‘Westworld’ Co-Creator: Our Identities are ‘The Stories We Tell Each Other’

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Lisa Joy, the co-creator, executive producer and director of “Westworld,” said the morning of Nov. 7 (a virtual identity conference ran Nov. 6–7) that our identities are the “stories” we tell each other. (The respective moderator had asked what our identities are.) Virtual Identity Summit 2018 “was created with one purpose in mind: to get Lisa Joy here,” the moderator said. He later remarked to Joy that while “’Westworld’ is set in this super-binary, black-and-white genre of filmmaking … you destroy the black-and-white notions.”

“You introduce all this nuance, and I imagine this was done by design,” he said.

“Yes, this was done very much by design,” she said, remarking that “in arts, as in tech, you build on” shoulders of giants preceding you.

“At first, ‘Westworld’ was a project we had declined to do,” said Joy, who created the show with husband Jonathan Nolan (“The Dark Knight”).

But they were intrigued by “the notion that you could explore the genre from a different vantage point,” she said.

“We played a lot of video games to prepare for this,” she said.

“What really interested me was the non-player characters,” she said.

“(Her) imagination immediately went to what happens” to a single mom who can’t pay for her “babies,” Joy said.

“And so why we were playing the game, it was the fringes that stood out to me,” she said. “What about that girl who is left crying … instead of the one who goes out to explore … good and evil?”

“I think you have to give agency to men, as well as women,” Joy said.

“You just touched on free will … you guys explain this in both seasons of ‘Westworld?’”

“I think this is something we will explore,” Joy said. “The unspoken agreement among a lot of scientists is that there is not a lot of free will … the philosophical question of ‘is there a bear?’ is maybe best a question not asked.”

Humans “are somewhat predictable,” Joy said.

“The question is: why do we not talk about (free will)?” she later said.

The moderator noted that Joy also co-produced the show with Nolan and also J.J. Abrams (“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”).

While saying “I appreciate not being talked down to” in the show, the moderator said “I do not have a clear sense of even what is happening.”

“It does not come from a desire to trick the audience,” Joy said. “When we started writing the pilot, you would not believe the pushback that people would have.”

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