When Mr. Robot hit last summer, it was clear USA was no longer the sunny home of yore. Characters weren’t so much as welcome but omnipresent.

With Queen of the South, a Mexican-English language show about drug cartels starring Alice Braga based on an international bestseller, USA is testing the boundaries again. I talked with producer and professional multi-hyphenate David T. Friendly about getting the rights to the books, breaking through TV’s clutter and Scarface.

This is a powerhouse performance from Alice Braga. Was she always in mind for Teresa Mendoza?

We probably looked at 1,500 actresses but nobody felt as right as Alice. We knew she was the right person for the part, the question was would she be willing to do a television series and commit to do a series like this? Her career has been in features like City of God and Elysium. It turned out she was aware of this book and it had been given to her by a friend eight years ago, who said she should play Teresa Mendoza. We were thinking the same thing. I believe the quality of the material and Alice as Teresa is what got us on the air.

What was the adaptation process like?

I saw a full-page ad in a trade for a show I’d never heard of, La Reina del Sur. I discovered there was a book La Reina Del Sur, which was written by a famous South American fiction writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte. That began a process that took over a year of me speaking with Arturo’s agents on a daily basis, because I wanted to develop the book as a one-hour drama. I was aware of the telenovela, but felt this would be a very different show. This was for American audiences, and I hoped we could elevate the material with a slightly different arc for the character, which meant her coming to America.

How difficult was it to get Arturo to agree to those terms?

There’s nothing easy about getting a show on the air, but this was some of the most difficult work because he didn’t know me and he didn’t know whether to trust me. They were not open to it initially but part of being a good producer is persevering, and I persevered. We spoke on a daily basis, I’m not exaggerating, for at least a year. He doesn’t speak a word of English by the way. So it was constantly through his agent. Eventually someone can be convinced your heart is in the right place through that level of commitment.

This is a show that probably doesn’t get made before Narcos. What push back were you getting?

It’s not like this is the first show to examine the world of the cartels. But it is the first show with a female protagonist in the key role. That is probably one of the reasons we were able to get through this incredible obstacle course and have a show that’s got 13 hours on the air.

In a world dominated by men, and it’s a violent, dangerous, intense, competitive world, its uniqueness is that at the core, there’s a woman who has succeeded in taking this journey on. She didn’t choose it, it chose her, and she has all the right personality traits and skill-sets to do it.

When I was watching the pilot, I jotted down “female Scarface,” and then there it was on screen. What other movies were touchstones during production?

Very perceptive of you, that is a tip of the hat to one of the major influences for the show. Whenever you’re working on a movie or television show, people start talking about television and films that influenced you on set. I grew up in New York in the 70s, and we talked a lot about movies like The French Connection, The Conversation and Serpico in that wonderful era of classic filmmaking. Our goal was to have each episode look like a short film.

Scarface is something we talked about at length. The difference is, and I didn’t understand it when it first came out, there’s a bit of campiness to Scarface that we didn’t want any part of. We were not going for that. We were going for a gritty reality.

I was struck by how much this felt like premium cable. I know TV has upped the ante, and USA did with Mr. Robot, but did they have the same vision?

When we went out with the pilot, there were several interested buyers, but nobody as passionate as USA. We didn’t even know that much yet about Mr. Robot. As soon as I watched that show and saw how bold it was, I felt like we were at the right place and knew they would support us.

Honestly, hand to god, we have never gotten a call saying you have to dial back on this. We never got that call. It was shocking to me, because I grew up with USA as blue-sky TV, things that on a certain level are right down the middle. Here they were: we are rebranding this network. We want you to go for it.

RELATED: Why USA Rebranded to Reflect a Risk-Taking American Spirit

We never ever got a call saying this goes too far, which I’m so grateful for because when you’re doing a show about the violence and the intensity of the drug world, if it’s not real, look at what you’re competing against. You’re competing against movies like Sicario; you’re competing against a series like Narcos. You can’t be the light and fluffy drug show. That’s not going to work. It was important that we have authenticity and we had nothing but support from USA. It was the perfect home for the show.

You’ve been a jack of all trades: writer, reporter, producer, director. What’s one thing you haven’t tackled that you’d like to?

Last year I wrote, produced and directed a documentary, Sneakerheadz, which was one thing I’d never done. I was proud having done it. Right now, I love the television business because it’s so much faster paced than film and there’s so much more action, for lack of a better term. To work with Fox Studios and USA, and have notes coming in from both, and 11 directors for 13 hours, I just want to do this again. There are other projects I’m working on in television that aren’t quite yet ready to come out, but I’m excited about television as a business.

The one remaining thing that I’ve never done but want to do is get involved in some sort of theatre production, because I love live theater. It’s fascinating. That would be hitting for the cycle.

Given your past as an entertainment reporter, if you had a column today, what would it focus on?

I would be writing a column right now with the headline “Clutter & Disruption.” There were 400 new television shows last year. That is the clutter. The disruption is: how do you get viewers to find the really good stuff? How do you get viewers to come to your show? This is what I’m thinking about with Queen of the South. I know our show is good. I’m proud of it. But I need people to come watch our show. How do I get them to turn our show on and not the 399 other new shows? That’s what I’d be writing about. What are the main mechanisms to get audiences to watch your material? Is it social media? Is it the 30-second TV spot? Is it print? Is it radio? This is what I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about. That’s what I’d be writing.

What’s your method for Queen of the South?

The most important thing in trying to recruit viewers is word of mouth. Look at Twitter right now, look at #QueenoftheSouth, look at the vast number of people saying they liked the premiere at ATX. It’s like drugs in my vein. That’s what we need. Facebook is incredibly important and it’s where you’re going to see a lot more marketing and advertising for these series, because the audience wants to know that other people think the show is good. Not so much critics or planned advertising, but genuine word of mouth gets the show to blow up. How do you harness it? That’s the disruption.

Queen of the South comes to disrupt the clutter June 23 on USA.

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