenient it may be. The days of just jumping to another tech firm are gone. The workers are stuck where they are and they’re nervous.
The series explores the possibility that work may not be a “safe” place any more. “If something goes wrong, you’re going to have to fix it. You’re going to have to compromise. You have to take the bullet, in a sense,” Basgallop says.
It’s up to the CompWare employees to determine what their boss is really up to and uncover his murky past.
In many ways, he’s a satire of a modern business leader who manipulates others and is quick to expose and manipulate weaknesses. One song that plays is Elvis Presley’s “You’re the Devil in Disguise”.
“There is a sense of humour about him that is unique. He is equally good at comedy and drama. There is no one better at fixing you with a stare and making you feel just uncomfortable,” Shakman says.
Waltz took a chance when agreeing to play the show’s leading role, having only seen the script for the pilot and not knowing how the character would develop.
“I considered it risky,” he says. “As an actor who actually lives in the moment, the prospective result almost becomes secondary.”
The irony is that Waltz – whose last TV project was on the phone-based Quibi platform – is now playing a man who is leading a tech company, yet the actor himself is anything but tech-savvy.
