Wondering what HBO's latest prestige TV hit
in the making is all about? Don't worry, we've
got you covered. From the making of the show
to its story and themes, here's all you need
to know before taking a trip into the ambitious,
provocative, and terrifying world of Lovecraft
Country.
Published in 2016, Lovecraft Country is the
sixth novel by author Matt Ruff. When Ruff
worked out the idea, he thought it would make
for a great TV show, and wrote the novel as
a proof of concept.
In other words, Ruff wrote the book with the
hopes that one day it would get optioned by
Hollywood and turned into a television series,
even though such an idea "was an extraordinary
long shot."
But within a year, Ruff's gambit paid off.
In May 2017, HBO ordered a series adaptation
of Lovecraft Country. While a bunch of major
industry players and their production companies
signed on to bring the book to life, it still
took more than three long years for the show
to surface, with the first episode of the
series premiering on HBO in August 2020.
In 2017, just a few months after Jordan Peele
released his thought-provoking, Oscar-winning
thriller Get Out, Deadline announced the comedian-turned-filmmaker's
next project: An adaptation of Lovecraft Country.
Like Get Out, Lovecraft Country is a horror
title with plenty to say about race relations
in America. It was Peele who discovered the
novel and brought it to Hollywood's attention.
Right out of the gate, Lovecraft Country boasted
some major talent with the track record to
bring such a unique project to the small screen.
HBO ordered a full season of episodes to be
produced by Warner Bros. Television in association
with Peele's Monkeypaw Productions and Bad
Robot, the production company founded by Star
Wars, Star Trek, and Lost mastermind J.J.
Abrams.
Moreover, Misha Green, the co-creator and
showrunner of the WGN America series Underground,
signed on as showrunner. Green argued that
Lovecraft Country wouldn't be a viable TV
show without the groundbreaking, previous
work of Peele and Abrams. Green said at a
Television Critics Association press tour,
"I think this would have been incredibly hard
to get on screen if Get Out hadn't come out.
I think that paved the way for people to really
open up to the idea of seeing more black people
in genre spaces. It's an epic journey that
wouldn't have been possible if we weren't
making TV at the level that started with Lost."
With a dazzling group of acclaimed producers
and creators to its name, along with its interesting
and provocative source material, Lovecraft
Country was able to attract an impressive,
all-star cast.
Portraying one of the lead characters, Letitia
Dandridge, is Jurnee Smollett. This will be
her return to HBO, with the actress previously
having enjoyed a two-year stint on True Blood
– and will also see her reunite with her
Underground showrunner Misha Green.
HBO stalwart Michael K. Williams who played
Freddy Knight on The Night Of, Chalky White
on Boardwalk Empire, and Omar Little on The
Wire stars as Montrose Freeman, Atticus' missing
father.
Acclaimed veteran character actor Courtney
B. Vance, who recently won an Emmy for his
work as Johnnie Cochran in American Crime
Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson, has a
major role as Uncle George Black.
And then there's relative newcomer Jonathan
Majors, who looks likely to become a breakout
star in the lead role of Atticus Black.
One major name who won't be in Lovecraft Country,
however, is Elizabeth Debicki. Early on, the
actor signed up to play the mysterious and
villainous Christina Braithwhite, but had
to drop out. Her replacement will be Abbey
Lee, of Mad Max: Fury Road fame.
Lovecraft Country is an extremely original
project, pulling from a number of disparate
genres and histories.
All at once, it's a period piece with a lot
to say about systemic racism, a production
promising genuine, horror story frights, and
an exploration of mid-century science fiction.
What's the actual story, you ask? Lovecraft
Country is set in the United States of the
1950s, an era absolutely rife with violent,
Jim Crow-era racism.
The plot follows Atticus Black, a young, Black
sci-fi enthusiast and Korean War veteran,
his uncle George, and his childhood friend
Letitia as they embark upon a road trip in
search of Atticus' missing father, Montrose
Freeman.
The three carefully travel through the hostile
southern states, hoping to avoid racism, a
creepy secret society called the Sons of Adam,
and more than a few monsters straight out
of the works of H.P. Lovecraft.
These wrathful creatures serve as a metaphor
for the evils of racism... but are also connected
to it. What happened to Montrose? What do
the Sons of Adam want? You'll have to tune
in to find out.
Portraying Atticus Freeman in Lovecraft Country
caps a couple of years of attention-getting
high-profile film roles for Jonathan Majors,
following his work in Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods
and the festival hit The Last Black Man in
San Francisco.
He prepared extensively for his role in Lovecraft
Country, telling The New York Times,
"The first thing I do when I start a role
is I look to see where we're similar. I played
sports my entire life; that speaks to the
physicality of Atticus."
Prepping the imagination of the character
one victimized by racism and violence was
more difficult. Majors said,
"I had to go to places of remembering when
I was beaten up so bad in school that I retaliated
and ran to my apartment building and grabbed
a knife and was chasing the bully down the
street like, the fear I had pulsing through
my body."
Veteran actor Jurnee Smollett will plays one
of Lovecraft Country's primary roles: Letitia
Lewis, Atticus Freeman's traveling partner
and childhood friend with whom things have
grown complicated in adulthood. Smollet is
best known for her roles as Michelle's best
friend Denise on Full House, Black Canary
in Birds of Prey, and Rosalee in Underground,
the WGN America series about the Underground
Railroad co-created by Lovecraft Country creator
and showrunner Misha Green. But just because
the two had worked together before doesn't
mean they always got along, or that the process
of casting Smollett on the show was easy.
The actress told The Hollywood Reporter,
"We did the pilot and I hated her. We proceeded
to be the worst of enemies for the first two
months of shooting."
Green confirmed that assessment, acknowledging
tough times on the Underground set between
the two. She said their animosity toward each
other became an on-set inside joke, but once
they worked out a communication style that
worked for both of them, they ended up becoming
friends or at least not outright enemies,
since Lovecraft Country sees them working
together again.
When she signed on to make Lovecraft Country,
Green knew that Smollett was the right actor
to play Letitia, but she resisted the instinct
to cast her at first. Green told The Hollywood
Reporter,
"I just didn't want to be one of those people
who only works with [actors] they've worked
with before."
Smollett was determined to get the part, as
she was a huge fan of Matt Ruff's source novel
of the same name, and tracked the show's development
progress. Through it all, she didn't understand
why it took Green a long five months to offer
her the role.
In her Hollywood Reporter interview, Smollett
recounted her paranoia at the lack of contact,
asking rhetorically,
"'Does she not think I can stretch and do
a different character?' I mean, I was freaking
out, literally losing sleep for months."
Up until a few years ago, The Negro Motorist
Green Book was a little-known but fascinating
relic of American and segregationist history.
Between 1936 and 1966, an African-American
postal worker named Victor Green published
annual directories advising African-American
travelers as to which hotels, restaurants,
nightclubs, bars, salons, and gas stations
would accept their business.
Green's books, distributed under a variety
of different names, covered locales all over
the world but which were particularly valuable
in the South, where businesses openly segregated
or refused African-American patrons until
the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made such practices
illegal.
All of these concepts were brought to mass
attention by the movie Green Book, the 2018
Academy Award winner for Best Picture about
a white man who drives an African-American
concert pianist through the segregated '60s
South.
HBO's Lovecraft Country also explores the
importance of the Green Book but in a much
more personal and provocative way.
Part of Atticus Black's traveling group is
his uncle, George Black, played by Courtney
B. Vance. For the purposes of this show, he
is the highly-informed author of The Safe
Negro Travel Guide, an obviously fictionalized
version of The Negro Motorist Green Book.
Whether his books in the TV show have anything
to say about what travellers should do against
any ancient, unknowable, godlike monsters
they may encounter? That remains to be seen.
The "Lovecraft" in Lovecraft Country refers
to H.P. Lovecraft, a pioneer in science-fiction
and horror literature who laid out a lot of
those genres' standards and tropes which are
still used today. Lovecraft also helped popularize
the notion of a unified fictional world in
which to set multiple, otherwise not explicitly
connected works not unlike the Marvel Cinematic
Universe or Harry Potter's Wizarding World.
Lovecraft set many of his stories in fake
towns within Massachusetts' real Essex County.
Some Lovecraft scholars refer to the area
as the "Miskatonic region," after a fictional
river and university found in those fictional
works, while the Lovecraftian game Call of
Cthulhu spread the phrase "Lovecraft Country."
However, the term "Lovecraft Country" as the
title of a show about racial issues is also
a subtle criticism of that author's worldview.
H.P. Lovecraft had some disturbing opinions
on race, so in other words, "Lovecraft Country"
is a metaphor for "racist stuff."
For example, the real-life Lovecraft espoused
anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, sympathized
with Hitler, and justified anti-Black violence
in the South and the people behind the book
and show are very aware of this. Lovecraft
Country and its HBO adaptation grapple with
Lovecraft's legacy, the same way many readers
of his work do today. Yes, he was an important
author, and indelible in the development of
genre fiction... but he wasn't the most progressive
individual.
While Lovecraft Country is set in the past
albeit an alternate version of the past, in
which literal monsters are a legitimate threat
to the protagonists its themes still resonate
today. Lovecraft Country is primarily about
Black characters traveling through a country
where "sundown towns" exist exclusionary places
where Black people can be attacked with no
recourse if they're in public at night.
It's all packaged in a show that's hitting
HBO mere weeks after massive nationwide protests
called for an end to police brutality, systemic
racism, and a reinvigoration of the Black
Lives Matter movement.
During a Lovecraft Country panel for Comic-Con
at Home 2020, star Jonathan Majors read a
scene in which his character is pulled over
by a white police officer during his travels,
and he could relate to the fear and uncertainty
Atticus feels. Majors told Variety,
"Literally on the top of my script for that
scene I wrote, 'The worst day in Texas,' where
I grew up. That is the type of thing my mama
would pray over me when I would travel pray
that wouldn't happen."
"It is something that is ancient, you know,
that systematic racism, that bullying."
His co-star on the show, Courtney B. Vance,
all but labeled Lovecraft Country vital viewing,
saying during the panel,
"Watch Lovecraft Country because it is so
different, and so engaging, especially in
this time period we're living in now."
"You know, you thought you had something going
on with Game of Thrones, but… watch out."
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