Ron Moore talks working with Apple on 'For All Mankind' in new interview

Ron Moore, the creator of the Apple TV+ series "For All Mankind," recently sat down with The Hollywood Reporter for an interview about his career, the new series, and what it has been like to work with Apple.

When asked about the decade-long jump between season one and season two of "For All Mankind," Moore said that he always wanted to approach the series as a generational story.

From the beginning, I was attracted to doing it as a generational story. To see the space program expand and become real, it had to take place over decades. I thought it was interesting to follow a group of characters, watch some of them grow up, watch others grow old and die and do it as a generational story. There was a miniseries that I loved when I was a kid in the 1980s that was called Centennial, which was based on a book and followed the story of a mythical town in Colorado, from Indian times all the way up until the late 20th Century. I loved that story as a kid. It was the same thing, you saw characters grow old, you saw their children, their grandchildren. I wanted to replicate that for the show.

When asked what it was like working with Apple, the creator said that, despite working with many familiar faces, there were definitely growing pains as the company was just getting into the entertainment business.

Zack called me and wanted to talk about the NASA show [he'd been pitching] and suddenly we have a new series. The working relationship was already established, and then there was a good chunk of people beyond Zack and Jamie that went from Sony over to Apple as well. There was a certain familiarity of how things would get done. That said, then all those people were adjusting to a completely different corporate environment. It's a tech company that is getting into entertainment and there were growing pains to figure out. As I started working with Apple, I'm not used to people saying things like, "Well, Cupertino hasn't weighed in on that." The first year was a lot of growing pains of any company setting out to do something for the first time but it was greatly aided by the fact that I knew so many of the people who were in the Apple TV+ division.

Moore also described a visit from Tim Cook in which the CEO got "lost in the consoles the keyboards."

They were interested how we were portraying technology, how fast is the technology going to evolve in the show. [Apple CEO] Tim Cook came to the set and sat at the Mission Control consoles and enjoyed himself. He got lost in the consoles the keyboards: "Oh yeah, I remember this kind of CRT." I would go to Cupertino for various things and was always [warmly received]: "For All Mankind, I love that show! I was a huge fan of the space program." I'd walk down the corridors and you would just see pictures of astronauts and space and it was clear that there is a great fondness and love within the tech world for the space program and for NASA. We were doing something that not only interested them on a business sense but it was also appealing to something that touched them all emotionally and very personally as well.

You can read the full interview with Ron Moore at The Hollywood Reporter. The first three episodes of season two of "For All Mankind" are available now on Apple TV+.