This is about 45 minutes. So thank you all for joining us today. We are pleased to have the creators and actress asia hinds from underground railroad today. Unfortunately did we get the video back . Okay. So well show a couple of clips too. So thank you. So thank you all for joining us today. For those of you who dont know, i love television. And i love the underground railroad. So im excited that this show has allowed me to combine both loves. I would like to thank wgn america and Sony Pictures entertainment for making this possible today. So thank you. In 2016, wgn america launched underground, a thrilling tv series that continues to receive critical acclaim for its gripping portrayal of the underground railroad. The show follows a group of courageous men and women who use their ingenuity and power and perseverance to attempt the greatest escape in history and break free, despite the dire consequences that awaited them on the other side. The finale aired last week, so its really auspicious that youre here today. Though i know we dont want to ruin the tip in all lay for those who havent had a chance to watch it yet. Well, no, everyone watched it, right . Underground is the first show, tv series, to deal specifically with the underground railroad. What made you decide to focus on this period of history . You know, when we first started talking about it, we started doing research, i think we didnt quite understand why we wanted to focus on this period of history. I think the more research we did, the more information, the more we saw what was really going on in the underground. We it was that idea of, we havent given voice to the revolution. Wed seen the occupation but we really, you know tv and film hadnt seen the revolution yet. And that was really important for us. Joe, do you have anything to add . What she said. Despite the show now we know the shows quite popular. Why do you think you guys had such a hard time finding a network to put the show on and air the show originally . I think people didnt understand that it was the most heroic, exciting story ever in American History. I think weve always watched kind of the sleepy sepia tones. And i think we, you know we had a hard time getting it on the air. We wrote the script. People finally got it. We found a genius like john legend. We had to really just keep reminding people that it was as exciting as the show could be. When question filmed the show, people finally got it. In interviews you guys have talked a lot about the amount of research that has gone into creating the shows and the scripts. What is the most fascinating thing that you guys uncovered in your research about the underground railroad . The biggest thing for me was that the underground was the spy network for the civil war. You know, it was this builtin system that was eventually used to, you know, fight the big fight. Theres so theres so many Everyday Research is just you keep uncovering things and peeling back the onion and uryoure like, wait, what . Wait, huh . For me its the personal things. Its things like a guy an enslaved man telling the story about how he walked all the way to the other plantation to go to the plantation dance to see a girl. And he got a paddling for it because he didnt have a pass. To me im like, oh my god. Like thats a story to me that makes what has a little bit been dehumanized for me, humanized. Humanized, is that a word . And so its all those personal stories that i love, that i like to see. Some have taken issue with the shows historical accuracy. Who . Who did that . Tell me right now. Ill write their names down after the show. But some have taken issue with the historical accuracy. But how important is historical accuracy for the shows creators . Or you guys trying to do Something Else . I think its really important for us. I dont think were trying to do anything else. I think when we make a decision, for instance, patty cannon was actually deceased by the time the show was, but shes still in the show. When we make those kind of decisions its because patty cannon was such an interesting character and we dont know about those characters. Then theres stuff like the baseball mitt hadnt been invented at the time, and we kept that in because it was a cute line. But when it comes to those things its very few and far between. Its one of those things that people come and they say about Harriet Tubman, she didnt have an ax and a gun . Im like, didnt she . Shes known to carry a gun. I feel like its not inaccurate at all, in my opinion. Its telling a story thats true to what was the feeling of what was going on at that time. I do agree with you, i think sometimes if we get caught up in the minutiae of the details, then yeah, no its not historically accurate. I think you guys get across a lot of the big ideas. Africanamerican agency. The strong roles of women being involved. And the importance of rivers. I think you guy dozen all that. So maybe some of the specific details may get lost in translation. But i think viewers will come away with a greater than understanding of some of the big ideas that make the underground railroad so compelling. At the end of first season you guys introduced Harriet Tubman to the show. Actually at the end of the first season you introduced her as a shadowy figure. This season she came out of the shadows in an exciting fashion in the shows first episode, if we can play that clip, 201. Beyonces playing right now. Move ill shoot your head clean off. I could say the same. My arms are tired, end this quick. This be over quickly you dont shoot your mouth. Going to be more trouble than its worth, trying to get a man who cant walk to collect the reward. Anybody can see his ankles broken. Why dont we make a sale right here, ill give you 5 for him, same as yall would have got, 5 for your hassle. We got three runaways and you want to pay us for one . You aint got nothing yet. 10 or two bullets, its your choice. I aint scared of no nigger bitches. And aint nobody scared of you. My daddy taught me how to carve up a tree real good. I imagine your skin would be a bit easier to handle. Now you heard me say my arms is tired. So whats it going to be . Every crime includes an injury. Every injury includes a violation of a right. This is as true today as it was when Justice Wilson said it 60 years ago stop the clip. Thank you. I read that you knew from the very beginning you were going to introduce hair ret tubman as a character. Why did you feel it necessarily or want to make her a part of the show . We always talk about this as being a superhero show. And we our line is basically, you cant tell a story of the Justice League without mentioning superman. Thats kind of how we feel about harriet. We wanted to start very personal with people you dont know, but Second Season obviously we wanted to open up the world and understand the underground as a network. And you really cant understand the underground without touching on harriet. Do you have anything to add, aisha . The next question is actress aisha hinds who plays Harriet Tubman. How much did you know about tubman before playing her on the show . I thought that i knew a whole lot. And i realized after doing the show and i continue to realize even having done a beautiful exhaustive tour here yesterday in the town of dorchester, going to cambridge, that i really probably walked in with maybe 9 of education about her. And that 9 was pretty dense, you know, to me. And so it certainly was a massive education. Just learning the intricacies of who she was. I think that certainly i was trapped where most people are trapped, you know. Exalt in this heroic figure. Being sort of stuck in the place of worshipping, you know, this idol and hero and forgetting to think about her as a human being and all of the intricacies that made her who she was and the little girl that she was and the wife that she was and the daughter that she was and the friend that she was. All of those things i think were a revelation for me. What the next question is also for you, aisha. What is the most important thing you try to get across in your portrayal of tubman . I try to sort of give her the layers i think that we miss. You know, when we look at those onedimensional figures, i try to sort of create the dimensions of her. I certainly walked into the project feeling incredibly inadequate and feeling that i had not lived enough life to really be able to access the depth of her faith that she was able to access to do the things that she did. I certainly am still scratching the surface on accessing the depth of her courage, her bravery, her selflessness. But i wanted to be able to articulate those things. And make sure that everyone knew that this was truly a very ordinary woman, you know, in a pocket of the earth who did this extraordinary thing. And so it was important for me to convey what was conveyed to me, which was that there is a piece of harriet inside of me and there is a piece of harriet inside of us all. Thank you very much. This season that you guys dedicated entire episode entitled mentee to submans story. In the episode hinds delivered an hourlong, monumental and definitive speech as tubman. The episode was described as one of the greatest in television history, received rave reviews across the board, called remarkable by both the Associated Press and the new york times. Heres a clip from that episode, 201b. B. 206b . 206b, sorry, yes, sorry. Black folk, we know pain. Known it a long time. I got more scars on my body than i can count. Susan, the woman i was hired out to, she gave me a lot of them. The first day she told me to dust and sweep the grate with no instruction, just pushed a broom in my hand and left me to work. And when she returned she werent happy with what she saw, so she took a rawhide and she had me come at it again. No word about what i done wrong. I tried my best to collect every piece of dust, i had that thing in my hand, dusting my own blood. But when she returned i took up that broom once more. And again i never cried out once. I wouldnt give miss susan the satisfaction. Thats how i learned to live with pain. Every time i got hit, i took it as an opportunity. For defiance. To not give anyone the reaction they expected. Then i thought again maybe that there was freedom. But i couldnt reconcile why something everybody held so precious come from pain. There had to be an easier way to it than that. Now this is for the question is for the shows creators. What made you decide to write this episode and write it in this way . How did you guys come up with the script . I mean, i think it started we were doing research, miesha was just like, i just read this amazing thing that frederick dug lats and William Still asked harriet to speak, to fundraise, to fire up abolitionists. And like everything she did, when she did it, she did it better than anyone else. We read and she did voices and sang songs and people were so engaged. It became pretty clear that we lean into the format of television, tell the story of her life through her words. Now do you have something to add to that . Um, yeah i think it was also important for us with the character like harriet, who you think you know because of that little paragraph in your book, and now you know its only 9 of it, that we did want to give some of her story, her real life, and get more into it. But its 19 its 1858, so we had to figure out a way to tell that without, you know, being boring, without just going through it. And to find out she was speaking to people again, for me, it was that reaction of, this is a person. William still is a person. Frederick dug lats was a person. All of these people were interacting at the time in the movement. And that to me was really exciting and interesting as well. And just to add to that i mean, being that harriet htubma is one of the greatest revolutionaries in American History, it was only fitting i think that underground, which has sort of identified itself as a show that deals with this narrative in a way thats engaging and entertaining, enlightening and edgy, that they would tell her story in a completely revolutionary way. Because the way in which they rolled out this particular episode was revolutionary for the medium. Its something that has never been done in television history. Underground was only in its Second Season of the show. So its a fairly young show. Taking a huge risk, you know, at doing something that has never been done in the history of television. Wgn obviously is a network that was young in its format of taking on longformat television. So everybody on board, you know, was doing a thing that they had no idea how it would land, you know. Which i think is sort of emblematic of Harriet Tubman sort of leading people you know, not knowing what the outcome would be, but being certain that this was the way that it had to be done, you know. And i think that it was i celebrate misha and joe for taking the risk of doing this thing, her legacy in such a way that to tell her story they would do it in a way that she told her story, regardless of whether audiences were ready for it or not. And thankfully audiences were ready. And this brings me to a question for you, aisha. What was the most challenging thing for you as an actress in filming this episode . Getting the script an hour before it. No. A little over an hour. Certainly the anxiety of taking on all of the information and articulating all of the information. I wanted to certainly spend as much time with it as possible. And so i walked in thinking that dear misha and joe would gift me with the script, these 45 pages of dialogue, certainly well in advance so that i could live with this thing long enough and not be reaching for lines or, you know, and struggle through it. You know, we started the show shooting the production in three months. I was like, so, you know, when do you guys want to when i get that script . They were like, ha ha, what . Thats at the end. I was like, oh, okay. All right. So i played it kind of cool. Maybe id get it maybe two months in advance. Two months came, still no script. Then one month in advance. Surely i was like in the pocket, one month in advance, i had it in my head, this is what were going to do, this is the curriculum for when you get this script, one month in advance, were going to take a page a day and saturate yourself in it because were going to get the script a month in advance. A month in advance and there was no script there wasnt a word on the page, they were all trapped in here and there. And so here we are ten days before were supposed to shoot the episode and misha decides to grace me with the first half of the script. And so, you know, i rush over to their office and i was like, hey, guys, can we just have a cold read . Now im just throwing out terms because im so afraid to sort of engage the script. Like i have actual anxiety. And i dont want to sit and read it myself because i dont know how to approach it. So i go into the office and im reading and its making no sense to me. Im just throwing words out. The words are on the page, im just spitting them out. So we finish and joe was like, okay, well, that wasnt terrible. You know, and so they make a few little changes. Then i go home and i start to get into it, you know. I create what i call the crisis curriculum which is just i start calling all my friends who are in the theater, im like, how do i do this . Is this possible . I send an email to my college professor. I was like, how do i memorize 45 pages in a week . Is it possible to do that . Can you tell me what he was like, not possible. Period, send. And so i was like, wow. And so i went into this thing really, you know, thinking that i was approaching the impossible. And so the anxiety began to naturally well up even more. And misha delivered the second half to me seven days before we were supposed to shoot. So here i am holding 45 pages of impossible. And so thanksgiving was canceled, which is when i got we were at that point in production, it was just before thanksgiving. Thanksgiving got canceled. I flew home to l. A. A friend of mine who lives in new orleans, she was someone i went to college with, she flew home. Flew to l. A. To be with me. And we literally slept, ate that script from night to day, day to night. And so it went in, it went in, and it was just about getting it out, you know. So we had talked about all of these safety nets, you know. Maybe we could have a teleprompter for you. Maybe well have a ear piece for you where misha can spit the lines to you if you should lose your place in the story. So i memorized with this idea that the safety net was in place for me. So i get back to savannah where were supposed to shoot and find out theres no teleprompter. And then we get to the first day of shooting, which we have three days now to shoot 45 pages. And so that too was a revelation because im like, wow, you guys. Usually theres nine days to shoot an episode. Were going to just cut that by more than half . Okay. So we get there and the first day i show up to the sound cart and i tell the guy, youre the most important person for me to see today. So he sticks the earpiece into my ear. And misha comes over to give me me hey, how you doing. Were probably two sentences into conversation, im hearing all of this feedback, feedback from the earpiece thats in my ear. So i was like i turn to the sound guy, can you turn this down a little bit . And he says to me, oh, no, thats standard. Youll hear the feedback until misha starts talking in your ear. So i was like so im supposed to be delivering this thing with this shhhhhhh in my one ear . I was like, no way, im going to be like this the whole thing. Instinctually my hand reaches to my ear and i pull out the earpiece and i hand it off to the sound guy. And i knew in that moment as i faced this mountain of impossibility that the only thing that i could really, really, really count on was not my preparation, because i didnt really have the time to do it. Was not my i didnt have time to infuse all of the things that i do as an agt actress. I didnt have time to write the letter from older mentee to younger mentee and journal in the voice of mentee. I didnt have time for that, you know. It wasnt my craft, it wasnt that honestly, it was the spirit of Harriet Tubman. In that moment, she consumed me. And she occupied the space that we were in. And we went up to do a first rehearsal which i hadnt i hadnt had one single rehearsal after we go up to shoot this first rehearsal. And i remember anthony was like, were going to shoot the rehearsal, onkay, just in case. Just in case. The story tells itself. Thank you. Your intention in writing this, particularly in the last episode, the last scene, watch it. Its just so much rooted in right now, our moment, this moment in time. Did you guys intend that . Other episodes. Nina simone said, you cant help but be a sign of the