TV Producers Discuss How the Election of Trump Affected Their Shows

“We’re hyperaware. Even if you’re not doing a political show, you’re recognizing no matter what genre, no matter what character, that there are political implications to every narrative choice you make,” Beau Willimon said during the “Television in a Trumped Up America” panel at the ATX Television Festival on Friday.

The panel was an in-depth discussion of how the election of Donald Trump changed their writers’ rooms and affected stories.

It included several television producers, including Liz Tigelaar (Casual), Javier Grillo-Marxuach (The Middleman), Paul Garnes (Queen Sugar, Underground), Michael Rauch (Royal Pains, Instinct), Julie Plec (The Vampire Diaries, The Originals), Beau Willimon (House of Cards, The First)

“For the first couple of months after the election, it was really hard to focus on anything else. It felt as though the whole country had been sort of slapped across the face with a two-by-four,” Willimon noted.

“It’s become a negotion really to sort of balance one’s time between what you’re able to do as an artist creatively in terms of holding a mirror up to society and reflecting, but that’s a process that’s not immediate. It takes time,” he continued. “The resistance is strong. We’re seeing that every day, and I maintain hope.”

Liz Tigelaar said the election results affected one character on Casual specifically. Tara Lynn Barr, who plays Laura, contacted Tigelaar and exclaimed, “‘I want my character to be anti-Trump!'” Because they were still early in the process of writing the season, Tigelaar said they were able to take the story in that direction.

“We were at this point of still being able to decide our season arc. So it definitely impacted … Laura’s story,” Tigelaar explained. “We decided with her we were going to go a more political route.”

“It has recontextualized the way I look at certain things,” said Julie Plec, noting that she’d spent the past several years in the vampire genre. “The advent of the genre itself has been very steep in deep gothic roots, [and] it’s a very predatory, seductive, sensual character, the vampire. There is a rape culture thread that weaves through it.”

Thanks to the results of the election, it caused her to re-think a key relationship on one of her series.

“I was talking to the writer who wrote the episode that was to be delivered the day after the election, her script, and in the episode a female character got beaten up by a man,” Plec recalled.

“We all decided on that day — those two can’t be together anymore. And we killed a love story on that day that probably most people on the show are actually still rooting for. And that’s a really weird feeling.” Though Plec didn’t state it directly, it’s assumed she was referring to Hayley and Elijah on The Originals.

Paul Garnes discussed how the election changed one of the final episodes of Underground Season 2. “The election influenced Misha’s tone in that monologue. It ended with this amazing call to action almost directed to the audience: ‘Are you a citizen or a soldier?'” he said.

Be sure to check out all of our coverage of the ATX Television Festival right here (there is still more to come)

Follow us on Twitter @telltaleTV_

Want more from Tell-Tale TV? Subscribe to our newsletter here!