The Offer, which premieres April 28 on Paramount+, chronicles the making of the legendary film The Godfather. Dan Fogler and Patrick Gallo play two of the most important figures behind the scenes: director Francis Ford Coppola and author Mario Puzo. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with the cast members about the dynamic between the two men who teamed up to create this cinematic masterpiece.
“I would say that they were paired together to really squiggle down and sculpt down the novel into the script,” Dan told HollywoodLife during the show’s press junket. “Francis was known for writing Patton and being like a script doctor. The two of them got along kind of famously. They loved food, they loved wine, they loved each other’s company. They really appreciated each other’s genius.”
Patrick noted that Coppola and Puzo, who went on to win an Oscar together for Best Adapted Screenplay, had a “mutual respect” for each other. “They both respected each other in their craft so much so that there was a trust and an ease and a rhythm that they had with each other,” Patrick continued. “It was organic. It was effortless. Nobody was going to stab each other in the back creatively. They were going to work together and they were going to make something when they both said yes, that’s what it is… At the end of the day, think about how deep the respect was. Instead of calling it The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola said, ‘No, it’s called Mario Puzo’s The Godfather.’ That’s love and respect.”
To embody the iconic director, Dan watched the documentary Filmmaker about the making of Coppola’s The Rain People. “It was really great to see him really wanting to prove himself,” Dan said. “That was really helpful. Also, Dexter Fletcher said look at The Godfather notebook which is this enormous, beautiful book that has all of Francis’ thoughts in the margins of Puzo’s beautiful book. He really used that to sculpt the movie that he wanted to make.”
For Patrick, it was all about reading Puzo’s work. “He put so much of his life and soul into the things he wrote,” Patrick said. “He was a poet, and he was just a great artist. For me, it was all about the passion that he had for the written word. For his work, for other people’s work, he loved the written word. He loved it. You can really feel and smell and taste how much he cared for it. That was the thing that really accelerated my journey into his world. It was locating how much passion was just everywhere around him in his art, his own life growing up. That was what I used. That was my deck. As long as the passion, the art, and the excitement and what he did and the torment of what he did was intact, then I could just kind of let it all come through that, and that I was I think doing justice to his legacy I hope.
The series also stars Miles Teller, Matthew Goode, Juno Temple, Colin Hanks, and more. The Offer will premiere on April 28 with three episodes. The following episodes will drop weekly on Thursdays.