Director Pete Berg has referred to his upcoming Netflix Drama American Primeval as “the hardest thing” he’s ever filmed. He weathered harsh conditions in the New Mexico mountains alongside his cast and crew for 13 months.
The six-episode limited series, which premieres on January 9, takes a brutally honest, raw, and extremely violent look at 1857 America. This fictionalized dramatization tells the story of an explosive collision of culture, religion, and community as the Indigenous, the Mormons, and the pioneers fought and died to keep and control their land.
Berg, who serves as executive producer and makes an on-camera appearance, detailed the experience in an in-person interview and a second over Zoom. He described the 135-day shoot as treacherous at times.
In addition to extreme weather conditions, the cast and crew had to contend with various Hollywood strike shutdowns that impeded filming. “We shot 99% exterior. We were on soundstages for only three days,” explained Berg. “Everyone thought it’d be so nice to go onto a soundstage but we were all in such a feral mental and physical state that we didn’t want to be inside. It felt good for a second and then we just wanted to get back outside and into it.”
As for those strike closures, they presented the director with some unique challenges. “Some of our younger actors went through growth spurts and puberty,” he laughed. “Betty Gilpin, who portrays Sara Rowell, also got pregnant. We had a lot of fun challenges that we were excited to try and overcome.”
Berg told me about a particularly challenging week and a half of filming at the ski mountain above the Los Alamos Laboratory where American physicist Robert Oppenheimer built the atomic bomb.
“We were at about an 8,500-foot altitude and there was a lot of snow. It was freezing cold and there were heavy winds and ice everywhere. People were literally struggling to stay on their feet. We were there for ten days or so and often we stayed up all night and that was some of the toughest shooting that I’ve ever done and I’ve done some fairly legit outdoor exterior shoots,” recalled Berg. “That was, for me, a feeling of real gratitude to have a crew and a cast that was just up for it and were on that mountain, in that weather, in that suck and smiling and working hard. That got me fired up.”
Taylor Kitsch in Pete Berg’s ‘American Primeval’ on Netflix.
Taylor Kitsch joined Berg following their previous Netflix hit Painkiller. He portrays a mysterious man named Isaac tasked with accompanying Sara and her son to safer lands. In a separate interview alongside Gilpin, Kitsch confirmed the many challenges they faced. Oh, and he also suffered quite an injury in the process when he broke his foot while filming a scene and had to have a bone removed from his big toe. “I had to do 70% of the show in a boot.”
In retrospect, Kitsch laughed while describing being tackled by a stuntman, who he says was double his size. “His knee landed on my big toe and it broke,” he said, clarifying that the toe itself was not removed, just a bone in it.
Kitsch seemed rather unbothered by the injury and said it’s all part of the excitement of being challenged. “You’re always trying to be uncomfortable and scared and not just play the same character,” he pointed out.
He also talked about living in Montana and his appreciation of nature. “My place looks out to a bridge of mountains. I love the outdoors and this was an incredible learning experience about the Native American culture that I honestly didn’t know a ton about, especially being in Montana, and surrounded by it. Enveloping myself in that community has been life-altering. I loved the experience.”
Betty Gilpin as Sara Rowell in ‘American Primeval’ on Netflix.
As for Gilpin, she told me that she found the experience exhilarating. “It’s easy to coast and find jobs that feel safe and that aren’t challenging. Everything is controlled and calm when making a TV show and working 16-hour days on a soundstage. I knew this would be the opposite of that. It felt like a necessary challenge as an actor to try something like this. I’d never worked in these conditions before, or in this genre or world. It felt pro-actor. It felt like doing a play on a boat that was inside a cyclone in a rainstorm. The external elements were so intense and unpredictable. It raised the emotional stakes as an actor.”
Executive producer Eric Newman, who worked with Berg and Kitsch on Painkiller, concurred and referred to the American Primeval shoot as their own frontier story. “We faced logistical nightmares, unpredictable weather, hundreds of cast and crew, and horses and wagons. This project was not for the faint of heart.”
Shawnee Pourier, Taylor Kitsch, Betty Gilpin and Preston Mota.
No detail was too small in this production. Indigenous Cultural Consultant Julie O’Keefe was brought in to ensure authenticity at every level. Separately, she described the two major challenges she faced: the various languages, and each item on set had to be factually and historically accurate.
“There’s a lot of native language in the show; about 3,700 words. There are three different tribes involved in this: Southern Paiute, Shoshone, and Ute,” O’Keefe explained. “Some of those languages are not recorded in actual alphabet or words. There are 574 tribes and a huge push to save our language.”
She credited the series with spotlighting each language. “Pete would change the script daily, with new scenes and dialogue, and we had two linguists who would write it all down for their language and it ended up in their syllabus to teach to their people.”
Indigenous Cultural Consultant Julie O’Keefe detailed how each item was made to be historically … [+]
O’Keefe said there were three workrooms wherein different communities made various items, including props and set teepees. “There are 3,500 items that Native Americans made for this show. My favorite is a buffalo teepee. They are rare. It’s so expensive to make them. The guy who does this cleans hides traditionally; it’s called brain tan. They take the brains of a pig and tan it, stretch it, I mean the whole nine yards. It takes 32 to 37 hides to make one 22-foot teepee. It’s not a kit. They have to make the poles too. We had one of those and two elk hide. There were also close to 700 pairs of moccasins made from the same hide. This gave people in the community jobs. When you engage communities, they are very proud of their work. They took pride in being a part of the story and would sign their work.”
American Primeval also comes from writer/creator/executive producer Mark L. Smith and executive producer Alex Gayner. The cast includes Dane DeHaan, Saura Lightfoot-Leon, Derek Hinkey, Joe Tippett, Jai Courtney, Preston Mota, Shawnee Pourier, and Shea Whigham.
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