The new Netflix series American Primeval follows as one woman tries to get herself and her son to safety on the frontier in the middle of the 19th century. In addition to the narrative at the center of the action, the star-studded Western mini-series also puts a lens on the clash between religion and culture in the American West.
But is it actually based on a true story? No. However, although the series is not technically based on a true story — Netflix calls it a “fictionalized dramatization” — its cast and crew still strove for historical accuracy.
“It’s raw and honest about all the brutality and insanity that came with that time,” Betty Gilpin, who stars as Sara Rowell in the series, said in a behind-the-scenes featurette.
“What we’re bringing here is realism,” added Derek Hinkey, the actor behind Red Feather. “We’re not sugarcoating anything.”
The series is set in 1857, when “up is down, pain is everywhere, [and] innocence and tranquility are losing the battle to hatred and fear” amid a collision of culture, religion, and community, Netflix explains in a synopsis. “Peace is the shrinking minority, and very few possess grace — even fewer know compassion,” the streamer adds. “There is no safe haven in these brutal lands, and only one goal matters: survival.”
Sara is the show’s main character and the viewer’s entry into the world of American Primeval, director and executive producer Peter Berg says. The series “is about one of the most violent and isolated parts of America in 1857 and a woman and her son trying to get through that land,” Berg adds.
For the shoot, the American Primeval cast and crew spent 145 days in the mountains of New Mexico, often weathering intense cold, Vanity Fair reported. The production even recreated Fort Bridger, a fur trading outpost that became a U.S. Army post, as a massive outdoor set.
That setting and that timeframe indicate the show will delve into the Utah War, which was a violent conflict between the U.S. Army and Brigham Young’s Mormon militia, per Smithsonian Magazine, as well as an 1857 massacre of 120 wagon train members that nearly brought the U.S. to war with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the magazine reported.
“We wanted [American Primeval] to be very, very accurate,” Mark L. Smith, a writer and EP on the project, said. “We would explore the characters that were in this world — the indigenous, the Mormons, the pioneers, and bounty hunters in Fort Bridger.”
As part of those efforts, the show brought on Indigenous cultural consultant Julie O’Keefe. “Every department, the authenticity was really, truly spectacular,” O’Keefe said.
Gilpin, meanwhile, hailed the detail work in the production from “the texture of the tepees down to the wagon wheels.”
In an interview with Game Rant, Berg said that O’Keefe’s insights accompanied those from Mormon consultants and military consultants. “We had the curator of the Fort Bridger Museum, who was out there every day making sure that I understood everything I needed to understand about what it meant to be a mountain man in Wyoming in 1857,” he said.
Taylor Kitsch, who plays Isaac Reed, a Shoshone-raised white man who agrees to escort Sara on her journey, also did research for the project. “He’s fluent in the Shoshone language, basically,” Gilpin told Vanity Fair. “It was so impressive and so rare. When your scene partner is that invested, it just makes you step up.”
Hinkey, meanwhile, relied on his Indigenous background play Red Feather, telling Game Rant, “I grew up on a reservation, so it’s just genetic memory, being real, but also tapping into that skill set and craft of learning how to relay that message to people.”
All the cast and crew’s hard work aligns with the four words that, according to Vanity Fair, served as Berg’s mantra for American Primeval: Make it feel real.
American Primeval, Thursday, January 9, Netflix