Interview with Black Sails Stars Toby Stephens and Hannah New

Toby Stephens: I play Captain Flint who is the captain of the Walrus. When we join in, historically he has been the most successful pirate on the island. He’s brought in the most money, but he’s hit a foul patch and his crew is becoming discontented and beginning to doubt his captaincy. There’s a guy on the crew who is trying to get him kicked out because these crews are democracies. They’d all be pressed, the crews and pirate ships have all been pressed to naval ships or onto merchant ships. They were taken away from their families, they were treated appallingly, they were paid very little, it was a very hard life, so when they became pirates, they imposed this real democratic system which was terribly inefficient because every time there was a decision to be made, they all kind of had to go by show of hands. The only time the captain had absolute power was in battle. So anyway, there’s this sense at the beginning of this that Flint is this terrifying figure, but he’s on the back foot, he’s in trouble, they’re going to vote him off, and he has to survive.

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Interview with Black Sails Creator Jonathan E. Steinberg

Q: Is it safe to say that Treasure Island was one of your favorite books growing up?

Jonathan Steinberg: It was, yeah, who wasn’t? I mean, it’s one of the first adventure stories that you get exposed to, but I think what was fun for us was starting to understand that world. The Treasure Island world and the tone of it, while it’s become the basis for everything pirate that went after, it is not by any stretch a historical document. I mean, it’s a campfire story, and the reality that happened before it is really fascinating and something that’s far more grown-up and far more complicated and far more engaging I think. And so once we were able to dig into that, I think that’s, that’s when we knew there was something here.

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Interview with Outlander Novel Author Diana Gabaldon and Executive Producer Ronald D. Moore 

Diana Gabaldon: It would be nice to have a female character to play off of these guys, since it was essentially Scots vs. English during the Jacobi rising, let’s make her an English woman. We’ll have lots of conflict. So she walked into a cottage full of Scotsmen, one of them stood up and said, “My name’s Dougal McKenzie, and who might you be?” And without my stopping to think, I just typed, “My name’s Claire Elizabeth Beacham, and who the hell are you?” I said, “You don’t sound at all like an 18^th century person.” So I found with her for several pages, trying to beat her into shape and make her talk like an 18^th century woman. She wasn’t having any of it. She just kept making smart-ass modern remarks and she also started telling the story herself, so it’s all her fault that there is time travel.

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Interview with Da Vinci’s Demons Creator David S. Goyer and Stars Tom Riley and Laura Haddock

Q: You had mentioned this show, and I was excited from the get-go, and I loved the details, I love the historical, you know, the details. I don’t know how much time you’ve spent on the research.

Interview with Da Vinci’s Demons Stars Blake Ritson, Gregg Chillin and Carolina Guerra

Q: So the second season seems to be very mystical, very fantasy, I’d say a lot more than last year.

Blake Ritson: I mean, it’s really, I think everything is bigger this year, really epic. It’s really ambitious. I think structurally, we kind of, it captures going in four different directions. I think it’s a new fun in terms of new alliances, catapulting characters you wouldn’t expect to co-exist together into these queasy alliances. So for example, one of the main thrusts of the series is the believers (not sure if he said believers, but that’s what I got), in terms of what you’re talking about, the mysticism. It’s this arcane compendium of forgotten knowledge which I and Leonardo believe could change the whole socio- political landscape of the world, so in the aftermath of the Pazzi conspiracy, we both think this is the answer. We both drive off across the Atlantic, racing across to the New World, to try to find the Book of Leaves, so as you said, one of the thrusts of the season is a possibly mythological, possibly real artifact… and yes, some interesting things happen. I mean, it’s really pushed to a breaking point. That’s another defining characteristic of the series, physically, mentally, spiritually, and I think with that, we get to glimpse into the dark recesses of the souls of a lot of characters, we get to pull in a lot of gaps that were hinted at in the first series. There’s a lot more information.

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