Reader TTS

The South Pasadena, Calif., hardware store thrummed with the usual rhythms of a Wednesday night: customers browsing shelves, cash registers chiming, the low hum of fluorescent lights

overhead. Lurking in one of the aisles, a man quietly slipped an incendiary device, made from a cigarette, matches, and paper, into a section displaying foam rubber, with practiced ease.

Fire roared to life minutes later, engulfing the store in a furnace of rising panic and confusion. Advertisement Advertisement The blaze at Ole’s Home Center on Oct. 10, 1984, which killed

four people, was one of nearly 2,000 suspicious fires across Southern California throughout the ‘80s and early ‘90s. Craft shops, department stores, and discount retailers struck by the

arsonist all bore the same eerie signature: delayed ignition, maximum destruction, and a clean escape. Investigators were left grasping at smoke, trying to make sense of a pattern that felt

deliberate but remained elusive.  This true story, chronicled in the 2021 podcast _Firebug_, became the basis for Apple TV+’s new nine-episode crime drama _Smoke_, starring Taron Egerton,

Jurnee Smollett, Greg Kinnear, Anna Chlumsky, and John Leguizamo, and debuting June 27. But it’s no procedural retelling. It’s a feverish descent into moral ambiguity, where duty and

delusion, heroism and harm, become blurred in the heat of the blaze. “What really drives my engine is always the human psyche,” _Smoke_ creator, executive producer, and writer Dennis Lehane

tells TIME. What captivated him wasn’t the forensic detail of the fires, but the “whacked out” emotional terrain that surrounded them. “_That’s_ what I was locking on.” Lehane, whose

literary canon includes the novels-turned-movie hits _Gone, Baby, Gone _and _Mystic River_, is no stranger to the fault lines of morality. When he first listened to _Firebug_, he wasn’t

immediately convinced it was a story he wanted to find his own way into. But the psychological undertones tugged at him. “I really think this is about people who are turned on by the things

that can kill them,” he explains. He approached _Smoke_ not as a mystery to be solved, but as a dark drama where guilt, ego, and self-deception flicker and flare. A key decision was to set

the story in the present day rather than tether it to the ‘80s and ’90s, where its real-life roots lie. That shift allows the series to examine contemporary notions of trust, institutional

failure, and existential unease. The show also marks a reunion between Lehane and Taron Egerton, who previously worked together on the 2022 Apple TV+ series _Black Bird_. In _Smoke_, Egerton

stars as Dave Gudsen, an arson investigator in Umberland, a fictional town in the Pacific Northwest, whose life starts to buckle under the strain of a difficult case and a fragile home

life. He’s soon paired with Michelle Calderone (Jurnee Smollett), a sharp detective recently transferred from the metro police’s robbery division. Because Michelle doesn’t share the insular

loyalties of the local department, her clear-eyed perspective proves essential as they track a pair of serial arsonists; she sees things the others don’t. As the investigation intensifies,

suspicion creeps closer to home. The evidence suggests one of the arsonists may have ties to the profession—perhaps a firefighter or someone from within the department itself—forcing Dave to

consider the disturbing possibility that he may be pursuing a colleague, or worse, a friend.  From the start, _Smoke _struck a chord with Egerton, who also serves as an executive producer.

“It felt like something that would be a stretch and a challenge,” he recalls. What intrigued him most was the contradiction at the heart of his character. Dave, he explains, is a man with a

“slightly self-aggrandizing image of himself” as a hero—yet his private life “doesn’t totally line up with that.” He’s someone who regularly tests people’s boundaries. To capture that

duality, Egerton created a moral framework for Dave that doesn’t necessarily align with conventional standards. “He’s the guy who has it all figured out and knows exactly what’s right and

wrong and knows what’s for the best of everybody in there,” says Egerton, adding, “I had to get under the skin of who he is and figure out what that very specific brand of morality is: What

is OK for him and what’s not, and also does that code of ethics apply when nobody’s looking?” The actor’s experiences mirrored his character’s unease. Lehane recalls Egerton wrestling early

on with how to portray the complexity of Dave. “Those first two episodes he was in actor hell, I would argue,” recalls Lehane. But after their work together on _Black Bird_, Lehane already

knew Egerton had the ability (and willingness) to push himself into emotionally raw places. “When you find an actor who has the range to do _anything_ you want to do, you hold onto that

person, particularly if they’re not just gifted, but as good a human being as Taron,” he explains. That discomfort ultimately served the role, lending Dave a raw, destabilized energy that

captures a man struggling to hold his life together. READ MORE: _The Chilling True Story Behind _The Mortician A CAREFUL STUDY OF OBSESSION The real story that inspired _Smoke _was even

darker. By the late ‘80s, Southern California was in the grip of a firestorm—a wave of suspicious blazes that erupted with chilling regularity. They began quietly: a spark near a bolt of

fabric, a flare in the foam rubber aisle, as at Ole’s. But within minutes, these small signs gave way to catastrophe. Entire structures were gutted. First responders often arrived to find

buildings fully engulfed, too late to save what was inside. As the fires spread, so did the sense that this was no coincidence. The ignition method was strikingly consistent: a crude yet

effective time-delay mechanism, fashioned from everyday items like cigarettes, matches, and pieces of lined yellow notebook paper. The targets were just as deliberate: retail chains,

mom-and-pop shops, and warehouse-style stores, all easy to access, lightly monitored, and filled with highly flammable merchandise. Over time, law enforcement homed in on John Orr, a former

fire captain whose fingerprint was found on a partially unburned incendiary device. A federal jury convicted him in 1992 on three counts of arson, sentencing him to 30 years in prison. The

following year, he admitted to setting three more fires. In 1998, Orr was tried again at the state level on 21 additional counts of arson and four counts of first-degree murder for the

victims of the 1984 blaze at Ole’s Home Center in South Pasadena, Calif. He was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.  The story didn’t end with

Orr’s conviction. His disturbing legacy drew the attention of filmmaker and former HBO executive Kary Antholis, who had followed the case for decades. He was just as  interested in the

psychology behind the crimes as he was in the procedural details—not just how the fires were set, but why. His investigation became the foundation for _Firebug_, the podcast he created with

Emmy-winning producer Marc Smerling. Through exhaustive research and a series of taped interviews with Orr and those who knew him, Antholis assembled a chilling portrait of a man who spent

years crafting his identity through fire and fiction. One of the most revealing discoveries by law enforcement was a manuscript entitled _Points of Origin_, a novel Orr wrote with moments

mirroring the real-life fires with uncanny specificity. “He was doing this [lighting fires] for a very long time, so I think he wanted to take a bow for it,” Smerling explains.  The result

was more than a true-crime chronicle. _Firebug_ became a slow-burning study of the seductive power of control. “Orr had a strangely twisted ego that drove him to do these things,” Smerling

continues. “He had incredible feelings of powerlessness. This was his way to foster power.” MOVING FROM AMBIENCE TO ‘ACTION’ Although _Smoke_ takes creative liberties by reimagining

characters, relationships, and story arcs, Lehane built a show that trades sensationalism for something more unsettling—a meditation on identity, obsession, and unraveling. Every episode

opens with a visual and sonic elegy: a title sequence created by the studio Digital Kitchen, depicting objects consumed by flame and underscored by a new song from Thom Yorke called “Dialing

In.” Yorke’s slow track twinkles with dread, setting the emotional temperature for what’s to come. That precise tone—moody, dark, charged—was carefully calibrated. Kari Skogland, who

directed _The Falcon and the Winter Soldier_ and _The Loudest Voice_, oversaw the show’s first two episodes. Lehane chose Skogland partly for her ability to draw subtle, nuanced performances

from actors. “I would be like, I want you to pull that from the actress,” says Lehane, adding, “But I don’t want it to be obvious. I want it to be on a second viewing that viewers catch

it.” In a medium increasingly reliant on digital wizardry, _Smoke_ leans into practical effects when possible. “The fire in _Event Horizon_ is spectacular,” says Lehane, also citing the

visceral realism of films like _Backdraft_ and _Only the Brave_. “Right from the beginning, I said to my team, this is what I want it to look like. I don’t want to endanger anybody, but we

have to find a way to do practical fire.” To bring that vision to life, the production team constructed a sprawling “burn stage” in Vancouver, where fires could be safely set and controlled.

In addition to using fire-resistant materials and having safety-focused crew on set, members of the city’s fire department were stationed close by during filming. This wasn’t just technical

bravado, but a commitment to realism. The fire had to feel alive, volatile, and credible—a force the actors had to confront in real time. The opening scene in _Smoke’s_ pilot episode

showcases one of the series’ more complex and technically demanding moments. In the scene, Egerton’s character navigates a hoarder’s house overtaken by flames. Achieving the effect required

precise teamwork—all while the actor navigated the growing inferno. “Taron, God bless him, man,” Lehane says. “There are no special effects in that scene. That’s just Taron on the burn stage

with pipes all around him shooting actual fire.” Egerton, for his part, welcomed the production’s commitment to realism. “I think we all feel a little bit of fatigue when things are heavily

reliant on computer generated imagery. There’s a real value in storytelling to things that feel tangible and practical,” says the actor. “It was obviously a challenging sequence to do, but

things that are worth something are normally hard won. It really does have a kind of magic to it.” WHAT TRAGEDY LEAVES BEHIND In _Smoke_, fire isn’t just a destructive force, it’s the show’s

emotional grammar: how guilt simmers, how ego combusts, how lies catch and burn. The series draws its fear and unease from a chilling idea: the sense that dangerous people often hide in

plain sight. “We just miss them. We don't see them, because we're not looking very hard on a psychological level,” Smerling says. “You have to understand people at a deeper level

than the surface.” It’s a notion that resonates deeply with Egerton, who sees the world of _Smoke_ as a dreamscape of moral distortion. “It _resembles_ our world, but it’s also a kind of

slightly darker, heightened version of it,” he explains. As the episodes unfold, the narrative mutates, and what begins as a crime story bends into something more abstract, more interior.

“It really shifts, changes, and distorts over time,” he says. “It becomes something much more psychological and weird.” For Lehane, the truest devastation lies not in what the fire takes,

but in what it reveals. The show’s most haunting moments are its most intimate: the quiet reckonings, long-deferred truths, characters unable (or unwilling) to look themselves in the mirror.

“I hope it leads people to question a lot of these paths they’re going down,” says Lehane, adding, “I wish we could all just admit, ‘Hey, we’re all messed up—every single one of us.’ And if

you’re not, you’re lying to yourself and to everybody else. So just strive to be a little better every day.” That is the core of _Smoke_. Beneath the fire and ash, beyond the secrets and

suspense, it asks the simple, difficult question: What does it cost to live in denial? “Every single person in the show lies to themselves, and it only leads to grief,” Lehane continues.

“There’s not a single person, with the exception of [one], who’s honest with themselves—and look how much pain is caused by that.”