We caught up with the cast and creators of The Shannara Chronicles during NYCC 2015, and they let it be known just how excited they are to have the world see their adaptation.
Speaking first with Poppy Drayton, who plays Amberle Elessedil, we asked about the practical yet gorgeous costuming that will be integral to the look of the show. After praising Jane Holland, the costume designer, Drayton described her wardrobe.
“My sort of signature look was a leather bodice and leather pants, and obviously a sword and a beautiful bangle that I’ve tried to recreate in my general style,” she says. “[The costumes] were extremely practical, actually. You’d imagine that running in so much leather would be really difficult, and sometimes it was, depending on how early our call time was, but for the most part it was really movable and really easy. You could kick ass.”
Good thing, too, as Drayton’s character is a strong-willed and savvy warrior who takes on tradition and her kingly grandfather all in one go. “You get script after script after script, and they can be amazing scripts, but it’s so often they’re the weaker or the giving character, the maid or these sort of tentative women who are very much just women,” she says. “They’re lovely parts, but it’s so rare to get a character that has so much strength and wants to kick ass and has to save the world. That’s huge, absolutely huge. And so to have the chance to play a character like that was just utterly overwhelming. I still feel hugely lucky.”
Related: New Shannara Chronicles trailer, premiere date announced
The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic futuristic world, one which still reflects some of our same traditions and stereotypes. But maybe not for long, considering Amberle is quick to challenge that early on. But what is it about this genre that draws audiences in?
“It causes me to see the world in a different way,” says Austin Butler, who will be playing Wil Ohmsford. “And thinking about humanity in a way of going, ‘What would I do in this situation?’ It adds these new challenges that are super heightened versions of what we deal with in everyday life.”
Dystopian futures are not rare on television or the big screen, but that doesn’t mean The Shannara Chronicles will feel like the same old story we’ve seen over and over again. When Executive Producers Al Gough and Miles Millar, as well as Director Jonathan Liebesman, joined us, they were quick to explain how helpful MTV was in meeting their vision of the adaptation.
“MTV was the network that stepped up because they wanted to be bigger,” Gough says. “It was a really big swing and a bold move for them, and they were really all in. They actually turned out to be terrific partners for this because they were willing to be bold, and that’s what the show required. You couldn’t play it safe. This show would not work on NBC.”
“For them as a network, they really wanted to broaden their audience,” Millar adds. “And how rare is it to see a property like this that has been so beloved and sold 50 million copies and that chance for it to be on MTV? They really saw it as an opportunity.”
And so did Gough and Millar, who had a specific vision going into this project. “When we did it, we wanted to do something different,” Millar explains. “We wanted to do something that hadn’t been seen before. We wanted to challenge the idea of what you could do with visual effects on television. The idea of fantasy, which people had a prejudice against, like, ‘Oh, fantasy’s not for me.’ It’s like, well, I think this show will surprise people, and that’s always great.”
From describing the sets as being bigger than movie sets to admitting they don’t have a single “clunker” episode, Gough, Millar, and Liebesman have certainly convinced us this is a show to have on our radar.
And if that hasn’t, the two-hour pilot certainly has — check back next week for when we tell you exactly what we thought of the advanced screening party we got to attend while at New York Comic-Con 2015.