The Underground Railroad series creator Barry Jenkins discusses recontextualising history of Black ancestors

It was “the most satisfying creative experience of my life,” says Barry Jenkins on developing Amazon Prime’s 10-episode show The Underground Railroad When Oscar-winning director Barry Jenkins was considering adapting Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the Underground Railroad into a limited series, he kept hearing the same thing: Impossible. “The choice was to protect these children out of faith that at some point this thing would end and these children would go on and carry the legacy.’” During production, Jenkins said the most important thing to him was to protect himself, the cast and the crew from being “devoured by the barbarity.” To make sure of that, a counsellor was on set at all times. “I had to be extra aware of who I am and where I was personally at every step because those are very heavy states of being to carry and being someone who struggled with depression in 2016, I personally couldn’t afford to allow myself to get into that space, especially because we’re going to shoot for 10 months.” For Atim, “it did bring up a lot of anger” about “injustice and also the understanding that race-based oppression is still a thing and racism is still a thing in the world.” That’s part of what drove Jenkins and the cast. Australian actor Joel Edgerton, who plays the bounty hunter pursuing and tormenting Cora, said it’s important to remember that “we’re not that far away from what you’re seeing in The Underground Railroad.” “We were able to go to towns and dress them up without too much … and you go, ’OK, those buildings are still there where things took place, where environments, plantations still exist,” he said.