How ‘Washington Black’ Leans Into Escapism With Its “Black Peter Pan Adventure”

How ‘Washington Black’ Leans Into Escapism With Its “Black Peter Pan Adventure”

[This story contains mild spoilers from the finale of Washington Black.]

Hulu’s adaptation of Canadian author Esi Edugyan’s 2018 novel Washington Black is a fantastical journey that follows the life of a young George Washington Black (Eddie Karanja) after he escapes from the plantation where he’s enslaved in Barbados. With the help of the younger brother of the plantation owner, Christopher “Titch” Wilde (Tom Ellis), a scientist, Washington traverses the globe, first in a hot-air balloon and then on a pirate ship. He even makes his way to the arctic before settling in a community of free Black people in Halifax, Nova Scotia, as a young man (then played by Ernest Kingsley Jr). It’s there that Wash, as he’s now called, comes under the protection of mentor Medwin Harris (Sterling K. Brown) and meets love interest Tanna Goff (Iola Evans).

“It reminded me of a Black Peter Pan adventure through the lens of this young boy,” Kimberly Ann Harrison, who is co-showrunner of the series alongside creator Selwyn Seyfu Hinds, tells The Hollywood Reporter. “That was my way in.”

Filming an epic of this magnitude set in the early 1800s was no small undertaking. Still, Hinds advocated shooting in the film’s exotic locations as much as possible. “Let me put it this way, I left home in October of 2021 and I got back just before Christmas of the next year, and that’s just for the first part,” he explains.

For Hinds, a native of Guyana, bringing the tale of a young Island boy to the screen was particularly meaningful, as was the opportunity to display the differences in experience for Black people enslaved in the United States versus abroad and, above all, the opportunities that made it possible to dream versus the racist realities that threatened to hold them back.

“The Caribbean doesn’t get out of the shadow of colonialism until many years later than here, so I remember going to school and being taught by white British nuns,” says Hinds. “There’s an element to that experience, of what it is like to exist under that imperial sort of power, that is in my lived memory. How that inhabits the relationship Wash has with all three of the [Wilde] brothers is three very different kinds of relationships. That’s somewhat what I’m interrogating, versus just people running around calling you bad words. That’s not what we’re doing.”

Below, Hinds and Harrison talk with THR about the challenges of adapting Edugyan’s book and fully leaning into Black escapism within the Washington Black narrative.

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Selwyn, you tweeted in reference to the series that six years ago you read one of the most amazing novels you ever picked up and now we’re here. How did this adaptation take off?

SELWYN SEYFU HINDS It’s exactly that. It was Christmas of 2018 and I was sent this book from [one of the executive producers] Ellen Goldsmith-Vein that she’d already loved, that Sterling already loved. I was home in Guyana where I’m from. I read it and was blown away, not just in terms of the novel by itself, but also by the opportunity to adapt a story like this — a story that was rooted in the Caribbean and then connected to the diaspora at large. To write a story that was about resistance through joy and through genius and through finding the best of yourself to the point that you can fly are things that really pulled me to the story and got me involved.

KIMBERLY ANN HARRISON I had heard a lot of noise around 20th [Telvision] about Washington Black. I had a couple of people slip me a couple scripts and I read the book. I was like, “This is so big and so epic.” It reminded me of a Black Peter Pan adventure through the lens of this young boy. That was my way in. I have two young boys, and I was like, “This is just so now.” It was something I was looking forward for them to see, and now it’s finally on the screen.

To your point of how big this is in terms of the places Washington goes and the things he does, what was the major challenge in bringing a book like this to screen and were there any major changes you had to make from the original source material?

HINDS There are a ton of changes, but as I like to say, we arrive at the same destination. It’s like Esi did a two-week cross-country trip from New York to L.A., and we went the other way but we get to the same place. We’ve added characters and explored different backstories, but everything was driven by the emotional core of the story, which is not different. The story still is about a young boy who’s a dreamer, a scientist who is brilliant and who has this incredible kindness and love that’s endemic to him that sort of changes the world. That’s still the story that we told. Kim and I talk about the challenges of producing a show of scale and also a show that’s global on set. We used to joke like, “Wait, are we doing a TV show [or] are we doing Mission Impossible?”

HARRISON Definitely some Mission Impossible in there. For me, the biggest challenges were scheduling, the weather, the locations; just the practicality of all that. But with the love and resilience of the crew, cast and everyone, this labor of love is now finally being shown to the world.

Can you talk through some of the technical aspects: How much was VFX? Where did you decide to do set builds or shoot on location?

HINDS I very early on, in talking to the production designer and team, wanted everything as much as we could to be practical. Every television show these days has some degree, obviously, of VFX, but we wanted the show to feel lived-in, real and authentic. When it looks like he’s on a glacier, that’s really a glacier. When he’s on the dunes in the desert, that’s really the dunes and desert.

Who are some of the characters you added and what does their inclusion add to the series overall?

HINDS There is our wonderful friend [William] McGee [Edward Bluemel]. That’s like a two-part addition. Part one was [creating] the sort of romance piece of the story, giving that a bit more tension, giving someone who feels like a bit of a rival from Wash. And then one of my writers was like, “What if McGee is not McGee?” People were like, “That’s interesting,” and then it became evident that actually, we can have a character who feels like a bit of a doppelganger, a bit of the other side [of Washington], because both characters come out of these tough conditions, whether it’s the sugar plantation or the slums of East London. And both take very different paths towards that idea of bettering themselves and flying.

So in McGee and Wash, you’ve got twin sides of a coin about how you make yourself better in the world, and we thought that was an interesting thematic layer to add. But even in a character like McGee, you’re obviously rooting for Tanna and Wash, but you’re like, “I do understand the appeal of McGee,” and that is where I feel like you take creative liberty from the book to make this amazing, rich character that really does stand a chance against Wash.”

Going back to the idea of this Peter Pan kind of world, who do you envision as the audience for this series, and can you talk about the creative decision not to show the brutality of life for Black people at this time onscreen?

HARRISON The plantation is just his jumping off point to this really big journey across the world where he’s learning from these adults, but every adult that he encountered learned from him a life lesson. So it was more about balancing where he started — he did grow up on this plantation — staying true to that, but also the stories about this epic journey with this kid who wanted to dream, and dreamed at a time that that wasn’t in the forefront.

HINDS It’s not shying away from that early narrative either, but there’s some very distinct things about it. I think it’s a distinguishing fact that it’s not the American South. You’ve never seen that on the Caribbean side. It was also very intentional that it was a lot more internal to those people’s feelings and emotions and experiences. So seeing them pray, seeing the relationship between Young Wash and [Kit], which in so many ways is the spine of the story, the bookend of the story. Seeing it as a place, a pressure cooker where this kid’s genius is beginning to emerge. There’s a narrative and emotional point to the story starting where it starts.

The series ends with each of the characters looking into the camera and saying the word “fly.” What are you hoping viewers are left with after watching?

HARRISON I’m hoping audiences dream bigger than what they’re already dreaming. I want this to be the catalyst for you to up your dreaming and know that wherever you start isn’t where you ultimately end up.

HINDS What we do is a lot in escapism and in giving you something to dream and aspire to. Lord knows, even for me, Washington Black has sustained me as a creative for a number of years, and I hope it does the same to the viewers in terms of that emotional inspiration of, “I can be more, I can do more, I can aspire to more.”

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Washington Black is now streaming all episodes on Hulu.