The backlash was quick to follow the announcement from Game of Thrones showrunners that they would be making a brand new show, Confederate.
The show from D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, is set in an alternate universe where the South won the Civil War. What got people talking was the buzz surrounding the fact that in the movie, slavery is still legal.
Benioff and Weiss have been getting called out for their decisions on Game of Thrones for years now but one of the lingering concerns people have with GoT, is one that could negatively impact this new venture: their inability to deal with diversity well. Many are concerned whether or not this pair has it in them to deal with slavery in the best way possible.
Benioff and Weiss are white but Nichelle Tramble Spellman and Malcolm Spellman are black and will also be producing the show.
In an interview they four producers discussed the backlash they have gotten over the series already.
“This is scary, for all of us,” said Benioff. “It’s scary for different reasons. But it is a pretty terrifying prospect getting into it. We knew it would be, and now it’s come true. It’s obviously creating a lot of controversy before anything’s happened just on the basis of a press release, and that will only continue as we get closer. But even aside from that outside part of it, there’s just the frightening part of — we’re all gonna put a lot of pressure on ourselves to get it right. ”
— Pair gets 35 years for terrorizing black boy’s party with Confederate flags —
According to Tramble Spellman, Weiss and Benioff sought both her and Spellman out in order to ensure that the show covered the black perspective.
Spellman also addressed the question on many minds, why did two African Americans sign up to make a television show in which the South wins the war?
“Me and Nichelle are not props being used to protect someone else,” he said. “We are people who feel a need to address issues the same way they do, and they should at least humanize the other end of those tweets and articles. You know what I’m saying?”
Spellman went on to say he was interested in the project to try to shine a light on the current racial tensions in the country.
“What people need to recognize is, and it makes me really want to get into the show: The s—t is alive and real today … So the idea that this would be pornography goes back to people imagining whips and plantations. What they need to be imagining is how f—d up things are today, and a story that allows us to now dramatize it in a more tangible matter,” he said.
