.jpg?q=50&fit=contain&w=1140&h=&dpr=1.5)
Quick Links
There is literally no escaping the past for the hero of FX's sci-fi series Kindred, the long-awaited onscreen adaptation of Hugo Award-winning science fiction author Octavia E. Butler’s 1979 book of the same title. In this sci-fi drama series, Dana James is a young Black woman and writer who relocates to Los Angeles with her husband Kevin Franklin. While trying to settle down into her promising new life, Dana suffers dizzy spells, during which she finds herself pulled back into America’s pre-civil war past, when slavery was still in practice.
The difference between how time passes in the past compared to the present is even more enigmatic. Time moves quickly in the past, which means an experience that takes several hours there and then could just take a minute in the present. It’s a complexity that showrunner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has said he is keen on capturing onscreen. “She kind of lives both in the past and the present and at different paces.” And because her experiences in the past change her, “the longer she stays in the past, the more exponentially harder it is for her to get home.”
With all that in mind, here's everything you need to know about this genre-and-time-bending series.
When and Where Will Kindred Be Released?
Prepare to binge Kindred starting December 13, 2022. All eight episodes of the series are set to be released all at once. Produced by FX and Protozoa Pictures, Kindred will be released exclusively on Hulu. An ad-supported subscription to Hulu costs $7.99 per month while a no-ads subscription costs $14.99.
Watch the Kindred Trailer
The trailer opens with a bewildered present-day Dana finding herself inexplicably on a riverbank in 19th-century Maryland, with a white boy drowning in the river. Dana rushes to rescue the boy and successfully revives him with CPR, only to be accosted by a white man with a shotgun, demanding: “What the devil is going on here?” What indeed is Dana doing in the antebellum period when slavery was still standard practice across America’s southern plantations? When Dana comes out of her first time-traveling spell and transports back to modern-day LA, she is screaming in terror and her white husband is asking: “What is going on?”
Dana struggles to make sense of it all as we see her being shuttled between the past and the present. Soon, Dana is back in the south, running for her life, chased and beaten by a white man. Mysteriously, she is again rescuing the same white boy — this time from a fire. Her forays into the past throw her current life into chaos. A police car is shown outside her house, sirens blaring. A knife is drawn. Dana is seen in a bathtub, the water red with blood. It looks like the cost of her involuntary trips to the past could very well be her life in the present.
Who Are the Cast and Crew of Kindred?
Mallori Johnson stars as Dana. A relative newcomer, Johnson played Bea in WeCrashed and is slated to appear as Ellie in the upcoming comedy-drama The Other Zoe. Dana’s husband Kevin is played by Micah Stock, who is perhaps best known for his role as Deke Slayton in The Right Stuff. The southern characters whom Dana meets in the past (and who seem to have ties to her future) include Ryan Kwanten (Glorious) as Thomas Weylin, Gayle Rankin (GLOW) as his wife Margaret Weylin, and David Alexander Kaplan (Stranger Things) as the young boy Rufus. Austin Smith, Sophina Brown, and Sheria Irving round out the cast.
Kindred showrunner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is an Obie Award-winning playwright. His previous plays Gloria and Everybody were finalists for no less than the Pulitzer Prize. Described by The New York Times as “one of this country’s most original and illuminating writers,” Jacobs-Jenkins is known for delving into issues surrounding class and race through a historical lens. His TV work includes HBO’s Watchmen series and Prime Video’s Outer Range. Jacobs-Jenkins executive produces Kindred with fellow heavy-hitters Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel of Protozoa Pictures and the showrunners of The Americans, Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields, alongside Courtney Lee-Mitchell and Julian Jackson. Zola director Janicza Bravo executive produced and directed the pilot. Matthew Shire is credited as a writer and co-executive producer on the project, with Alonso Alvarez also credited as a director and producer. Other producers include Amanda Marsalis (co-executive producer) and Ernestine Walker (executive producer). The cinematography for the series was done by Cybel Martin and Anka Malatynska. For more crew information, you can use this link.
What Is Kindred About? (And More Octavia E. Butler Adaptations to Watch Out For)
.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=1500&dpr=1.5)
The official synopsis reads as follows:
As Dana, a young Black woman and aspiring writer, begins to settle in her new home, she finds herself being pulled back and forth in time, emerging at a nineteenth-century plantation and confronting secrets she never knew ran through her blood.
Fans of Octavia E. Butler’s 1979 novel can finally look forward to seeing Kindred onscreen, knowing that the source material has enough character complexity and thrills to fill a series. And for audiences who may be unfamiliar with Butler's work, this could serve as the perfect introduction. Butler is the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur “genius” Grant and one of the first African-American science fiction writers to become famous, selling millions of books until her unfortunate death in 2006 at the age of 58. She leaves behind a treasure trove of stories, many of them ripe for adaptation. Apart from this series, HBO is adapting Butler’s vampire novel Fledgling into a series with executive producers Issa Rae and J.J. Abrams and A24 is working on a film adaptation of Parable of the Sower with Garrett Bradley (Time) directing.