Lawmen: Bass Reeves is more than just a passion project for star and executive David Oyelowo. Now that it’s out (and now that the Hollywood strikes of 2023 are over), he tells TV Insider it’s a “relief” to be able to speak about it.
There were seemingly endless obstacles on the path to getting this created. It took the actor eight years to get this story green-lit. During the hard-won production process, extreme changes in weather on set in Texas caused scheduling delays and posed threats to the cast and crews’ health, and on top of it all, the strikes loomed as they were wrapping filming earlier this year. Series creator/showrunner Chad Feehan had to leave set three weeks before they wrapped when the WGA writers’ strike began in May, Oyelowo shares.
Suffice it to say it’s been a long journey to get Bass Reeves’ story on-screen, but Oyelowo says it was worth the energy. “I have to be perfectly honest; sometimes you are out there talking about projects that you believe in less,” he tells TV Insider. “When it’s not only one that you truly believe in but really feel privileged to be a part of, that’s always a great time to get to speak about it.”
Taylor Sheridan, the creator of Yellowstone and all of its spinoffs, was the one producer who finally said yes to this story about the first Black U.S. deputy marshal west of the Mississippi. Bass was born into slavery and was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War. While father to a growing family (he and his wife, Jennie Reeves, played here by the captivating Lauren E. Banks, had 11 children), he became an infamous lawman dedicated to bringing justice to the West. His over 3,000 arrests and other career accolades are said to have inspired the Lone Ranger character. With a résumé like that, you have to wonder why he wasn’t depicted on-screen in detail sooner.
Sadly, Oyelowo is no stranger to being met with resistance when trying to get a story about a Black historical figure made.
David Oyelowo as Bass Reeves in ‘Lawmen: Bass Reeves’ Season 1 Episode 5 (Credit: Lauren Smith/Paramount+)
“We went out with [Bass Reeves] twice. Once in 2015. Again, in 2017. First time, the industry said, ‘We’re not doing that because no one’s doing westerns.’ The second time we went out, they said, ‘We’re not doing that because everyone’s doing westerns.’ And so you just think, OK, something else is going on here. And you and I can both guess, given the demographic of this character, what some of those issues truly are,” he shares in the interview above. “And I’ve experienced that on other projects that took a ton of time to come to fruition, Selma being another one, given the demographic even of Dr. Martin Luther King. How difficult that was to get told.”
“But I have to take my hats off to Taylor Sheridan and what he has built with Yellowstone and 1883 and 1923 and just the reinvigoration of not just the Western, but storytelling that focuses on that time period, that place, that region of America,” he continues. “It gave us space to tell this on a scale that even in the eight years it’s taken me to get this story to the screen; I couldn’t have anticipated this scope and scale. Because traditionally, that’s one of the things you just have to make peace with is not going to be afforded a story centering [on] a Black person, even though they are of immense historical significance. You just go, OK, we’ll have about a third of what should be afforded. And that was definitely not the case with this.”
The eight-episode Bass Reeves covers roughly 15 years of Bass’ life, from 1862 to 1877. Making sure this story stood out from other shows in the genre was top of mind for Oyelowo. When searching for directors, he knew they needed someone who would “embrace the fact that the Western genre is defined by scope and scale and beauty in relation to how it is shot” but who also wouldn’t shy away from the intimate home life depicted through the Reeves family. That’s what they found in Christina Voros, who directed five episodes, and Damian Marcano, who directed three.
“When you are telling someone’s life story in a historical context, there’s always a danger that it feels episodic, that it feels like a history lesson, that it feels like a Wikipedia page comes to life,” Oyelowo explains. They avoided that by making the Reeves family the emotional center of the tale. Finding the right actor to play Jennie was vital because of this, and Oyelowo says Banks’ audition is one of the best he’s ever seen.
“We searched far and wide for that character, and I’ve produced a few shows now. I don’t think I’ve ever had an audition tape have quite that effect on the brain trust as hers did,” he says. “It was just such a no-brainer. And that continued to be the case as we shot it.”
Demi Singleton as Sally Reeves, Lauren E Banks as Jennie Reeves, and Damian Marcano, director, on the set of ‘Lawmen: Bass Reeves’ Season 1 Episode 5 (Credit: Lauren Smith/Paramount+)
In a separate interview, Marcano (director of Episodes 4, 5, and 6) tells TV Insider that Banks’ performance is the series’ standout. “I feel like we’re here talking about somebody that 20 years from now, we’ll be like, ‘You remember when she was on Bass Reeves?’” he says of the actor, who attended the Yale School of Drama and in 2017 was the recipient of Yale’s Carol Finch Dye Award, a prize previously given to Meryl Streep and Frances McDormand, to name a few.
Working with Oyelowo as an executive producer “compounded upon the pride that I had for what I was doing along with Chad, along with Taylor,” he added. “It was just a very supportive environment. Everyone knew the magnitude of what we were trying to pull off.”
Marcano recalls the first time Oyelowo called him about the dailies (raw, unedited footage), a frequent conversation between an EP and a director. “I was like, oh God, problems,” he feared. But “he just simply said to me, ‘I just watched the rushes,’ what he calls him, and he said, ‘Absolutely beautiful, man. What an eye you have.’” To have someone “larger than life” like Oyelowo give that kind of praise “meant a lot” to the director.
Oyelowo, Banks, Marcano, and Feehan share a deep love of and belief in this series. Banks told us in another interview that from the moment she read the script, she could tell this project was special, and it was because of the compelling characters at the center of it. Oyelowo says Bass and Jennie lived an improbable life and that, like with all of the historical figures he’s played before, he just “couldn’t shake the idea of playing” him.
“What he did and went on to do shouldn’t have been possible at that time,” Oyelowo says. “Three thousand arrests, 32 years in law enforcement, a father to over ten kids, someone who was enslaved and went on to be in a true leadership position where he was arresting the very people who had subjugated him not long before. You need to be tenacious. You need to be fastidious. You need to be someone who truly has a modicum of self-belief that not everyone has in order to be able to do that.”
Learn more about how Lawmen: Bass Reeves came to life in the full video interview above.
Lawmen: Bass Reeves, Sundays, Paramount+