The showrunners of 'Super Pumped' explain why the unlikability of Uber founder Travis Kalanick brought a 'humanity' to the series
- "Super Pumped" follows the rise and fall of Uber's cofounder and first CEO Travis Kalanick.
- The series showrunners told Insider why making Kalanick likable to viewers wasn't an issue for them.
In Showtime's upcoming anthology series "Super Pumped: The Battle For Uber," creators Brian Koppelman and David Levien, along with showrunner Beth Schacter, dive headfirst into how the ridesharing goliath revolutionized transportation as we know it.
But to take us on that journey, they put us in the hands of the company's co-founder Travis Kalanick (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt), whose ego and hot temper fueled Uber's meteoric rise when he was its first CEO back in the mid-2000s. However, his behavior also put the company in hot water after stories surfaced that he had knowledge of sexual harassment allegations at Uber and did nothing about it. He resigned as CEO in 2017.
Gordon-Levitt plays Kalanick as a fast-talking instigator who loves to hold a grudge as much as he likes to throw a raging party. It leads to the character being unlikable right from the first episode.
But Koppelman, Levien, and Schacter all agree they were less interested in making Kalanick appealing for viewers and instead, wanted to use him as a way to show the company's unconventional disruption of the transportation space.
"Likability matters much less to us than trying to understand what it is about — often men like this — that allows them to show us who they are exactly and yet as a culture we not only follow them but we put our money with them," said Koppelman to Insider, who along with his longtime producing partner Levien (the duo also created Showtime's hit show "Billions") adapted the series around the Mike Isaac book of the same title.
"We thought about humanity," Schacter added, who has been collaborating with Koppelman and Levien since becoming a producer on "Billions" in 2020 (she's now its showrunner). "This guy's a very human person. He's not a monster, he's not from some Greek myth or a comic book. He doesn't belong on a Marvel show, he's human and has human faults and human strengths."
The trio said Gordon-Levitt was their first choice to play Kalanick. Instantly, they found he — along with the rest of the cast, which includes Kyle Chandler as Uber's angel investor Bill Gurley and Uma Thurman as board member Arianna Huffington — could keep up with their rapid-fire style of dialogue.
"They can carry so much," Schacter said of the cast. "We love people that use language. To talk people into things, or talk people out of things."
But "Super Pumped" isn't solely focused on Kalanick's rise and fall. The show also examines the friction between Kalanick and Gurley, the plight of the low-paid Uber drivers, and the sexual harassment allegations that plagued the company.
"Over time the stories that kept sticking around revolved around what interested those in the writer's room," Levien said.
The result is a fast-moving, extremely entertaining series (a second season is already greenlit which will focus on Facebook) that's filled with Pearl Jam needle drops and narration done by legendary filmmaker Quentin Tarantino.
"We are drawn to powerful people behind desks making Titanic-sized cataclysmic decisions," Koppelman said. "This was a story ready-made for that."
"Super Pumped" premieres on Showtime at 10 p.m. on Sunday, February 27.