Interview: Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins On Adapting KINDRED Into a Series

Two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has made his television debut with a series adaptation of Octavia E. Butler's seminal 1979 sci-fi novel Kindred.

Kindred tells the story of 'Dana James', a young Black woman and aspiring writer who, while settling into her new home, finds herself being violently pulled back and forth in time, from contemporary Los Angeles to a nineteenth-century plantation, a place remarkably and intimately linked with Dana and her family. This is the first screen adaptation of any of Butler's work.

Kindred stars Mallori Johnson as "Dana James," Micah Stock as "Kevin Franklin," Ryan Kwanten as "Thomas Weylin," Gayle Rankin as "Margaret Weylin," Austin Smith as "Luke," David Alexander Kaplan as "Rufus Weylin," Sophina Brown as "Sarah" and Sheria Irving as "Olivia."

Jenkins is known for his plays like An Octoroon, Gloria, War, Appropriate, Neighbors and Everybody. Now, he is taking his work to the small screen as new episodes of Kindred premiere on Hulu.

BroadwayWorld caught up with Jenkins to discuss how he adapted the book into a series, creating a television series after working as a playwright, and a potential second season.

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How did this adaption originally came about for you and what was it like turning it into a series?

I guess I've always been obsessed with Octavia Butler, like I've been reading her since I was a kid basically. The book was one that I read multiple times and then I read it in 2010, sort of at the height of what I think we're referring to as the "Golden Age of Television." I remember feeling like this is a TV show and I became obsessed very like Moby Dick-style, kind of obsessed with trying to make it a TV show and it took 12 years. Here we are, which is wild.

It's been a long journey. I've had a lot of things going on throughout it but I would say Covid really gave me an opportunity to like double down on it. When theatres closed, I was like, "What am I gonna do?" And I guess what I did was this. So here we go.

Since you have worked in theatre and have a background in playwrighting, when did you realize that this would be a television series and not a play?

I think quite early on, because unlike the plays and things I've adapted, the book itself just felt like it was, it needed to be longer than two hours or three hours. The book is so much about time and THE PASSAGE of time and the experience of being with characters like truly over the course of their entire lives. It just felt like TV was the form that was doing that the best and probably still is, honestly. That sort of being with and witnessing that makes good television.

So then you were able to expand these characters into a multi-episode arc. What was that process like for you?

I guess it was a lot of fun. I mean, it was fortunate about having such a good book to start with is you kind of have this map. The road map is there, like I know where most people begin and end because Octavia Butler did that work for us. I think as a fan or even like a super fan, it was just like a real joy to like imagine bringing these things to life that I'd imagined in only in my mind, over and over again. We had a writer's room and a lot of that folks in that writer's room were familiar with the book, are familiar with Octavia Butler and, and also fans. It just really became a way to geek out over this like beloved, beloved text.

When you guys started filming, what was it like getting to watch these characters come to life before you?

It was wild. Yeah, it was wild. I mean, starting even back with casting, you're looking at all these amazing performers audition with the material and you're looking at this multiverse of ways in which you could can sort of realize these beloved folks. But it was just very thrilling and spooky and fun. I always just kept feeling so titillated as the lover of the book to just be like, I"I can't believe I'm THE ONE who gets to do this." It's like incredibly fun. There was a ton of fans on set. People were really rooting for this. I love to be in that kind of world.

What do you hope that fans of the book take away from the series?

Well, I hope they kind of appreciate the ways we're trying to expand on the book and sort of fold it outward. There are some like iconic scenes I felt like, "I just need to see the scene on screen." It's sort of like having someone cover a song that you love. I hope people like appreciate what we did with those moments. I hope it drives people back to the book, even if you've read it before, just to trace some of the ways in which we're trying to counterpoint or sing harmony to it, versus singing the melody.

How did the series develop and change over the 10 years that you were creating it?

I would say early on there were attempts to really make something that felt more like a one-to-one translation of the book. I think that spending all these years immersed in it and immersed in like the ideas around it really did inspire me in some ways to find ways to rhyme with or echo some of the original intentions in our contemporary moment. One of the big things we did is we set it not in 1976. So that kind of brought its own interesting challenges and questions along with it.

That's actually been the joy of developing as long as we have is like, I mean, no one but me will ever know how many different versions of this that could have been, you know? I feel like we're all very pleased with the choices we've made to get it to where we've gotten it.

Just for audiences in general, what do you hope they take away from it when they're watching it?

Well, first of all, hope that people are just like entertained and moved and all the good things you associate with a good story. But I hope people are kind of asking really penetrating questions of themselves about who they think they are in the context of history, in the context of this country. Maybe asking new questions about how they think about their own families and how they relate to how they relate to other people. You just always wanna sort of be responsible for some kind of shift in a person's perception of the world, hopefully in the right direction.

Since this series came from how big of a fan you were of the book, is there anything else that you're a fan of that you'd want to adapt in the future?

I mean, I've always been obsessed with this movie Set It Off. There was a time when I very seriously tried to adapt into musical. It didn't quite pan out. I mean, there's just so many things I love. I don't know. Everything I do comes from the space of being a fan of wanting to see something on stage. So the list is kind of endless. I mean those are the major, the major ones now.

The reward is in realizing your potential as someone who imagines or just providing for someone else this experience and the joy you felt initially encountering something. So I always feel very lucky in that way when I get to make something like this for this screen or the stage.

Is a second season something that is of interest to you? Do you have any ideas?

Yeah, we don't really cover the whole book in the first season. There are writers right now who are sort of working on a second season. We need people to watch the show so you can get that actual order. But yeah, season two, season three, season four, there's a lot of book to cover that we're trying to get through it all.

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Watch the trailer for Kindred here: