NEW YORK– Rebelliousness, sexuality, and Wiz Khalifa guest-starring as Death riding around a carriage that only Emily sees. Yes, you heard me: rapper Wiz Khalifa as Death. (And the inside scoop: he brought his mom with him to the set to film his scenes!)
This isn’t your AP English teacher’s Dickinson.
AppleTV+ helped launch Dickinson on Saturday night at the Tribeca Television Festival in New York City to an energetic crowd eager to see just how contemporary a beloved poet from pre-Civil War America could be.
The answer: Dickinson may be just become America’s coolest literary heroine. At least the one portrayed by this television program.
Hailee Steinfeld, who stars as Emily and is an executive producer, says she chose this role because it was so different from others out there:
“One of the main reasons (I took this job) was it was unlike anything I’ve read or seen,” Steinfeld said. After realizing it would be a contemporary take on the character, she was even more sold on the concept, she added.
“She (Dickinson) sits in the corner of her room and looks out the window. And there’s a world out there but there’s even a bigger one in her mind,” Steinfeld said.
Co-star Jane Krakowski, who plays Emily’s mother, was asked how she got involved in the show and said it was a somewhat personal decision: “I was reading the script and there was a badass woman saying ‘I am nobody who are you’ … and my mother made me memorize that poem… so I was like I need to be a part of this. I love the juxtaposition of the modern storytelling and the modern music put together with the 1850s and these characters.”
But is it a comedy?
“To be honest with you… I wasn’t sure of how much of a comedy we were making… there’s definitely weighted moments in the show…but they are also a quirky family. Nobody ever left home. They all stayed together and died together. I’m also really taken by the irreverent humor in the program,” Krakowski added.
While the fictional Dickinson portrayed in the TV show is much more of an extrovert and does things we know that the historical record shows the real Dickinson didn’t do, show creator and executive producer Alena Smith said that was the point. “Her (real) life is boring. Not a lot happened” she said.
“The basic idea is if Emily wasn’t fully understood in her own time, maybe we can understand her in ours. I think we are representing a modern consciousness trapped in a pre-modern time. We’re pushing viewers to ask do we still feel that way? What’s holding us in?” Smith said.
Smith doesn’t shy away from the idea that gender will be perhaps the most important element to the show because it seems imbedded in everything Emily thinks or does:
“I once read something that said period shows make the best feminist TV, because by pushing things into a time when perhaps the roles were even more exaggerated we can look at maybe where things still are in fact different today and why Dickinson was the right figure to use for a crazy world like this is she broke all the rules of her time…in secret,” Smith said.
She added that it’s fun to explore ideas that come directly from Dickinson’s poems.
Smith said it is clear Apple didn’t cut corners: from elaborate costuming to recreating the Dickinson house for their set design, creating an exact image of the 1850s was important. The idea of turning the period world on its head only works if you can first create the perfect period world, she noted.
“It was really important to me that everything look right. There was a tremendous amount of research primarily around Emily and her family but also the context that she lived in and the world of the 1850s which becomes uncannily more and more resonant… when we look at America right before the eve of the Civil War and look at America today. The dissonance of contemporary life would never work if we didn’t get all the details right,” Smith said.
And the impact of the show on today’s generation of viewers and potential readers?
Krakowski said she was most excited that the show can introduce a new generation of fans to Emily Dickinson’s writing. “We can introduce strong women to the show… and we are lucky to have Hailee to do so.”
“The parallels with young women today and Emily Dickinson will resonate for a new generation” Krakowski said.
Steinfeld said filming a season of the show has truly changed her as a person. “I’ve found a new fearlessness in my work, my life, and my relationships.”
The cast members also agreed that one element was essential in creating this show: creating a contemporary approach to Dickinson would be nothing without contemporary music.
Smith added that “we look at music as a sort of direct root straight into (Emily’s) brain. With Hailee as a lead–who has a double life as a pop star and musician–my hope is the music lets you feel everything that Emily has trapped inside that (she) wishes could burst out.”
Steinfeld said, “The music is definitely one thing that stood out for me…It’s amazing to have a Billie Eilish song that is my favorite song right now…in our show… for me too…I do have a song in the show and it’s coming out September 19th and I’m incredibly proud of (it).”
But how irreverent will it be?
Smith foreshadowed that John Mulaney has been cast as Thoreau in an upcoming episode but Thoreau will be portrayed as a “total phony whose mom comes to his cabin and does his laundry” and Zosia Mamet is set to portray Louisa May Alcott. While there is no historical record of Thoreau or Alcott meeting Dicksinson, she said that was part of the joy of creating a show set in the 1850s since all the writers lived in close proximity.
“What’s so fun about Dickinson’s world… the most important writers lived down the street from each other… I hope if this season has many seasons to come we can meet gay Walt Whitman and crazy Herman Melville. Why not?” Smith added.
It is unclear if the show will drop all of its episodes at once or deliver some week by week. One hint may have come from Smith, though, when she said she hoped the Alcott episode could be timed to air close to when Little Women (the film) hits theaters near Christmas-time.
Perhaps the most important piece of advice for herself and the writers? Smith said as they work with the show the idea is that every story from the past has to be connected to a modern audience.
“If it’s not about today, it doesn’t belong in the (writer’s) room,” Smith said.
Judging from the reception of the audience at the world premiere, it seems the initial reaction to the show is that the world is ready for this Emily Dickinson. And based on the irreverent humor and the imaginary carriage rides with death, America’s in for quite a trip.
Dickinson will premiere on the new Apple TV+ beginning November 1st
