In the newest episode of the PBS series Breaking The Deadlock, moderator Aaron Tang leads a group of nine panelists through a fictionalized, although very real scenario in which an election and its results are increasingly in jeopardy.
From deciding whether or not they would allow someone fleeing ICE into their car to discussing the lengths (or limits) they would go through to protect election integrity, the panelists engage in a fascinating "what if" conversation that tests how far they would go to oppose actions they believe might be illegal.
I recently had the opportunity to speak with executive producer Nina Weinstein about how the show comes together and the challenges of producing a show filled with unexpected moments.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity:
I'm curious about the production process for the show. After you've selected a topic, what does the process play out after that? What kind of discussions are you having?
The trickiest part is to have the right mix of participants from the right and from the left. From different perspectives, academia, history, politics, culture...so it's very tricky. We probably start out with a list of 50 or 60 people that we want to go after.
And then we look at them, examine their video online to make sure they are good talkers and then honestly, getting through to their communications people is probably the biggest challenge.
The trickiest part is to have the right mix of participants from the right and from the left. From different perspectives, academia, history, politics, culture...so it's very tricky. We probably start out with a list of 50 or 60 people that we want to go after.
And then we look at them, examine their video online to make sure they are good talkers and then honestly, getting through to their communications people is probably the biggest challenge.
Is there a particular type of person that's the hardest to book - whether it's a particular political viewpoint or perhaps just a profession?
One challenge is that politicians are so used to now being about to go on MSNOW or CNN or Fox for a 10-minute hit from their living room, that the idea of coming to New York and spending a whole day or two to get here and go home and sit on a panel with eight other people where they might not want to share time with, it can be difficult. But again, oftentimes it's just getting to them. I don't even know if some of the people we've pitched even know about our request, it really depends on who their communications people are.
Many of them don't answer their emails. They don't respond. That's really amazing to me because that's their job. But it often depends if their comms people are right out of college or if they've been doing it for ten years.
If they've been doing it for 10 years, they get it. They understand the concept of the show. Some of them have even seen the old Fred Friendly series or they have at least looked at clips and now what the show is about.
And we'll lay it out for them. Here's who's been on the show so far. Here's how it works and the older comms people get it. The younger ones, they're a bit more nervous. They're new at this and they want to get their bosses on social media for a minute and a half. They don't understand why someone would want to do this.
And you also don't want to the person who recommends something that ticks off your boss, if it's a bad experience.
One challenge is that politicians are so used to now being about to go on MSNOW or CNN or Fox for a 10-minute hit from their living room, that the idea of coming to New York and spending a whole day or two to get here and go home and sit on a panel with eight other people where they might not want to share time with, it can be difficult. But again, oftentimes it's just getting to them. I don't even know if some of the people we've pitched even know about our request, it really depends on who their communications people are.
Many of them don't answer their emails. They don't respond. That's really amazing to me because that's their job. But it often depends if their comms people are right out of college or if they've been doing it for ten years.
If they've been doing it for 10 years, they get it. They understand the concept of the show. Some of them have even seen the old Fred Friendly series or they have at least looked at clips and now what the show is about.
And we'll lay it out for them. Here's who's been on the show so far. Here's how it works and the older comms people get it. The younger ones, they're a bit more nervous. They're new at this and they want to get their bosses on social media for a minute and a half. They don't understand why someone would want to do this.
And you also don't want to the person who recommends something that ticks off your boss, if it's a bad experience.
You mentioned the original Fred Friendly show, which made me wonder how you decided to adjust the show tonally for a new era. What changes did you feel you needed to make?
Well, one change we made was that those old shows had a huge number of participants. And they can't talk to each other. So we have been shrinking it down in order to allow for more conversation. So I would say that's the biggest change.
One of the interesting things about this particular episode is that sometimes someone who isn't necessarily the best politician or spokesman for a particular point of view makes for a really good panelist. I mean, Dan Crenshaw, pretty controversial guy. I'll just leave it at that. But he was not afraid to take the standpoint of, "Hey, look, I don't think there's issues with a President trying to fix an election. You guys are blowing this all up," which did help the conversation.
You mentioned the idea of someone clipping someone's comments and it turns into a big social media-driven story. And I suspect that drives a lot of this reluctance, because everyone is afraid that ten years from now, someone will bring up a comment you made in passing and it will turn into a controversy.
Given those fears, are there any topics you'd love to do, but don't think you could get people to agree to it? Are there some hot button issues that would be difficult to pull off?
We've done those hot buttons. We did abortion and that was a pretty hot button. There was not one where we broke the deadlock, but they were very respectful.
And that's another interesting thing. Scott Jennings has been on a couple of shows and he's not the Scott Jennings he is on CNN. He's just goes along with it. He is reasonable. He's friendly. He's polite.
And that's another interesting thing. Scott Jennings has been on a couple of shows and he's not the Scott Jennings he is on CNN. He's just goes along with it. He is reasonable. He's friendly. He's polite.
Our next episode is on AI. So that's pretty interesting, but we have to make it not nerdy. We can't make it so that nobody understands what we're talking about.
On the day of the filming, what's that process look like as you're juggling all these different guests coming in?
They come in and are seeing each other for the first time and you know, it's pretty wild.
That is something that would be fun to see on camera. Just people coming in, realizing who else is there.
Actually, you're right. We should do a behind-the-scenes feature. Yeah, we should absolutely do that. I'm going to bring that up. That's a great idea.
And it's an interesting process to watch. In one of the episodes, Dan Goldman, Tim Ryan and John Tester knew each other from Congress and realized they were all on the panel.
But the ones where nobody knows anybody really, those are a little more uncomfortable.
You mentioned the upcoming episode is about AI. It strikes me that with a topic like that, the challenge is winnowing the conversation down to something that is manageable. You could spend six hours talking about AI. So how do you winnow it down to something that fits inside an hour?
After watching the finished version of this election security episode, did you feel better or worse about the possibility of something happening?
Neither. You can't ask me because I'm the staff pessimist. I'm the staff doom and gloom.
There's something to be said for having that point of view when you're doing shows like this, because for it to be interesting, it requires someone to think of the worst case scenarios.
How much of a role do you play in helping Aaron come up with the questions and the overall beats of the conversation. How much input do you have and how many conversations are happening throughout the process?
Aaron and Joan Greco - who's also a lawyer - they come up with a sketch of the conversation. And then we decide "Here is the direction we all want." And then they start writing. And that process goes on up until the week before.
So it's weeks of refining and we sit there, we all give notes. There are a bunch of us. There are five or six executive producers on this.
We all give notes and, and I don't know if you know this, we have two complete rehearsals before we do do this. So we bring in people locally. There are law school professors, they work in local elections for that.
They work in a related field, journalists, in the gambling thing, some sports people. And we run through the whole show two times and then they stay after and tell us what they think was confusing to them, what they thought didn't work. And then we all go back and rewrite or Aaron rewrites with some of those notes.
Some of them we disregard, but we take that feedback very seriously, because that's our only way to know that flow. It's going to be two hours. It's it good, or did we hit this enough? Did we spend too much time on that? Do we have too many story beats?
So that's a big part of the process. It's also hard to cast.
So it's very important for us to have a mix of people that are known and some people that no one knows. But I have to deal with that all the time. How about this person? Well, nobody knows that person. And he's got 20 followers on social media.
No, we're not going to use them. We had Aaron Parnas with these 5 million followers and everybody listens to him.
But in the end, it really gets down to the job Aaron does with the conversation. If somebody blows up, he's got to get it back on track. That's not easy. I mean, you can watch that on Meet The Press. They are so into their questions that you find yourself watching and thinking "Are you going to follow-up that question? Or are you just going to ignore what he just said?"
Breaking The Deadlock premieres Tuesday, July 7th, 2026 on PBS. It is also available on the PBS app.