Last week at San Diego Comic-Con, I had the opportunity to visit several press rooms to talk with the casts and crew of some of my favorite shows. At the press room for Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle, Executive Dan Percival sat down with us to talk about some of the show’s thematic elements, how it relates to today, and give us a preview for Season 2.
Relevant Today?
Everyone knows that at the same time as San Diego Comic-Con took place in San Diego, the Republican National Convention was taking place in Cleveland. I won’t take this platform in a political direction, but I will say that in today’s climate, a show about living in Nazi and Japanese controlled United States has never been more relevant.
“What’s extraordinary to us is the how messages of that time are still so resonant and relevant today,” Percival said. “Even more so because the further we get away from the second World War, the further we get away from what we remember the Nazis and the totalitarian Japanese states represented to our parents and grandparents generation.”
“It reminds us of how quickly the ideals of fascism can appeal to us,” He added.
When asked if they intended to create the show to reflect our world, Percival said no. The show had been in development for 10 years, and the political climate was quite different at that time. “”It was not our intention”, Percival said, but remarked how the “world has caught up with the message of the show”, rather than the opposite.
Season 2 Preview:
Percival began teasing Season 2 when telling us about the show’s music. When developing the music for the show, they have to decide what would and would not have survived in their reality. There would not be any Jewish or Black artists in a Nazi regime.
“We have to imagine a world where the popular culture post-war never happened…So a lot of the engines that drove the popular culture music in the post-war era are gone. And yet so much of the influences survive,” Percival said. “In Europe in the 60’s and the late 1950’s under the communists rule, there were all these underground clubs, and you’ll see this beginning to happen in the second season.”
So there you have it. The first tidbit about The Man in the High Castle’s second season. More? You betcha!
At the end of the season, we saw one character wake up in a brand new world. One much more familiar to humans of the 21st century. Percival pulled no punches when asked about it: “You will experience the alternate realities in Season 2.”
Hmm. Sounds like we may see more than one iteration of the space-time continuum. However, we will still get to see the primary world in which we got to know our characters last season, and that will still be the focus.
Perhaps the best spoilery tidbit of them all is next. Percival described the first scene that they shot in the new season. “It opens in a school, and it’s an ordinary day in an American high school, and we join Thomas getting off the bus, going into his class and seeing the girl he likes and settling into his classroom. Being asked to step forward to read the pledge, [He] very proudly goes up with his hand on his heart, and he pledges allegiance to the Fuhrer Adolf Hitler.”
On that, Percival added: “Now what we’re really saying there is ‘think carefully about our own conservative values, our own propaganda, our own beliefs systems, and how they can with a tiny nudge be shifted into something else.”
Last Little Bit:
Given all of the political and socio-political undertones this show carries, Percival wanted to remind us what Philip K. Dick (the author of The Man in the High Castle) would want us to glean from watching this series, which is simply “don’t ever stop questioning the reality around you”.
What do you think? Does this have you primed for the new season? Stay tuned for more scoop on all your favorite shows from San Diego Comic Con, including more from The Man in the High Castle.
Season Two of The Man in the High Castle will premiere in Fall 2016 on Amazon Prime.
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