DGA Award nominee Kat Coiro has made a lasting impact in the television industry this past year with her direction of two highly anticipated and strikingly different pilot episodes: “Matlock” on CBS, a contemporary reimagining of the iconic legal drama, and Roku’s “The Spiderwick Chronicles”, an adaptation of the beloved fantasy book series.
While both shows differ vastly in tone, genre, and target audience, they share one key commonality—Coiro’s expert ability to set the tone and establish the visual and emotional foundation of each series.
“The Spiderwick Chronicles” is based on the bestselling series by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black and follows the Grace Family as they move into their ancestral home only to uncover a dark mystery surrounding a foreboding faerie world existing alongside their own.
Coiro collaborated closely with department heads, including production design, visual effects, and costume design, to ensure that the show’s visual identity remained true to the original stories while also introducing a fresh, immersive aesthetic, particularly within the Spiderwick home. She also made sustainability a priority, ensuring that green initiatives were implemented behind the scenes, from eco-friendly set materials to reducing single-use plastics on set.
“It does require the studios to have infrastructure for water fillers, but it actually ends up being cheaper,” explains Coiro. “I think sometimes the enormity of the situation, to make the set sustainable, scares people, but just do one little thing. It doesn’t have to be perfect.”
Coiro also brought the initiative to the Critic’s Choice Award winning set of “Matlock”, starring Kathy Bates. The “Marry Me” director faced the challenge of breathing new life into a classic procedural drama, crafting a fresh, modern version of the iconic legal show, which features a dynamic cast including Skye P. Marshall, Jason Ritter, David Del Rio and Leah Lewis.
With her extensive TV directing experience—from “Modern Family” to “Girls5Eva” and “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law”—Coiro effortlessly balances the show’s sharp humor with deeply emotional moments. This is particularly evident in episode six, “Sixteen Steps,” which features an intimate and decelerating conversation between Madeline Matlock [Bates] and her supervisor [Marshall] about loss.
“A lot of the preparation of [“Matlock”] is about where are these moments that need quiet, and the moments where we can bring fun and energy,” shares Coiro. “The set is a rollercoaster because you have to give respect for those deep scenes that are about opioids and death and betrayal and end of life.”
Kat Coiro spoke with Awards Focus about her unique approach to directing pilots, creative collaboration with heads of departments on both “Matlock” and “The Spiderwick Chronicles”, her passion for integrating sustainable initiatives on set and reveals what to expect this season on “Matlock”.
Awards Focus: I want to start with “The Spiderwick Chronicles”. How did you come to the project and direct the first two episodes of the season?
Kat Coiro: I had met the showrunner, Aron Eli Coleite, on another show he was doing years ago. We had really connected, and the timing didn’t work out for that show. I was just coming off “She Hulk” and, I’ll never forget this, I got this email that came in the middle of the night from Aaron and he said, “I have this show and for some reason I think that you should read it. It’s about fairies and magic.” I was very close to my grandmother who was British and lived in the British countryside and taught me to believe in fairies until way too old in age probably. So, I saw this and thought this is for me, and fell in love with the story.
AF: The setting of the Spiderwick house in the show is incredible, especially with that magnificent tree sprouting out from inside. Can you talk a bit about finding that location and the construction of those secret passageways within the house?
Coiro: I had the most amazing production designer, Elena Albanese, and cinematographer Florian Ballhaus, and it was just an amazing collaboration between us and our showrunner, Aron. We did build the exterior of the house in a field in Canada with a lot of blue screen. It was half real and half digital. Then, we built the interior on a stage. It was all created and built because there were so many little specifications that we had to have.
AF: How did working on “She Hulk” help prepare you for the fantasy elements in “Spiderwick”?
Coiro: “She-Hulk” was a lesson in VFX because every shot in that show was VFX. It was really cool coming into “Spiderwick” with that knowledge. We had an amazing VFX team and Costume Designer, Ann Foley, who brought a lot of her designers to the creature designs. What was so cool was that I learned it’s a collaboration just as important as the cinematographer or the production designer, and working hand with VFX is really fun.
AF: I was reading about your implementation of a sustainable set with the idea of, Lights, Camera, Action. What inspired you to implement this both in front and behind the camera?
Coiro: When I was doing “Marry Me,” I didn’t feel like I really had control of making the set green, and I wracked my brain about how I could do something. It’s so hard to watch all the waste that happens on sets. I wanted to eradicate waste and single-use plastic, especially from the screen. It’s the thing I can control. It doesn’t affect the budget. So, I had conversations with the actors and production designer, and we did it on that movie.
While I was doing that, this article came out in The Hollywood Reporter about a woman, Sheila M. Morovati, who has a not-for-profit called Habits of Waste, which is about small actionable items to help live a more sustainable life. She had this idea, Lights, Camera, Plastic, but it wasn’t in practice. So, we were put together, and we really launched it into reality. The idea is that you start with what’s on the screen because it influences the audience, it influences the actors, all the crew members. Then it starts to bleed out into the rest of the set. Eventually, you make really sustainable choices across the board and behind the screen.
AF: There’s nothing more confusing on a set than the miniature plastic water bottles that you drink in three gulps. It’s such a waste.
Coiro: I’m always trying to tell people it’s actually more convenient if you bring your mug and you bring your water bottle. You’re going to have nicer water. It does require the studios to have infrastructure for water fillers, but it actually ends up being cheaper. That’s what I keep telling people. When you make that small switch, it can save money. I think sometimes the enormity of the situation scares people, but just do one little thing. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Sheila has a book called “The Imperfect Environmentalist,” and that’s kind of our North Star. If you strive for perfection, it’s never going to happen, but try every day to be sustainable.
AF: Were you able to bring those actionable choices onto “Matlock”?
Coiro: [Showrunner] Jennie Snyder Urman really took it to heart and brought that idea of sustainability into the writer’s room. The way we always talk about it is if it ruins the story, we’re not going to do it. We’re going to let the story lead. But I would say 99% of the time you can come up with something more creative.
AF: How did you come to direct the pilot and the collection of episodes throughout the season?
Coiro: I had met Kathy [Bates] on a feature film, and we had the most incredible meeting. I remember I left the meeting, and I thought, is it weird that I think Kathy Bates is my soulmate [laughs]? I loved her passion and creativity, and as a human being.
About six months later, “Matlock” came into my inbox, and I wasn’t that interested in doing broadcast. It didn’t sound like something I wanted to do. Then, they said Kathy Bates was attached. Before I read the script, I reached out to her and asked how the script was. She said she wouldn’t change a word.
I went into the script with that, and she was right. Jenny’s a genius, and meeting her was as if it was meant to be. I wanted to do as many episodes as possible. I did 1, 2, 4, 6, 12, 14, 16, 18, and 19.
AF: It’s becoming a bit more commonplace now for studios to opt for a longer season. How did the episode length open the possibilities for the first season of the show?
Coiro: It’s a lot of work, and it was amazing to watch Kathy do 19 episodes straight. It just felt organic. The season feels so driven by the story. We needed all those episodes to get this incredibly complicated story out and it works on so many levels. I don’t think it would work in an eight-episode format.
AF: There’s such a strong, organic chemistry between the core characters, and I love how their relationships have changing dynamics. Can you talk a bit about casting the core cast around Kathy and shifting those dynamics throughout the season?
Coiro: The story with Skye Marshall is wonderful one where Jenny has actually worked with her before, but I wasn’t aware of that, and I didn’t know how much Jenny loved her. To Jenny’s credit, she didn’t say, “Oh my god, you’re going to love this person.” She let me find Skye, and I remember going through audition tapes and being wowed by her. We brought her in for a chemistry read, and her and Kathy just clicked. They are real friends now and you could feel that the moment they met. The show is really a love story between Maddie and Olympia. Then, it was about bringing in the rest of the cast and rounding out the dynamic.
AF: One standout scene was in episode six where Maddie and Olympia are having a moving conversation about loss. Can you talk about working with the cast and balancing the sharp humor of the show with softer, human moments?
Coiro: That scene was intense. Kathy and Skye both come in very prepared. When these scenes are going to be deep that you need to give space and quiet on set, I always try to shoot with multiple cameras so we’re not doing one side and then the other so that we can capture them really bouncing off each other. A lot of the preparation of the show is about where are these moments that need still need and quiet, and then where are the moments where we can bring fun and energy? It’s a rollercoaster. The set is a rollercoaster because you have to give respect for those deep scenes that are about opioids and death and betrayal and end of life. I think that’s what makes the show so unique is that up and down it is a huge part of how we prepare and how we run the set.
AF: Looking ahead at the rest of the season, what can you reveal about what’s to come?
Coiro: I can’t reveal much, but I will say that every character really grows and has more storyline coming up. I think there are characters that will really surprise everyone. They all really have their own worlds that we start to build out.