The Truman Present’s Influenced Peacock’s The Copenhagen Check

The Copenhagen Check, Peacock’s newest hit collection, was impressed by The Truman Present. Consisting of eight episodes, with Shang-Chi star Simu Liu within the lead position, the sci-fi thriller takes place within the close to future. It focuses on Alexander Hale, an intelligence agent who quickly begins to suspect the whole lot and everybody round him.

Scream‘s Melissa Barrera, Sinclair Daniel, Brian d’Arcy James, Mark O’Brien, and Kathleen Chalfant additionally star within the breakout drama. The Copenhagen Check has been on the prime of Peacock’s charts because it premiered on the platform in late December 2025. However the premise of an agent whose each transfer is watched takes inspiration from a Jim Carrey traditional.

Picture by way of Peacock

In an interview with ScreenRant‘s Liam Crowley for The Copenhagen Check, collection creator and showrunner Thomas Brandon and co-showrunner Jennifer Yale have been requested about how the brand new spy saga was influenced by The Truman Present. Brandon talked about that the Carrey-led dramedy was one in all his favourite films, being a baby of the Nineteen Nineties. He additionally spoke of all the weather that got here collectively, requiring Hale to dwell in a Truman-like world.

Yale added that the Peacock thriller put a concentrate on want, with characters desirous to be part of actuality and wanting to have the ability to belief these round them. Yale, an government producer on the collection alongside Brandon, mirrored on how that need can typically be weaponized in opposition to the very particular person searching for it out. Learn their responses beneath:

Thomas Brandon: Completely. Little one of ’90s cinema right here. The Truman Present is one in all my favourite films. After I was first realizing that this story I needed to inform was a bit of sci-fi a few man, his eyes and ears getting hacked, would meld completely with my deep John le Carré love of spy tales, after which I spotted the John le Carré factor ever is should you uncover a hack, you would not eliminate it. That is a line to the enemy. So in a really good method, you need to maintain the hack going. And that meant this man needed to fake he did not know. That meant this orphanage needed to construct a faux world round him. I appeared up and realized we’re speaking a few Truman Present world. We’re speaking a few world the place this man doesn’t know what’s actual or what’s not.

He is been assigned a girlfriend. Am I presupposed to fall in love along with her? Can I belief them? And in the end, did my very own nation do that to me? Who can I belief? How far am I keen to go? I simply assume what I really like about tales like that is that they sort of pose this query of, “Is it actual or is it faux?” And the one fascinating reply to that query is sure, that it’s each. There’s artificiality there that turns into actual. And when you possibly can’t inform the distinction between the 2, that is essentially the most dramatically fascinating factor. That is the haunting, horrifying, compelling factor. Discovering the road of what’s actual and what’s not, we labored with that in your entire manufacturing. Folks would ask, “Effectively, am I feeling this? Is that this faux or is that this actual?” I used to be like, “No, it is each.” There’s part of it that is actual and there is part of it that is a efficiency. And to glide between these two saved us all curious about each side of manufacturing.

Jennifer Yale: In addition to the need. Wanting issues to be actual and desirous to know which you could belief these individuals and that they are there that can assist you and never use you.

Thomas Brandon: The extra you need one thing, the extra you are keen to misinform your self.

The Truman Present was directed by Peter Weir, with Andrew Niccol writing the script. It focuses on Carrey’s character, the titular Truman Burbank, who comes to comprehend that his whole life is a scripted drama. Burbank is the one one who’s unaware of this truth till he slowly begins to place the items collectively. The movie was a giant success, grossing $264 million on a reported $60 million funds. It was equally a important success and acquired three Oscar nominations.

The Truman Present has change into a time period for a delusion through which an individual believes their life is secretly staged indirectly, for some purpose, and that the individuals round them are all actors in on the deception. There is a second in The Copenhagen Check that speaks to this, with a room full of individuals watching as Alexander flirts with a bartender. He is the one one who does not know it is an elaborate efficiency, however he has his suspicions.

The Copenhagen Check is now on Peacock.