An Interview with Ian Biederman - - Executive Producer and Creator of Shark

Creating a series takes a special kind of person, one who is aware of what viewers' current tastes are, and who knows just the right formula for putting together a cast people will not only love, but relate to. Most importantly, the creator needs to develop a scenario that will have viewers waiting anxiously to see what happens week after week. After working on some of the most successful series on television, Ian Biederman is the perfect man to create what I believe to be the next big series on television.

Q: When did you decide to get into show business?
Ian: "I always harbored dreams of being a writer since I was a little kid in grade school in New York. When I went to school in Chicago, I was thinking about being a lawyer and was in pre-law and studied political science. I always had it (writing) in the back of my mind that I'd love to give it a try and didn't know if I had the courage to try because I think its a very tough business. I got to the point where I applied for law school and I was preparing to go and I thought let me try it for a year and delay law school. I moved out from New York to Los Angeles and got a job as a writer's assistant on a show called Lois and Clark. I worked my way up over the last ten years, level by level and producer different types of shows like Chicago Hope and Crossing Jordan."

Q: You have worked on some of the most successful dramas on television, what do you feel is the formula for the consistent success?
Ian: "Well, it's a funny business. I was lucky enough to get on Chicago Hope through a producer that I met and worked with named Bill D'Elia, who now runs Boston Legal with David E. Kelley, a very successful guy who brought me over to Chicago Hope and was really a great mentor to me. A lot of it is meeting people who do good work. A lot of it is luck that the shows you get on do succeed."

Q: How did the idea for Shark come about?
Ian: "I was working on Law & Order: SVU and at the time I was sort of a legal junkie and was watching a lot of the news talk shows lawyers were on. I had a chance to meet a lot of the big time defense attorneys. I watched a series of celebrity trials -- the Robert Blake trial, Michael Jackson and the OJ trial and it became apparent to me that the best legal system on the planet is at its core, not really fair.

Your guilt or innocence is based on your ability to pay, to afford a good defense. It's not so much a racial system as some people would argue that race has a big influence, but I think the dominant factor is economics. A rich guy and a poor guy can commit the same crime and they don't get the same justice. It became very apparent to me at that time and it annoyed me to the point of saying it would be great to have a Robert Shapiro or Johnny Cochran on our side, at least we'd have a fair fight. It was really a revenge fantasy on my part, sort of imagine what it would be like to have one of these guys switch sides."

Q: Is Sebastian Stark someone you know in real life?
Ian: "No, he isn't. He's really a lot of people, a lot of lawyers I know of, whose work I read in preparation for the show. There's a little Mark Geragos, Scott Peterson's lawyer, a little Robert Shapiro. Robert Shapiro is one of our technical consultants, he sits in the room with us, gives insights into how these guys really work, he's brilliant. He actually appears in the show in the first episode after the pilot. He plays poker with James Woods."

Q: In one episode, you have managed to show us the many layers of this complex man, how deep does Sebastian's psyche go?
Ian: "I think it goes pretty deep. For me it is a legal show and it isn't a legal show. It's about redemption, it's about a guy trying to start over and trying to do so at the pinnacle of his career. This guy was at the top of his game and at this particular time in his life, combined with the time he was going to lose his daughter and realize he was never going to get to know her, I think it reciprocated this idea that maybe I'm not the person I wanted to be and maybe it's too late for me to change and how hard that is. He's motivated to be a good guy."

Q: The legal team is made up of very different personalities, is the plan to make each one of them compliment Stark's character?
Ian: "My plan is to hopefully have them exist separately and independently from Stark. Certainly, he has a mentor role to play with all four of them, who are all wonderful and all distinctly different. All those characters have their own mountains to climb personally and professionally."