Next stop: Purgatory! Not long after its Tubi special back in September, the Wynonna Earp series continues to take audiences on a wild adventure to the Weird West with their latest audio drama, Wynonna Earp: Tales from Purgatory. Following Wynonna Earp (Melanie Scrofano) once again, the newest installment sees the show’s beloved heroine as she rides off into the sunset with the love of her life, Doc Holliday (Tim Rozon). With more demon hunters and even more shocking revelations, Wynonna Earp: Tales from Purgatory promises to whip up chaotic supernatural mayhem outside our screens and through our speakers.

Collider’s very own Therese Lacson had the opportunity to sit down with the creator of the Wynonna Earp series, Emily Andras, at New York Comic Con 2024 and chat about the audio drama, as well as the future of the Wynonna Earp franchise and audience reactions following Wynonna Earp: Vengeance. Check out our interview with Andras in the player above, or read the full conversation below.

‘Wynonna Earp: Tales From Purgatory’ Took a Year of Battling Back and Forth Before Coming to Life
Image via SYFY

COLLIDER: Emily, first of all, I’m very curious as to what brought about the idea for this project. Why did you choose for it to be an audio drama? Did Audible approach you, or did you have the idea for yourself, and you wanted to shop it around?

EMILY ANDRAS: Audible approached us, which was incredible. We were kind of batting it back and forth for about a year. I was certainly intimidated because it’s such a different medium. Obviously, the television show has our gorgeous actors; for the Audible dramas, you’re just gonna have to close your eyes and picture their beautiful faces when they’re speaking. Then, it became so intriguing about what we could do in this medium versus on screen. So, once we figured out the anthology system where we were gonna tell different stories with different characters, kind of fill in some plot holes or maybe some backstory we wouldn’t have had time to do on the show, it became so much fun.

When did the ideas for these stories start forming for you in relation to [ Wynonna Earp ] Vengeance ? It’s been a very Wynonna Earp year this year. I feel like I’m going back into, like, 2020 when my entire life was the show. Can you tell me a little bit about how it was forming ideas for both?

ANDRAS: It was really challenging, and I will give Audible a shoutout. They were first, so way to go. But once it became apparent that maybe we were gonna get a movie, as well, it became a bit of a juggling act. But because we knew with the movie, we were gonna pick up well after the series had ended and we were gonna meet the cast and the actors where they are now — that felt like the most natural fit and the most interesting story to tell — I realized that it was a boon to Audible and Tales from Purgatory because we could use those stories to fill in the gap, pre-movie, to set up where everyone had been right after the events of the series. So, it was serendipitous, to be completely honest. They became a great match for one another. And again, so lucky to have another year of Earp.

I love that you guys filled in not just the time in between the movie and the TV show, but also some of the times that we were missing in the show itself. I really enjoyed getting into everybody’s life. And Nedley got his little segment.

ANDRAS: I know! He’s so good. Ned really was the MVP this year, I feel like in both the movie and Audibles. He’s amazing, and it turns out he can sing! So, there you go. Quite a crooner. Who knew?

The musical film is coming.

ANDRAS: Purgatory’s Frank Sinatra. You heard it here first.

“You Should Be Scared All the Time” – The Biggest Challenges in Developing ‘Wynonna Earp: Tales from Purgatory’
Image via Tubi

What was the biggest obstacle for you when it came to developing this as an audio drama?

ANDRAS: Honestly, if you are a writer and you’re not scared, it’s not good. You should be scared all the time because you want it to be good. So, I was definitely intimidated again, taking it from a visual medium to purely auditory. So much of Earp is action and genre and supernatural creatures. I was a little bit intimidated by creating a soundscape. I was like, “Are we gonna be able to have enough story? Is it just gonna be two people talking on the couch?” But in fact, once you dive in, you realize that you aren’t constrained by budget, for example, which is amazing, right? You can put people on a plane, you can put people on an old-timey train back in 1884, or whatever you have. So, once I wrapped my mind around that and realized just what we could create, it became really exciting.

That being said, all of us as writers come from a TV background, and we did kind of have to work on some quirks we have. You can’t put, “Wynonna nods cheekily.” Well, no, she has to say yes. You just can’t kind of rely on those visual cues. But honestly, the production from Audible was so incredible. When we heard the finished product and watched it being made, I couldn’t believe how rich it was. I really thought it was wonderful.

The fact that it was a TV show first, I could listen to it and basically imagine, like it was on in the background, and I just wasn’t looking at the TV.

ANDRAS: Oh, good! I’m so glad. That’s what we wanted. You want it to still feel like the characters you know and love, and the tone and the jokes and stuff.

In this audio drama, you jumped to different points in the timeline. How did you pick and choose where you wanted to go and what points you wanted to fill in?

ANDRAS: We have a very passionate fandom, the Earpers, so I have a pretty good sense of what they love and also what stories they were missing, to be honest. An example is, there was a famous storyline on the TV show where some people get whisked into a magical garden, and when they come out, there’s been an 18-month time jump with people left behind to wonder what happened to them, and that trauma. So, that was a story, for sure, that I knew the fans would love, to know what had happened to Nicole when her love was missing for 18 months with no trace of her. That seemed like a very natural storytelling opportunity, as well as seeing Doc Holliday with Wyatt Earp back in the day. That just felt almost like borderline fan fiction, something we might not be able to do on the show, but we did it so lovingly.

Also, there were characters who I knew were going to be underserved in Vengeance, for example. This felt like an opportunity to give them their due, give them their own storyline, maybe in a way they wouldn’t be able to have on the show. Mercedes Gardner might not have had an A story on the show, but she’s featured in one of the tales, and so funny.

I love her, and I love that story.

ANDRAS: She’s the best! I’m so glad you liked it.

Exploring the Many Possibilities for the Future of ‘Wynonna Earp’

So, Wynonna and Doc have a daughter, Alice, and I’m curious if you’ve ever thought about pursuing a future series with an older Alice, maybe, with her way hot, younger cousin?

ANDRAS: Oh my god, look at this! I want your outline on my desk by Monday. I love this pitch. Let’s just greenlight it now, shock everybody, and be like, “Yeah, that’s official! Contractual.” I would love Wynonna Earp: Next Generation. Sure, of course. It’s funny, with Doc and Wynonna having a daughter, so much that is powerful about Wynonna’s story is that she did give up her kid for a better life, right? That’s a story that isn’t always told about motherhood and about different ways to be a good mother. Honestly, having a kid on set is sometimes hard when you’re running a budget show. But a sexy 17-year-old Alice comes stomping back into town in her boots, meeting her way-hot cousin? I don’t know what we’re calling her.

Her hair is gonna be amazing.

ANDRAS: It’s gonna be incredible. I would definitely love that. It’s always good to go back to a younger generation because they just get to repeat all the mistakes we all made all over again.

I think it’d be entertaining for Wynonna to watch her daughter make the same mistakes and be like, “She’s so dumb,” but like, you literally did the same thing.

ANDRAS: Like, “You and I did it, but this is really annoying.” Exactly. And also seeing Wynonna try to become a mother again to a teenager? Good luck, girl. It’s truly her biggest challenge ever.

One of the things I really enjoyed about these episodes, specifically, was the Calamity Jane episode. I really liked them going back in time and getting to see more of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday together. Is that something that you would be interested in pursuing, looking more into the past, as far as the Western genre goes?

ANDRAS: I have all the time in the world for Tim Rozon as Doc Holliday in a sexy, sexy gun-slinging outfit when he was a real bad boy. Again, I can eat that with a spoon all day long. I’m so glad you like Calamity Jane. I was really impressed with that performance. Like Doc Holliday, there have been a lot of iconic Calamity Janes through film and television, and I really thought she made it her own. I would love it. I think Wyatt Earp’s shadow hangs over the entire series and Wynonna’s legacy, so I would like to know more about him and what he was like, and the curse that befell his family.

So far, we have the spin-off and we have the backstory spin-off. This is going great, guys. 2025 is gonna be even better for Earp. I’m very excited.

We’re gonna have, like, five shows.

ANDRAS: I’m ready! We have lots of good writers. We can do it.

Related ‘Wynonna Earp’s Showrunner Has More Story to Tell After ‘Vengeance’ Emily Andras also discusses why one character’s fate isn’t necessarily permanent and wanting to push the envelope with the Tubi special.

Talking about Wyatt Earp, I thought it was really interesting when I was watching the show that, as the show went on, Wyatt had a more morally gray twist to him. I’m curious if that was something that you intended in the beginning or if that’s something that just came as you continued to develop the show? There’s some stuff that he says about Doc Holliday, and I was like, “Excuse me, sir?”

ANDRAS: “How dare you. That’s Doc Blue-Eyes Holliday.” Very early on, I was really interested in the idea of heroism. I think Wynonna is such an unlikely heroine. She is a borderline alcoholic, she’s promiscuous, she killed her own dad by accident, she was raised in foster homes. So, then to be related to someone who is considered one of the biggest American icons of all time really interested me. What if you do live in the shadow of a famous ancestor, but you know for a fact that maybe they were just a person who had flaws and made mistakes and terrible choices? So, I like the idea that Wyatt Earp kind of wrote his own history, but the truth was that, like everyone, he was not perfect — far from perfect — and Doc, who considered himself the sidekick and maybe the borderline sociopath, actually had grown to have more of a conscience and fell in love and put family first.

I think it’s never too late to grow into your own skin and your own chance to do good. I’m really interested in those themes of forgiveness and choosing your own life and how you want to be perceived by the people who love you. But I would say we couldn’t have done that storyline the first year. Do you know what I mean? People were pretty nervous about saying, “Wyatt Earp was a big jerk,” because we don’t know — apologies to the Earp family wherever you are in America. He’s a fictional character on our show. But I like the idea that even heroes, they’re, more than anything, the survivors of history, so who knows what choices they made to become that?

I think, especially, Doc is a good example of that because you definitely see him becoming a better person as the show goes on to where he’s very accepting, very open. I’m like, “Oh my god, this is a new man!” I love that for him.

ANDRAS: I like that he was open-minded, he wasn’t intimidated by sexuality or gender. I think he saw a lot in the old West, and he just seemed more open-minded than Wyatt. He was a little more rigid and it also makes me understand why Doc loves Wynonna.

For sure.

ANDRAS: Plus that hair!

Emily Andras Discusses Her Controversial ‘Wynonna Earp: Vengeance’ Choices

Now that there’s been a bit of breathing room after Vengeance , what are your thoughts on the post-mortem of it all? What has been the biggest reaction that you’ve gotten from fans? You mentioned to my colleague, Carly [Lane], that you could push the envelope when it comes to stories. Was there a white whale story that you hit in Vengeance , or is there still more story to be told?

ANDRAS: Oh, definitely more story to be told. I would say having been away from Earp and then coming back, I was, again, sort of worried about, “Will I be able to find stories for these beloved characters,” even though they’ve been living in my soul my whole life. But I feel like we just opened a can of worms. I feel like there are so many more stories to tell in the Earp Universe.

Look, we made some really controversial choices in the movie; we killed off some beloved characters — sorry if you haven’t seen it. Spoiler alert, you have 10 more minutes. But I think death is the ultimate story, and in a weird way, that felt natural, too. That was certainly part of how we got the movie in the first place, is pitching something maybe we wouldn’t have done on the series, something a little bigger. Feedback has definitely been mixed, but here’s what I think about Earp that is the secret: The fans want to feel something. If they didn’t care, we would have a problem. You see that, as well, with Tales from Purgatory. They’re loving the emotional ones, they’re loving the Nedley storyline, they’re loving the heartbreak. So, I just want to take you on a journey, and at the end of it, if you want more from me, even if you’re angry at me, that’s amazing because I would love to make Earp well into my Golden Girls years.

Related Your Favorite Demon Slayer Is Back in Purgatory in New ‘Wynonna Earp: Vengeance’ Sneak Peek The 90-minute special drops on Tubi this weekend.

Honestly, the episode with Nicole where she’s struggling, I was like crying while listening.

ANDRAS: Good! Excellent. I hope you were walking somewhere super public, and people were just like, “What did she listen to?”

I’m always crying in public.

ANDRAS: Me too! I love a good cry, a good cathartic cry? Please. Can’t beat it. It really freaks everyone out, too, which is great. It gives you a lot of space. But I’m so glad you like it. That’s such a ringer performance, right? It was so fun recording these because Audible was great. They brought everyone into the studio together, flew them in from wherever they were, and it makes such a huge difference when they can look into each other’s eyes. Honestly, it almost becomes like a play. They had so much fun and confidence being together, being able to tap into those performances even without the visual element. So, Katherine Barrell, total ringer. So good. She’ll bring the feels!

Wynonna Earp: Tales from Purgatory is available exclusively on Audible.

Battling demons and other creatures with her unique abilities and a posse of dysfunctional allies, Wyatt Earp’s great great-granddaughter Wynonna is the only thing that can bring the paranormal to justice.Seasons 4 Main Genre Drama

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