Behind every great story is…usually another great story. For the past half-century, The Godfather has stood as one of the most acclaimed films ever made, and the making of the Oscar-winning mafia saga is now as legendary as it was fraught. Many aspects of the harrowing production are well-known—director Francis Ford Coppola’s near firing by the studio, the real-life mob’s fury at the project—but at the center of that maelstrom was producer Albert S. Ruddy, trying desperately to hold it all together.

Ruddy, now 91, shares his side of the story in the upcoming Paramount+ limited series The Offer, starring Miles Teller as the novice producer tasked with overseeing the adaptation of a pulpy gangster novel that would go on to become a cinematic landmark. At that point, he had few credits apart from cocreating the World War II sitcom Hogan’s Heroes, but Paramount Studios liked him because they thought he could keep the production cheap, quick, and under control.

In this exclusive first look at The Offer, which debuts on the streaming service in April, Vanity Fair takes you back to Hollywood at the start of the ’70s to explore the larger-than-true-life characters who had no idea of how much trouble they would face.

The show’s first episodes are directed by Rocketman filmmaker Dexter Fletcher, and the series takes its title, of course, from Don Corleone’s famously menacing vow from the opening scene of The Godfather: “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

The Offer was created by Michael Tolkin, known for 1991’s The Rapture, the 2018 jailbreak series Escape at Dannemora, and for writing the novel and screenplay for Robert Altman’s blistering Hollywood satire The Player. He claims to have known little about The Godfather’s behind-the-scenes turmoil, apart from an anecdote about the author of the book getting into a restaurant squabble with an iconic singer who saw too much of himself in one of The Godfather characters.

“All I knew about the making of The Godfather was that Mario Puzo got into a fight with Frank Sinatra at Chasen’s. So I had a five-minute scene and all I needed was nine hours and 55 minutes more,” Tolkin tells Vanity Fair.

Tolkin spent five days interviewing Ruddy, who serves as executive producer of The Offer. “What sealed it for me was when Al said, ‘Every day of making The Godfather was the worst day in my life,’ and that told me we had a show,” Tolkin says. “For every character in the film, getting it made or stopping it from being made was at the core of their actions, and it was a matter of life and death to them. So that’s not a gangster story, that’s a human story. That’s what gave the book and the movie so much power. Everyone is fighting for their existence.”

Ruddy was not in the fight entirely alone. His closest ally was the late Bettye McCartt (played by Juno Temple), who would go on to become a talent agent and manager for clients such as Tom Selleck, George Clooney, and Billy D. Williams.

But during The Godfather, McCartt (who died in 2013) was Ruddy’s secretary, and adept at navigating the channels of power. “She was Ruddy’s right hand woman. And at the time, a woman with a voice was not necessarily let behind the velvet rope,” says The Offer showrunner Nikki Toscano (Hunters and Revenge), who cowrote the series with Tolkin and executive produced it alongside Ruddy. “When Bettye McCartt came to life in the writer’s room, it was a woman who was battling the sexism of the time, a woman who was a little saucy, and we wanted to ensure that we were building Bettye in a way that sort of was informed by the feminism of the time.”

During The Godfather’s most precarious moments it was Ruddy and McCartt against the world—the world being the executives of Gulf+Western, which owned Paramount, and the underworld figures of the Cosa Nostra, who—like Sinatra—also saw a little too much of themselves in The Godfather story. “At the beginning of our story, we come to learn that the mafia has a very active interest in making sure that The Godfather never gets made,” Toscano says.

During The Offer’s own production, the series reportedly faced some existential challenges itself. Teller stepped in to replace original star Armie Hammer, who had become embroiled in a grim personal scandal. Then over the summer, production was reportedly imperiled over the alleged vaccination status of Teller. (After weeks of speculation, Teller tweeted in November, “I am vaccinated and have been for a while.”)

Toscano declined to comment on the medical history of the actor and fellow executive producer. “The only thing that I will say about Miles is that he was a wonderful number one on our call sheet,” the showrunner says.

The Godfather’s myriad dangers and obstacles might have led a producer with more experience than Ruddy to steer clear of the project. But due to a mix of bravado and naivete, Ruddy was the ideal shepherd for the film. “He’s a guy that doesn’t know the rules, and doesn’t care to know the rules,” Toscano says. “It was kind of his superpower as he was navigating both his inexperience in the studio world and in the organized crime world.”

Tolkin put it another way. “Al has the most brilliant combination of tenacity and taste,” Tolkin says. “With all the forces against him, he moved steadily ahead, protecting the film’s vision, not his own ego.”

One of the forces he had to contend with was Hurricane Francis.

As played by Dan Fogler (Fantastic Beasts, The Walking Dead), Coppola is depicted in The Offer as another relative newcomer with just a handful of credits to his name. He had won an Oscar for the screenplay to Patton, but as a filmmaker he had no real power in the industry at that point beyond what he could generate himself through force of will, enthusiasm, and brashness. “There is a great deal of passion in his performance,” Toscano says of Fogler. “He’s wildly alive.”

That never sits well with suits. In the show, the woolly-bearded filmmaker dives headlong into a minor gangster project with ambitious ideas about building it into an epic about family, right and wrong, capitalism, and the American dream itself. “The Francis Ford Coppola that you’ll find in The Offer is a man who was governed by creative integrity at a time when not everybody else around him was,” Toscano says.

But that doesn’t mean he and Ruddy were always simpatico. Coppola was in near constant danger of being fired and replaced by Paramount Studios chief Robert Evans (played by Matthew Goode.)

Evans, who died in 2019, remains the epitome of a Hollywood slickster, and was the subject of the 2002 documentary The Kid Stays in the Picture. Along with Gulf+Western industrialist Charles Bluhdorn (Burn Gorman) and the fictionalized studio executive Barry Lapidus (Colin Hanks), Evans often balked at the filmmaker’s demands and indulgences, especially as the budget for The Godfather ballooned and the production seemed to spiral.

“There were times Evans stood in Francis Ford Coppola’s way, and Francis stood in Ruddy’s way, and Ruddy stood in Evans’ way,” Toscano says. “But in a lot of different situations, they come back together and unite to see this film through.” In that way, she adds, The Offer has that in common with The Godfather: It’s about people who, however hostile they may be to each other at their own table, find a way to join forces when an outside crisis arrses.

In The Offer, that crisis comes in the fearsome form of Joe Colombo.

Google Joseph Colombo Sr. and the first image that appears is his mugshot. Another image is him on a 1971 cover of Time magazine under the banner “The Mafia at War.” He was the reputed head of one of the “five families” that controlled organized crime in the United States, but also helped found the Italian American Civil Rights League, which battled against mafia stereotypes. It also conveniently staged protests of the FBI for alleged discrimination and harassment when Colombo’s son was arrested for allegedly melting down silver coins. (A jury apparently agreed, and acquitted him.)

The mobster loathed depictions of mobsters. Shutting down The Godfather became a point of both pride and practicality for Colombo, who is played by Giovanni Ribisi. There could be no authentic mafia portrayal, the mob boss argued, because the mafia did not exist. “Joe Colombo at that time had just recently received his own seat at the table. And he had an incredible amount to prove,” Toscano says. Or, one might argue, disprove.

Just as Frank Sinatra (played in The Offer by Frank John Hughes) reportedly got in the face of author Mario Puzo (played by Patrick Gallo) because the character of singer turned actor Johnny Fontane struck too close to reality, it’s easy to guess why someone like Colombo, a traditionalist who headed his own “family,” might bristle at the onscreen presentation of Don Corleone and his assorted business dealings.

Ruddy and Paramount were “being pressured by multiple sources to shut the picture down, and he was sort of the architect of doing that,” Toscano says.

There have been various explanations over the years for how this was resolved, but The Offer will reveal Ruddy’s take on what happened. Until then, Toscano is invoking omertà, the pledge of silence.

“I feel like that’s all I wanna say. I’m sorry,” she says. “I just don’t want to give anything away.”

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