It's a long way from them thar hills outside Calgary to the palm-lined canyons of Beverly Hills. But Tennessee actor Anson Mount, Irishman Colm Meaney, Dominique McElligott — whom AMC president Joel Stillerman introduced as "the woman who plays the fair-haired maiden of the West" — and the hip-hop artist Common warn't complainin' none.
Hell on Wheels, AMC's sprawling, eye-filling saga of the post-Civil War building of the first Transcontinental Railroad, pulls up stakes from filming outside Calgary at the end of August, and the actors candidly admit the location shoot has been both arduous and exhilarating.
Common, who plays an emancipated slave determined to win real freedom in a society still entrenched along racial lines, and Mount, who plays a disillusioned former Confederate soldier bent on revenge for the murder of his family, say Alberta's "so real it hurts" locations and Hell on Wheels' meticulous attention to period detail made it easy to lose themselves in a time and place far removed from the glitz and glamour of present-day Hollywood. There were no parades down the red carpet, nor basking in the popping glow of paparazzi flashes in the rolling hills and grassy flatlands outside Calgary.
And they were perfectly OK with that.
In those quiet moments when the actors are away from the spotlight, they will tell you that, now that Hell on Wheels' debut season has almost finished filming, they feel they've been part of something special. Hell on Wheels debuts in November on a cable channel that's rewriting the rules of hard-hitting, much-talked-about television drama, from the Emmy-nominated Mad Men and The Killing to the still-buzzed-about Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead.
Hell on Wheels owes its origins at least in part to the success of AMC's 2006 miniseries, Broken Trail, which featured Robert Duvall and Thomas Haden Church in a tale about an aging rancher who agrees to drive 500 mustangs across the American West in the mid- to late 1800s to sell to the British army — a.k.a., Canada — so he can purchase his dream plot of land.
Hell on Wheels has a similar epic quality, but it's harder-edged, more gritty and violent, but no less compelling for it. Hell on Wheels is more Deadwood than Wagon Train, more True Grit with Hailee Steinfeld than True Grit with Kim Darby, and that suited Mount, Meaney and Common just fine. The name "hell on wheels" is based on the actual tent city that followed the slow, steady construction of the railroad from its terminus in Council Bluffs, Iowa, to San Francisco Bay. Upon its completion in 1869, the railroad would link with the Eastern railroad line and connect the U.S. Atlantic and Pacific coasts for the first time.
Naturally, when Hell on Wheels' producers looked for a landscape that would approximate the American West in the late 1860s, they settled on southern Alberta.
And despite rain, wind and more mud than they dreamt possible, they dearly loved what they found.
"To say it wasn't a pretty picture, in terms of what life was like on Hell on Wheels, would really not do it justice," AMC's Stillerman said, deadpan. "They had a funny little slogan about the tent city itself that, I guess, was designed to boost real-estate prices at the time. It went something like, 'Hell on Wheels, population: one less every day.'"
On the screen, the early, outdoor images of Hell on Wheel are so gorgeous, they take the breath away, but Stillerman says it warn't like that, really.
"It all looks so glamorous," he said, "but for the fieriest two weeks of production, it rained, it rained and it rained some more, which led to mud and more mud and even more mud, mud so deep that the horses couldn't walk.
"The good news is, it dried up. I'm sure the guys are happy to be here, but you'll forgive them for being equally happy just not to be covered in mud for a day."
For Common, a Chicago hip-hop artist controversially invited by U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama to appear at a poetry reading at the White House in May, Hell on Wheels — and Common's role as an emancipated slave — struck a personal chord with the man born Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr. during the tail end of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement.
"I got to say, honestly, I didn't watch a lot of westerns growing up," Common told Postmedia News. "When I read the script, it was like, 'Ooookay.' But then I thought, 'Man, this has great characters.' More than a western, this is about great characters. Now, having been in it and been immersed in that world, it's really hitting me. Just yesterday, we had a scene where we were rolling up on horses — myself, my character, Anson's character and a character played by a native, not Native American, but a native First Nations character — and it was a real hero shot. We ride up on horses, and it's this classic western hero image. And I was thinking, like, 'Man, wait till the people from Chicago see me doing this.'"
One of Hell on Wheels' themes is the simmering racial tension that existed in the weeks and months following the end of the U.S. Civil War.
"I can't say the racial tension of the time surprised me, because, when you look at history, you still see a lot of prejudice and racism going on, up until Civil Rights (Movement), and even up until present day, sometimes," Common said quietly, measuring his words. "That part of the script wasn't so surprising. But what I thought was interesting, and what intrigued me the most about the script, was that my character and (Anson Mount's character) related to each other as human beings, not just in terms of black and white. I thought, like, man, I didn't even think black people and white people related that way during those times, but those relationships existed. It wasn't just black and white. And that intrigued me. There's a humanity in the way these characters have been written. My character is a freed slave who is of mixed race. His father was his master. You know, that's already confusing.
"And by the same token, it's like, man, I'm in this time and place where they say we have freedom. As a black man, I can read, I can read the Emancipation Proclamation, but it's not being practised. So what do I do? What does my character do? I have to keep trudging on and try to create a place where I can be seen as a human being and as a free person. That was the most interesting part for me."
Common paused, then smiled wryly.
"And, you know, it's just fun to be in the mud and running around with guns, learning to ride a horse. It's a great time."
Hell on Wheels is scheduled to wrap production Aug. 31. The series premieres in November. A second season looks likely, but has yet to be officially confirmed. Either way, Common says, this one was special.
"I love the way it puts things on the table," Common said. "It's not like we're trying to hide issues of race and prejudice that existed at the time. And that's liberating in itself, because I think we have a tendency to be politically correct, all the time, and it's like we're hiding the truth. This truth is being put out there. The truth is . . ."
He paused, then laughed again.
"The truth will set you free, you know."
Source: Postmedia Network
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