Dennis Lehane Had ‘So Much Fun’ Writing a Character Who’s a Bad Author in ‘Smoke’

Once a writer, always a writer. 

Dennis Lehane opened up about writing a character who’s a bad author in his new Apple TV+ series Smoke during a panel at its Tribeca Festival premiere, hosted by PEOPLE’s Breanne Heldman.

“It was so much fun,” the acclaimed novelist said of the experience. “Even the names. I’ve taught and those are the names that young men come in with. They’re all names like Brock, Brett, Kent.”

Smoke reunites Lehane and Taron Egerton after their work in the Emmy Award-winning series Black Bird. The crime drama, which is based on a true story, follows Egerton as arson investigator and aspiring author Dave Gudsen. He decides to channel his industry knowledge into penning a novel while he pursues two serial arsonists.

Jurnee Smollett, Rafe Spall, Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, Anna Chlumsky, Greg Kinnear and John Leguizamo also star.

Dave’s dreams of making his big break as a author quickly came to a halt. In the second episode, titled “Your Happy Makes Me Sad,” the investigator received a rejection email from a literary agency that criticized the lack of female characters and “stilted dialogue” in the chapters he submitted.

Lehane revealed during the panel that he did all the “bad writing” sprinkled throughout the show. “I remember legal called and they said, ‘None of this is from the actual John Orr book, is it?’ Because Orr published his book — he self-published it. And I said, ‘No. I read one page of it and it’s dreck and I didn’t need to read anymore.’ So no, I don’t know anything about that book, but I’m just having a blast.”

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The Small Mercies author was having such a great time, his writing team wanted a turn. “Every time my writers would be like, ‘Could we write one of the bad writing scenes?’ I’d be like, ‘No, they’re all mine,’ ” he said.

The show creator also gave his assistant, Brittany Bookbinder, a shout-out for penning the cringey copy that played during an online training session for a restaurant in the series.

“She wrote the Coop’s copy, which I think is one of the funniest things in the show,” Lehane said. “We said, ‘We need some sort of copy for Freddy to look at in this video. And she came up with that whole thing, like, ‘Do you think customer service is no yolk?’ ”

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“You’re doing a really dark show and then all of a sudden you get to light it up with something absolutely crazy and funny and goofy. That’s Dave’s book,” the novelist added. 

Egerton could tell Lehane was having a good time with his character’s book, saying, “I’ve never seen him so happy. He loved it.”

Lehane is also the author of many hit novels including Mystic River and Shutter Island – both of which have received movie adaptations. He also wrote the Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro series and the Coughlin series. His latest novel was 2023’s Small Mercies. 

Lehane also wrote episodes of The Wire and Boardwalk Empire.

Speaking exclusively with PEOPLE on the red carpet, Lehane opened up about finding inspiration from the 2023 true crime podcast Firebug. 

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“The man who created the podcast brought it to me, I thought it was a wonderful podcast, but it was not a story that I wanted to tell,” he shares. “But the pathology of the main character, the craziness of the main character. This guy who saw himself as a hero arson investigator who was also an arsonist, who was writing a book about an arson investigator chasing an arsonist whose arsons mirrored the real arsonists. That, to me, said something that I couldn’t quite articulate about American celebrity and psychological chaos.”

“I just said I want to do that guy. I took some of the methods, like how he set fires, and then I just walked away from it. So it’s about 5% Firebug and 95% imagination,” Lehane says.

New episodes of Smoke premiere Fridays on Apple TV through Aug. 15.