So I need to get Showtime now. It wasn’t something at all on my list until I saw Ethan Hawke doing a “nuttier than squirrel turds” take on abolitionist John Brown in The Good Lord Bird. And now it’s skyrocketed to the top of shows that simply must be seen.
The Good Lord Bird is based on the award-winning book by James McBride, and developed for TV by the folks at Blumhouse. That’s great and all, but it’s Hawke who is going to be the draw here as the gun-toting, Bible-thumping John Brown, who eventually led the infamous raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859.
Hawke is joined by co-stars Daveed Diggs as Frederick Douglass, Wyatt Russell as Jeb Stuart, McKinley Belcher III, Blindspotting‘s Rafael Casal, and Joshua Caleb Johnson-Lionel as the fictional slave Onion whose perspective will guide the 7-episode series.
SYNOPSIS: Ethan Hawke stars as abolitionist John Brown in this limited series based on the National Book Award-winning novel. The story is told from the point of view of “Onion,” a fictional enslaved boy who becomes a member of Brown’s motley family of abolitionist soldiers battling slavery in Kansas, and eventually finds himself in the famous 1859 Army depot raid at Harpers Ferry, an inciting incident of the Civil War. It’s a humorous and dramatic tale of Antebellum America and the ever-changing roles of race, religion and gender in American society.
The Good Lord Bird hits Showtime on August 9th.
