‘Kindred’ Showrunner Unpacks the Biggest Changes From Octavia Butler’s Book

Creator Branden Jacobs-Jenkins says he was inspired by Butler’s admission that she “didn’t crack” this particular story

kindred-Mallori-Johnson
Mallori Johnson stars as Dana in "Kindred" (Richard Ducree/FX)

For playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, who identifies himself as a “super fan” who aims to amplify the things he loves on the big screen, the decision to adapt Octavia Butler’s “Kindred” was “instantaneous” after a 2010 reread of the beloved sci-fi novel sparked a vision of a TV adaptation.

“Kindred” follows Dana (Mallori Johnson), an aspiring TV writer who moves to Los Angeles and sparks a relationship with a waiter named Kevin (Micah Stock) after a family reunion with her aunt and uncle goes south. Amid her personal turmoil, Dana begins to question her sanity when she is violently pulled back in time to a 19th-century plantation.

When Dana unintentionally transports Kevin along with her to a time when an interracial couple like themselves would never be socially acceptable, their budding romance grows complex as Kevin assumes the role of slave holder, and Dana of an enslaved laborer owned by Kevin, in order to navigate the situation.

“It’s about one of the most essential components of the American history and American identity,” Jacobs-Jenkins told TheWrap. “It’s the original sin that keeps resurfacing as we’ve witnessed again and again … Especially coming out of the last five or six years, it just felt like we had a lot more to talk about and a different vocabulary with which to talk about it.”

After setting his mind on adapting the novel, Jacobs-Jenkins scoured “every single piece” of paper related to “Kindred” he could find at The Huntington Library in San Marino, CA, which became the home to Butler’s papers after her death in 2006.

“Famously, in her lifetime … she felt like she never really cracked this book; she never really landed it,” Jacobs-Jenkins said. “I thought, man, it’d be an amazing thing for the show to try and do that work for her.”

To uncover the true aim of the novel, Jacobs-Jenkins spent time examining Butler’s false starts and “every draft she’d ever written,” which meanwhile illuminated themes of the series he wanted to amplify or even change.

“That process really shored up a lot of the things that I think you’re seeing in the show,” he said. “These new family dynamics and family shapes came from that research, the ways in which these smaller minor characters in the book really stepped forward came from that research.”

As Jacobs-Jenkins began writing the series, the “Kindred” creator shifted key elements of the novel to give series life over 40 years after its original publication stunned readers across the globe — starting with its setting.

While “Kindred” is originally set 1976 as a result of its 1979 publication, Jacobs-Jenkins shifted the narrative to contemporary times in 2016, which he says was “the last year we could all agree on what was happening.”

“[Octavia] wanted to write against people who felt superior to times in the past,” Jacobs-Jenkins said, adding that she recognized the “inclination” for many to “hold ourselves above our forefathers.” “This is a book about asking you, the reader living today in your life with your value system, with your ideas, what would you do in this time period?”

While Jacobs-Jenkins first sold the pitch to FX in 2016 and began writing the series during that year, he admits “there was a lot of time conversation [in] the writers room and in shooting the pilot to consider setting it now,” though he ultimately did not want to include the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the series.

“All signs pointed to 2016 as a year to really think about,” he continued. “I thought it’d be interesting over the course of a series to try to feel one period in time become more and more historic feeling than the actual history we’re traveling back to.”

Jacobs-Jenkins also deepened the familial dimension of the novel by cementing Dana’s relationship with her mother as integral to her journey — whereas Dana had been an orphan in the original — as a result of reading several drafts that included a maternal figure.

“The show is called ‘Kindred,’” Jacobs-Jenkins said. “There is an opportunity to explore Dana’s own family dynamics and thinking about family as the thing that shapes us. Sometimes I think [an absence of someone shapes us], but those people can often come back”

While the novel introduces Dana and Kevin as a married couple with years of history, Dana meets Kevin at the same time as the audience in the series and they begin their relationship with the weight of these destabilizing experiences and dynamics shaping their romance.

Though Jacobs-Jenkins says this choice was in part facilitated by the new setting, as it was “hard for [him] to buy a young woman of color in this day and age accepting some of the behavior that the Kevin in the book exhibited,” the creator also noted his interest to display a portrait of a marriage “in real time.”

“I had this fantasy that by the end of this series, they are married,” he said. “There’s so many versions of this kind of couple in stories that are about waging the war for their love against external factors, but I was curious about the internal stuff, too,” he said, adding that he wanted to see how conversations of race and politics bleeds into more intimate spaces.

Though the pandemic shifted auditions to Zoom, Jacobs-Jenkins noted that, for each lead actor, the part was theirs from their first audition — including Dana.

“There’s all this anxiety about casting Dana, the iconic character from the book, but Mallori Johnson, man, one audition, and it was just hers, that’s how great she was in it,” he said. “They were cast because they were already kind of showcasing what myself and the writers felt were essential to those parts.”

“Kindred” is now streaming on Hulu.

Comments