David Benioff and Dan Weiss respond to criticisms of Confederate, their new HBO show

With Game of Thrones season 7 on the air, you’d think that creators and showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss would have their hands full talking about that. But when HBO announced that the pair were set to write and produce a new series to air after Thrones is over, the news quickly caught fire on account of the subject matter. Called Confederate, the show will explore an alternate timeline where the Confederate States of America won the Civil War, and takes place in a world where slavery is a “modern institution.” Many took offense at the idea that two white men would be telling such a racially charged story.

And so on.

Benioff and Weiss will write and executive produce Confederate alongside Nichelle Tramble Spellman (Justified, The Good Wife) and Malcolm Spellman (Empire), both of whom are black. In the wake of the backlash, the four of them talked to Vulture about what they were going for with the show.

First, Benioff clarified that the idea for Confederate was something that he and Weiss had kicked around for years and originally envisioned as a feature film, but after working on Game of Thrones, they thought it might work better on TV, particularly with a story of this breadth — they’re picturing Confederate as having dozens of characters and multiple plotlines, not unlike GoT in the abstract.

As for brining in the Spellmans, Benioff joked that it was because he and Weiss were “lazy” and didn’t want to do all the work themselves. “And they’re two great writers. We’ve known Malcolm and Nichelle a long time, socially, and always talked about doing something together at some point. And this felt like a good thing. Now we’re bonding under fire.”

From left to right: Writer/producer Malcolm Spellman, writer/producer Attica Locke and actor Danny Strong. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for AFI)

Malcolm Spellman expanded on that, saying that Benioff and Weiss approached himself and Nichelle in part because “they knew they needed black voices on it.”

"For me and Nichelle, it’s deeply personal because we are the offspring of this history. We deal with it directly, and have for our entire lives. We deal with it in Hollywood, we deal with it in the real world when we’re dealing with friends and family members. And I think Nichelle and I both felt a sense of urgency in trying to find a way to support a discussion that is percolating but isn’t happening enough. As people of color and minorities in general are starting to get a voice, I think there’s a duty to force this discussion."

From there, the writers started exchanging ideas, and things snowballed. “And immediately what the conversation turned into is how we could draw parallels between what has been described as America’s original sin to a present-day conversation,” Nichelle Spellman said. “I think what was interesting to all of us was that we were going to handle this show, and handle the content of the show, without using typical antebellum imagery…This is present day, or close to present day, and how the world would have evolved if the South had been successful seceding from the Union.”

So what drove Benioff and Weiss to think of this story in the first place? According to Benioff, it stems in large part from the two of them being big history dorks (that would certainly fit with their interest in Game of Thrones). Weiss addressed part of the reason why they were interested in this part of history specifically.

"[I]t goes without saying slavery is the worst thing that ever happened in American history. It’s our original sin as a nation. And history doesn’t disappear. That sin is still with us in many ways. Confederate, in all of our minds, will be an alternative history show. It’s a science-fiction show. One of the strengths of science fiction is that it can show us how this history is still with us in a way no strictly realistic drama ever could, whether it were a historical drama or a contemporary drama. It’s an ugly and a painful history, but we all think this is a reason to talk about it, not a reason to run from it. And this feels like a potentially valuable way to talk about it."

Malcolm Spellman clarified the concept. “This is not a world in which the entire country is enslaved,” he said. “Slavery is in one half of the country. And the North is the North. As Nichelle was saying, the imagery should be no whips and no plantations.”

But even with ideas like this in place, everyone was quick to point out that the show is still in the planning stages — there’s no script. There’s not even an outline or any character names. At this point, the four writers are still developing the alternate history. Given how embryonic the show is, Weiss was surprised at the degree of the backlash (both Nichelle and Malcolm Spellman have deleted their Twitter accounts since the announcement was made, incidentally), although they all expected to get some. “I guess that’s what was a little bit surprising about some of the outrage,” Weiss said. “It’s just a little premature. You know, we might fuck it up. But we haven’t yet.”

Addressing the Twitter backlash specifically, Nichelle Spellman wishes some critics had reserved judgment until they’d seen the final product, while Malcolm wondered if social media was the best place to handle this debate.

"You cannot litigate this on Twitter. It’s not possible. There’s a new emerging group of black filmmakers, right? And we have a good standing there with our peers. But there’s no connective tissue between us and what’s coming out in the media. I don’t know that we can change anyone’s mind… but what people have to understand is, and what we are obligated to repeat in every interview is: We’ve got black aunties. We’ve got black nephews, uncles. Black parents and black grandparents. We deal with them every single day. We deal with the struggle every single day. And people don’t have to get on board with what we’re doing based on a press release. But when they’re writing about us, and commenting about us, they should be mindful of the fact that there are no sell-outs involved in this show. Me and Nichelle are not props being used to protect someone else. We are people who feel a need to address issues the same way they do, and they should at least humanize the other end of those tweets and articles. You know what I’m saying?"

Benioff also clarified that, whatever accusations to the contrary, the Spellmans will be equal partners with himself and Weiss when it comes to running the series. “[A]nyone who thinks that Malcolm and Nichelle are props have never met Malcolm and Nichelle,” he said. “[W]hen we sit down and map out this show, and the season, and the characters, it’ll be the four of us arguing about everything. There is no precedent who gets to rule by decree. And people can believe that or not, but it’s the truth, and they’re not in the room, so they don’t know.”

Benioff and Weiss are perfectly aware that the success of Game of Thrones has given them additional leverage when pitching a new show, and chose to go with Confederate specifically because it involved difficult, challenging material. And it goes without saying that they’re going to approach this material different than they approached Thrones. “We were very hyper-aware of the difference between a show with a fictional history and a fictional world, and a show that’s an alternate history of this world,” Weiss said.

Malcolm Spellman, responding to the idea that Confederate could potentially be “pornography or wish-fulfillment” for white supremacists, got the last word.

"What people need to recognize is, and it makes me really want to get into the show: The shit is alive and real today. I think people have got to stop pretending that slavery was something that happened and went away. The shit is affecting people in the present day. And it’s easy for folks to hide from it, because sometimes you’re not able to map it out, especially with how insidious racism has become. But everyone knows that with Trump coming into power, a bunch of shit that had always been there got resurfaced. So the idea that this would be pornography goes back to people imagining whips and plantations. What they need to be imagining is how fucked up things are today, and a story that allows us to now dramatize it in a more tangible matter."

To read the full interview, which is terrific, head to Vulture.

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