\n<\/p>\n
Couples Therapy<\/em>\u00a0finds authentic suspense in its structure\u2014a credit to its cinematic bona fides. \u201cWe really don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen,\u201d cocreator and executive producer Kriegman says. \u201cThere\u2019s a formless reality to the process where we\u2019re trusting our gut, and then really excited to see what comes of it. That\u2019s the joy of this filmmaking.\u201d<\/p>\n Having now gone through several seasons, Kriegman and his team have a better sense of what they need to work: They see hundreds of couples\u2014the estimate in our interview for how many they saw and considered for this installment alone is 400\u2014and rather than outsource the casting, do it all in-house themselves. Once the ensemble is finalized, the producers give Guralnik the space to conduct her sessions and progress the therapy without interference, but do speak with her regularly during production. She\u2019s not isolated from the process.\u00a0<\/p>\n As Kriegman puts it, \u201cWe have conversations about how the work is going, but very much through the lens of the therapy and less through the lens of the filmmaking.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNever in my life as a professional have I had such close scrutiny and supervision of my work as I\u2019ve had in the\u00a0last [several] years,\u201d Guralnik says. \u201cI did a PhD and then I did another 10 years of analytic training\u2026. But in every [Couples Therapy<\/em>] session I have people watching the session while I\u2019m doing it, and I have then editors and directors peering over the material and trying to understand it\u2014and talking to me about it later, both session by session and then period by period.\u201d<\/p>\n This season,\u00a0Couples Therapy<\/em>\u00a0brought on\u00a0Joshua Altman,<\/strong>\u00a0an award-winning documentary veteran (All These Sons, Minding the Gap<\/em>), as a new director. He stepped into a well-oiled machine, but also imbued it with fresh perspective. \u201cTo find couples that I felt had this push and pull of genuine love for each other, and at the same time, this dynamic between them that as an audience you\u2019re like, \u2018Man, these two should split up\u2019\u2014those feelings are real things that all couples go through,\u201d Altman says. \u201cAs I watched other seasons again, I was like, \u2018Okay, yeah. How can we pull that out?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n One way was through Guralnik directly. For the first time in the series, she\u2019s confronted with a couple she believes, to some extent, she cannot work with, and agonizes over whether to terminate the treatment. The struggles between the pair resonate, initially, as a portrait of a couple in crisis. \u201cBut [Altman] was able to say, \u2018Oh, no, the story here is as much Orna\u2019s story as it is the couple’s story,\u2019\u201d Kriegman says. \u201cThat was a really great insight that took the season to a place that we\u2019ve never been before.\u201d Adds Altman: \u201cWe have the benefit of watching things and rewatching things and starting to look at patterns and offering those to her\u2014not as a way to steer her, but to bring up questions and to raise ideas. Sometimes she shuts them down, and sometimes she\u2019s like, \u2018That\u2019s really interesting.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n