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Summary
- Director Peter Berg collaborates with Taylor Kitsch for Netflix's American Primeval, delving into the gritty expansion of the American West.
- The screenplay by Mark L. Smith explores the clash between cults, religions, and pioneers fighting for control, set against historical events.
- Indigenous Consultant Julie O'Keefe ensures authenticity by involving Native tribes in an accurate representation of important historical events and people.
Director Peter Berg is known for his gritty, realistically action-packed dramas. He’s brought audiences to Afghanistan with boots on the ground in Lone Survivor. He brought us the horror of the Boston Marathon Bombing with Patriot’s Day and the death-defying, blue-collar bravery of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. He also famously introduced the sublimely American Friday Night Lights franchise to an explosively appreciative audience. Now he reteams with FNL and Battleship star Taylor Kitsch for Netflix’s new bloody Western epic American Primeval. Helping Berg portray the most accurate and exquisitely researched version of this story on the screen is Indigenous Consultant Julie O’Keefe, who previously brought her unique talents to the set of Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon.
Written by Mark L. Smith, the screenwriter of The Revenant, American Primeval explores the violent, gritty expansion of the American West and the colliding religions, Natives, and pioneers fighting to the death for control of this new world. With a wide cast of characters placed within infamous historical events, co-starring Betty Gilpin (Mrs. Davis), Dane DeHaan (Oppenheimer), Derek Hinkey (Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter One), Saura Lightfoot-Leon (The Agency) and Kim Coates (Sons of Anarchy) as Brigham Young.
Collider’s Steve Weintraub had the pleasure of sitting down with Berg and O’Keefe to dissect the themes and influences behind American Primeval. Together, they talked about working with the Nations on the accurate representation of important historical people and events, the difficult work happily performed by the cast and crew, exploring mankind's violent history, and why Berg chose to cast himself in a particularly intimidating role.
Peter Berg Returns to Acting for ‘American Primeval’
“People were intimidated by the role, I guess.”
COLLIDER: I've watched the whole series. I really want to say congratulations. You both did great work on this. I really dug this.
PETER BERG: Thank you!
JULIE O’KEEFE: Thank you.
Peter, I definitely have to start with you. I thought that all the actors in the series were just so good, but there was a guy who sort of looked like you in the first episode that really brought the series down, and I wanted to know, why'd you cast him?
BERG: I don't know. It was a big mistake. I couldn't get anyone else to do it. I really tried. People were intimidated by the role, I guess. So, at the last minute, I decided to put myself in it — mainly as a test to see whether I could still remember that many lines. It's been a minute since I've had to act, so I did it not because I thought I'd be good, but I did it for selfish reasons, just to test my own brain set and brain skills and see whether I still have the ability to memorize lines. So I apologize to you and everyone else who has to watch that.
[Laughs] No, you did great.
‘American Primeval’ Reflects Life: “A Series of Adventures and Challenges”
Image via Netflix
Being serious, one of the reasons I think this series is so well done is because you shot on location. It just adds so much realism to what is being depicted on screen. You've done so many things, so was this the hardest thing that you've ever filmed?
BERG: I think it was, yes. When Mark L. Smith and I first talked about doing this, we wanted to go out into the environment, to the elements, and shoot something that was not on sound stages, not in a particularly controlled environment. We wanted a challenge and we definitely got that challenge. I can't say enough about the crew. Every man and woman on that crew were with me in lockstep, getting up at three in the morning in the pitch black, driving up to these mountains, and it was freezing cold, then hiking hundreds of yards up into the mountains, setting up on rocks and on little folding chairs, and working their butts off with a smile on their face.
It wasn't just me that got really into the grit. It was the actors, it was the extraordinary crew and Julie being right there as someone I couldn't have done it without. It was an adventure, and that's what life should be. I believe it should be a series of adventures and challenges, and we definitely had one with American Primeval.
I think people who don't know how movies are made are going to feel that realism as they're watching. It adds so much.
Indigenous Consultant Julie O’Keefe Put Together Teams From Southern Paiute, Shoshone, and Ute Tribes
Image via Netflix
Julie, I have a question for you. Talk a little bit about what you did on the series and also how you added to a specific scene or sequence to make sure it was as authentic as possible.
O’KEEFE: What I do is come in and bring in experts. I bring in people from the Nations to come in, historians — I put teams from all three: Southern Paiute, Shoshone, and Ute. What I did was basically, once we bring them in, Pete has a lot of the language and that is something that's being brought up today currently within our Nations, is saving our languages. Then, really engaging artisans to come in. We set up workrooms within the community, and it was for teepees and really interesting textures. I had research from [National Museum of the American Indian] at Smithsonian. Their researchers there sent a lot of photographs out of the actual collection for me to work with the costume and work with set, work with prop, really so that I give them enough really accurate information that they can act on.
Then, we brought in Eastern Shoshone singers. We have a scene that's called “Getting Ready for War.” It's a night scene. One of the gentlemen, named Waylon, was the historian who had been sent to us from Eastern Shoshone. Waylon is the head of a Native group, so they came into the set. I asked the person that I was working with, who I worked a lot with, a gentleman named Sam Tischler, and I said, “You all should have some music in this. It's authentic.” And he said, “Can we do that?” Because nothing's written down on sheet music. You're bringing in singers, and they're really just orally singing these songs. So I started working with Netflix with their legal department to figure out all the details of it.
They show up on set, and this was one of the most chilling moments the morning before we were shooting because Pete shot this late in the evening. They've gotten their costumes; everything that was on them was made by some Shoshone tribal members — the headdress and different things are authentic. They go to practice that morning while they're setting up the set. It's cold, and everybody's trying to get everything together for the scene to be shot that night, and they sit down with that drum, and they start playing, and everyone on the set, all the crew, stops. They go over just to listen. The thing I think is most interesting is men, in particular, sometimes will go stand around that drum. You see it in a lot of tribes and in our dances, but those men will go around there and really start listening. So, it set the tone on set, and you saw people dancing. It's a really wonderful scene.
Thank you for sharing.
“The reasons for this violence are hard to define, but certainly fear is a big one.”
Image via Netflix
Pete, you have some great action in this. Specifically, in Episode 1, you have this brutal sequence. You have a lot of experience with action, so can you talk about what you wanted to do with the action in this series? And if you could, address a little bit of Episode 1 and that incredible sequence.
BERG: One of the themes Mark L. Smith and I wanted to explore was man's inherently violent nature. Certainly, if you go back to the origins of this country and start studying and documenting the history of violence committed by humans upon humans up to the present day that we're living in today, and certainly from the origin story of America and other countries — almost all of them — we are a violent species. The reasons for this violence are hard to define, but certainly, fear is a big one, and a desire for humans to bond with their own group and to protect themselves from perceived threats. That was sort of a theme of the show. That then led to some of the violent altercations that you see in the film. We wanted to present that violence in a very unfiltered, unglamorous way. We wanted to capture as much as we could of the rawness, the brutality, and the immediacy of this violence.
The Mountain Meadows Massacre, which is the event that you're referring to, which occurs in the first episode, is a real event. It was a mass murder that was committed by Mormons against pioneers from Arkansas. The Mormons had involved some different members of an Indian tribe and manipulated, I believe, that tribe into participating in this massacre. It's been documented. It's been owned by the Mormon Church. There's a monument that I attended where the Meadows Massacre happened in southern Utah that the Mormon Church built. It's a horrible crime that really did occur. We present it, and the one thing I would add to it is that we don't present it in a vacuum. We try to explain to the audience how tensions got this elevated, why something like this was able to happen, and folks were able to get this angry and feel this threatened by each other, leading to something really catastrophic, which was the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
American Primeval is now streaming on Netflix.
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It follows the gritty and adventurous exploration of the birth of the American West, the violent collisions of cults, religion, and men and women fighting for control of the new world.
Network Netflix
English (US) ·