Typically, those two things were the same." He added that he and his fellow writers "never once sat in the writers' room and said, 'How can we be controversial? 'How can we be provocative or hot button?' We asked ourselves two things: what terrified us the most and what felt most true.
"If I can sleep at night knowing this entire enterprise has an authenticity and integrity to it, then I'm good." "Yes, there is a concern, but at the end of the day, I as an artist have to sit with myself and grapple with the authenticity of the show," he said. "Them" creator and executive producer Little Marvin acknowledged that the violence is upsetting but said it was necessary to illustrate the devastating effects of racism. The mayhem gains momentum in the fifth episode, which depicts the murder of a Black infant while his mother is raped and continues in a later episode with the blinding of a Black couple with hot pokers, and a white mob then burning them to death.Ī bucolic homestead in North Carolina becomes the site of racist violence in in Amazon's "Them: Covenant." (Amazon Prime Video) While much of the menace in "Them" comes from things that go bump in the night, the most shocking horror lies in its more realistic scenes of racist violence, which are arguably more disturbing than the vivid images in its recent predecessors. Like last year's Emmy winner, "Watchmen," its HBO counterpart, "Lovecraft Country," and Hulu 's "Antebellum," "Them" features horrific scenarios of Black people being attacked, images that remain highly resonant with the national furor surrounding police brutality against Black people and the resurgence of white supremacist groups. The 10-episode first season, subtitled "Covenant," follows other high-profile mash-ups of the country's troubled history of race relations and genre elements. They are locked in a deadly battle with supernatural forces, putting a sinister twist on the familiar refrain, "There's no place like home." Henry Emory (Ashley Thomas), his wife, "Lucky" (Deborah Ayorinde), and their two young daughters have more to fear than hostile neighbors.
Set in 1953, the series follows the fictional Emorys, who have journeyed from North Carolina to settle in Compton. The plight of the Emory family is at the center of Amazon's new anthology series "Them," partly inspired by the Great Migration, when millions of Black families oppressed by the racism of the Jim Crow South relocated to the West, Northwest and Midwest.