The Hollywood Reporter – August 14, 2019

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THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 84 AUGUST 14, 2019

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How to Go Out

With a Big Bang

With 244 episodes of CBS’ hit comedy under his belt, director Mark Cendrowski reflects on

how he shot the emotional final episode BY LESLEY GOLDBERG

Mark Cendrowski’s
second Emmy
nomination comes
with a lot of weight
attached to it.
The go-to direc-
tor of CBS’ The Big Bang Theory
(he helmed 244 out of its 280
episodes) boasts one of only
three nominations (including
editing and technical direction)
that the long-running nerdy
comedy earned for its 12th and
final season. The series signed
off May 16 as the No. 1 scripted
comedy in the adults 18-to-49
demographic and as TV’s longest-
running multicamera comedy
ever (besting Cheers).
Cendrowski earned his first
Emmy nom in 2018 in an unusual
fashion: Seven hours after the
nominations were announced,
the TV Academy revealed he’d
been left off the list because a new
rule requiring that at least one
multicamera director be included
in the category was overlooked.
For the second year, he’s the lone
multicamera director nominated
in the comedy field.
When it came time to craft
the finale for the Chuck Lorre
series, Cendrowski called up

Cheers co-creator and director

Jim Burrows, who gave him a key

piece of advice: “Enjoy the tears.”

How was directing the series finale

different than the 240-plus other

episodes you helmed?

I wanted to keep it from being

too emotional. What we did all

year, because we ran for 12 years,

the way we celebrated onstage

was we made it our high school

senior year. We did a yearbook,

class pictures, had a prom. We

tried to keep things light all year.

With five weeks left, [recurring

guest star] Wil Wheaton did

up to do the last slate of the very

last scene. He thought it would

be a neat thing to do and got very

choked up.

With a show built around a char-

acter like Sheldon (Jim Parsons),

who doesn’t understand or

often express emotion, how do

you ensure those big emotional

moments of the finale landed?

Sheldon’s non-emotion ampli-

fied everyone else. You could get

frustrated with Sheldon, but then

you saw how it affected Leonard

(Johnny Galecki) when he’d be

upset. That’s what I’d lean into.

That universe spinning around

him had to be real and honest.

I felt a lot of pressure because

it had been building up all year.

The episode had a lot of great

challenges — we had 300 extras

and had to shoot an auditorium

scene to make it look like 3,000

people attending the Nobel Prize

ceremony. That was a vast scene

that also had to play emotionally

and close to the heart.

How did having new sets and loca-

tions shake things up for you?

Being out of the living room,

which was always the go-to, was

a challenge. We had to avoid

how we usually prepped. We did

run-throughs and rehearsals on

another stage where we had the

airplane and auditorium set up.

We treated it with a single-camera

“The show was special,” says Mark Cendrowski

(left), with the cast of The Big Bang Theory.

M

The Big Three of Game of Thrones

IN THEIR FINAL ACT, THESE LONGTIME HELMERS OF HBO’S FIERY SERIES SENT

BELOVED CHARACTERS TO THEIR DEATHS AND EARNED EMMY NOMS FOR IT

his last episode and delivered

a beautiful speech to the cast

and crew when he wrapped. I

could see people tearing up and

hugging each other, but we still

had quite a few episodes to go.

In approaching the last episode,

we knew the table read was going

to be emotional. We pre-shot

the entire episode. We only had

two days on camera, and I got

a third day so we could put the

whole episode in the can. That

took pressure off the cast when it

came time to shoot in front of the

studio audience. At the very end,

it hit me when Chuck Lorre went

David Benioff & D.B. Weiss

“The Iron Throne”

The series’ creators wrapped up this

epic journey by helming the final

episode themselves (it’s the only

one they’ve directed as a team). The

episode reveals who will become the

new leader of Westeros.

Miguel Sapochnik

“The Long Night”

It took three months of grueling night

shoots (shot mostly from 5 p.m. to

5 a.m.) to complete the 82-minute

battle episode, the series’ longest. The

cinematic feat ends with the death of

the Night King. — REBECCA FORD

David Nutter

“The Last of the Starks”

The longtime TV veteran has helmed

episodes for GoT since 2012, and the

nominated episode, which became

infamous because of its accidental

inclusion of a 2019 coffee cup, was his

ninth and final episode.