'Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber': The REAL story behind Quentin Tarantino as show's narrator
One of the bigger surprises in Showtime's 'Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber' is 'Kill Bill' director Quentin Tarantino lending his voice as the narrator. The series looks at the meteoric rise and equally devastating fall of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The series is created by 'Billions' co-creators Brian Koppelman and David Levien. It also includes Beth Schacter who serves as the current showrunner on the hit finance drama.
For Tarantino, it was 'Billions' that made him agree to sign up as the narrator. Koppelman shed light on getting the marquee director onboard. “What David [Levien] and I knew was in the last two years – if you listen to the podcast you know what a big deal Quentin’s work is to us – he wrote to us that he had become a really big ‘Billions’ watcher and fan,” he told TheWrap. “He watches it very closely and is very engaged with every reference and every character’s journey. So that’s why we thought maybe it was possible he would do it. We knew he liked our work to some extent or was engaging it."
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It was typical Tarantino when he agreed to Koppelman via mail that he would agree to work on 'Super Pumped'. While the team was working on the show, Koppelman had reached out to Tarantino to be a guest on his podcast.“When I asked him to do the podcast, in the same email I asked him to do this,” he explained. “He said yes to both and I wrote back, 'You know you said yes to both things?' and he said, perfect Tarantino-ish, ‘Yeah I know what I said yes to.'"
Levie was all praise for the director calling him a performer. "He was amazing because he showed up as a performer and was totally open to our input and wanted us to be happy with it,” Levien said. “He didn’t bring his directorial authority to it, he was like, ‘Let me just read it out loud, you’ll hear what I do, and then you’ll tell me,’ basically. And of course, he was basically right on it when he read it, and we would just give tiny thoughts about things. He was so enthusiastic and game, honestly it was surreal and one of the most fun things we’ve ever done in our career."
'Super Pumped' premieres on February 27 at 10/9c on Showtime.