The sliding supernatural creatures that stalked her in the shadows were not what put Jurnee Smollett in the right frame to film the new HBO horror series “Lovecraft Country.”
What scared the actress was the shooting of the scenes in which her character, Letitia, had to shoot racist white policemen with guns in her arms and mock in her eyes. The series, which debuts Sunday at 9 a.m. Eastern, may have been set in the Jim Crow era, but it is now disturbingly topical.
“The moments when I was put in the back of a car or searched by an officer, I think of friends, I think of my sibling, I think of stories I’ve heard,” Smollett said. “I do not go too far to draw from the source – it is right here. We see that the systemic racism on which this nation is built has not yet been dismantled.”
“These stories are not only timely, they are personal,” added the actress, who has childhood memories of a dead fish left on her family’s lawn on the morning of Million Man March 1995 and saw her mother be called the N word.
“I don’t think you as a Black American have to go very far to gain access to the fear of being black in America,” she said.
“Lovecraft Country” courtesy of showrunner Misha Green, creator of the Civil War drama “Underground”, and producer Jordan Peele, who used the horror genre so effectively as an allegory to tackle racism with “Get Out” and “Us” . ” JJ Abrams, of “Star Wars” fame, is also a producer on the show.
Adapted from the 2016 novel by Matt Ruff, the story follows Korean war veteran Atticus Freeman (Jonathan Majors) on a journey in the backwaters of New England to find his missing father (Michael K. Williams) and discover a nasty family secret discover. With his friend Letitia (Smollett) and his uncle (Courtney B. Vance), the publisher of ‘The Safe Negro Travel Guide’, the gun drives, Atticus and his companions run out over racist local police raiding the all-white sundown towns patrolling, “where blacks were legally expelled to darkness with dire consequences for offenders.
That’s exactly where their problems really begin.
Although the story was set in 1954, “Lovecraft Country” debuted during a summer of account of systemic racism in America after the assassination of George Floyd by police.
That timing is not lost on the cast.
“What we’re talking about in the story … and in the TV series is the same thing that happened a long time ago,” Majors said. “We’re talking about George Floyd, Brother Floyd, King Floyd, but there’s also a guy named Emmett Till. It’s funny how those things connect. I think what this dope really is (the show) on this moment, we say, ‘Yes, it happened all this time.’ “
“This piece feels like a bodycam to me,” he said. “Now you have a bodycam for the whole experience of what it’s like to be African American or of African descent in America.”
Ruff said he came up with the original idea for “Lovecraft Country” back in 2007 for an unsuccessful pitch for a television series, aiming to be a show that revolves around the paranormal investigations of a Black family who fictional version compiled from “The Green Book,” a true travel guide for Black Americans with safe motels and restaurants that would serve people with their skin color.
The idea was to contrast these kind of paranormal horrors of the kind you would get on ‘The X-Files’ with the real historical, everyday horror of everyday racism, and ask what a major threat it is to your safety or health. , “Ruff back.
The producers were over, but Ruff was interested enough to complete a novel.
That novel, in turn, intrigued Green and Peele, then still known for comedy, but was busy working on a thriller called “Get Out,” which the author called in a bid to “Lovecraft Country” fit for the small screen. Ruff, a fan of Green’s “Underground,” even before the call, made the deal.
Part of the draw for Green, a self-proclaimed history buff, was the opportunity to explore a bygone era of history: the segregation era.
“If I had made a sundown city that you could not be in this city after dark, and there were signs throughout the US saying, ‘Let the sun not set on you here,’ then people would be, ‘OK, yeah, we’ll buy into it so we can see (the story),’ ‘Green said.’ That, which makes me history, is so fine, in unpacking things from our past that affect us today. . “
“I just have to bring it here now and fix it with my sci-fi, this crazy thing that happened that I didn’t have to do,” she added. “And for me, it adds an extra layer of depth.”
The name of HP Lovecraft in the title is part of that history lesson. Ruff deliberately believed in the aesthetics of the early 20th century writer, who was as famous for his cosmic horror stories as his terrible racism.
“One by one, he’s this incredibly influential, talented cosmic horror writer who had a real impact on the genre because he was there at the end of modern horror and science fiction,” Ruff said. “At the same time, he [was an] unreconstructed white supremacist who was very sincere in his belief that other races were inferior. “
“That’s traditionally something that white Lovecraft fans have a tendency to miss or overlook altogether, but of course, black fans of science fiction have stood out all along,” he said.
The cast was also appreciated for using the proprietary literary icon’s own name in a project that would go against his racist views.
“I feel like I gave HP Lovecraft the finger every time I ran on the set,” said Aunjanue Ellis, who plays Atticus’ aunt.
Or as Majors put it: “We’ve turned junk food into soul food.”
That has been a successful recipe in recent years.
Not long after his telephone conversation with Ruff, Peele published “Get Out” – a horror film about Black victims forced to exchange consciousness with rich, white aggressors – which became a surprising sensation of pop culture, earning $ 255.4 million worldwide at the office and start a less quantifiable number of awkward office conversations about race.
HBO recently found success in a similar subversion of genre-pop culture as a way to tackle racism with “Watchmen,” a sequel to the iconic comic strip.
That show, which this year led to the Emmy nominations with 26, opened with a resurrection of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, the desecration of the Oklahoma neighborhood called Black Wall Street and the death or displacement of its residents by a blank mob. One of the worst racist attacks in the nation’s history was too late for its close-up, said Wilson Morales, founder of blackfilmandtv.com, a news website covering diversity in entertainment.
“They use the sci-fi and horror genres to shed light on racism so they get an audience,” Morales said.
“A lot of people didn’t know about the Tulsa Massacre until ‘Watchmen’ showed it,” he said. “Then everyone goes to Google and starts reading about it. More people learn about history than if they made a documentary.”
It’s not just about distant history. These shows also say a lot about the present.
“When could you have ‘Lovecraft Country’ released and it would not be time since 1619?” asked Smollett, referring to the year when the first African slaves arrived in the English colony, and later the state, Virginia.
“What month, what day would the themes we explore in ‘Lovecraft’ not be timely?”
