Wondering what HBO's latest prestige TV hit in the making is all about? Don't worry, we've
got you covered. From the making of the show to its story and themes, here's all you need
to know before taking a trip into the ambitious, provocative, and terrifying world of Lovecraft
Country.
Published in 2016, Lovecraft Country is the sixth novel by author Matt Ruff. When Ruff
worked out the idea, he thought it would make for a great TV show, and wrote the novel as
a proof of concept.
In other words, Ruff wrote the book with the hopes that one day it would get optioned by
Hollywood and turned into a television series, even though such an idea "was an extraordinary
long shot."
But within a year, Ruff's gambit paid off. In May 2017, HBO ordered a series adaptation
of Lovecraft Country. While a bunch of major industry players and their production companies
signed on to bring the book to life, it still took more than three long years for the show
to surface, with the first episode of the series premiering on HBO in August 2020.
In 2017, just a few months after Jordan Peele released his thought-provoking, Oscar-winning
thriller Get Out, Deadline announced the comedian-turned-filmmaker's next project: An adaptation of Lovecraft Country.
Like Get Out, Lovecraft Country is a horror title with plenty to say about race relations
in America. It was Peele who discovered the novel and brought it to Hollywood's attention.
Right out of the gate, Lovecraft Country boasted some major talent with the track record to
bring such a unique project to the small screen. HBO ordered a full season of episodes to be
produced by Warner Bros. Television in association with Peele's Monkeypaw Productions and Bad
Robot, the production company founded by Star Wars, Star Trek, and Lost mastermind J.J.
Abrams.
Moreover, Misha Green, the co-creator and showrunner of the WGN America series Underground,
signed on as showrunner. Green argued that Lovecraft Country wouldn't be a viable TV
show without the groundbreaking, previous work of Peele and Abrams. Green said at a
Television Critics Association press tour,
"I think this would have been incredibly hard to get on screen if Get Out hadn't come out.
I think that paved the way for people to really open up to the idea of seeing more black people
in genre spaces. It's an epic journey that wouldn't have been possible if we weren't
making TV at the level that started with Lost."
With a dazzling group of acclaimed producers and creators to its name, along with its interesting
and provocative source material, Lovecraft Country was able to attract an impressive,
all-star cast.
Portraying one of the lead characters, Letitia Dandridge, is Jurnee Smollett. This will be
her return to HBO, with the actress previously having enjoyed a two-year stint on True Blood
– and will also see her reunite with her Underground showrunner Misha Green.
HBO stalwart Michael K. Williams who played Freddy Knight on The Night Of, Chalky White
on Boardwalk Empire, and Omar Little on The Wire stars as Montrose Freeman, Atticus' missing
father.
Acclaimed veteran character actor Courtney B. Vance, who recently won an Emmy for his
work as Johnnie Cochran in American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson, has a
major role as Uncle George Black.
And then there's relative newcomer Jonathan Majors, who looks likely to become a breakout
star in the lead role of Atticus Black.
One major name who won't be in Lovecraft Country, however, is Elizabeth Debicki. Early on, the
actor signed up to play the mysterious and villainous Christina Braithwhite, but had
to drop out. Her replacement will be Abbey Lee, of Mad Max: Fury Road fame.
Lovecraft Country is an extremely original project, pulling from a number of disparate
genres and histories.
All at once, it's a period piece with a lot to say about systemic racism, a production
promising genuine, horror story frights, and an exploration of mid-century science fiction.
What's the actual story, you ask? Lovecraft Country is set in the United States of the
1950s, an era absolutely rife with violent, Jim Crow-era racism.
The plot follows Atticus Black, a young, Black sci-fi enthusiast and Korean War veteran,
his uncle George, and his childhood friend Letitia as they embark upon a road trip in
search of Atticus' missing father, Montrose Freeman.
The three carefully travel through the hostile southern states, hoping to avoid racism, a
creepy secret society called the Sons of Adam, and more than a few monsters straight out
of the works of H.P. Lovecraft.
These wrathful creatures serve as a metaphor for the evils of racism... but are also connected
to it. What happened to Montrose? What do the Sons of Adam want? You'll have to tune
in to find out.
Portraying Atticus Freeman in Lovecraft Country caps a couple of years of attention-getting
high-profile film roles for Jonathan Majors, following his work in Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods
and the festival hit The Last Black Man in San Francisco.
He prepared extensively for his role in Lovecraft Country, telling The New York Times,
"The first thing I do when I start a role is I look to see where we're similar. I played
sports my entire life; that speaks to the physicality of Atticus."
Prepping the imagination of the character one victimized by racism and violence was
more difficult. Majors said,
"I had to go to places of remembering when I was beaten up so bad in school that I retaliated
and ran to my apartment building and grabbed a knife and was chasing the bully down the
street like, the fear I had pulsing through my body."
Veteran actor Jurnee Smollett will plays one of Lovecraft Country's primary roles: Letitia
Lewis, Atticus Freeman's traveling partner and childhood friend with whom things have
grown complicated in adulthood. Smollet is best known for her roles as Michelle's best
friend Denise on Full House, Black Canary in Birds of Prey, and Rosalee in Underground,
the WGN America series about the Underground Railroad co-created by Lovecraft Country creator
and showrunner Misha Green. But just because the two had worked together before doesn't
mean they always got along, or that the process of casting Smollett on the show was easy.
The actress told The Hollywood Reporter,
"We did the pilot and I hated her. We proceeded to be the worst of enemies for the first two
months of shooting."
Green confirmed that assessment, acknowledging tough times on the Underground set between
the two. She said their animosity toward each other became an on-set inside joke, but once
they worked out a communication style that worked for both of them, they ended up becoming
friends or at least not outright enemies, since Lovecraft Country sees them working
together again.
When she signed on to make Lovecraft Country, Green knew that Smollett was the right actor
to play Letitia, but she resisted the instinct to cast her at first. Green told The Hollywood
Reporter,
"I just didn't want to be one of those people who only works with [actors] they've worked
with before."
Smollett was determined to get the part, as she was a huge fan of Matt Ruff's source novel
of the same name, and tracked the show's development progress. Through it all, she didn't understand
why it took Green a long five months to offer her the role.
In her Hollywood Reporter interview, Smollett recounted her paranoia at the lack of contact,
asking rhetorically,
"'Does she not think I can stretch and do a different character?' I mean, I was freaking
out, literally losing sleep for months."
Up until a few years ago, The Negro Motorist Green Book was a little-known but fascinating
relic of American and segregationist history. Between 1936 and 1966, an African-American
postal worker named Victor Green published annual directories advising African-American
travelers as to which hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, bars, salons, and gas stations
would accept their business.
Green's books, distributed under a variety of different names, covered locales all over
the world but which were particularly valuable in the South, where businesses openly segregated
or refused African-American patrons until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made such practices
illegal.
All of these concepts were brought to mass attention by the movie Green Book, the 2018
Academy Award winner for Best Picture about a white man who drives an African-American
concert pianist through the segregated '60s South.
HBO's Lovecraft Country also explores the importance of the Green Book but in a much
more personal and provocative way.
Part of Atticus Black's traveling group is his uncle, George Black, played by Courtney
B. Vance. For the purposes of this show, he is the highly-informed author of The Safe
Negro Travel Guide, an obviously fictionalized version of The Negro Motorist Green Book.
Whether his books in the TV show have anything to say about what travellers should do against
any ancient, unknowable, godlike monsters they may encounter? That remains to be seen.
The "Lovecraft" in Lovecraft Country refers to H.P. Lovecraft, a pioneer in science-fiction
and horror literature who laid out a lot of those genres' standards and tropes which are
still used today. Lovecraft also helped popularize the notion of a unified fictional world in
which to set multiple, otherwise not explicitly connected works not unlike the Marvel Cinematic
Universe or Harry Potter's Wizarding World.
Lovecraft set many of his stories in fake towns within Massachusetts' real Essex County.
Some Lovecraft scholars refer to the area as the "Miskatonic region," after a fictional
river and university found in those fictional works, while the Lovecraftian game Call of
Cthulhu spread the phrase "Lovecraft Country."
However, the term "Lovecraft Country" as the title of a show about racial issues is also
a subtle criticism of that author's worldview. H.P. Lovecraft had some disturbing opinions
on race, so in other words, "Lovecraft Country" is a metaphor for "racist stuff."
For example, the real-life Lovecraft espoused anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, sympathized
with Hitler, and justified anti-Black violence in the South and the people behind the book
and show are very aware of this. Lovecraft Country and its HBO adaptation grapple with
Lovecraft's legacy, the same way many readers of his work do today. Yes, he was an important
author, and indelible in the development of genre fiction... but he wasn't the most progressive
individual.
While Lovecraft Country is set in the past albeit an alternate version of the past, in
which literal monsters are a legitimate threat to the protagonists its themes still resonate
today. Lovecraft Country is primarily about Black characters traveling through a country
where "sundown towns" exist exclusionary places where Black people can be attacked with no
recourse if they're in public at night.
It's all packaged in a show that's hitting HBO mere weeks after massive nationwide protests
called for an end to police brutality, systemic racism, and a reinvigoration of the Black
Lives Matter movement.
During a Lovecraft Country panel for Comic-Con at Home 2020, star Jonathan Majors read a
scene in which his character is pulled over by a white police officer during his travels,
and he could relate to the fear and uncertainty Atticus feels. Majors told Variety,
"Literally on the top of my script for that scene I wrote, 'The worst day in Texas,' where
I grew up. That is the type of thing my mama would pray over me when I would travel pray
that wouldn't happen."
"It is something that is ancient, you know, that systematic racism, that bullying."
His co-star on the show, Courtney B. Vance, all but labeled Lovecraft Country vital viewing,
saying during the panel,
"Watch Lovecraft Country because it is so different, and so engaging, especially in
this time period we're living in now."
"You know, you thought you had something going on with Game of Thrones, but… watch out."
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Looper videos about your favorite
movies and TV shows are coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so
you don't miss a single one.