HBOs long-awaited adaptation of Lovecraft Country started last night, bringing viewers face to face with a number of heinous monsters – both supernatural and all-too-real. Op the premiere episode, we got to know many of the show’s key players, but none who were quite as intimate as George and Hippolyta Freeman, who shook walls (and hearts) with their fierce declarations of love. Pictured with power and strength through Courtney B. Vance en Aunjanue Ellis respectively, George and Hippolyta are the center of their South Side Chicago universe, fixing cars, distributing mail, and even publishing a green book that helps their Black neighbors find safe haven on road trips. With George now off on one of those road trips and in some deep abyss, let’s ask ourselves what Hippolyta is at home, and who she really is, other than just George’s wife.
The AV Club talked to Vance and Ellis about all of this, from how Hippolyta treats George’s deviations to why George feels a responsibility to help and serve both his family and his congregation. We’ve also talked about how the story’s storylines relate to the life of the Blacks in the 21st century, and have even picked up a few book recommendations from the two gruesome readers. Bits of that conversation are in the clip above, but the full transcript is below for those interested in diving deeper into the show’s distorted universe.
The AV Club: When we meet George and Hippolyta, it is immediately clear that they are in love with LOVE in capital, but George’s job is dangerous and every trip he goes through, he may not return. How do you think Hippolyta handles that?
Courtney B. Vance: Not good.
Aunjanue Ellis: I think it’s twice with her, you know. I think she loves her husband and that she knew that every time he knocked on the door … actually I think I relate to that right now. When my loved one walks out the door, I worry about him. I’m worried about him and I hope he comes home again, so imagine that in the fifties.
I do not have to imagine it. I know what that is. I live that now. I live that when my friend tells me he will go shopping after 10 o’clock at night. I sit on pins and needles until he gets home. He walks every day and I want to tell him, ‘Do not do it. Do not walk in a park. “I am scared to death every day. Until he gets home and until he gets back to his apartment, I’m not good. So I do not want to imagine how Hippolyta feels. I know how Hippolyta feels.
The other part is that she herself is a frustrated traveler. She’s in a repressive situation because it’s the 1950s, and because of the community, the culture, and the marriage she’s in. She is an astronomer, and there were not that many black female astronomers at the time. There are not so many black astronomers at the moment, besides Neil deGrasse Tyson, as far as I know. That, she wants to be on the road. She is a traveler, an astronomer. Their purview is every constellation, every galaxy, every universe.
That, yes, George’s absence is frighteningly provocative, but it also supports her longing for more for her life.
AVC: George writes the Black Travel Guides as a way to take care of his family, but somehow he also cares for millions of other people so they can travel safely from one place to another. How did you feel about that aspect of your character, Courtney?
CBV: It was about us being fixtures in the community, because that was what we had to do to survive. Back in that time there was a village. Everyone knows that our home is a community center. We are not just writing the travel green book. We repair cars. We post letters because everything was separated at the time. You had fountains with black water, black post offices, black groceries, everything was separated. That we had to be everything to each other.
If we did it really well, like they did in Tulsa, they massacred you in 1921 – or like they did in Wilmington, Delaware, as Aunjanue let us know. You could not tell how white people would feel. If you stayed in your place, they were crazy about you because you stayed in your place and you turned your place into a business – a mecca – and then they were crazy about you that you became “up” by in your place. It’s like, “We get our own thing and you’re crazy, and when we go to your place you’re crazy.”
That’s something that needs to be understood: That there was no place for Black people to deal with any kind of crime, or any kind of injustice. There was nowhere for Black people to turn. I hope so Lovecraft and other shows like ours are able to give people an understanding of that feeling of hopelessness. And that, although people came to the end of their sail, they gave no hope. We went on and on we supported each other and although Uncle was murdered last week, the village surrounded the family and took collections into church and made sure the children were taken in by other families.
Taking over seeing the village is something. When they try to say that Black people are inferior and that they do not take care of their families, you do not know Black family. You do not know where we came from, and how we survived when there was no other place to turn, when no one cared about Black people as Black children. I mean, it took a documentary made about 150 Black kids killed and before white people realized, “Oh, there are some Black kids killed in Atlanta,” as opposed to one white, young girl that is killed and suddenly on the milk cartons and it is an Amber warning.
If you really look at it, you see that we do not understand the reason that Black life does not matter. And that’s why people are so overwhelmed, eventually white people start to see what we knew 450 years ago: That Black lives do not matter. We are at the end of our sail with it, and something must turn.
AVC: You mentioned Tulsa, for example, and many people now only hear about this massacre 100 years later Watchmen. Is there one piece of this show that you hope people see and look deeper into? That people say, “I can ‘t believe this happened on that show and I’m going to learn a lot more about it and incorporate it into my life.”
CBV: I just hope people just start seeing other people. Trans people, gay people, Black people, indigenous people, East Indians. I mean, people are different.
I’m always interested in how people are where they are. I’m interested in the differences we have because we [Vance and Ellis] were raised to treat people equally. That I’m not threatened by it. We did not raise our children to be threatened by people being different. But some people are threatened by it and their children are raised to be threatened by everything. That consistently they continue to learn the hate. That the youth does not learn, and they learn nothing about different cultures at school, and the hatred is erected.
What will it take for us to realize that we need each other? We can not continue to promote hatred. We need to start learning love somewhere. Nobody teaches history in schools, and nobody teaches it in homes. And in the information age, the fact that we do not know about each other is just ridiculous.
AVC: George and Hippolyta clearly love learning, and they love books. Do you have a favorite book?
AE: Oh my God, girl, you just messed up.
CBV: She screamed badly, right? She does not even know it.
AE: My colleague and I are big bookworms, so you just opened a can of worms.
I have read a lot. I am an aggressive reader. I’m angry at the moment, but I would suggest writers as to what my favorite book is. I think Loved is one of my favorite books, by Toni Morrison. De Bluest Eye by Toni [Morrison] is a great book. And then there are many writers I like. I like Lauren Groff. She is a writer with short stories, I try to read everything she writes. i’m reading Karen Russell right now. She is another really great writer of short stories. I called this really great book reading Perfect peace by Daniel Black about this Black family in Louisiana that had queer members in the early 1900s. So anyway, like I said, you opened a can of worms. I love reading.
CBV: I love Stamped From The Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi, and I love Mary L. Trumpthe book about her uncle. Stacey Abrams, Our time is now.
I am a big reader of biography. I loved [Ron] Chernow’s Subsidy and of course, Hamilton en Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs. The fact that I read Chernow’s 900 page book about Ulysses S. Grant and at the end of the book, I cry over this man, I mean, that’s what books can do.
But in this country we have moved away from reading and how important it is to just let your imagination sit and take you, or how you can take the experience of another author to you. People do not have the patience to actually sit there and have not done everything for you with the movie or with the series. They just can not sit there with a book.
AE: Can I say another one? As a Mississippi, I have to point it out Choose Leymon’s memoir Heavy. I highly recommend Heavy.
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