Anyone needing evidence that Hollywood might be reconsidering its aversion to Trump-friendly content might want to take a closer look Justin Wells and his production company Ashokan Studios.
The former Fox News producer who helped build the Tucker Carlson brand — he was fired by Fox in 2023 in the aftermath of the mammoth Dominion Voting Systems libel payout — is making the rounds on account of the second season of Art of the Surge, his intimate, fly-on-the-wall peek inside Trump’s historic presidential campaign and the first few months of his head-spinning second term.
What Wells is offering in Art of the Surge is access. Astonishing access to both President Trump and the people closest to him (Wells and his cinematographer were standing feet away from candidate Trump during the assassination attempt at the Butler, Pennsylvania rally).
Season one, which captured several viral moments including Brian Grazer admitting that he had voted for Trump premiered in October 2024 on X and Apple TV where it reached the top spot among all series in the Apple TV store for several weeks. When word spread that a second season of seven 30-to-40-minute episodes was in the works, the studios and streamers weren’t going to sit idly by. “We had conversations with every single major streamer,” says Wells.
The producer sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to discuss his new show, the evolution of conservative media in second Trump term and what Grazer said after his political loyalties were revealed.
“High quality” conservative content is very much associated with your new company. What does that mean exactly in your mind? And does it suggest that the content that came before wasn’t very good?
I think a lot of it lacks significant production value. You don’t see a lot of stuff that somebody who thinks more conservatively would gravitate towards and consider high quality programming in the same way that someone on left or someone who is woke would be able to find. A lot of people watch Fox or MSNBC or ABC to get their news, but as far as programming that’s reality-based or even scripted even, there’s a lack of quality content that’s produced well for that (conservative) audience.
There was a lot of discussion about some of the mistakes that the Harris campaign made regarding her refusal to go on certain podcasts, which speaks to an evolution that has occurred in the conservative media sphere. Where are you hoping to position yourself in that ecosystem?
There’s an overwhelming number of podcast players and it’s everyone from Joe Rogan to comedians that lean to the right a little bit to just young guys like the Elk Boys. What I think we can do though is provide content to the bigger streamers that’s a little bit more high level; not just sitting in front of a microphone doing interviews but creating television programs and series for those same audiences but just giving them a completely different experience. You might go on Netflix and find a documentary about somebody or something that would appeal to somebody who voted for Kamala Harris, but it’s very hard to find content that would pique the interest of somebody that voted for Donald Trump.
I don’t think anyone is surprised that the second season of Art of the Surge ended up on Fox. Could you share some of the conversations that you were having with other companies and distributors who were interested?
We had conversations with every single major streamer. They all viewed the program. Some took meetings, some did not. Several, I’d say, about half did take meetings and several others besides Fox made offers on the programs with a significantly larger audience space. However, Fox gave us the opportunity to maintain full editorial control over the show and ultimately that was extremely important.
Art of the Surge takes a fly-on-the-wall filmmaking approach. What other shows or filmmakers inspired this approach?
Showtime’s The Circus was on television for a very, very long time and I found that that was extremely compelling television, particularly in the earlier seasons when it was a little bit grittier, and didn’t have these huge production crews. It was just me and one cinematographer for virtually ninety nine percent of the production. So that inspired it quite a bit. We didn’t really want to take a political stance throughout the show. I make no qualms, and I’ve said that it’s friendly to Trump for sure. However, it’s not really about issues. We’re not sitting there getting involved in some debate over whether a candidate is pro-life or pro-choice. It’s about sitting there being the wallpaper in the room, absorbing what’s happening and watching how this person interacts with his team. Donald Trump has probably been on television more than anyone in history at this point, and we felt the only way to get a different side of him and see who he really is as much as possible was to kind of take yourself out of the story and go on the journey with him and be there as he’s having conversations. It’s not our job to question him, to challenge him, to support what he’s saying one way or the other.
The access you had was extraordinary. What was the process like trying to secure that type of sustained access?
I’ve known the president and a lot of people around him for a very long time. So, I set up a meeting with him at Mar-a-Lago in April of last year of 2024. I explained the concept to him, and I explained that he was going to need to trust us. We didn’t have a lot of time, and we weren’t willing to allow them to review every piece of footage. He appreciated what we were trying to do right away. I mentioned The Circus in that pitch, and he looked at me and he said, “as long as you make it 10 times better than The Circus, then I’m in.”
Were there any other conditions? Did he have any suggestions on where he wanted to see it air?
He wanted it to be put out to as wide of an audience as possible and to have as many eyeballs on it as possible. He particularly wanted to make sure people saw it before the election. We took a multi-pronged approach, especially with season one. We put it out on Tucker Carlson’s network. We put it out on X because everybody was tuned into, especially the news consuming political audience, checks out what’s happening on X. And then we distributed on Apple TV and the Google YouTube store as well, and it became the top show for three weeks on Apple TV. My promise to [the President] was that we would get wide distribution for it and that people would be able to see it. We’ve been able to fill that promise.
You’re probably aware of the documentary being made about the First Lady, Melania, that Brett Ratner’s directing for Amazon and there are reports that she’s a profit participating. Is the President compensated in any way from your show?
The president was not compensated whatsoever off the project, neither was any of the folks around him or the campaign.
Did he ever try to get compensated?
He did not. And I’m familiar with the Melania project. When she signed that deal, she was a private citizen and what Brett’s doing is a different kind of project. It’s more theatrical. This is equally as interesting, I think, but it’s completely different. So, there was no conversation ever about any type of compensation other than it had to be good.
The first season had that sensational footage from the assassination attempt at Butler. Does anything in season two come close to that?
I think so. What’s fascinating about Butler is we had just started filming and he was just getting familiar with having us around all the time, and so was his campaign. We were 15 feet away over his left shoulder by the stairs that he exited the stage. Obviously when you go through the trenches of something as significant as that there’s obviously some trust that’s built. We were only cameras that went inside the ABC debate hall with Kamala Harris. We were the only non-ABC people in that building. We were also in his hotel room in Las Vegas when he was putting out tweets on Truth Social in real time when Kamala Harris was giving her convention speech and you see the way that his brain works when he’s coming up with those messages. It evolved to the point where if the president was at an event we were backstage with him and were the only people besides the campaign team that was with him. That continued through the transition and then through some things that have happened in the early days of his administration and at the White House. The journey’s been fascinating and there are moments like when he’s at a football game in the box with the producer, Brian Grazer for example. Or the governor of Maryland, Wes Moore, who is downstairs greeting him as he gets off at the stadium and he clearly didn’t want to be seen publicly with him in the stands in front of all the fans. But he’s sitting there and it’s remarkable how he responds to seeing Trump and how he’s kissing his butt essentially. And capturing those moments I think gives the show something certainly unique that nobody’s ever seen before because. Democrats may say on camera they don’t like the guy, but they certainly know he’s the president and they want his support, so they act very different when they don’t think somebody’s watching.
Did Brian know that his comments on Trump were being taped at that moment?
We were in a small box and as soon as you come in, the cameras are visible, and he was in a public place in front of cameras. Did I meet Brian? No. But there were all kinds of cameras swirling around that box. I know that The New York Times called him for comment as well. He didn’t deny that he said those things, and he has given a little more context to it, I believe.
Have you heard from Grazer since?
I have not.
You mentioned that incident with Wes Moore. I’m wondering if you had any other incidents with any other major media figures or Democrats who had these private interactions with Trump?
Not really folks on the left, I wouldn’t say, but there’s certainly interactions with people that are on the right. For example, he was having conversations with John Thune and the Speaker of the House in that same box that day about the debt ceiling, and nobody’s saying anything embarrassing. You’re just seeing these real interactions as opposed to the president of the United States standing at a podium giving a speech and calling people up to say what they want to say about whatever legislation or whatever initiative he’s putting forward.
Politicians saying or acting one way while cameras are rolling is nothing new. I’m wondering if you think if this moment of hyperpolarization and Trump’s rhetoric has altered the way politicians can interact even when the camera is not rolling?
I don’t know. I’ve seen a change versus President Trump’s first term. He certainly broke the mold when he became president in 2016, and for some people on the left, it just completely broke them. People changed the way they interacted. They couldn’t come to grips with respecting him. I find that since he won the second time what I’ve witnessed and what I think the American public has witnessed is that there are more people willing to go and have a conversation with him.
What’s your relationship like with Tucker these days? Are you guys still tight?
We’re great. After I left Fox, I helped him get his company off the ground for the first year and then I said I was going to go off and do my own thing, which I’ve done. We talk all the time. I give him advice from time to time, but he’s doing his thing now and I’m kind of doing something different. He’s more in the podcast world and he’s selling nicotine pouches and doing some great things, but I’m focused on bringing more conservative, friendly content to mainstream players.
What other formats are you exploring for your company?
We’re talking to several players in Hollywood and there are a lot of people, believe it or not, that aren’t completely to the left or completely woke. The politics of a lot of the people that worked on our production center around Trump but they’re not in the credits of the show because they’re afraid they’ll never work in Hollywood again. But we’ve homed in a lot of talent from that world. We’re looking to evolve from this series, do some things that might be spinoffs of this. But we’re also talking to several producers and a couple other distributors about doing some stuff in the scripted space as well. Limited run series, full length features. We’ve not narrowed it down a hundred percent, but there have been conversations about both.
There’s this old saying that politics is downstream from culture and I was thinking about the fact that Democrats have been widely viewed of having the advantage of understanding and leveraging culture to their advantage. Is that still the case?
I think Republicans and Democrats have switched places. When Obama won in 2008, everything was about how he completely figured out how social media works. They figured out Facebook, they figured out how to reach young people. And I think things have flipped a little bit. In this last election, the Republicans and Donald Trump suddenly became the party of being cool, of being hip and more current. And the Democrats are still stuck in 2008. Donald Trump was out there doing podcasts with Theo Von and Joe Rogan and the Elk Boys and Kamala Harris was begging Beyonce to go perform for her at some convention. The right has evolved to become the party of cool in the last couple of years and nobody really saw that coming.
Drill down a little deeper on that. How were the Republicans able to do that?
There were people in the room that had a different idea of how this could be approached, and I think that at the highest level, Trump’s campaign in particular, they were willing to try different things, and I saw that firsthand. and he was willing to do it too. This was his third time running for president and he really wanted to win. And there was just a willingness of like, yeah, let’s give that a shot. Why not? Sure, I’ll talk to that person. Sure. I’ll let a documentary team follow me around for six months, even though it might be uncomfortable at times where I think Joe Biden and Kamala had a bunch of advisors around them saying like, oh, you’re going to do George Stephanopoulos this week and then we’re going to take a week off. They didn’t ebb and flow with the times, and I think that they were probably wrong on those things, but I’m not so sure that they’re going to learn from their mistakes.
Is there anything that the Trump Administration has done that makes you uncomfortable of that you disapprove of?
Not at all. I don’t speak about my politics often, to be frank. I’m not a hugely outward political person. However, I don’t think there’s anything that they’ve done in the first few months of the administration that they did not campaign on. And there might be people that are surprised at some of the legislation that’s been passed or some of the executive orders. But I was at over 200 events. I heard all the speeches. I’ve heard the interactions backstage and the thought process in getting to what ends up being in those speeches and everything that’s been enacted so far this year is consistent with what he sold to the American people, and I truly believe that.
What about the administration’s approach to gay rights and the various rollbacks?
I happen to be gay. I’ve been married to my husband for 12 years, but nothing that they’ve done bothers me at all. I happen to know that the president has many gay friends. There are many people that happen to be gay in his administration, and I’ve never seen any hate. I know some of the things that are said publicly upset some groups, but it really does not bother me.
A version of this story appeared in the June 18 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.