‘GoT’ Creators Respond To Backlash Over Their New Alt-Reality Civil War Drama

By Becky Scott July 21, 2017

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, two of the showrunners behind HBO’s “Game of Thrones”, came under fire this week after announcing their new HBO drama: a series that imagines a world in which the South won the Civil War and slavery has evolved into a modern day institution.

The plot of “Confederate” drew the ire of many a social media maverick, causing the showrunners to fire back in an interview with Vulture on Thursday.

“‘Confederate’, in all of our minds, will be an alternative-history show,” Weiss told Vulture. “It’s an ugly and a painful history, but we all think this is a reason to talk about it, not a reason to run from it. And this feels like a potentially valuable way to talk about it.”

Weiss and Benioff also confirmed that nary a single word of the script had been written yet but that everything — every detail of the plot, the characters, the lines — would be conceived of with the help of two black writers, Nichelle Tramble Spellman (“The Good Wife”) and Malcolm Spellman (“Empire”). And both are very excited about the undertaking.

Malcolm Spellman told Vulture, “For me and Nichelle, it’s deeply personal because we are the offspring of this history. We deal with it directly and have for our entire lives … I think Nichelle and I both felt a sense of urgency in trying to find a way to support a discussion that is percolating but isn’t happening enough. As people of color and minorities in general are starting to get a voice, I think there’s a duty to force this discussion.”

In the end, David Benioff is just asking people to give the show a chance.

“You know, we might fuck it up,” said Benioff. “But we haven’t yet.”

Comforting, indeed.

Becky Scott is the editor of The Schmooze. Follow her on Twitter, @arr_scott

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO