Why M. Night Shyamalan brought in his daughter Ishana to direct Servant episodes

Servant is a family affair. That's true on the surface of the Apple TV+ thriller series, which in its third season still revolves around the Turner family: Sean (Toby Kebbell), his wife Dorothy (Lauren Ambrose), her brother Julian (Rupert Grint), and their servant Leanne (Nell Tiger Free). But it's also true behind the scenes.

M. Night Shyamalan is an executive producer and occasional episode director on Servant, and starting in season 2, he brought in his daughter Ishana Night Shyamalan to direct several episodes. The father-and-daughter duo spoke with EW about the experience in a joint interview ahead of season 3.

"Ishana is one of several filmmakers that I hired based off of their short films," Night tells EW. "The great news is they're 30-minute episodes, so it's still basically a short film. So I'd seen Ishana's short films, I'd seen her writing, she was going to NYU's Tisch School where I went, and I saw this opportunity. I said to her, 'I think you should take this shot. I think you should take a semester off from school and you should come here and do this.' I just had an instinct that these were the right episodes for her. She was humble and worried a little bit."

"My initial feeling was one of intense fear because I so loved the first season. I thought it was executed just at the highest level and really wanted to do justice to that," Ishana says. "I think as a young filmmaker, everyone experiences this intense fear when you're embarking on the professional world for the first time. But I ended up feeling incredibly supported by the crew, the cast, and everyone around me. I think our particular crew has this great sense of family. It really does feel like a family. Actually, some of the people that we worked with on the set, I've grown up knowing, so it was a really lovely experience."

Ishana ended up handling two of season 2's highlight chapters: "Pizza," when the Turners set up a fake restaurant in order to infiltrate their enemies' home, and the season 2 finale "Josephine," where Leanne had a violent confrontation with a dark figure from her past. She returned to direct more episodes in season 3, including last week's "Hive," where a seemingly cheery party at the Turners' home for neighborhood kids is nevertheless shot through with eerie atmosphere that builds up to a grotesque discovery of infestation in the house.

All of her episodes, in other words, have infused a more surreal style into Servant's storytelling.

"She has slightly more of a fantasy bend than I do. She speaks in bolder colors than I do," Night says. "The camera is more canted or more grotesque in showing someone scarier. The disadvantage of being an accomplished artist is that your experience starts working against you. I see less options, because I've done so many things. She doesn't see that; for her, everything is possible. There are advantages and disadvantages to the levels of experience that we each have."

Night is proud of how many young directors he's been able to bring into Servant. In addition to Ishana, there's also Julia Ducornau, who directed the first two episodes of season 2 before winning the prestigious Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival for her raucous French language body horror film Titane (becoming only the second female director to ever do so).

"This is the unexpected win of Servant for me," Night says. "Now I get to watch how Ishana directs the episode, I get to watch how Julia directs an episode, or how Dylan [Holmes Williams] does it, and I get to go, 'oh whoa, that is really cool how they did that. Right, right. I always had that option, and I forgot.' Our brains are intended to become more and more efficient, thus limiting our point of view. It's why it's harder to learn a language as you get older. These younger directors remind me to open up every neutral pathway that you can."

Though Ishana started on season 2, she says that there was a magical feeling to the production of season 3 — not least since it was not bifurcated by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic like its predecessor.

"There was definitely this alchemy about this particular season," Ishana says. "We'd all spent a big chunk of time not being able to do our art because of the pandemic. So there was this sense of gratitude, both from myself and everyone around us, about being able to come back and once again do the thing that makes us feel most alive. We felt that across the board, and hopefully viewers can feel that in the season as well. For myself, I was able to come back with a bit more confidence after having these two episodes before to play in and learn from. So I felt more of an ability to experiment in the third season."

The first three episodes of Servant season 3 are streaming now on Apple TV+, with more coming in the subsequent weeks.

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