Category: Article

New series heads to Washington as part of Black History Month

 

THE WRAP – WGN America’s new Underground Railroad drama “Underground” will screen at the White House as part of Black History Month, the network announced Friday.

 

The pilot episode of the show will be be screened on Feb. 22 as part of the White House Office of Public Engagement’s Black History Month event, “These Hallowed Grounds,” highlighting landmarks and monuments around the country significant to the African American community, including stops on the Underground Railroad.

 

Prior to the screening, there will be panel discussions with the “Underground” cast and creative team, including executive producer John Legend, creators and executive producers Misha Green and Joe Pokaski, executive producer Akiva Goldsman and director and executive producer Anthony Hemingway.

 

Stars Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Aldis Hodge, Christopher Meloni, Alano Miller, Jessica de Gouw and Amirah Vann will also be in attendance. The panel event will be live streamed beginning at 5:30 p.m. ET.

 
Continue reading Slavery Drama ‘Underground’ to Screen at White House

GLOBALGRIND – It may turn out to be the most interesting time of my life. I was just offered a guest spot on MTV2’s Uncommon Sense on the same day I was scheduled to visit the set of one of the most interesting shows coming to television, Underground, a program about a group of runaway slaves being filmed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

 

There was no way in hell I was going to cancel anything; I was determined to make it work. Because in a world filled with so much racial tension, I had to see how this TV series based on the slave narratives in the Library of Congress was being made.

 

I pushed my flight back, did MTV, and finished with exactly 60 minutes to get from the middle of Times Square to JFK airport in rush hour traffic. By the time I got to the airport, there were exactly 10 minutes to get through the terminal to TSA and then to the gate. Needless to say, I missed my original flight. But luckily, I caught another and arrived in Baton Rouge by the morning. It all worked out.

 

Continue reading Jurnee Smollett-Bell & Aldis Hodge Get Dirty: Trip To The Set Of “Underground”

THE MARY SUE – WGN America is launching a new dramatic series in January 2016 called Underground, whose storyline is centered around a group of slaves, their daring escape from a plantation, and the abolitionists who help them.

 

Yep. I had the same reaction when I saw the press release.

 

To be honest, I feared that this would be, at best, 12 Years a Slave “the miniseries,” or at worst, a historically distorted narrative like Mississippi Burning. However, then I saw that John Legend’s company, Get Lifted, had signed on as the executive producers, and WGN had tapped Misha Green (Spartacus, Sons of Anarchy, Heroes) and Joe Pokaski (Daredevil, Heroes, CSI) to pen the script. Add to that an amazing cast featuring several actors whose work I enjoy, such as Aldis Hodge (from one of my favorite shows, Leverage), Jurnee Smollet-Bell (Friday Night Lights, The Great Debaters), and Christopher Meloni (Law and Order: SVU), and I decided that I must learn more about this show.

 

Underground’s plot is actually being promoted less like a slave narrative and more like an adventure of survival. (Less Roots, more The Defiant Ones.) When I heard that the cast would all be going to New York Comic Con, I jumped at the chance to interview some of them and ask them the one question that had been on my mind since the premise of the show was revealed:

 

“What was your reaction when your agent called and told you that you had just landed a starring role on a brand new show … about slavery?”

Aldis Hodge (Noah):

I thought that we had seen this narrative before, but when I read the script, that changed everything, because I realized they told an honest story we’d never seen before. They were talking about people’s strength; they told the strength of these people as opposed to the weaknesses, the victimization of it. We got to see heroes. We got to be proud of these people. We got to see how smart and intelligent they were, and we got to see where the foundation of that came from. I like to speak to everybody, and this is a show that does that. Even though we’re talking about black culture, you realize these are Americans; regardless of what they look like or what their color is, they’re all Americans.

 

Continue reading WGN Has a New Show About Slavery, and I Don’t Know If I’m Ready

MONSTERS AND CRITICS – I think the story of the Underground Railroad is just so exciting and thrilling and hasn’t been told, and it is one it was the first integrated civil rights movement in America, and I think that that’s the important thing to really highlight again today.- Misha Green

 

“Underground” follows a group of courageous men and women who use their ingenuity, power, and perseverance to attempt the greatest escape in history and break free, despite the dire consequences that awaited them on the other side.

 

At Winter tour TCA (Television Critics’ Association) the WGN panel included the “Underground” creative team, executive producer, Akiva Goldsman; creators, writers, and executive producers, Joe Pokaski, and Misha Green; executive producer, John Legend; executive producer, Mike Jackson; and executive producer and director, Anthony Hemmingway.

 

Continue reading WGN America’s “Underground” Timely, Relevant PREVIEWS

DEADLINE – Producers of WGN America‘s upcoming pre-Civil War drama Underground blasted the trivialization of slavery by those who use the horrific history as a metaphor for everything from Obamacare to gun control. “We’ve seen a lot of hyperbolic comparison,” said exec producer Akiva Goldsman at a TCA panel today. “Everything is ‘slavery’, everything is ‘the Holocaust.’ These words have specific meaning. It’s the corruption of words that begins the corruption of ideas. That is terrifying,”

 

Underground follows a group of slaves who escape from a Georgia plantation, traveling 600 miles to freedom and aided along the way by a secret abolitionist couple running a station along the Underground Railroad. The slaves are tracked by a group tasked with bringing them back dead or alive.

 

The era of the Underground Railroad, Goldsman said, “is a period of time in our history which has somehow become obscured by shadow. It’s not taught, we don’t learn it…it’s the vanishing of our past, and therefore the whole wonderful notion we are doomed to repeat it becomes ever more likely.”

 

Underground, he added quickly, is “not teaching history here, but this is the truth of where we come from.” Goldsman said the series is designed to be both entertainment and “edifying.”

 

Continue reading ‘Underground’ TCA Panel Decries Trivialization Of Slavery In Political Discourse

TV Guide – Yes, WGN America’s Underground is about the Underground Railroad, the term given to the network of people and safe stations that allowed slaves to escape bondage in the South for the northern part of America and Canada. Although it’s a topic often explored in American history textbooks, the show’s writers and producers want you to know that this is decidedly not an educational exercise. “We didn’t want it to feel stuck in the period,” says John Legend, an executive producer. “We didn’t want people to feel like they were in a museum. We wanted it to feel fresh.” That begins with the musical direction. Although Kanye West was previously attached the project as a musical director, it’s Legend who’s the head honcho of the show’s sound (is you listen closely, you can hear his background vocals on the show’s theme song, “Heaven’s Door,” by Alice Smith).

 

Created by Misha Green (Sons of Anarchy) and Joe Pokaski (Heroes), Underground tells the story of people who dared to make the 600-mile trek from a Georgia plantation to freedom. The show digs into their humanity, bringing to life the small details you may (or may not) have read. “All I saw about the Underground Railroad was this little square in social studies,” said Pokaski. “The more I learned, I saw how dangerous and heroic it was to run.” With five seasons in mind, the creators are looking to tell lots of stories and illuminate the three-dimensional qualities of people we know little about. We’ll see, for example, their ingenuity, Green says — how people hid costumes, shipped themselves in crates or pretended to be white to get freedom for themselves and others.

 

Stars include Christopher Meloni, Aldis Hodge and Jurnee Smollett-Bell– sister of Empire star Jussie Smollet, who will guest-star; this will mark the first time in 20 years the siblings appear in the same series.

 

Underground premieres Wednesday, March 9 on WGN.