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Regardless of what is happening in real-life politics, House of Cards co-showrunner Melissa James Gibson says the show’s storytellers have to be ‘brave.’

Canadian-born co-showrunner says 'the most terrifying battlefield is the American psyche,' which has great resonance today

Note: This article contains spoilers for the previous (fourth) season of House of Cards.

When Frank Underwood was born, who could have imagined U.S. President Donald Trump? House of Cards – the series that established Netflix as not just a streaming platform but also a producer of must-watch original programming – is back for its fifth season, following the jaw-dropping promise that ended Season 4: that Frank (Kevin Spacey) and Claire (Robin Wright) would "make the terror" in order to hold onto their power. The show launches as the new real-life U.S. President engages in his own unique form of leadership, providing interesting context for House of Cards' new co-showrunners, Melissa James Gibson and Frank Pugliese.

Gibson is from Canada and has politics in her blood; her father is the former B.C. politician Gordon Gibson. She moved to New York at 17 for school and is now a dual citizen. Pugliese is from Italy; he moved to the United States as a four-year-old. The pair have been writers on House of Cards for the past two seasons and took over as showrunners from creator Beau Willimon for Season 5, which is out on May 30. They spoke with The Globe and Mail's Marsha Lederman this week.

I have to start with the obvious question: In the era of Trump, when truth is stranger than fiction – and possibly more entertaining – how do you write this show?

Melissa James Gibson: We just keep doing what we've always done on the show. Regardless of the climate, we just have to be as brave as possible as storytellers.

Frank Pugliese: We have a story we're telling and there's a trajectory to it and we have established characters. We do an enormous amount of research and are responding to or kind of living in the moment. Culturally and politically, it may be the same moment that created Trump. But we're not writing to comment on Trump; we're just writing what we see and how we see it. If there's some relevance and there's some dialogue between the two, so be it.

Most of House of Cards Season 5 was written months before Trump was elected, co-showrunner Frank Pugliese says.

I wonder how you navigate your fictional world when this crazy stuff is going on in the real world and if there is any influence or impact.

MJG: I think there's a lot of resonance, but it's not resonance we went out of our way to pursue. As you know, Season 4 left us with the Underwoods on the verge of fomenting chaos and fear, basically with the promise of total war. When we began talking about Season 5, what was most interesting to us was to figure out how best to pay off that promise. And for us, there's nothing more terrifying than trying to use fear and terror to manipulate the imaginations of the American people. In other words, the most terrifying battlefield is the American psyche. I do think unintentionally that that has great relevance and resonance in our current climate.

FP: Most of the season was written six, seven months before Trump was elected and during the primary of the real election. We had laid out a lot of our story way before.

MJG: We were in the tail end of preproduction for Episodes 10 and 11 [when Trump was elected], so there wasn't much left to shoot. But I would say the other thing that really informed the design of our season, that feels apropos of what's going on in the world, is we had a lot of conversations about the porousness of the divisions between politics, entertainment and the media and how those divisions are ever more disappearing and how people move through those realms with a fluidity that they never had before. So you have a speechwriter who becomes a screenwriter who becomes a pundit. And certainly, President Trump is a prime example of the entertainer, the 24-hour news show.

FP: He might be a product of that fluidity. For research, we meet a lot of people like lobbyists who could have easily become screenwriters or wanted to be pundits as well. There's a real a blur between the lines and it seems to be the same kind of blur that helps create someone like Trump. So it was something that we wanted to explore with the season. We do a lot of work to make sure that anything that's onscreen could actually happen and we take it to the extreme to entertain and to maybe put some things to question. In real life, some things have gone to the extreme as well. And they may be rooted in the same idea of someone trying to be entertaining rather than being a politician.

Did real events at any point influence a direction that you took with the season?

FP: If it leaked in at all, we had decided before the season started that we wanted to explore Francis Underwood's direct address and the complicity implied with that between him and the audience/the voter. In a sense, Francis is always campaigning and asking for allegiance. And our goal was to put that in question and put it back on the audience and ask: Is this what you really wanted? In a sense, I think there's some aspects of that that might have been affected by the emergence of Trump.

MJG: We wanted to pay off the very seeds of the show. The first frames of the show it's Francis turning to us and inviting us along for this ride. At what point does passive complicity become participation? And I think it's a relevant question for all the people in this country who didn't vote.

FP: In this season, Francis does sort of ask the spectator if he wants to be a participant or just stay passive. That might have been something that came from real life.

What are the challenges of taking over a show that is this prominent and this much in the spotlight after four successful seasons?

MJG: It's sort of like having a baby. You think you can prepare, but you can't anticipate how overwhelming it is. But I would say stepping into a showrunner position anywhere is humbling and daunting and challenging. And to step into this situation was a privilege. It's a privilege to be trusted to carry on the telling of the story.

Kevin Spacey as President Frank Underwood visits Ben’s Chili Bowl in Washington on May 22, 2017.

Melissa, you're from Canada. You grew up here. Does that in any way give you an advantage in writing this show – a bit of an outsider's perspective?

MJG: I've lived here [in the United States] for an awfully long time, but yeah, at heart I do maintain a little bit of a distant perspective. I do think it's helpful. And politically, what's going on in both countries is just fascinating fodder. The pace of the news is just incredible. It's like watching a show.

FP: The most difficult thing to compete with is becoming the fact that politics has become a 24-hour television show. Trump's not going to watch our show because he's too busy watching a show called Trump and it's on every day.

I was thinking about you guys watching the body-slam story play out in Montana this week. When something like that happens, is it ever similar to an idea you've had? Have you ever taken anything off the table because it actually happened?

MJG: Absolutely. I'm sure it's true with all of these shows that deal with politics. But you start to feel a little bit crazy in terms of the chicken-egg thing. It's like wait – we thought of that, we did that. But you're airing first. Real life is airing first.

Is there anything specific that you ended up taking out or changing?

FP: We had this idea of what a travel ban would look like and we put it in the first episode. That was written a long time ago. And then when Trump was talking about the travel ban, we were like, wow.

You both come from a theatre background. Has that come into play at all in terms of how you approach the work?

FP: To go back to your question about how we transitioned into showrunners, theatre at its best is incredibly collaborative. There's a way we both have decided to do that which is I think a little bit more about listening than demanding and we translated that into our year as showrunners. We collaborated with everybody and we brought everyone in even on story aspects all around; we really wanted a collaborative atmosphere.

MJG: This show is a well-oiled machine but it's also populated by people who are just working at the top of their game in every department so we just wanted to use our resources and empower people as much as possible. And I think it really pays off.

Frank and his wife, Claire, struggle with their own humanity in the show, James Gibson says.

I started to really like Claire at the beginning of last season. And then, of course, I didn't. Is it hard to write such despicable characters?

MJG: I think it would be if their humanity is completely extinguished, but I think the drama of the show is each of these characters ultimately struggling with their humanity. It's like their ambition and their humanity are in a constant battle and that's really the heart of the show.

FP: Any character, any issue, any element enters this world that has a very corrupting aspect to it and usually the price they pay is their humanity. Our characters have struggled with the humanity they can hang on to. Claire's arc [this season] is really very exciting. [She] is starting to embrace her ambitions and there is a price you pay for that.

MJG: It's exciting to me that Claire can be as much of an anti-hero as the men that populate these shows.

FP: There's been a whole generation of bad-dad shows; these middle-aged men who do bad things but they do it all for you. And I think to write about the emergence of Claire [is exciting].

MJG: [Claire and Frank] have met their match in each other and that continues to be the juice of the show.

FP: The show at its core is about a relationship.

MJG: Yeah, a marriage; a crazy, complicated marriage.

FP: And how it evolves and changes and tries to reset itself is always there. When you pull back the curtain on this show, that's what's at its core and it's really exciting to write.

This interview has been edited and condensed.