The new HBO Max series “Raised by Wolves” is hard to forget. Even if it turns out not to be your cup of tea, Aaron Guzikowski (“Prisoners,” “The Red Road”) and Ridley Scott‘s combined vision is one of the most original sci-fi productions in recent memory. And as I noted during my conversation with Guzikowski last week, after watching the six episodes screened for the press I still had no idea where it was going. And considering how much content is dumped online in this era of Peak TV that’s sort of exciting.
READ MORE: Amanda Collin is an utterly unconventional mother in “Raised by Wolves” [Interview]
Set in the far future, the series begins with two androids, Mother (Amanda Collin) and Father (Abubakar Salim), arriving on a barely inhabitable planet to try and restart the human race by raising six human embryos. Years later, a space ark of a devout religious order arrives after escaping a war-ravaged Earth. Mother and Father, who are programmed to preach atheism, attempt to protect their surviving children from the newcomers. In so doing, we quickly discover Mother has a deadly and dangerous secret that even Father was unaware of.
Note: If you’ve watched the first three episodes now available there likely are no spoilers in the context of my conversation with Guzikowski. If you haven’t, you’ve certainly been warned.
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The Playlist: Where did the idea for this series even come from?
Aaron Guzikowski: It was probably first inspired by my experience as a parent. I have three young sons and just thinking about the world that they’re moving out into. The way technology is encroaching on us and the distance between humans and the technology that we created is just getting smaller and smaller. And then also thinking about if we were given the opportunity to restart civilization, push the restart button, but we knew about everything that happened earth, what might we want to take with us? What might we try and leave behind? And are we even able to make that choice or are we kind of stuck in our own sort of human algorithms that are doomed to repeat the same cycles over and over again?
There’s nothing like this in your previous work. Were you a secret Sci-Fi fan or had you been dying to do something in this genre for a long time?
Yeah, I’ve been a sci-fi fan my whole life. I was obsessed with “Star Wars” as the kid. I was obsessed with “Alien.” I’ve always been hugely into Sci-Fi. “Star Wars,” the whole thing. It was just a matter of trying to find the right story to tell that I thought could work, but I had been wanting to do so for my whole life basically.
How did Ridley become involved?
So what happened was I wrote the script on spec, the pilot script, and then that ended up at Scott Free, Ridley’s production company. And they were going to produce it, which was great. And I didn’t expect that he was going to actually direct it. But he read it and apparently he got hugely inspired by it. He started drawing storyboards right after he finished reading it. He basically storyboarded the whole pilot. It’s just [an] incredible, full-color amazing piece of art. Panel by panel he drew the whole thing out. And as soon as he got the ball, the whole thing just took off like a freight train and the next thing I knew I was in South Africa and we were shooting.
Was the season already broken out at that time?
When I went into Scott Free, initially I pitched to them the whole plan for the show, beyond season one, all the way to the end. A lot of the annoying mysteries and mythology and so on and so forth. That was laid out for them initially when they first got involved, so there is a plan, should we be given the opportunity.
How many years in the future is this version of humanity?
It’s about 150 years from now, thereabout. Yeah.
Outside of the first six episodes, is there any revisiting of that timeline?
There will be some revisiting of that. We do flush out some of that earth story in terms of those series of events. And we will probably continue to do that should we be given the opportunity in the future. But it’s definitely a story that has been worked out. So, we do have a good idea of what that history is, what happened inside of those 150 years.
It’s so rare that you see anything dealing with Atheism in this sort of context. As the show goes on, it’s clear you want to challenge the beliefs of people who may be set in their faith and those that are atheist as well. How important was that to you for the show overall?
It’s always been definitely a big part of the DNA of the story. And the ambition for the show. It’s taking the idea of faith in general and how it relates to our future as a species. What will we choose to have faith in? Looking at technology in the same light as you look at religion, you think that we could potentially put our faith in hopes that it will take us to wherever we’re supposed to go. And I don’t know the answer to that. I just know that [it seems as though] the human race needs purpose, things that will help unite us. And sometimes, even if you’re united through some bullshit [deity], but you’re still being united and you’re still doing things, positive things. The same goes for technology. But obviously there’s a flip side to both. A dark side to both. And I just love asking that question, thinking about what the future might hold.
You’ve worked in television before with “The Red Road.” What lessons did you learn from that show that you brought to this production?
I think it was such a different show that was a very low budget show, in a good way. It was like making a gorilla low budget movie, that sort of thing. And when you do create something with not as much money, not as many resources, you end up touching a lot more aspects yourself. It was a great education just in terms of how it’s done and how not to do it. I just love having one thing in my brain. I think as a writer, you tend to sometimes work on more than one project at the same time, and you’re thinking of different things. I love the idea of being almost like a method actor. I just want to live in this one world. Only pick stuff from this world and create for this world. I just think that’s something I kept a little bit [of] from having worked on “The Red Road.”
I don’t know if the series would work if Amanda and Abubakar hadn’t been cast as Mother and Father. Can you talk about finding them? Did you do chemistry reads with them?
We did a little bit of that. I mean, the most important aspect, obviously, was the casting of these two androids and it was a difficult process I think because we saw really talented actors and everyone has a different take as to how they’re going to play an android. And most of the time it always just feels a little bit phony or you just buck out or it’s just robotic. So you’re looking for someone who just naturally brings something different and has almost an instinctual feel for the character. You don’t even know necessarily what that looks like, you just know when you going to see. And as soon as we saw Amanda’s audition tapes, it was that. She really was the character and all these kinds of unexpected qualities in terms of how she was going to perform as an android. It was incredible. And with Abubakar, the same sort of thing. As soon as I saw him, I’m like, “That’s Father.” You hear his voice, it just overtakes you. [He] has this kind of depth that just kind of radiates from him. But you don’t really know until you see it. You have to get lucky.
I was sort of embarrassed to ask this to Amanda so I didn’t, but I will ask it to you because you clearly had to have this conversation with both of them. Both actors are wearing the same basic unitard for pretty much the entire show. When did that conversation with them happen? And do you remember what their reactions were?
Well, it was interesting. So Ridley came up with the skinsuits. And when everyone first saw them, it was kind of shocking and no one quite knew what to think of it. I think as time went on, after a couple of days you realize the brilliance of it, because every time you look at them, you never forget that they’re androids. They also kind of have this kind of nudity to them, almost like an Adam and Eve vulnerability to it. But all at the same time this kind of power that exudes from it at the same time, it just acts. Before very long I couldn’t imagine that any other way. It became as important as Spiderman‘s suit, that they had to wear those things all the time. That has become very essential to their characters. And yeah, they were not easy suits to wear. Very hot. Many, many versions of the suits had to been made because they would rip through them pretty fast and they’re highly uncomfortable. So, again, it was incredible withstanding all of that much stress.
Another aspect I’ve appreciated is that it’s unclear who’s the good guy and the bad guy. It’s all very grey. Do you want the audience to root for anyone in particular?
I would like them to discover who they’re going to root for. I don’t like delineating too much between the good guys and the bad guys. I think it’s like in real life where you don’t know, you have to live with it for a while to figure that out. Are they good or are they bad? And it’s fun to play with, these kinds of first impressions and then subverting them. And I think that’s what it’s all about. I think it’s closer to reality and oftentimes they go back and forth. We all douche up the bad guys at the end of the day. It’s just a matter of what choices are you going to make right now, today, that morning. And that’s something I always find fascinating with any story. It’s just building every character. The same way in the sense that, you want them to be well rounded and you want to understand them and you want them to make sense, whether or not that sense goes off into a dark place or a good place.
I wanted to ask about the necromancer itself as a concept. How close is it from you had originally envisioned to what is in the series?
The original conception of it didn’t really change much, in the sense that it’s a superweapon, the modes of weaponry that she uses. Ridley definitely came up with the blonde’s appearance. The way she does her curve, that kind of Christ pose flying, that’s [what] Amanda actually naturally did when we had her up on the center of the cable, instead of what she ended up doing when she was really flying around. Some of it came through that process, from the very beginning in the script we had the supersonic sound that blows people up. I always was terrified as a kid just by nature, looking into the eye of something, you could be hurt. I loved that idea and wanted to manifest that in mother a little bit. But anyway, she’s more akin to a nuclear bomb than she is to the kinds of Androids we’ve seen in other kinds of films and TV. She represents something larger, both God and the devil, the beginning and the end. A little bit more of that.
I’m sure you don’t want to give probably too many revelations about this world, but in your mind, how many of these necromancers were flying around Earth?
It was an armada essentially of necromancers. Probably about a hundred of them sort of say, that’s about all they need, they probably didn’t even need that many. And but we get more into that down the road.
O.K., that’s good to know.
They’re all left on earth.
Let’s talk about the stunning production design. When Chris Seagers came on at the beginning, clearly, Ridley as co-creator and director was involved very much, but was there anything that you personally wanted for the look of the series?
Having been a fan of Sci-Fi myself we’re going to find things that are different, that doesn’t blend into the larger mountain of science fiction that now exists. Things that will kind of set themselves apart and that are different. That was my main concern. That’s how we would go at it, but I mean that’s how Ridley kind of goes at it anyway. So, I was extremely relieved when he came on board because I knew that’s not something he’s interested in doing which is just kind of repeating itself. There’s certainly homages to his past work and schematic ways that continue on through here. But I think like The Beatles, he wants to just keep doing something wholly new or finding ways to turn it upside down and that’s what I wanted as well.
Having gone through this process, is it harder or easier than you thought to create a series where you have to do so much world-building?
Well, I think it’s about as hard as I thought it would be. I think it’s fairly difficult. But I think if you just live it, it’s the only thing you’re doing, it’s the only thing you’re thinking about, then that’s how you get it done. You have to transport yourself into the world, like a virtual reality rig sort of thing, and spend time there, and keep going back to it. You have to make it real. I think that’s the really challenging act. It is very difficult, but it’s so fun that I can’t really say that it’s hard work, as much as it’s just fully immersive.
The first three episodes of “Raised by Wolves” are now available on HBO Max on Thursday. Additional batches of episodes will be released every Thursday.