'Westworld' Creators on Accepting Expectations and Combating Diversity Issues in Westerns
HBO's upcoming drama Westworld is a big deal for the network, which desperately needs a big winner to rise in the wake of show's ending and show's underperforming, and with Game of Thrones ending sooner rather than later.
During the Westerns: Then and Now panel at the ATX TV Festival, nearly three minutes of the new show was revealed in an opening reel that included clips from other westerns such as Justified and Hell on Wheels. Creators Jonathon Nolan and Lisa Joy are well aware of the high expectations on their shoulders.
t was actually Game of Thrones that made us feel like we could pull this off,” Nolan said, also crediting the diverse Californian landscapes that kept the scope and budget at the right levels.
“In the finale, it is about this contrast between artificial life that our characters are living. Our show is about the robots who don’t realize that they are in a fake western. They think they are in a real western. So the actors are trying to figure out what that’s like and then they realize, wait, this is f***ing like [actors]!”
On the lack of diversity in the western landscape, Joy said of Westworld “I can’t say with this season that we cover all ground and all people, but I will say that we try to do the actors and the characters themselves the service of loving them.
“It’s a really wonderful task, because a man like my husband gets to write an African American, well actually she’s British in this, but a prostitute, and it opens your mind a little and question assumptions. Just like it does for me to write a swashbuckling, white gunslinger who’s male. I think it’s a lesson in empathy. It’s humbling and gratifying.”
Westworld is debuting this year, despite earlier concerns it would be delayed again until 2017.
Source: Deadline
