COLLIDER: Creators/Executive Producers Joe and Tony Gayton Talk HELL ON WHEELS
by Christina Radish
November 8th, 2011
AMC television series Hell on Wheels is a contemporary Western that centers on former Confederate soldier Cullen Bohannon (Anson Mount), whose quest for vengeance has sent him on the hunt for the Union soldiers who have killed his wife. He ends up in a dangerous and lawless town that travels with and services the westward construction of the Union Pacific – the first transcontinental railroad. The series documents the railroad’s engineering and construction, as well as the immigrant experience and the plight of newly emancipated African-Americans during Reconstruction, while showing just how brutal and corrupt it all was. The show also stars Colm Meaney, Common, Dominique McElligott, Ben Esler, Phil Burke and Eddie Spears.
During this exclusive interview with Collider, show creators/executive producers/writers Joe and Tony Gayton (Faster) talked about how Hell on Wheels came about, the three-year journey it has taken to reach viewers, the challenges of telling the story of their own set of characters in the historical context of building the railroad, what made Anson Mount their leading man, and just how violent the series will get...
... Collider: How challenging is it to balance the stories of these characters while telling the history of this time period?
TONY: "What we didn’t want to do was a docu-drama. We could have taken the approach where we did it all from the building of the railroad and Durant (Colm Meaney) dealing with Washington, D.C."
JOE: "And had real characters."
TONY: "We wanted to create our own set of characters, in the context of the building of the railroad. The building of the railroad, excuse the pun, is the engine that drives the story, but we wanted it to be an original set of characters. Durant is based on a real character, but we’ve taken some license with him. Although, a lot of it isn’t too far from the truth."
JOE: "The real Durant has given us great plot stuff."
TONY: "He was getting paid $2,000 a mile, so he built a crooked railroad, until he had to start speeding up because he was going to lose the Central Pacific, if he didn’t."
JOE: "When he did have to speed up, he built it really shoddy and bridges would wash out. As long as he got it approved, they couldn’t disapprove it afterwards. He would just have to rebuild it. So, his mantra was just, 'Build it fast and get that sucker down...'"
HELL ON WHEELS airs Sunday at 10/9C on AMC
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