Exclusive: Ethan Hawke And Joshua Caleb Johnson Talk Showtime’s The Good Lord Bird
Premiering on Sunday, October 4 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Showtime is its new limited series The Good Lord Bird, executive produced by and starring Oscar nominee Ethan Hawke as the controversial abolitionist John Brown.
The seven-episode series comes from Blumhouse Television and is based on the National Book Award-winning novel The Good Lord Bird (buy at Amazon) by bestselling author James McBride.
The Good Lord Bird is told from the point of view of Onion (Joshua Caleb Johnson), a fictional enslaved boy who becomes a member of Brown’s motley family of abolitionist soldiers during Bleeding Kansas – a time when the state was a battleground between pro- and anti-slavery forces – and eventually finds himself participating in the famous 1859 raid on the U.S. Armory at Harpers Ferry.
Brown’s raid failed to initiate the slave revolt he intended, but was the event that started the Civil War. The Good Lord Bird weaves a humorous, dramatic and historical tapestry of Antebellum America, spotlighting the complicated and ever-changing racial, religious and gender roles that make up the American identity.
BlackFilmandTV’s Wilson Morales recently spoke with Hawke and Johnson about the series, and the roles each plays.
