Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. This is Bloomberg Business Week inside from the reporters and editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus global business, finance and tech news as it happens. Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio.
It is Bloomberg Business Week. That's Carol Master. I'm Tim Stenevec Labor. It's been front and center. Two weeks after Boeming tried and failed end to strike with the brash move of a direct offer to workers, the Planemaker and its largest union are taking another stab to end the stalemate.
Yes they are.
This comes after Thursday's news that US DOC workers agreed to end a three day strike that had paralyzed trade on the US East and Gulf Coast and threatened to become a factor in the presidential election.
Lot going on, Yes, So couple this in with the return to office push that's coming hello Amazon last month. No question, companies are thinking a lot about employees. But the question is are we having the right coma We've got with us Doctor Stephan Meyer, he follows all this closely. He's the James P. Gorman, Professor of Business at Columbia Business School.
He's the author of.
A forthcoming book, The Employee Advantage, How Putting Workers First Helps Businesses Thrive, Help business Thrive, which come out comes out on October fifteenth. He joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio.
Full disclosure.
Professor Meyer was my professor back in the fall of twenty sixteen.
Tim a good student. That's all we wanted.
We have grade no disclosure at the Business School.
However I did.
I did like blake your eyes. You know what good It.
Is the perfect course for journalists.
Yeah, it sounds like it.
It's all case studies kind of stuff we love. I didn't have to do a lot of excel in that class, which was not my strong suit coming econometrics it was.
It was. It was actually an awesome class. Professor. Good to see you got your things from the book.
Thanks for having me here.
See you again.
It was a was a great student. Disclosing without disclosing degrades.
He was amazing. Thank you. I appreciate that. You're good to know.
So Carol and I were talking about this ahead of ahead of the interview, and we got a good bit of time with you, so we're happy about that. She reminded me about this letter back in twenty nineteen from the Business Roundtable, which talked about the idea of investors having to think differently about so called stakeholders, right companies moving away from shareholder primacy and committing to all stakeholders, including employees. Yet here we are five years later, has anything actually shifted?
Well, I actually don't think so.
That feels like a no, Yes, I actually.
Don't think so. Now, to be perfect lens, I've never met an executive who doesn't think or says that employees are the most important asset. But when you actually look at the data, you know, if you look at how often do they talk about them compared to customers, like ten times less than customers. How engaged are people at work? Not that much? You know, Like according to Gallup there is like sixty seven percent of workers are disengaged at work. So I don't think they're doing a good job.
Is there always like that amount of people are just like it's a job.
I don't think so. I mean, I think that's part of the problem. Kind of the mindset is like, you know, they don't want to work anyway, so I have to either incentivize them hard or control them even harder. But that's just not true. I mean people actually like work. I mean, you know, there's a limit to it. It's still yeah, but people actually come to work, you know, because they you know, it's part of their identity. If it's done well, if they're really engaged, you know, it's
a it's a fulfilling thing. I mean, I mean, I'm sure the two of you like.
You we do actually your job? Do we really do?
We really do like to come to the job. You know, there's something about it. I mean, I also love my job. There is something I do and what I do. I'm there are many, many people across the income distribution. It's also not just people who earn a lot. There is others who don't wound up much, but who are happy at work.
I like the other.
Yeah.
God, well, I was gonna say what we don't hear though, And we're about to go into earning season. What moves a company's stock is top line bottom line for the current quarter, what things looked like last quarter that outlook. One number we don't hear about is employee turnover at the company in the beginning of your book, you talk about Amazon's focus relentle jeftbezis is relentless focus on the consumer,
on the customer. But then you talk about that twenty fifteen New York Times expos that talked about what a terrible place many people thought Amazon was to work. It didn't seem to affect the way shareholders felt about the company.
No, And I think it's a problem. I think we have to think about how the employees think now. In fairness, I think Amazon for the longest time also got some heat because they were customer centric. Was like, wow, you're spending so much money on customers, where's the profits, like whatever? And back then they said like, look, you just wait. I mean it's actually, if we improve the experience for our customers, eventually we can make money. We can actually
increase the price. And I think the same should be true with employees. If we improve the experience for our employees, you know, productivity, cost per unit goes down. Because productivity goes up, turnover goes down, innovation goes up, and you know, in the customer experience, if they actually have contact to customers goes up as well. You know, I heard before
you talked about Costco quick. You know, people at Costco are happy, Yeah, the customers and the employees, and you feel it when you go in there.
And that's a company that was always like front and center in terms of healthcare and benefits. Why is it as long as they're a publicly held company or many companies are publicly held, is it going to be hard for an executive to kind of not think about cutting costs when it comes to employees and not worrying so much about that Because I feel like part of our political problems or economical problems or the economy is people feeling left behind and companies that are making tons of money.
We talked about this with the dog worker strike, and yet they're not feeling like they're a part of it.
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the hard part is if you want to cut costs in the short term, short term, the easiest is like to cud labor. Yeah, in the short term, that's an easy thing to do. I mean a little bit. If you want to, you know, slash your marketing budget, that's also easy to do in the short term. But in the long term it's just not a good idea. And I think even publicly traded company, if they can communicate to their investors that you know,
it's in the best interest. I think it's a good strategy going forward. When you know when best Buy was about to be turned I mean when best Buy was when you know all their competitor were out of business, everybody like best Buy. I mean that's like who And so Hubert Jolly comes in and he does a very human centric turnover and he got exactly that advice. He's like cod labor, you know, cut, cut, cut, and he
says like, no, I don't do that. What I actually want to do is understand what really happens in the store. Our blue shirts need to be happy. I need to understand what the problem is. And he did and turned around the company in a very successful way, I think where the shareholders were actually happy in the end.
So best Buy and Hubert Shorely is one example. What's another example of a of a company that has been rewarded by Wall Street for treating its workers right?
I mean, I think Costco is one that does it really well. Does there tweats their employee nicely and and turns it around. I think Etsy was one that did like a turnaround in a. They were probably a little too employee centric at the beginning, and meaning, you know, employee centric is not like giving perks. I think, like you know, free yoga classes are okay, but I mean that's not cutting it or like ping pong tables or
free snacks or whatever. And I think they figured that out did turnaround which cut some of those perks, but it's still very very employees centric organization.
What are you know, what is it that employees want? Is it salary? Is it benefits? Is it a pretty office? Is it?
What is it?
Yeah? I mean I think it's actually less about monetary or those perks. That's not what really keeps people motivated. I mean, there's very few people who get up in the morning is like, you know, today I'm going to increase the return and invest in capital by like half a percentage point, Like I'm so jast very few do that. I mean, obviously there's if you don't make enough money,
you know, it's also a problem. I mean it's like money is really really important if you have to worry about making ends meet, But once you reach a certain level, it's not money. I mean I talk in the book about well then.
Is that the employees.
You're talking about that those that are already making a decent salary, because I do feel like there's a sector of our economy that just can't make it. So hang on a second, because we've got to do a little bit of news, and I feel like we've got a lot of good stuff to unpack here. We're going to come back with Stefan Meyer. He is the James Gorman Professor of Business at Columbia Business School. He's got a new book out called The Employee Advantage, How putting workers
first helps business thrive. It sounds so logical, makes sense, right, and yet it as you say, we're getting ready for earning season, and it's not one of the things that we're going to highlight, right unless there's a lawsuit, then we talk about.
It against a company.
That's when it makes news and moves the stock price.
For now, though for.
Now exactly, we're going to come back right here on Bloomberg Business Week.
I want to get right back to our interview with Professor Stefan Meyer. He is the James Gorman Professor of Business at Columbia Business School. He is a former FED official. He worked at the Federal Reserve. I should say at the Federal Reserve at Boston and also New York as well. The new book The Employee Advantage, How Putting workers for
Helps business Thrive. Professor, I want to talk a little bit about where the pandemic fits into all this and thinking about it in the context of how employees think differently about their work. There seemed to be a shift take place. Just look at the pushback that Amazon is getting right now to bringing workers back to five days a week. That's a distinct example. And you write about Amazon in the book. But how do you think about the pandemic shifting this?
Yeah, thank you, Tim. I mean I think the pandemic shifted the lat It put like a really bright spotlight on what actually didn't work well before. I don't think like with the pandemic it suddenly was broken, but we figured out something is just not working well. And that spotlight really woke up a lot of people. They're like, really do I want to do that? Is that the right way of doing so? And the remote work is just one you know, where we thought like we can
never do I mean, it's never possible. Turns out yeah, but it's kind of fish and now we have to figure out like how much. But it's definitely I mean, in my view, it's definitely five days a week is not why should that be the optimal? Maybe there's sometimes but like I don't see why five days should be. And people woke up to like, maybe how we did things, how bosses behaved, how the workplace was structured, is maybe not the way we should do or have to do it.
Because the pydemic showed us we can actually do it diffinitely, And I think it was a really real big wake up call that late first to you know, great resignation and people rethinking like what are our opportunities? What are my priorities in work? And do I really want to work for a workplace that doesn't treat me as much as as well as I actually think I should should be treated. Well?
Have we changed them?
Because it does feel like a lot of people are being called back to the office and all of these kind of new wave of thinking of maybe how we work we thought would be with us forever, but are we seeing it kind.
Of roll back? And is that maybe not smart? That we're not evolving?
Yeah and transform, I mean I don't think we're I mean, when you look at how many percentage of workdays at home. I think we're plateaued some like thirty percent of the days.
But like obviously the news of like Amazon, you know, calling everybody back, and it's kind of ironic obviously, almost like I talk in the example, my first example is about Amazon and they like that they're not as employee centric and whatever and now and I thought, well, well, maybe they turn around because Bezos actually said we want to be the most the best employer as well. Turns
out they're the ones who I'll call everybody back. I think it's a huge mistake and it kind of shows that we haven't evolved as much, Carol, that we you know, they didn't listen to their employee as much as they would do their customers. They would do focus groups and like all customer insight right journeys, and now they're doing something or seventy five percent of Amazon employees hate.
Well do you miss because you get into the book, like you talk about purpose statements that companies need to put out, and I do wonder. We work at a company that has a very distinct culture and we talk about it a lot, and people who come in you feel it right from the get go. And it was important for people to be back here. And part of
it is that we running. You know, when you walk in, it's this big open area and everybody from all different departments are running into one another, and things do happen when you run into somebody, And I do wonder does culture get lost working at home? You talk about the importance of purpose statements for employees, so I wonder there's something to that. Absolutely, I mean you find it only at the office rightly.
There was actually two motivators that I describe that deal with are affected when we think about remote work. One is the flexibility autonomy and the other one what I call working together works. We have to be kind of together being in a good team. Now, do we need to be together forty hours a week?
Probably not sure. It does, love you, tim, but.
Sometimes it feels like we're or more it does culture matter? Yeah, But like you know, when we were in the off, when everybody was in the in the office five days a week, Like I guess like fifty percent of companies that like toxic work cultures, just because we're together doesn't make it great. If you have a good culture, you know, and you're really intentional about it, it's probably a good thing, but again, doesn't need forty hours or like you know,
there are downsides. Mentoring might not work so well. Do we do forty hours of mentoring? I don't think so. Do we do forty hours of like water moon or like kombucha tap moments? I don't think so. So we couldn't be actually much.
We haven't had that yet.
We haven't had You don't have a kombu.
We don't have kombuch like a lot of other taps. I want to talk about some more sort of examples that are happening in real time. We used to talk to Brian Nicol, the new CEO of Starbucks all the time. We have spoken him since he became CEO of Starbucks.
We talked him or so here. But I'm curious how you're looking at sort of that transition there, because there's a labor challenge with union and potential unionization, and then there's also the corporate challenge where he's like loves Newport Beach and they need him in Seattle, so he's like on a private jet quite a bit.
Yeah, funny enough. I actually wrote an opet giving advice to him. The advice is like doing a human centric turnover. I mean Starbucks where you employed the baristas are critically important. If you feel if you go into the Starbucks and you feel welcoming, the whole point was like that you have like the baristas and they're really happy.
I feel like I did a case study on Starbucks in your class.
Well, yeah, good, you remember that.
And and I do think it's like really important to not fall into that myth of like, you know cutting, we talked before about like should you should he cut costs right away in this turnaround, And I don't think so. In the long term, it's better to actually listen to you know, your workforce, working with the union or not. You know, often when you actually treat your employees well, they don't unionize because they're happy to begin with.
And they're good with customers help.
You can't you can't get happy customers without happy employees. I think there is no way you can't walk into a Starbuck and everybody is miserable and then be happy about paying whatever how much a Lotte is nowadays, but about a ridiculous amount of money for a Lotte, which part of it is the coffee, and part of it is the atmosphere that you're that you're buying, and so you need like happy employees in order to create that feeling and also to make them productive.
It is amazing in a service led economy. And we all have horror stories of being on hold. I had somebody with a particular company, telecom company, who was on hold for like four or five and you know, she's like, Luckily I could be at home doing stuff and be on whold because I had to deal with an issue.
But most people don't.
Have that time you're at work, like you know, we have to hang up, got to go do our show. But I do wonder, like what's happened, because it just seems like in a service led economy, service has gone to the wayside. I've got into stores and there's nobody around to help me, or there's somebody, you know, I'm buying something and they're on their cell phone while they're checking me out or something, or I check myself out, Like so, isn't it kind.
Of surprising that, yeah, if it's service.
Yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree more with you, Carol. I mean, I think like they in a service economy, the employees has to be creately coal important and you need to treat them well. And I think Costco again is a good example. There is this other for those of the listener who are from Texas, there is h EB. It's a grocery store in Texas where I tell that story where like they opened the store outside of Dallas and people would line up through the night to be
the first person in that grocery store. It's a grocery store and it's a very employee centric organization, and it creates this atmosphere where people are welcomed and love it to be there. And so I think they, as my book says, you know, you tweet your employees nice and then the business actually thrives as a result.
I was going to say, you're a behavioral economist. You teach students every semester at Columbia Business School. A top industry these students want to be in is consulting. Consultants often are told to cut costs.
So there's this.
Mood production overseas.
There's this circle that kind of needs to be disrupted, I imagine in your view, and I'm wondering how that message is being received at the school and in your class.
I mean, I try so you know, it's a topic where like everybody on the one it says like, yeah, I'm for it, the question is whether they actually implement it. And I think it's the same with obviously customers centricity. You know, there is no executive who says, so, I don't care about customers, but only if you can really
pull it off to be really customer centric. And I think the same is true with employees that you know, if you really care and you really put in the work to be employee centric, the benefits will come, but it's going to be delayed. You know, we talked about this before. It's not a short term thing. If you want to, yeah, the easiest way to cut cost right now is to cut labor force. That's often the biggest factor in the cost structure.
It feels kind of depressing, like the outlook, because it just sounds like you have a couple of examples, but most companies.
Yeah, I mean I see it as actually as a very positive story. I think like there is a way if we change the mindset of thinking it's not either or we're fighting against the employees and otherwise it comes out of the bottom line. It's like, no, we can actually treat them well and create more profit.
What's the research that backs that up?
I mean, there is like study over study that shows, like you know, organizations that put well being not wellness well being and treat their employees nicely, they're actually more profitable. Now, it's a hard thing to study because there's all you know, what's causal and what is actually correlational, because maybe the
better companies can also treat them better. But I think I do think, like there are many examples and studies who actually show that if you treat them well, the benefits will come.
But go back to like I meuniversity has gotten better, and I think boards like we've seen more diversity, and we've seen the research that says companies perform better. But I do wonder, again, go to earnings if we're not highlighting that this company's doing so well with its employees, especially for publicly held companies. I just I understood for smaller companies maybe why that happens because you're really but I just I don't mean to be so negative, but I do.
I've got about thirty seconds to wrap up.
I probably have to shift and maybe you guys have to shift and talking more about the employees yeah. Where you know, nowadays we talk a lot about customers. You know, many many years ago, customers were like an afterthought. It was like product centric and engineering and finance. And then we move towards thinking, no, actually the customer is really important.
What's retention rate on your customers and so on and so forth, And I think we probably have to shift to also now think about employees and maybe in the future on your show, you have to ask those executives that's the least like you say.
They often say, yeah, of course important.
Yeah, that's true.
Actions speak louder than words.
Stefan Meyer. He's the Jane Gorman Professor of Business at Columbia Business School. Brand new book out next week, The Employee Advantage Help Putting Workers First Helps Business Thrive.
This is Bloomberg Business Week.
This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio.
Well, The Lord of the Rings Rings of Power on Prime Video and it's in its second season, Carol, it's expected renewed for a third and from what we've read, Amazon has planned for five seasons.
Yeah.
Talk about having some you know, visibility. It's incredible and you know listen.
I think that's a Jeff It's like a Jeff Bezos passion project. I think so two years ago he's like, he was so excited about this.
And you get it. It's based on the work of J. R. R. Tolkien. Our next guest isn't you.
Looked up how to say that? Everybody says JR.
Tolkien, Well, it's so interesting.
There's actually an interview with I think one of the actors that was in one of the series or movies, and it's it's apparently a thing, and we talked about it in the newsroom, so I did do my homework. Our next guest is an executive producer director of Rings of Power. Great to have with us, Charlotte Branstrom. She has been involved with a lot of projects that you'll
likely know. She's an award winning director directing both TV and film, a producer who has worked on Showgun, The Continental, The Unlikely Murderer, I'm leaving a lot out, The Outsider, The Disappearance. We could go on and on and on. We're really excited to have her and she's with us from Paris.
Welcome, Welcome, it is Tolkien, right.
Yes, absolutely, thank you, Thank you for having me.
Well, thank you for being with us. There's so much we want to talk about.
I got to say that whenever we see someone who is as accomplished as you and has gone the distance in this industry, we do kind of wonder about how you began.
What was your first job? How hard was it to get going?
My first job was a job in Death Valley. Actually I was cleaning the motor homes for the actress.
No, oh my god. All right, So, and then what did that do? Like just introduce you to people? You met people? Is that how it happened?
No, I think I've worked very hard and then imaginally convinced me to work in the editing room. So I started off standing the editing and assistant editor and worked myself up. That was actually after I went to film school, I went to a F, I came to the States. I went to the States to go to the a FI American Film Institute in Los Angeles.
So when I graduated from there is when I got my first job cleaning moder homes, and then I sort of worked myself up from there.
So I don't I've sort of worked in every incapacity I think in films and for I do.
And it was really easy, right the whole process.
I'm being I'm being a great crazy I just walked.
How hard was it?
And it's something that you know, we we actually talked on our planning call about, you know, the number of women who are reaching the level that you are and directing and producing.
And it's still not a ton is it.
No, It's it's hard, I guess also because I mean.
They we were a bit back then.
I started directing twenty five years ago, and we were a bit typecast. When I would walk into a room, they saw me and they said she should do like a sentimental drama or romantic comedy.
And I just wanted to do action films and I wanted to do epics, cinema. I wanted to do different kind of films.
And because those are the films that I enjoy watching, my my, I mean, I love Lauras of Arabia. I loved all the big epics. I mean, I liked the scale. So I just pushed for that. So whenever I got the actually little drama or comedy, I always put action in it.
So a little bit little, hey, I want to talk a little bit. We have a bit of time with you.
So it's great.
I want to talk a little bit about being a director in a world of incredible things you can do with CGI, with AI and computers, because if you go and watch some stuff out like Showgun was just I just wrapped it up. It was just an amazing, amazing visual the whole thing. We loved it filmed in British Columbia. But how do you how do you balance your vision with what then needs to be done in post production to make something work?
Well, you try to basically work. You work not only with CGI visual effects. Obviously you add special effects and you you build sets. So everything that you have in the foregrounded that's close to camera you try to build for real and see GI I'm not I'm not saying mainly, but it's used a lot for extension and then banishing everything. But then if we talk about Shotgun, if we go back to the ships, that's.
What the biggest That was a very big challenge.
And those were just pieces of ships that I had, just small pieces on the parking lot in the rain, so and I put the actress on it and I would walk off from my monitor in the tent where I was sort of a little bit like avoiding the rain and walk up to see these four actress staying there being drenched on deck, and they had.
To imagine the ocean and everything else.
So you try to basically talk to them and try to have them, I mean imagine everything around them.
I will say there are some scenes where there are dives off of ships and you.
Know it's real. He dived into a tank there.
Yeah, that was something we need a little see Jai that day too, actually, because when it was very cold in the air and Cosmo was diving to the water that was actually warm. So when he would get out of the water, he was like smoking. He looked like the devil. So we actually had to use to eye on the day you don't even realize, just to get rid of the smoke around him.
Wow, when you're dealing, when you're dealing, like you said, you like the scale, you like epic films. When you're dealing on that scale, is it I mean, does it require typically more takes because it's so complicated and there's so much involved. I'm just curious how complicated it is. And those poor actors that are on the rain or they're in the rain for a long time, because it's just difficult to put together.
Yeah, it's tough, actually, But what was really tough on Shogun was the scenes in the in the woods, the attack with the flaming arrows because it was a night. I mean, we had a lot of weather problems on that show because of the rain, and we had to base. See everybody was carrying around an umbrella, and the poor cameraman was trying to light the scene but he couldn't se anything before everybody took off the umbrellas, and then
when the one us were gone, everybody got wet. So we had to like really really shoot very quickly eventually, but you know, it takes a lot of preparation. It's like you have to imagine what it's going to be like I actually everybody has their method. I like to work with models, so I had the ships were built like small models, and I was playing around with that and people on deck that way, and was my best way to explain the shots to the storyboarder. And then
we would storyboard the scenes. And I do the same for big battles. I sort of placed them everything on the battlefield and I decide from which direction that coming and where the sun is and I work everything out, and for me, it helps me to work it out that way before creating everything.
That is so cool.
Hey, before we move on to that, one more question on Shoka. We were wondering so that we wanted to ask you. Our understanding is that the process that there were two writers rooms, one where English was spoken, one where Japanese. Just tell us a little bit about that dynamic, if we've got it correctly.
Yes, that's absolutely correct, except that I was around.
I came in when it was already all written, and I just received the script where everything that was supposed to be in Japanese was in italics, and then I realized my word script was in italics. Got how did you are you sure we're really doing this? And they said, yes, yes, we are shooting three quarters of the show in Japanese.
Then you are yourself with I mean.
You have to surround yourself with translators and people who know Japanese really well, and you feel like, after a few days you get sort of you get used to it. You sort of think you almost speak Japanese by listening to various intonations and things.
Well, that's courtesy of our one of our producers Elizabeth who has liked the series.
Oh, we all loved Yeah, we all loved it.
But incredible people working on it. And I think that hero Sonata was one of the most incredible. He was when he was not on camera. He was off camera constantly.
What can you tell us about season two and your role on season two?
On the Rings of Power? Right, not Shogun?
Well, on Shogun and then we'll talk Shogun.
I don't know. I can't say anything.
I knew that would be the answer, but Jim's already planning. It's already planning.
I can't say anything.
But you're an incredible season I think I.
Think you are.
You are working on it confirmed?
No, not right now?
Okay, okay, we'll see.
Well, what's it like.
To work over whether there's Shogun or Rings of Power? You know, something that is you know is going to be so watched, so critiqued big time. Do you feel that pressure as you're going through it?
You don't have time to do it's so much, it's so challenging the work itself. You have such long days and you have so many challenges every day, so you really focus on the detail of the day and you you sort of it's like building a major puzzle or having pieces of a puzzle every day that you put in, so you're really focused on that, so you don't think about the outcome at that moment, I think, or I don't at least, so I'm just trying to do something that really works well.
Well.
Tell us about it.
Rings a parrot certainly working well, So tell us about kind of working through that.
My understanding is too.
You worked.
Was it both the premiere and finale for season two?
Yeah?
I did the first, the opening, and the I mean and the last two episodes, and the last two were the most the biggest. I think they were probably bigger than Shotgun. They were the biggest I've ever done because there were huge sets and a lot of different worlds and a lot of challenges, And the biggest challenge for me was to work in constant mud in episode seven.
What's that?
That was like, Imagine you come in the morning at six o'clock in the morning and you're gonna work walk in sticky mud up to your knees all day, and it takes a lot of time to actually walk around in it because you can't walk very fast and you usually rushed all the time. Trying to finish the day, and you need to speak to everyone. So the walkie talkies were very useful. So we've were trying to talk to each other from a distance.
Hey, Charlotte, As I mentioned, Carol and I are headed out to Hollywood.
Were going.
We're going Wednesday for Bloomberg screen time is on Thursday.
AI is going to be a huge topic there.
I got a panel on that on Thursday, And I'm wondering, as a director, what's your view on the idea of AI or image likeness or displacement in the industry as a result of this technology.
I think we need to be protected. I mean, we need to protect a lot of players for I mean, to help them. I mean, because AI can't replace everything, but we need also to be very smart about it. We're not going to stop it, so we need to use it as a tool and to help us in
our work. So I'm just trying. I mean, of course everybody is using AI in different ways today, but I mean there is a danger that we need to limit, and its specifically when it comes to I see for our cast for actors, for extra I mean, because people want to keep working in this industry. But I as a director also, I mean we embrace vffcs. The progress is done and there is a lot of I mean, we're not going to stop it, so we have to
be smart and learn how to use it. So I think I'm just trying to learn as much as I can about it and see how I can use it.
It brings the power of the biggest thing you feel like you said, you know you like the large scale and working on these projects. Is this the biggest scale that you've worked on.
Yeah, I think so definitely, because it has so many different worlds. It's such huge sets, and you work with the crews are just at huge. We have a lot of people and they are the best there are. So it's just it's a gift every day to be able to walk to set and see these beautiful sets and figure out how to use them. But it's really about in the end, you sit in the dark tent with your cameraman and you're looking at the screen and you're trying to make the scene the work and the performance
is to be believable. And so it's in a way similar to every other show too. At the same time, it's just when you leave the tent and you see what you have around you.
That is a bit impressive.
I bet I bet so rom Com not in your near future, right, it can be good.
Gotta have the word epic.
I'm just gonna say epic com. No, listen, don't change a thing. Don't change a thing.
Charlotte, thank you so much. We know it's later where you are in Powis, so thank you so much for carving out time for us. We really enjoy this best of luck and we look forward to the.
Next seasons of whatever you're doing.
Charlotte Bradstroum. She is executive producer director. As we said, Rings of Power on Prime Videos