“It’s as improbable to get this on the air as it seems,” Ponies co-creator David Iserson says about landing a series order for the 1970s, Moscow-set spy series he co-created with his longtime The Spy Who Dumped Me screenwriting collaborator, Susanna Fogel.

Ponies follows two secretaries, Bea (Emila Clarke) and Twila (Haley Lu Richardson) in the U.S. Moscow Embassy in 1976-1977, who after becoming widowed, are turned into C.I.A. operatives as wet behind the ears as they are. The series was a go before the strikes, Iserson explaining that the show “went through multiple regimes of, of multiple networks to get here.” Peacock showed the most passion giving them a cast-contingent order. At a time post strikes when series are harder than ever to find a green light for TV creators, no matter the IP or talent attached, Iserson and Fogel explain how they threaded this needle.

When it comes to the future of Ponies, the duo tell us that they could briefly touch on 1980s Reagan-era/Soviet Union, though not entirely, as they feel that domain has already beein saturated in streaming and TV. The series will continue to take place in the 1970s.

“Our show isn’t about the fall of Communism, and America ‘good’, and Soviet Union ‘bad’. It’s about how both governments are pretty bad and have done unforgivable things and how do these two women find their purpose,” Iserson adds.

What also appealed to Fogel and Iserson about the time was that at a moment of American feminism, here’s two female protags who are plucked out of that sphere and into a place that is not.

Says Iserson “The Americans and the British had no success in Moscow running a spy (operation). And so, they were just willing to, make unlikely plans and field unlikely agents, and this idea that women wouldn’t be followed was a thing that they really noticed.”

While the two haven’t put pen to paper yet on season 2 (Peacock hasn’t ordered a season 2 yet), they left plenty of danglers, i.e. there’s a Soviet mole in Cheryl (Vic Michaelis) in the U.S. Embassy who has the ability compromise Bea and Twila’s work. Bea’s husband is alive in a Belorussian village. She’s unaware and we don’t know if he’s good or bad. The nefarious KGB officer Andrei (Artjom Gilz), who Bea has been seducing, has escaped with the KGB wrecking havoc on the C.I.A. Andrei has goods on Bea and Twila. Ditto for the duo when it comes to Andrei.

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