CraveOnline: What’s it like talking about American Crime with an audience who have seen a couple of episodes, but who don’t know the expanse of it?
John Ridley: It’s good because there is a level of engagement and a level of curiosity. Before the show comes out there are questions about what is the show going to be about, and coming from you is it going to be this or that? But when you get to the point where you’re a couple of episodes in and people have really specific ideas about, whatever, the Barb character or what’s going to happen when Leah shows up, or questions about the pilot now because they’ve seen it, and what did this mean or how did you do that?
Any time that you can have a specific conversation as opposed to, “Hey, would you watch my show, please…?” It’s the difference between me coming to you, saying, “Hey, would you like to taste the pie?” and you coming back, going “You know there was a little hint of something that I tasted, what was that?” That’s always a much better conversation to have.
I agree, but I think the core of my question was, American Crime is a short form mini-series. It’s a ten episode arc you’re doing. So people have seen two episodes by now, but they’re not even halfway through it. It’s like engaging an author after you’ve only read the first third of their book.
Yeah. Yeah, there is that sense of people are still very curious about what’s going to happen, and you have to throw up your hands and go, “I don’t want to spoil it. I don’t want to give any spoilers away.” But the fact that you, again, to have people who have actually watched it and still want to engage – which is obviously much better than people who watched it and went, “Okay, really good effort but I don’t want to be there…” – that’s when you feel different from a movie, even, where whatever you engagement you have is kind of done. It’s sort of finite. People have seen 12 Years and they have questions about it, but it’s not going to go anywhere more than what we’ve presented.
The fact that people are two hours into this, as you say, and they’ve only just begun, to me that’s what’s exciting, to know that it’s living, it’s breathing, we have space to go and there’s going to be an opportunity for audience to go in directions that… A two-hour film, as powerful as it is, that’s it. We’re done. We have nothing else to offer you. And to know that I could come down in another month and we’d still have space to talk about where American Crime is still going…
It’s very exciting. Has there been any surprise on your end in terms of how people have reacted? Like you thought maybe a character would be despised and everyone loves them, or…?
The reactions to Barb were always going to be curious to me…
Barb is the Felicity Huffman character…
Barb is Felicity Huffman, yes, and her character was clearly the most outspoken about her views, about biases that either she has or that, looking at the character, we would call that a bias. And the fact that people are both really, by and large – and I know there’s a large audience out there and a lot of people I don’t speak to – really dislike the Barb character but at the same time are really fascinated by the Barb character. Her journey, I think it speaks mostly to Felicity and her capacity as an actress. She’s absolutely phenomenal.
But I didn’t want a character, and I’ve said this before, I never wanted any of them to be a straw person that was simply there to espouse things that maybe I don’t agree with, but are easily knocked over. And out of all the characters, this was the one that could easily – at least for the first few episodes – drop into that space of being a convenient individual who says these things so that all these other folks can come along and show her up as being incorrect. Certainly Felicity and how the character has been managed has not been that way, but I love the fact that audiences have not dismissed that character or written her out of hand. And people have come out and said, “I hate her! I hate her! What is she going to do next?” [Laughs.]
