Them: Covenant is released today on Amazon Prime Video, and its creator Little Marvin chatted with representatives of the world press – including Sci-Fi Bulletin – shortly before its arrival. Them follows the Emory family as they move to Compton – an area that’s predominantly White…

Why start the show in the 1950s?

Because I wanted to explore the American Dream and in particular the dream of home ownership. This particular time in American history was really interesting because it was post World War II and a lot of vets were coming back and given low interest mortgages. It was the beginning of a building of a great big thriving middle class – for some, but not for everybody. So to be able to explore an American dream of homeownership story, it just felt like the perfect era to tell it.

What was the biggest challenge you faced bringing it to the screen? Not in terms of the writing of it but actually in getting it from sitting in there to sitting on our screens?

Oh lord, all of it!

That’s cheating!

As you guys know, production can be quite challenging under the best of circumstances. Obviously in the world that we’re in it was even more challenging, particularly because we were shut down because of [COVID] and we got to come back. We came back months and months and months later but we were able to come back thanks to our studios. So I would say, just like everyone else on Earth, the challenges were the challenges but luckily we were able to finish and get the show out.

What sort of horror movies do you enjoy?

I’ve been a lifelong lover of horror and genre and thrillers and domestic thrillers since I was a child. Movies of William Friedkin and De Palma and Kubrick and Hitchcock, these are the movies I grew up just loving and respecting the craft of. I think that horror, strangely, doesn’t get the respect I feel like it deserves. When it’s done right it’s a tremendously moving experience on top of being scary.

How was the experience of pitching to Amazon?

It was truly beautiful, which I know flies in the face of what many writers experience, myself included. It was beautiful. Before I was a writer I was a marketing executive and in advertising, and I spent many years putting together pitches and learning how to do that for brands and for other people. It was a unique experience for me to then do that with my own baby and bring it to them.

I remember the pitch meeting specifically. They were so rapt, they were so engaged immediately and I left the room with Lena Waithe and I said, ‘OK, that’s it right? We’re done. There’s the home.’ And sure enough, a few days later they were.

It was very apparent from day one that they’re collaborators and they’re really true supporters of artists. So yes, it’s been nothing but great, the experience. I wish I could give you some horror stories but there are none.

I guess the show was designed for streaming; was there any component for binge watching?

Well, now you’re making me think that maybe I should have but truthfully I didn’t think of it in those terms and in many ways maybe the opposite.

Again I’ve loved the horror films of the 60s and the 70s and those stories tend to be rather methodical. They take their time, there’s a slow burn to the kind of horror that I love. It’s not afraid to live in the quiet place and not always be in your face.

We were really emulating that style and in that sense the show takes its time and leads you to a place, I hope, before knocking you over the head. So no, we didn’t think about binging while we were making it, we’ll see if that strategy works out!

We know series are created first on the page, then on set, and then in the edit room. How much has Them altered fundamentally from what you first pitched or is it the superficial things that happen because shit happens in production?

I think it’s really a combination.

You have a vision, obviously, going in of what you’d like to make. This is my first experience of making a TV show and what I’d say I was pleasantly surprised by was that the vision just expanded exponentially by smarter people coming into the room and us having a collaboration.

Our production heads were geniuses. I have to call them all out: our production designer Thomas Hammock, our costume designer Mari-An Ceo, Howard Berger who was the head of our VFX. These are all luminaries in what they do and they’ve been doing it for many years, so for me it was amazing to just sit with these people, to have the vision and to really interrogate the pages together with them.

As it related to costume and production design, it was very specific. This is going to sound very nerdy: I’m a huge fan of Wong Kar-Wai the director and In the Mood for Love is one of my favourite movies of all time. You look at his movies and you look at how the pattern of the wallpaper and a dress play together and it’s not by accident, it’s absolutely by design that it looks that beautiful. That level of detail and that level of meticulousness was absolutely in our heads as we were making it so yes I think it just exponentially grew from what I dreamed to something better than what I could have dreamed.

There’s certainly a moment where Lucky’s in the house for the first time and she’s looking at the wallpaper and then a little bit later on Allison Pill’s character sees a little tear in the wall and I just thought yes, that’s beautiful attention to detail.

Oh, you noticed. Look at you guys, we could have this conversation all day. What else did you like? No, I’m just kidding!

We’re in a very unusual time to be telling a horror story…

Horror has always been a genre that is excellent at holding a mirror up to where society is at at the time. I think about The Exorcist coming out in the post Vietnam era: there was a mistrust of institutions, there’s people grappling with faith and what that even means. Every era has had horror that reflects its time and I think it’s very interesting that Black filmmakers in particular now are coming to the fore using horror as an opportunity to tell our stories.

I think none of us have even begun to process the ways in which we’ve been changed by this time. This time has been incredibly traumatic for all of us around the globe and as a horror writer that’s a great boon for me. As a human being, not so fun.

I think that we will find, in the next wave, folk who are going to be very inspired by what’s happening and have many stories to tell.

Them is available to watch on Prime Video now.

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