As one would expect from the creator of The Civil War, this new series is loaded with characters, ideas, and perspectives that, corny as it may sound, make history feel urgent and new. It’s also got a stacked group of voiceover performers, including Tom Hanks, Paul Giamatti, Meryl Streep, Claire Danes, Maya Hawke, Liev Schrieber, Lucas Hedges, Samuel L. Jackson, Kenneth Branagh, Josh Brolin, and Laura Linney, among others.
Though he frequently cited his work’s “stately pace,” Burns and his frequent collaborator Sarah Botstein are mile-a-minute talkers, and both are bursting to speak about their latest work. (Also potentially surprising: Burns drops more F-bombs than you might think, as you shall soon read.) What follows is considerably truncated for clarity’s sake.
Vanity Fair: Before anything else, let’s talk about this extraordinary collection of actors you’ve assembled.
Ken Burns: I suggest that there is no finer cast list than in any film ever made. Maybe The Longest Day, which was every major star of the 1960s, but it’s not a lot of women.
Pretty sharp to get Paul Giamatti, who starred in the 2008 HBO series John Adams, to voice John Adams.
Burns: Remember that Giamatti also played Adams in our film Benjamin Franklin. And he was in our Theodore Roosevelt for The Roosevelts. He can read the fucking phone book. One of my favorite quotes is [Adams’s] arrival to Philadelphia. There’s nothing dynamic or climactic about it; it’s about writing home to Abigail, saying, you know, “Philadelphia is an interesting town. It’s laid out from the Delaware to the Schuylkill, and it’s got first, second, third…” Some people don’t like it. I do. This was like anybody else writing home to his wife!
