The Sky’s The Limit for SHOWTIME’s THE GOOD LORD BIRD, Starring Ethan Hawke as Controversial Abolitionist John Brown

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede Ethan Hawke is fascinated by the lack of TV and film depictions of John Brown, the man who essentially sparked the U.S. Civil War. “It blows my mind that this hasn’t been wildly over-exploited, the fact that there aren’t 15 John Brown movies we’re talking about,” said Hawke, who plays Brown in SHOWTIME’s THE GOOD LORD BIRD, a seven-part limited series that debuts Sunday, Oct. 4 at 9 p.m. ET on Crave. But Hawke knows the answer to his own question, even as he asks it. “What was fascinating about John Brown – and part of why I think he doesn’t get taught – is if you really teach John Brown, then you really have to understand how much white America understood about what was happening in human bondage and how terrible it was,” Hawke said. “People like the idea that maybe people didn’t know. John Brown is somebody who is clearly on the right side of history, but who went to extreme measures for his beliefs. If you really study this character, he asks a lot of you philosophically, because he challenges why so many of us accept the unacceptable.” If all this makes it sound as if THE GOOD LORD BIRD is a super serious TV show, well, it obviously deals with serious subjects, but there’s a lot of comedy in it, too. It’s based on the 2013 National Book Award-winning novel of the same name by James McBride, who serves as an executive producer on the TV adaptation, as does Hawke. “I remember when the book first came out, it threw people,” Hawke recalled. “It was like, ‘Wait – you can make jokes about this? You can make this funny, this story that’s touching the great national wound?’ Yes, you can. And when you do it with love and wit and silliness and intelligence, and don’t ignore the pain, you can do something original.” THE GOOD LORD BIRD is told from the point of view of a young character nicknamed “Onion,” played by Joshua Caleb Johnson. “Onion” is a newly freed teenage boy, posing as a girl, who winds up joining the abolitionist Brown on his holy crusade to end slavery, including the infamous 1859 raid at Harpers Ferry. The details of what actually happened, and what it led to, are available at the touch of a computer key. But THE GOOD LORD BIRD deftly combines fictional characters (such as “Onion”), and real-life individuals (such as Brown and social reformer Frederick Douglass, played by Daveed Diggs) to provide fresh insight into the history of the United States, and how so much of what occurred in this tumultuous period still impacts – or haunts – the nation today. “This is not the typical story of the white saviour that comes to save African American people,” McBride said. “This is the African American perspective on the white saviour that comes to save us, and so it’s a lot different, and that’s why it’s so funny. It’s a story of caricature.” It’s a multi-faceted story to tell – with Brown’s devotion to the cause being both historically admirable and at times recklessly violent – but Hawke and McBride were glad to take it on, especially in the limited-series format, as opposed to, say, a traditional two-hour movie. “We were able to actually make a (seven-part) movie of (McBride’s) book – we didn’t have to distill it to 20%,” said Hawke, excitedly. “If we were making a movie in the old days, I’d just have the Harpers Ferry raid. They (John Brown and “Onion”) would meet, and they’d go to Harpers Ferry, right? And you’d lose Frederick Douglass. You’d lose all of the nuance and sophistication of the story.” McBride added, “John Brown is a real hero to me and to many black people who are no longer alive, and I’m so glad that we brought this story to people. Yes, we do take a couple of hits at Frederick Douglass. We have fun with it. I’ll take it. That’s mine. That’s my work. But the fact is, they buried (John Brown’s) story for a long time because nobody could figure out how to tell it without losing money, or losing their career, or getting themself deep-sixed in some kind of way. We managed to do it. And I guarantee … well, I can’t guarantee you, but I’m pretty sure people will like it, because it’s funny, and it’s touching, and it talks about someone that you and I can now learn to appreciate and understand.” billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv