For playwright Brenden Jacobs-Jenkins, who identifies himself as a “super fan” who aims to amplify the things he loves on the big screen, the decision to adapt Octavia Butler’s “Kindred” at Dear Science’s 2010 After re-reading it was “instantaneous”. The sci-fi novel sparked the vision of a TV adaptation.
“Kindred” follows Dana (Mallory Johnson), an aspiring TV writer, who moves to Los Angeles and strikes up a relationship with a waiter named Kevin (Micah Stock) after a family reunion with her aunt and uncle. Is. Amidst her personal turmoil, Dana begins to question her sanity when she is violently pulled back in time to a 19th-century plantation.
When Dana unintentionally takes Kevin with her in a time when an interracial couple like theirs would never be socially acceptable, their budding romance becomes complicated as Kevin assumes the role of slave holder, and Dana takes on the role of Kevin. plays a slave laborer owned by Navigate the status.
“It is one of the most essential components of American history and American identity,” Jacobs-Jenkins told TheWrap. “It’s the original sin that comes up again and again as we’ve seen over and over again … especially coming out the last five or six years, it’s like we have a different vocabulary to talk about and which to talk about.”
After setting her mind on adapting the novel, Jacobs-Jenkins found “every single piece” of paper related to “Kindred” at The Huntington Library in San Marino, CA, which acquired Butler’s papers after her death in 2006. The house has been built. ,
“Famously, in his lifetime … he realized that he never really broke the book; He never really landed it,” Jacobs-Jenkins said. “I thought, man, it would be a wonderful thing for the show to try and make that work for him.”
To uncover the true purpose of the novel, Jacobs-Jenkins spent time examining Butler’s false beginnings and “every draft he ever wrote,” which in the meantime had sought to enhance or change the series’ enlightened themes.
He added, “That process really pushed a lot of things to the side, which I think you’re seeing in the show.” “These new family dynamics and family sizes came from that research, the way these little characters in the book really stepped forward, came from that research.”
As Jacobs-Jenkins began writing the series, the “Kindred” creator transposed key elements of the novel to give the series life more than 40 years after its original publication stunned readers around the world — its setting Starting from.
While “Kindred” was originally set in 1976 as a result of its 1979 publication, Jacobs-Jenkins moved the narrative to contemporary times in 2016, which she says was “the last year we all talked about this.” But can agree that’s what’s going on.”
,[Octavia] Jacobs-Jenkins said, “I wanted to write against people who felt better than time in the past.” “It’s about asking you, the reader, who is living your life today with your value system, with your thoughts, what would you do in this time period?”
While Jacobs-Jenkins first sold the pitch to FX in 2016 and began writing the series during that year, he admits that “there was a lot of time talking… [in] To consider setting it right now in the writers room and shooting the pilot,” though he ultimately did not want to include the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the series.
“All signs point to 2016 as a year to really think,” he continued. “I thought it would be interesting over the course of a series to try to make a period in time feel more historical than the actual history we’re traveling to.”
Jacobs-Jenkins also deepened the familial dimension of the novel by solidifying Dana’s relationship with her mother as an integral part of her journey – while Dana was originally an orphan – as a result of reading several drafts that included a maternal figure. Was.
“The show is called ‘Kindred,'” Jacobs-Jenkins said. “An opportunity to explore the dynamics of Dana’s own family and think about the family that shapes us. sometimes I think [an absence of someone shapes us]But those people can often come back”
While the novel introduces Dana and Kevin as a married couple with years of history, Dana meets Kevin at the same time as viewers in the series and they are left with the weight of these volatile experiences and the dynamics that shape their romance. Let’s start our relationship with.
Although Jacobs-Jenkins states that this choice was partly facilitated by the new setting, it was “difficult to [him] Acknowledging some of the behaviors displayed by Kevin in the book for procuring a young woman of color in this day and age,” the producer noted his interest in having the wedding portrait appear “in real time.”
“I had this fantasy that by the end of this series, they’re married,” he said. “There are a lot of versions of this type of couple in stories about waging a war for their love against external factors, but I was curious about the internal stuff as well,” he said, adding that he wanted to see were how conversations of race and politics move into more intimate spaces.
Although the pandemic moved auditions to Zoom, Jacobs-Jenkins said that, for each of the lead actors, including Dana — the part was hers from her first audition.
“There’s all this anxiety about casting Dana, the iconic character of the book, but Mallory Johnson, man, one audition, and it was just her, how great she was in it,” he said. “He was cast because he was already performing the kind of performance that I and the writers felt was needed for those parts.”
‘Kindred’ is now streaming on Hulu.
