Ron Leshem in new series ‘Paranoia’ in Brazil, which is a good show

Writer-creator Ron Leshem, Oscar-nominated for “Beaufort” and co-creator of the original Israeli series that inspired Sam Levinson’s “Euphoria,” the second-most-watched series in HBO history, stands as one of the preeminent standard-bearers of a local-to-global drive that has constituted a significant portion of the most inspiring TV created in the past two decades.

So one big question, as global streaming services focus on local for local and TV operators around the world play much safer: where does that leave Leshem now?

The short answer is that Leshem is “excited,” he says Variety prior to a Canneseries masterclass. “There are so many reasons why today should be the Golden Age of global drama, and why indie can save TV drama, just as it has saved cinema several times over,” he enthuses with typical passion.

Leshem sets a good example. He’s “never been more excited” about a project since the first season of “Euphoria” and “Beaufort’s” Academy Award recognition than he is about “Paranoia,” which is entering production in Brazil at Globoplay and Janeiro Studios.

Although based in Los Angeles in partnership with CAA, his label Crossing Oceans produces primarily worldwide. Crossing Oceans was created with longtime co-writers Amit Cohen and Daniel Amsel and, in addition to ‘Paranoia’, currently has an upcoming series in Australia; “Pegasus”, a European co-production; ‘Revolution’, a series from France Télévisions made in collaboration with Iranian filmmakers, and an additional season of ‘Bad Boy’, which is also being adapted into an American remake.

“Global drama is seen as a cheap budget solution, plus an exotic niche, and as Hollywood’s R&D laboratory,” Leshem said. Variety just before Canneseries. “But the power of global drama is not just in the budgets (where in many countries you can sometimes produce six seasons of top drama for the price of one American episode). But more importantly, it opens the door to new environments, new worlds and journeys, new energy. It can reinvent the screen. Dare. Surprise,” he adds.

That doesn’t mean you lose the audience, Leshem argues.

“We need to tell edgy mainstream, edgy, bold, risky, groundbreaking stories, with mass appeal, built to feel like an event. The next mainstream won’t come from playing it safe. We need to act as a community of writers and producers. I’ve made it my personal mission to help global writers in this space and help build a sense of community among drama makers.”

“Amit and I divide our time between projects where we write every word ourselves and projects that we currently produce on four continents,” says Leshem.

“These are projects that we develop with a deep creative commitment, together with local makers,” he adds.

One example: ‘Paranoia.’ When it was announced at October’s Mipcom, it was described as “bringing unsung characters from across Brazil to the screen, set in a contemporary and vibrant Rio de Janeiro, showcased like never before.”

“Working with the Globoplay drama team in Brazil has proven to be the most inspiring, intelligent and genuinely heartwarming creative dialogues of my life,” said Leshem. “Also, the first time I walked into their studios in Rio, I thought the facilities were more impressive than anything in Hollywood, not just technologically, but also in terms of workplace culture and the human atmosphere.”

Leshem came to Cannes with tips on how to attract global partners. “In general, I would say: every show today should feel electric,” he says Variety. “There are four elements, and at least two have to feel really new before it breaks through and becomes an event: a world we haven’t seen on TV before, a protagonist with a voice or journey we haven’t seen yet, a cross-genre thing that hasn’t been serialized, or a cinematic language that invents something. And that means we have to be bold and take risks.”

‘Euphoria’ and the journey

From 1998, Leshem worked in Israel as a journalist, rising to deputy editor and head of news at Maariv in 2001. In 2005, he moved to television, working in content development for Keshet Broadcasting, becoming head of content and programming at the network and picking up development of programs such as ‘False Flag’ and ‘Prisoners of War’. The latter was subsequently adapted as ‘Homeland’ in the US

As a writer, however, “I felt like I wouldn’t be able to write a word before ‘Euphoria’ was cracked. Inspired in part by ‘Skins,’ it was a portrait of Israel’s new youth. Amit Cohen and Leshem” wrote on a white board: ’17 is the new 25, but 40 is also the new 25. You’re stuck.’ Stories that seem like they belong at age 25, but when applied to the body of a high school student, the childishness explodes and is disturbing. We wrote: ‘Sex is easier than a kiss.’ ‘Wanting is stronger than achieving, searching is more exciting than finding.’ ‘Heroes who live everywhere but reality; reality is exhausted; chasing euphoria through drugs and screens, porn and illusions, searching for purpose in an ocean of emptiness. A generation that feels everything and struggles to control it.’”

“Euphoria” is set in 2012 and was co-written with Daniel Amsel and Daphna Levin. “Euphoria wasn’t trying to be realistic. It was just a fractured fantasy with emotional truth about freedom poisoning, about love as an answer to meaninglessness, and about how childhood trauma determines the entire course of a life,” Leshem recalls.

But when it came out, Leshem was deeply frustrated by the results. “For the price of a single American drama episode, we could produce seven seasons and 60 episodes of a high-end drama. The toll is heavy: we sometimes had to settle for less than twenty scenes per episode, not a pace that would illustrate the attention deficit of the time.

“The HBO version was going to have 100 scenes in some episodes. We shot magical realism scenes, but with the meager money we had, they came out crooked and we threw them on the cutting room floor.”

When the original “Euphoria” launched at Israel’s HOT in 2012, “we felt misunderstood, and as we were unable to realize most of the vision and ideas due to budgetary constraints,” Leshem says Variety.

So Leshem and Hadas Lichenstein spent six years “knocking on every door in LA” — again going to all twenty networks that had passed on “Euphoria” and analytically explaining why the show would never get made.

“The iron rule in television, unlike film, stated that if the main hero is a teenager, it is necessarily a youth drama that will not attract an adult audience, even twenty-somethings. Our friends behind ‘Stranger Things’ went through the same thing – for that very reason 20 networks passed it on as well,” Leshem recalls.

But when Hadas Lichtentstein and Leshem went around with a presentation for an American series, the childhood experience changed in the background.

Finally, Leshem met Casey Bloys and Francsca Orsi who introduced Sam Levinson “Euphoria”. “Sam is truly a rare genius, who manages to lead 600 crew members like a true leader and yet remain a lone artist with exposed nerves, a painter and composer in his soul,” says Leshem.

“Frannie asked him as a teenager to weave his own personal wound. Rue’s addiction began with painkillers from her father, who was dying of cancer. The opioid epidemic, which claimed 800,000 victims in the US, and sometimes dozens of children from the same community, felt like a burning scar, yet an area that had not been serially addressed.”

With Levinson on board as showrunner, Leshem, who received a writing credit on the pilot episode, was able to focus on new shows, which he has done with extraordinary energy.

Leshem’s life journey

Based in the US since 2013, Leshem’s life journey is lived with passion and sometimes deep regret. Leshem and Cohen first met as members of the Israeli army’s elite intelligence unit 8200.

“I was the head of the intelligence unit [overseeing] the Palestinian peace talks. We were aware that so many powers, on both sides, were trying to sabotage it,” Leshem recalls.

“When hope collapsed, I was already a journalist and spent every evening looking at photos of dead bodies. I felt like I was carrying this tragedy on my shoulders, breathing in every victim and every name of a murdered child.”

Leshem’s war experience inspired ‘Beaufort’ and ‘Valley of Tears’ and the emotional thread of his entire career: the need for empathy with the ‘other’.

In “Valley of Tears,” which won the 2020 Series Mani Grand Prix, a young Israeli intelligence officer, Avinoam Shapira, meets a wounded Syrian, presumably the enemy. He starts talking to him and discovers things he has in common. Then one of Shapira’s fellow soldiers shows up and shoots the Syrians dead.

The Hulu/Arte series “No Man’s Land,” which remarkably played in the same main competition at Series Mania in 2020, features Antoine, a construction engineer wracked by guilt over his sister’s death in a terrorist attack, who thinks he catches a glimpse of her in TV footage of the Kurdish YPG militia.

Minutes later, in serial terms, he has crossed the border from Turkey into Syria and found himself in an extraordinary, if very grounded, world based on true events where he is transformed, finds a sense of belonging and fights alongside female soldiers in the YPG.

The bulk of “Bad Boy,” which scored an International Emmy nomination in 2025, focuses on young teenager Dean (Guy Menaster), who spends much of his teenage years in a juvenile detention center for selling drugs. It’s not an adolescence that most of the series’ audience would easily identify with.

“As in ‘Euphoria,’ I was very drawn to exploring the impact of childhood trauma or mistakes on a person’s journey and on the ability to heal and conquer one’s own destiny,” Leshem has shared Variety.

“But what has changed in me since ‘Euphoria’ is that it seems like the human capacity to feel compassion and empathy for those who are different is dying, it’s an epidemic, and drama is the only tool I know to fight and believe that we can transform the world,” he added.

“With all due respect to ‘local by local,’ we need much deeper, earlier collaboration across writing, packaging and production – not just hoping stories will travel,” Leshem said Variety just before Canneseries.

“Especially as the world spirals out of control and turns away from globalization and empathy – it is also the right choice to create a global drama community together.”

Expect announcements about more Crossing Oceans series soon.