EXTRA EDITION VARIETY TALK/ SKETCH/HOST JULY 8, 2020 © 2020 Comedy Partners. All rights reserved. ADVERTISEMENT 0708 EE Comedy central_CVR1.indd 1 6/30/20 10:55 PM Untitled-2 1 7/6/20 10:26 AM 2020 AN EMMY EXPLORATION OF LEADING EDITION CONTENDERS BEGINS ON PAGE 16 VARIETY TALK/ SKETCH/ HOST TOP TALKERS POLITICAL PIVOT STAGING A SKETCH TREVOR NOAH AND CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC AND COMEDIANS BALANCE LILLY SINGH COMPARE SOCIAL INJUSTICE PROTESTS CURRENT EVENTS COMMENTARY LATE-NIGHT NOTES HAVE TAKEN CENTER STAGE WITH TIMELESS HUMOR FOR DAILY FORMATS TOP BILLING A ROAD TRIP BACK IN TIME Courtney B. Vance, (left) Jonathan Majors, Jurnee Smollett Bell star in Misha Green’s adaptation of Matt Ruff’s 2016 novel “Lovecraft Country.” The Relevance of Race and Class Issues Through the Ages ADAPTING SOURCE MATERIAL WRITTEN YEARS PRIOR AND SET IN EARLIER TIME PERIODS COMES WITH THE CREATIVE CHALLENGE OF WHEN TO USE HINDSIGHT AS A STORYTELLING LENS By Danielle Turchiano WHEN ALDOUS HUXLEY was writ- World.” But Wiener’s version comes Fires Everywhere” and both HBO’s ing “Brave New World” in 1931, he almost a century after Huxley’s, and the “Lovecraft Country” and “Perry Mason” was envisioning a futuristic world novelist’s version of the future didn’t 100% also allowed their larger perspective on in which humans were genetically engi- come to pass. events of the past to alter period-specific neered into a caste system. Those who were “He didn’t have the benefit of the 90 tales of race and class issues. They created deemed the most intelligent were on top — years of history that we have,” Wiener says. projects that illuminate previously under- the aptly named Alphas — but no one looked “The book is challenging, it’s a little out represented areas of historical discussion around or within to question why things of date, and there are some elements that while also highlighting how far sensibilities were like this or if it was the best way. No aren’t as relevant anymore, so for us it was have evolved from the last time these one except a man from the “old” way of life about, how do you take the crystals that stories were told. who entered their so-called utopia. feel really true of that book and pass them “We all come into the world with biases The idea “that you’d rather be worry-free through the culture of our own time?” and prejudices and shortcomings and gut than engage with the world around you” Wiener is hardly alone in wanting to reactions to situations based on so many present in Huxley’s book was at the heart of mold source material for a modern audi- things, but if you don’t examine those, how what showrunner David Wiener wanted to ence by allowing hindsight to shape certain do you grow, how do you expand, how do depict when he set out to craft the first sea- elements. The showrunnners behind series you challenge?,” says “Little Fires Every- son of his Peacock adaptation of “Brave New such as TNT’s “The Alienist,” Hulu’s “Little where” showrunner Liz Tigelaar. ELIZABETH MORRIS/HBO ELIZABETH MORRIS/HBO 4 VARIETY TOP BILLING For her 1990s-set limited series adap- tation of Celeste Ng’s 2017 novel, Tigelaar was exploring motherhood, race and class issues around the arrival of a Black single mother and her teenage daugh- ter, as well as the adoption of a Chinese American baby by a white family in sub- urban Ohio. “We didn’t want to examine this binary of ‘You’re racist or you’re not rac- ist.’ We know what racist people look like, we think, but it’s not people at marches in KKK hoods only; it’s also insidious, quieter, painful ways that it comes up in every moment of every day,” she says. “And so, taking on the challenge of examining what a white, progressive, liberal woman thinks of herself and thinks of her relationship to race, that’s how we tell a more nuanced story that I think, hopefully, can have people exam- ine themselves.” Wiener notes that the premise of “Brave New World” makes the only dif- ference between characters “what you’re assigned when you’re born. It’s a ranking system, and we thought, ‘Well, shouldn’t further on-screen. STEPPING INTO A the same time, “Ida B. Wells was writ- CASTE SYSTEM different classes have different pur- “We are firmly rooted in the historical ing for a white newspaper, so we pre- poses? What that set up for us was an reality of 1950s America,” says “Lovecraft David Wiener’s supposed that the fictional character of take on Aldous interesting way to investigate how these County” showrunner Misha Green. This Huxley’s 1932 Joanna could have,” too, Carolan says. people who think they’re beyond bias, means, rather than Atticus (played by Jon- novel “Brave New But the majority is based in fact, who don’t concern themselves with those athan Majors) hearing about someone’s World” stars Alden even if it is little-known. Ehrenreich as John differences the same way we do today, experience with the sundown law, which the Savage. “There’s a scene in the very first actually have biases too.” allowed police to shoot Black people in episode coming back this year with a In this case, though, the biases do their county after dark, he experiences it suffragette storyline, and they’re out- not have to do with race. When Wie- first-hand. The show will “illuminate the side the prison and we see the police ner created his version of the caste sys- horrors of the time, and highlight the par- violently attacking the protestors,” he tem of New London, it was designed to allels to now,” Green continues. says. “The African-American popu- be a “multicultural utopia.” He rewrote Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald lation in New York at the time would important white, male characters such brought to light the discrimination of the have been less than 2%. But they were as world challenger Helmholtz Watson police against their own brother in blue, there, and it’s very important to see and world controller Mustafa Mond as who happens to be a Black man, through them now. It’s shining a light on areas women, and then cast women of color the character of Paul Drake (Chris Chalk) that have been neglected as well as (Hannah John-Kamen and Nina Sosanya, in “Perry Mason.” Adapting Erle Stanley wanting to be historically truthful. respectively) to embody them. Gardner’s 1930-1960s set novels, they There were Black suffragettes, there “It made the world feel like it still began in the ’30s, following the titular was police violence and there was had something to say about today,” Wie- character on his journey to become a law- general violence at the time. So what ner says. “We wanted to talk about what yer in a Los Angeles where “the economic we were trying to do there was hold a happens when people are neglected, disparity and access to power for the mirror to what is happening in society when people aren’t heard, when people haves, the have-nots and the never- will- right now.” aren’t seen, and what happens when you bes is pretty familiar,” as well, says Jones. “We need media and content and keep telling people to look and feel and As Linda Ong, chief culture officer, art to help us understand and to set the do a certain way — what their reaction Civic Entertainment Group, puts it, story- path forward,” says Ong. “If you look becomes.” tellers have to “choose whether you depict at everything from the Middle Ages — “Lovecraft Country” is in a similar [elements of the past] as right or wrong.” after that period we had the Renais- position to “Brave New World,” in that it Having hindsight not only allows for sance — and then after the pandemic mixes heavy history with science fiction. reflection but also calls for it. in 1918 and the end of World War I we The novel was set in the 1950s, but pub- “The Alienist: Angel of Darkness” had the roaring ’20s [and] the Jazz Age. lished in 2016, which already allowed showrunner Stuart Carolan admits some And then even after the end of World for the story of Jim Crow America to be liberties are taken with what women War II, you had postmodernism, you told with the weight of decades of linger- at the turn of the 20th century can do: had rock ’n’ roll. That is all defined by ing effects and still-prevalent racism. But The character of Joanna (Brittany Marie the first responders of, ‘How are we as the epidemic of police discrimination Batchelder), a Black journalist and suf- going to move forward and what does and brutality against Black Americans fragette, for example, works at the New the new normal look like?’ And so it is has been pushed further to the fore in York Times in 1897, which is well before the responsibility of showrunners, cre- headlines and social discussions, show- an African American made the mast- ators, filmmakers — all artists — to help runners are leaning into depicting it head in real life, he knows, but around model the world we want to see.” STEVE SCHOFIELD/PEACOCK SCHOFIELD/PEACOCK STEVE 6 VARIETY Untitled-11 1 6/30/20 10:56 PM IN THE RUNNING shows had opted to go audi- ence-free; by the next day, it became apparent that things were being shut down completely.