The Bingeworthy boys, Mike DeAngelo, and Playlist Editor-in-Chief Rodrigo Perez, are back to talk about all of the TV news and shows that are worth your time. This week finds our hosts digging into one of the new HBO series, “Our Flag Means Death” which premieres on March 3.
The show follows a wealthy aristocrat, Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby) who decides to leave his life of privilege to become a pirate in the early 18th century. Together with his crew, he begins to make a name for himself, although perhaps not the swashbuckling name he had set out to make. After the discussion, writer/showrunner David Jenkins stops by to discuss how the show came into being just by hearing the true story of the real Stede Bonnet.
“My wife heard about this guy, Stede Bonnet, and immediately was like, ‘You should look into this guy, this is a show!’” said Jenkins. “And she’s much smarter than me, so I did and I read about him on Wikipedia and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is fantastic!’ His story conforms to act beats, which when you see that it’s interesting and it’s a mid-life crisis and then there’s all these interesting questions like he left his wife and his kids. He did this awful this to his family and we don’t know why. And history won’t tell us why. And then he met up with Blackbeard and they became friends and we don’t know why. History won’t tell us why.”
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During our chat, Jenkins also talked about the magic of watching his stars, Rhys Darby and Taika Waititi play off one another as the characters of Stede Bonnet and Blackbeard.
“They’re so good together. They’ve known each other for over 16 years and the relationship is on the page, but when you see them together it’s somehow more,” Jenkins said. “They’re just so deft at improvisation. They’re amazing – they’re two of the greatest of all time. I really like, if the performer is open to it, to find the comedic actor and look for a little bit more of an acting gear. To hopefully not de-fang their superpower, but, I don’t know man, it’s old-hat now, but when Bill Murray was in ‘Rushmore.’ That’s a revelation. That performance was like, ‘Holy shit! He can do this?!’ And then it was like, ‘Holy shit! A story can do this?! I didn’t even know!’ To get there with Taika – who can do anything and go anywhere – to take that energy and focus it. I haven’t seen him like that, and I just think both of them are tremendous actors.”
The conversation also weaves into David Jenkins’ trajectory from actor/playwright to showrunner and working with Taika again on the new ‘Flash Gordon‘ film. You can listen to the entire deep-dive episode & interview below:
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