‘Under The Banner Of Heaven’: Dustin Lance Black On His New Mini-Series & Real-Life Struggle With The Mormon Faith [Bingeworthy Podcast]

In today’s episode of Bingeworthy, our revitalized TV and streaming podcast, co-hosts Mike DeAngelo and Rodrigo Perez dive into Hulu’s new mystery series, “Under the Banner of Heaven.” The show follows a devout Mormon detective Jeb Pyre (played by Andrew Garfield) whose faith is tested as he investigates a brutal murder seemingly connected to an esteemed Utah family’s spiral into LDS Mormon fundamentalism and their distrust in the government (read our review here).  There’s a terrific cast involved too, including Gil Birmingham, Sam Worthington, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Denise Gough, Wyatt Russell, Billy Howle, Chloe Pirrie, Adelaide Clemens, Rory Culkin, and more.

After our hosts discuss the show, Academy Award-winning screenwriter, writer/director/showrunner Dustin Lance Black stops by to chat with Rodrigo about making the series and the very personal reasons he chose to adapt the famous Jon Krakauer book of the same name.

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“It’s worth noting that I was a devout Mormon that was raised, mostly, by a single mom who was also a true believer,” Black explained about his complicated upbringing. “I loved the church that I knew. I loved the culture of the church that I knew, but, you know, I was a curious kid. I was, on more than one occasion, alarmed at the way my mother was treated in the faith and I had questions about why my mother was inferior. That didn’t square with me. The more curiosity I showed, the more trouble I got in, so I tried my best to do what I was instructed to do, which was to put my questions on a shelf, and it would be a really long time before I read Jon Krakauer’s book, I guess it was twenty years ago now. At that point my mother had left the church, I had left with her begrudgingly, but I had these lingering questions and doubts and that books answered so many of those questions—it brought up new questions.”

Thus, began the long journey of Black getting “Under the Banner of Heaven” to the screen, which finally became a possibility with the rise of the modern mini-series. This allowed Black to create two fictional detectives at the center of the story that are based on the many detectives that investigated the case in order to give the show the investigatory drive that readers of the book experienced.

“Yeah, Jeb and Bill [Gill Birmingham’s character] are fictionalizations. They’re creations.” Black shared. “Some of this came from the speaking with some of the officers who actually did investigate the case — and asked not to be depicted, by the way. They’re very cool, but they did not want to revisit this. But the stories they told me, without naming names, said, ‘Listen, our job is to ask questions. Our job is to dig deep. Our job is to figure out the truth in the service of justice. What happens when a case comes that demands that we dig into the history of the church? It demands that we dig into fundamentalism, which means going back to words written and said by Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. We’re not supposed to do that as Mormons.’ In this part of Utah an investigator had to decide, ‘Am I going to do my very best to find justice for Brenda and her daughter or am I going to serve the church and sweep this under the rug?”

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“Under the Banner of Heaven” debuted on Hulu last week on April 28 with new episodes debuting every Thursday. You can listen to the entire podcast below:

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