Jon Krakauer's best-selling true-crime thriller Under the Banner of Heaven was published in 2003, with film rights quickly purchased by Imagine Entertainment. However, its journey to being told in a visual medium would take nearly two decades. “We worked very hard on it for years, and yet there was a creative frustration that sort of blocked our belief that we should really go forward with it as a movie, and it was that we couldn't tell the entire story,” explained executive producer Ron Howard during a press conference for the limited series. “A few years ago, we all looked at each other and said maybe we should find a home for this at a company where we wouldn't have to edit. We could develop, we could benefit from everything that we've learned, and also the power and breadth of what Krakauer initially wrote. And we landed with John Landgraf at FX, and it's been a tremendous fulfillment creatively and narratively of what I always hoped that this story could convey.” At long last, Under the Banner of Heaven arrives on Thursday, April 28th, as a seven-part Hulu original series.
(Matthias Clamer/FX)
The novel was controversial for its depiction of the Mormon religion. “I grew up devout in this faith, and at least half of my family is still very active in this faith,” creator, executive producer, writer, and director Dustin Lance Black revealed. “We tried incredibly hard to make the distinctions between cultural Mormons, between modern, contemporary Mormons, and fundamentalist Mormons. And the show, I do believe, makes those distinctions clear.” Treading carefully with the material, Dustin Lance Black approached the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints about the adaptation to give leaders a chance to correct any issues they may have had with the material. “I think the fact that I actually went to Utah, that some of our cast also went to Utah, that we interacted, engaged, met real people, not just leaning on those sorts of stereotypes, that's meaningful to anybody, but it is certainly meaningful to Mormons, who get stereotyped so often.”
“I've been a fan of this book by Jon Krakauer since it came out,” revealed Oscar-nominated actor Andrew Garfield, who stars as Detective Jeb Pyre. He instantly hoped it would be adapted for the screen but was surprised when the project came his way. “I thought, well, this is the perfect team to do it. And especially with Dustin being so connected to the subject matter and the material, I was kind of convinced right away that this was just an incredible group of creative people that were going to not only honor what Jon Krakauer wrote but also honor Brenda Lafferty and Erica Lafferty and really unpack the rot at the core of what enabled such evil to take place. For me, it was kind of a no-brainer because of the people involved, and the subject matter just interests me deeply. And it is such an important story for human beings to look at, how we create the myths that we live within and how they infect and affect our behavior.”
The inciting incident is the murder of Brenda Lafferty, played by Daisy Edgar-Jones. “I was really lucky that Lance had collated a really helpful booklet of research for me, and I had a lot of access to the letters she had written to her sister,” the actress revealed, who brings Brenda to life through flashbacks as Detective John Pyre learns her story. Dustin Lance Black became close to Brenda’s family, who gave him access to her journals to aid in the writing and also Daisy’s portrayal. “Something that really struck me was what an incredibly empathetic person she was,” Daisy continued. “In the scenes that we see, particularly in that first episode, we watch her watching people quite a lot. That was something I really wanted to capture, that she's someone who is always more concerned with the experiences of the people around her than what's going on for herself. That empathetic quality was what I really wanted to try and emulate in my performance.”
(Matthias Clamer./FX)
It’s no secret, even within the narrative of the series, that Brenda was murdered by her husband’s brothers, Ron and Dan. Playing Ron Lafferty is Sam Worthington, who explained how he accessed his character through Ron’s relationship with his family. “It's all the brothers,” Sam shared. “To me, you had to get a great bond between all these actors, because their journey in this, their transformation in this is codependent. The interesting thing about playing these guys like Ron and Dan, their journey is a descent, but to play them, you have to look at it as a rebirth, in the sense that their choices were based on love and protection of their family. But what we see is this moral decline and this descent. When you're playing it with another actor, it is about empowering them and giving them the justification that they are on the right path. So the way that I approached it with Wyatt [Russell] was out of support and a positive way of looking at this relationship rather than just plain bad guys or people who were losing their way and need to find the way out of what we consider their path to darkness.”
Like Daisy, Wyatt Russell was given access to materials from the real Dan Lafferty. “Treating those people with humanity and not putting devil horns on them immediately was really important in the research for Dan in particular, because I had the opportunity to listen to some audio that Dan had spoken to people from prison,” Wyatt Russell explained. I often hear actors talk about distancing themselves from judging the character they play, which adds an extra layer of complication when they’re based on a real person. “It is a really hard thing because the minute you hear him speak, five minutes in you are going, ‘I like him. How is this possible? How is it possible that I'm hearing him speak and he's speaking with love and joy and faith and all these things.’ You can't help but say, ‘I am liking him in this moment.’ And you have to come back to the reality of what it was and what he had done. There's sadness in it because it was someone who was born into this situation and led down this rabbit hole in a way that only fundamentalist, extremist views can lead you down. It was a very interesting and difficult process at times to play him in a way that I thought needed to be played, which was bringing humanity to the person so you can identify with how anybody can go down this horrible path.”
Joining Ron Howard behind the scenes is his Imagine Entertainment co-founder and producing partner Brian Grazer. “I like stories, if they can be honest, that are cautionary tales about the dangers of extremism, and this definitely is all about that,” Grazer concluded. “That theme is transferable to so many things that are going on in our world today on a larger scale.” The first two episodes of this cautionary tale start streaming on April 28th, with weekly episode releases on Thursdays only on Hulu.