Arguably, Doug Ellin, the creator of HBO’s half-hour dramedy “Entourage” made one of the most rewatchable and entertaining shows of the 2000s. In retrospect, viewers and fans might pick on its flaws like the overly masculine (and intentionally chauvinist) tone, but it still remains one of the most impactful shows made about Hollywood and its ruthless, patriarchal film and TV business, featuring famous actors, directors, and writers as themselves. Oddly enough, it came from an idea that Ellin initially found preposterous.
In an interview with Complex in 2019, the creator recalled that it all started with Mark Wahlberg’s manager, Steve Levinson, approaching him with the concept of making a series based on Wahlberg and his friends. Ellin recalled, “I was like, ‘That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.’ And [Levinson] said, ‘You’ll figure it out.’ So, that’s really where it started, but there wasn’t much of an idea besides that.”
So Ellin ruminated over it for some time and wrote over two dozen drafts until he finally figured out how this could actually turn into a real series. After a year, he’d put together and sold the pilot. “We thought we were running the town,” he shared. And soon they kind of were, since “Entourage” became a massive hit.
Ellin struggled to establish the core characters of the series
Before “Entourage” became appointment TV, Doug Ellin had a tough time figuring out how the friend group of a male movie superstar — as opposed to the movie star himself — could turn into the focal point. Recalling the process, he explained, “[In one of the first drafts], there were 12 characters. I’d never done TV, I’d never written a pilot script, I’d never written anything really for television. And I had 12 characters.”
He continued, “Then I just started whittling down, whittling down, and ultimately, we ended up with the four plus Ari [Jeremy Piven].” Well, 12 main characters would probably have been a little excessive (to say the least), and the dynamic wouldn’t have worked as smoothly as it did with the final cast.
Interestingly, Ellin and Kevin Dillon (who played Johnny “Drama” in the series) started a podcast called “Victory The Podcast” back in 2020 with the idea of going through every single episode (including the series finale) of the show and taking a deep dive into discussing behind-the-scenes stories and funny anecdotes they remembered. Clearly, Ellin is proud of his work on the show he once thought was a terrible idea.