Exclusive: Ted Sarandos interview on new Netflix investment in Canada

Ted Sarandos admits that he watches everything.

In fact, the co-CEO of Netflix says he’ll keep watching something — even if he’s not enjoying it — in the hope that it will get better. (He joked that his wife, Nicole Avant, thinks his inability to turn off the TV is like “a disease.”) But, during a visit to Toronto last week, Sarandos said that he’s simply an optimist, always hoping that the good part is coming up.

Sarandos was in Toronto to celebrate Netflix’s opening of its first Canadian headquarters on the 32nd floor of the Well office tower on Spadina Avenue. To mark the occasion, he hosted a private reception with a guest list that included stars from Netflix shows, including Canadian actor Maitreyi Ramakrishnan (“Never Have I Ever”) and homegrown TV heavyweights such as Jean Yoon, Nina Dobrev and Jason Priestley. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, were also in attendance.

The new office is full of Canadiana: massive posters of Canadian-shot Netflix originals like “The Umbrella Academy” line the walls. The lobby features a maple leaf sign and a slogan that reads, “Entertainment is a fundamental human need.” The 12 meeting rooms are named after iconic Canadian shows and characters, like “Anne With an E.”

In a Canadian exclusive interview, Sarandos sat down with the Star to discuss Netflix’s investment in Toronto.

“We really wanted to pick a place where we do a lot of work,” said Sarandos, 58. He said he usually spends the most time in Toronto during the Toronto International Film Festival, adding that he loves “the diversity of food” and that he’s “never seen more cranes in my life. That says a lot of people want to be in Toronto.”

(Is he a Leafs fan? “I love to watch when I can,” he said, then added with a laugh, “Between movies and TV, there’s not much time for anything else.”)

Since 2017, Netflix has invested more than $3 billion on productions in Canada. “There are amazing crews, really talented actors to work with, a great business environment and incredible topography so you can shoot the beautiful country,” said Sarandos.

Sarandos said that what he’s most excited about is “Canadian stories for Canada. And if they’re really Canadian, then people will see that authenticity and it can travel around the world. That’s a cool opportunity.”

As a success, he brought up what Netflix’s global platform did for “Schitt’s Creek,” the Canadian comedy series from Eugene and Dan Levy. The series became an international hit when Netflix nabbed the rights. In 2020, it broke the Emmys record for most wins for a comedy in a single season.

“It was a super-Canadian show that people thought was maybe too Canadian,” said Sarandos. “But as soon as we got it on Netflix around the world, people saw the authentic nature of the storytelling and fell in love with it. Emmy voters rewarded it because they saw it, but typically they wouldn’t have (seen it); it would have been on a small niche outlet somewhere. Pop TV was the outlet in the U.S. and, with Netflix, it exploded around the world. We’ve proven our ability to do that.”

Sarandos said the reason for the success of “Schitt’s Creek” is similar to that of global hits like “Money Heist” and “Squid Game”: they’re authentically local shows that work for a local audience first.

“We’ve never had a show that failed locally and then travelled globally. The German audiences for ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ were even bigger and more enthusiastic for that movie than they were everywhere in the world. But if it didn’t work in Germany it was very unlikely to work anywhere else.”

Part of Netflix’s new Canadian investment includes new opportunities for creatives. The content giant has invested more than $25 million in training and development programs for creators from under-represented communities in Canada, including applicants from the Canadian Film Centre, Inside Out, the Being Black in Canada program and more.

“It gives an opportunity for folks who typically wouldn’t have had an opportunity — because they didn’t grow up in it or they don’t live near it — to have more chances to do things,” said Sarandos. “Why not take this opportunity to broaden representation so that the people behind the camera look like more like the people watching at home? You tell more authentic stories that way.”

Earlier last week, Netflix, CBC and APTN announced a joint commission of an untitled comedy series that will be filmed in Nunavut.

“It’s a world that hasn’t been explored in storytelling,” said Sarandos. In this case, Sarandos said, Netflix’s role is to bring resources to a story that deserves the amplification: “We can help make a show bigger than they could have done otherwise.”

Sarandos, who joined Netflix in 1999, was previously the company’s chief content officer. He had the foresight to push Netflix into original content programming in 2013, thereby changing the company’s trajectory.

The Arizona-born executive admits he has really broad tastes and that has influenced the teams that get built.

“I don’t really pick much of the content that’s on Netflix anymore. I mostly just pick the people who pick the people who pick the people who pick the content on it. So there has to be a sensibility about that.” (The Netflix Canada team is 16-strong; Danielle Woodrow and Tara Woodbury lead the streamer’s content strategy team in Canada.)

On the trend front, Sarandos cites “cinema-infused television” as the next big wave.

“It isn’t just the quality of the storytelling that’s more like what you used to see in the theatre; it’s actually the scope.” As examples, he points to “The Night Agent,” which was filmed mainly in Vancouver; “Beef,” the new 10-episode series starring Ali Wong and Steven Yeun; and the upcoming Chris Hemsworth action film “Extraction 2,” which, he said, has “mind-blowing scope and scale for a movie that’s built to be watched at home.”

Deciding how to tell a story — in a movie or a TV series — is always a key concern. “Some movies are too long and some series are too short,” said Sarandos.

“You look at those things and say, ‘Should that three-hour movie actually have been an eight or 10-hour series?’ I see it most with documentaries. Where a documentary generally fails is when the short should have been a feature and the feature should have been a short. You always want to leave the audience wanting a little bit more.”

The streamer recently started cracking down on password sharing between subscribers across locations, a move which has been criticized by some users. Sarandos stood behind the crackdown.

“We have about 100 million households who use Netflix on someone else’s account,” he said. “This is a way of getting folks who watch and enjoy Netflix to also contribute to the future of content, making Netflix a better product for everybody else, including themselves by giving us the ability to invest in more programming.”

Since the Netflix exec seemed ready for curveballs, I ended the interview by asking if he could do the viral “Wednesday” dance. He laughed and without missing a beat, said, “I would have to be coached a little, but I’m sure I can pull it off. Not as good as Jenna (Ortega) though.”

Interview by Marriska Fernandes. Originally published on thestar.com’ Photos: George Pimentel for Netflix