The First Look At 'Lawmen: Bass Reeves' Has Arrived

 

On Tuesday, Vanity Fair published a first look at the upcoming Paramount+ series Lawmen, from executive producer Taylor Sheridan, creator of Yellowstone, and its first season centered on Bass Reeves, through interviews with star and executive producer David Oyelowo at some point between the Writers Guild of America strike that began in early May and the SAG-AFTRA strike that began in mid-July. This is because Oyelowo was available but creator and showrunner Chad Feehan was not.

The journey to the show's making began after Oyelowo played Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in 2014's Selma, considered his breakout role. He'd basically wanted to play Reeves ever since, even if he, a Western fan from Britain, was still initially unfamiliar with the actual story. As he told, “I can’t tell you how many times in shooting the show I just found myself walking into either a daydream I had, either as a kid playing cowboys when I was younger, or even as an actor in the eight years I’ve been trying to get this thing made. Talking about his discoveries, he recalls "I had no idea who he was. Within a very cursory Google search, I couldn’t believe I didn’t know who he was—and that a myriad of TV shows and films hadn’t been made about him already, considering the legendary nature of what he had done. That was the beginning of the obsession with trying to get it made.” Reeves became an Old West gunslinger in the post-Reconstruction era as a federal peace officer in the Indian Territory, having escaped slavery to become the first Black deputy marshal in the United States to serve in the territories beyond the Mississippi River. He is said to have captured more than 3,000 of the most dangerous criminals without ever being wounded, and for it, he is considered the greatest frontier hero in American history. He survived into old age and died of natural causes instead of from gunshot wounds in his working years. 

The first version of the series was proposed by Face/Off and Hacksaw Ridge producer David Permut, who’s stayed on long enough to become one of the executive producers alongside Oyelowo and Sheridan. Shopping to studios and networks began in 2015, when the studio-based streamers were still several years away. There were two rounds of attempts in a two or three year span. On round 1, Oyelowo says the entire industry rejected it because "no one’s doing Westerns". On round 2, they said "everyone’s doing Westerns." In the midst of the project stalling, Yellowstone happens, so frontier tales became attractive again. “Taylor came along and indisputably reimagined and reinvigorated the Western,” Oyelowo says. “I talked to him, and he is a real historian around this stuff. At that point, I’d been reading up on Bass Reeves for quite a while—and [Sheridan] was the only person I’d spoken to who knew at least as much, if not more, as I did. His passion for it just started making it feel like this might be a great collaboration. And then soon afterwards, Paramount+ expressed interest and we were off to the races.”

In recent years, Bass Reeves has had a few onscreen depictions, but without as much singular focus as this first season of Lawmen provides. This includes Delroy Lindo in the fictionalized 2021 action Western The Harder They Fall. Colman Domingo played him in an episode of NBC's time-travel series Timeless in 2017. Jamal Akakpo played an actor playing Reeves in a 1920s-era silent film in 2019's HBO Watchmen series, while Jaleel White played Reeves comedically in a 2015 Drunk History segment. However these were more idealized, sensationalized depictions while Lawmen's will be more nuanced with the era in which he lived. Reeves begins the season as an enslaved man, forced to fight alongside his owner, Colonel George Reeves played by Shea Whigham and the Confederacy during the Civil War before ultimately escaping. The irony that Reeves's path to becoming a lawman began with him breaking the law has been noted by his actor.

“His very existence questions the nature of justice. If we can now say that the enslavement of people was unjust, then freeing yourself from that unjust circumstance, can that truly be deemed unlawful?” Oyelowo says. “I think that’s one of the biggest themes of the show. This is all playing out at a time that in many ways defines who and what America is. We watch the birth of America, in a sense, through the personal eyes of one Black man and his family.”

Lauren E. Banks costars as Jennie, Reeves’s wife, who provides his moral compass. They marry after he returns to Arkansas post-Emancipation Proclamation and settles down. “What I love about both characters is that love is very central to not only their relationship and their family, but thematically for them throughout the show,” Oyelowo says. “They go through some pretty rough patches—there’s no question. But that love is the magnet, and it’s really the reason for Bass to stay alive.” Dennis Quaid plays Sherrill Lynn, a deputy marshal who wants Reeves to join the force, a decade after he's settled. “He’s someone this job has chewed up and spit out,” director Christina Voros, who has worked on Yellowstone and 1883, explains. “He throws himself into these battles hoping that he won’t make it because he’s seen it all and he’s lost it all. There’s a wild irreverence to Sherrill.” Lynn is a condensed and fictionalized combination of several of Reeves's real compatriots, representing a cautionary tale about what his lifestyle can lead to mentally. “He’s not worried about doing the right thing or saying the right thing or being the right thing,” Voros explains. “His state of mind has come from the horrors he’s experienced that have made him an angry, hateful person. So, he sets up very early on what this job can do to a person if one gives their life over to it.”

Judge Isaac Parker of Fort Smith, played by Donald Sutherland, who kept order as the settlers came in in such large numbers, also sees value in Reeve's knowledge of Indian Territory, and so deputizes him. Parker has also been described as "imposing and commanding... with a complicated legacy." With Parker and Sherrill, Reeves has an uneasy alliance. “It’s complicated because, if your relationship with white people for most of your life has been one in which you were enslaved by them, oppressed by them, marginalized by them, undervalued by them, that becomes something that inevitably you carry as a distrust,” the actor says. “On one hand, you could argue he gives him an incredible unforeseen opportunity. But on the other hand, there is this inherent distrust as to how much of this is for me, how much of this is for you?”

Paramount+ also released a 20-second tease on Tuesday, which features his patrolling, his Civil War period, and being on duty. Other series regulars include Barry Pepper, Forrest Goodluck, and Demi Singleton. Joaquina Kalukango, Ryan O’Nan, Justin Hurtt-Dunkley, Rob Morgan, Lonnie Chavis, Mo Brings Plenty, Dale Dickey, Margot Bingham, and Tosin Morohunfola and Grantham Coleman will recur. Garrett Hedlund is set to guest star, but it's unknown if he's still a recurring guest star. The tease can be watched below. Lawmen: Bass Reeves premieres this fall (read: November?) on Paramount+.

Source: Vanity Fair