In Reaper, Harrison plays Sam Oliver, an ordinary guy who discovers on his 21st birthday that his parents sold his soul to the devil (Ray Wise) before he was born. From that point on, he is forced to become a demonic bounty hunter, sending the damned back to hell whenever they escape.

While filming the pilot, Harrison wasn’t always sure about Smith’s choices on the set, but he trusted in the director and realized that he was always right in the end. “Something that you don’t think is going to work on the day just might end up happening to work amazingly in the editing room,” he said. “And there’s things that are cut together that I never thought in a million years would cut right together. Because Kevin would give me a choice, like ‘All right, I’ll do it, but wow, this is scary, I am so out of my element. This is too campy. Really? You want me to do the Silent Bob eye-open deal that he does?’ And it works. And I saw it cut together, and it was like, ‘S–t man, trust the Smith.’”

In a separate interview, Harrison’s co-star, Tyler Labine, also praised Smith’s directing talents. Labine plays Sam’s best friend, Sock, who helps him in his bounty-hunting missions.

“Kevin Smith was, and is, my biggest man crush I’ve ever had in my life,” Labine said. “He came onto the show, and just even beyond having a good script—like, a very solid bedrock of a script that we could sit on—he just helped us get that [sparkle]. There’s like a sparkle in the pilot. There’s something you can’t quite put your finger on, and that’s Kevin Smith. He’s in and around everything. I mean, he cuts everything himself, he’s very hands-on. He’s a beacon of independent filmmaking.”

Labine added that he particularly appreciated the fact that Smith would let the actors deviate from the script if they felt the need to. “He encouraged us to improvise,” he said. “He improvises with us. … He’d say something or I’d yell something, and he’d be acting off-camera like, ‘Now try this,’ and you’re doing it, and lights are going off, and you’re, like, fighting fire, and he’s yelling. It was one of the truest sort of collaborative [experiences], especially for television.”