Episode 185: Creating The Gray House with Lori McCreary, Leslie Greif, and Roland Joffe

Today on the podcast, we’re stepping inside The Gray House—not just the story you see on screen, but the one behind it. This episode is a behind-the-scenes look at how this series came to life: how it was conceived, how it was built, and why it mattered enough to tell it this way.

I’m joined by executive producers Lori McCreary and Leslie Greif, along with director Roland Joffé. Together, they walk us through the creative choices, the production challenges, and the larger questions they were wrestling with as they made The Gray House. What did they want this series to say—not just about the past, but about the moment we’re living in now? And what do they hope stays with viewers long after the final scene fades to black?

This is a conversation about storytelling, history, collaboration, and intent—and about why some stories demand to be told as more than just entertainment. Let’s get into it

Lori McCreary is the CEO of Revelations Entertainment, a film and television production company she and actor Morgan Freeman founded in 1996 with a mission to produce entertainment that reveals truth. The duo first worked together on McCreary’s critically acclaimed Bopha! (Freeman’s directorial debut) in 1992.

McCreary’s producing credits include the upcoming Rendezvous with Rama to be directed by Dune’s Denis Villeneuve, the Award-winning Invictus, 5 Flights Up, the award-winning film about cancer, The C Word, and 120 episodes of the hit series Madam Secretary. She produced the highest-rated series in National Geographic history, The Story of God and Discovery’s Emmy-nominated series Through the Wormhole, exploring how science helps us understand the universe.

McCreary is a unique combination: part Producer, part UCLA-educated Computer Scientist. With her passion and deep knowledge of technology, McCreary teamed with the Intel corporation, and launched the first streaming service, ClickStar and was one of the first producers to have a day and date film (10 Items or Less) released simultaneously online and in theatres.

She is known for exploring innovative ways to incorporate cutting-edge technologies, such as virtual reality, AI, and immersive experiences, into the filmmaking process. This has earned her recognition as a visionary leader in the industry and a requested speaker on the current state of AI and the entertainment industry.

In 2023 McCreary joined forces with tech and media entrepreneur Todd Wagner as co-founder of FoodFight USA, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization with a mission to clean up America’s tainted food supply. FoodFight USA aims to reform every aspect of our broken food system from farm to table, focusing on legislative reform, consumer empowerment and the regenerative farming movement. Among other initiatives, McCreary is heading up the development of a system that will leverage AI to more efficiently and effectively evaluate the 10,000+ chemical additives in the U.S. food supply and prioritize those that pose the greatest risk to public health.

She is President Emeritus of the Producers Guild of America, founder of the PGA’s One Guild Committee and serves on the Board of Trustees for the American Film Institute, is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and IEEE.

Leslie Greif is an Emmy and Golden Globe nominated producer, creator, writer and director and is one of the most prolific figures in the entertainment industry. Leslie has a tremendous amount of versatility and production experience, and is a top creator of high quality entertainment content across a diverse range of both scripted and unscripted productions.

Les has hit various milestones over his career and produced various worldwide super-hits including: eight seasons of the classic crime drama Walker, Texas Ranger starring Chuck Norris; he produced and directed the highly acclaimed documentary, Brando, starring Al Pacino, Johnny Depp, Martin Scorsese, Sean Penn and Robert Duvall, which garnered him an Emmy nomination for his work. In addition, he executive produced seven seasons of the longest running celebrity docu-series, Gene Simmons Family Jewels; and the eminent mini-series Hatfields & McCoys, which received 16 Emmy nominations, garnering five wins and 2 Golden Globe nods, with Kevin Costner taking home the award for Best Actor in a Mini-Series. The mini-series was also awarded a WGA Award in the Long Form Original category.

Over the past 30 years Leslie has been at the forefront of the television industry having produced TV movies, scripted and unscripted series, mini-series and documentary specials for major networks including, HBO, ABC, CBS, FOX, TNT, A&E, Lifetime, Discovery and USA, just to name a few. In addition, to his television work he has produced and directed a number of feature film projects.

Roland Joffé directed movies like The Killing Fields (1974) with Sam Waterston and Haing Ngor, about the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, The Mission (1986) with Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons, about Jesuit missionaries in 18th century South America, Fat Man and Little Boy (1985) with Paul Newman, about the building of the atom bomb during World War II, City of Joy (1992) with Patrick Swayze and Om Puri, The Scarlett Letter (1995) from the 1850 novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, with Demi Moore and Gary Oldman, There Be Dragons (2011) set during the Spanish Civil War about the founder of Opus Dei, The Forgiven (2017) with Forest Whitaker as Desmond Tutu.