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Q: I’m curious how Jane Badler, who played Diana in the original V, came to be involved with the V remake. It seems like such obvious stunt casting (although she’s terrific so far). Was it planned from the start — or did they bring her in once the ratings started to flag? — MAGPIE, Toronto, Canada

The Oracle Speaks:

Neither, according to V producer and showrunner Scott Rosenbaum. Despite some reports to the contrary, Rosenbaum tells TheTorchOnline.com that the new character of “Diana,” Anna’s mother, was conceived without Jane Badler in mind.

Mother, daughter, grandmother

“I had this idea at the end of last season about what season two was going to be, and I thought it would be interesting to do a little back-story of the Visitors,” Rosenbaum says. “I started with Anna, and I thought, ‘Does she have a mother?’ I spent some time figuring out who that mother was, why there was conflict between them.”

At this point, Rosenbaum says he still hadn’t even considered Jane Balder for the role, but that he got a message that she was in town and wanted to meet him. “But we hadn’t even started casting yet,” Rosenbaum says. “She didn’t even know there was a role.”

It wasn’t until they were actually chatting that Rosenbaum put two and two together. “She was talking about her kid in Australia, and I was completely zoning out, thinking, ‘She could be Diana!’”

Rosenbaum says Badler auditioned for the role — something Badler confirms.

“There were sixty or seventy very well-known actors who auditioned for that role,” he says. “I was shocked by the names that came in. I didn’t think we’d have such a pool of recognizable actors — some who’d had B+ TV roles. But I chose [Jane] because she was the best. I didn’t do it at all because she was from the original.”

Rosenbaum acknowledges that it turned out to be something of a publicity coup for the show.  “But I didn’t do it because I thought the fans would be excited,” he says. “The thing is, they could’ve reacted the opposite way. You have to just pick the best person.”

Rosenbaum’s story strains credibility a bit — I’m assuming the character wasn’t really named “Diana” from the beginning — but he seemed sincere to me. And he did take over as showrunner partway through the first season, so it’s possible that previous producers were working on casting Jane as well, and Rosenbaum simply wasn’t aware.

Incidentally, why did Rosenbaum decide to make the next series story-arc about three women — Anna, Diana, and Lisa — in conflict?

“I felt like there needed to be more pressure on Anna,” Rosenbaum says. “And there’s an expression I heard years ago that stuck with me. The reason why grandparents and grandchildren get along is because they share a common enemy: the mother! That’s all you need to know about this three-women dynamic.”

Q: I agree with your opinion that prequels are really, really hard to pull off (e.g. Star Wars). So is Spartacus going to do it? How? — E.J., Lake Hope, OH

The Oracle Speaks:

I’ve only seen the first episode, so I can’t say how they’ll do it. But the producers have talked about what they learned from the first season, acknowledging that their storytelling grew stronger as the season went on. Maybe it’s just spin, but what they say is so in sync with how I perceived the first season to be that they’ve convinced me that they really do know what they’re doing.

“From the first episode on, we ratchet up the tension and the stakes,” writer-producer Steven DeKnight tells us in an exclusive interview. “There’s a lot of things that happen in the prequel that inform season one. You don’t have to have seen season one to know what happens, but in true Spartacus fashion, a lot of characters won’t see in the end of the prequel.”

What does DeKnight think of the finished product?

“Honestly, it turned out better than I had ever hoped,” he says. “We really got a chance to go back and flesh out so many of the characters and tell a story that I don’t think we ever would’ve ever been able to tell otherwise.”

In fact, DeKnight says that the existence of the first season, the events of which still lie ahead in the time-line, gave them the major theme of the prequel.

“Your actions will decide your fate,” he says. “It’s something that Batiatus’s father will warn him of, and we draw directly between what happens in the prequel and where it leads him in season one.”

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Five years.

That’s the amount of time that the new six-episode Spartacus “prequel” goes back, in order to tell the story of what happened before Spartacus arrived at Batiatus’ ludus.

Spartacus: Gods of the Arena premieres this Friday at 10 PM on Starz.

At a presentation last week at the Television Critics Association conference in Pasadena, the producers and stars of the show talked about the production, which was originally planned to give star Andy Whitfield time for cancer treatments (he did not respond well, and the part was subsequently recast for season two).

“We basically cut out all the boring parts,” executive producer Steven DeKnight said, describing how they were able to tell a Spartacus-worthy story in a mere six episodes. “We hit the ground running.”

DeKnight admited that the first season of the show was rocky at first, but that those mistakes helped them this time around.

“When we started off [in season one], you know, we went straight to thirteen episodes with no pilot,” he said. “So it was a lot of research and development on the job … And if you look at the first episode of season one and the last episode of season one, you see how far we have come. It was a little bit of everything and the kitchen sink at first. It was just a learning process. And after a couple of episodes, we really found what worked and what didn’t.

“Right when Spartacus really gelled in season one, we were able to start right there from the first episode of the prequel,” DeKnight said.

The prequel tells the story of a new gladiator, Gannicus, played by Dustin Clare, and the way in which he helps Batiatus first make a name for himself.

Many characters from the first season appear, including Batiatus’ wife Lucretia (Lucy Lawless), Barca, Ashur, Naevia, and Peter Mensah’s Oenomaus, but in surprisingly different versions of themselves (Oenomaus is not yet Doctore, for example).

The prequel tells the story of how they came to be the people they are in the first season, for good or ill.

Lawless (left) and Jamie Murray as Gaia

Asked if she liked playing a character younger than herself, Lucy Lawless said, “I love it!”

Whether it was difficult, Lawless said, “It was a rare pleasure actually. That never happens, where you get to go back and fill in blanks and actually find out more about your own character. It was a huge thrill for me. And you get to see our characters when they are in the honeymoon phase of their lives.”

“That was the honeymoon?” John Hannah, who plays Batiatus, deadpanned.

“That was it,” Lawless said. “That was all you get. Hey, come on. It was all right for you.”

Lawless also said that the actors’ performances were “youthened” in editing. “They fix us in post,” she said. “That’s not a lie. But my character certainly was a bit more sort of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed before her rotten college mate came back and taught her all these bad tricks, played by Jaime Murray who plays Gaia. But my character did not abuse the servants in the beginning, and she was devoted to her husband.”

DeKnight promised that the special effects are even better than season one.

“There’s some deaths that are so incredible, you just have to rewind to watch again because you can’t believe what you just saw,” he said. “[Co-creator] Rob [Tapert] and his team have definitely managed to up the ante. And I was stunned by how great some of this stuff looks.”

Did the events of the prequel change any of the events of season two, which was basically written when Whitfield was diagnosed with cancer?

“It was a very unfortunate circumstance,” DeKnight said. “But story-wise, the story [of the second season still is] basically what the story was.”

The actors and producers also responded to questions about whether the charactes of Batiatus and Lucretia will return in season two.

“It was just a flesh wound,” quipped Lawless of Batiatus’ obviously fatal injuries, prompting John Hannah to joke, “I believe that Batiatus does actually have a twin brother who we get to meet later on.”

Lawless, meanwhile, confirmed that she will return in season two

The six-episode prequel series Spartacus: Gods of the Arena begins this Friday at 10 PM on Starz.

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When Andy Whitfield, who played the title character in Starz’ Spartacus: Blood and Sand, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in March 2010, the producers and cable channel responded by giving the actor time to recover: they commissioned a six-episode “prequel” series, which airs later this month, with a different lead.

But Whitfield did not respond well to initial treatment and subsequently had to bow out of the part completely.

Last week, Starz officially announced that the series would have a second season, but the producers have been saying for months that a re-casting was in the works. Deadline reported in November that three actors had been flown to New Zealand to screen-test, but none ended up getting the part, according to the website.

So how is casting going?

Still no decision has been made, which means they’re cutting it rather close, since shooting is tentatively scheduled to begin in April, and if they follow the procedure of the first season and prequel, the actor will require at least a month of training beforehand to get in shape.

“We’ve been seeing a thousand actors,” says the show’s producer (and co-creator) Steven DeKnight in an exclusive interview last Friday. “It’s such a difficult part. We had such a hard time casting it in the first place. And Andy was a roll of the dice – a risk, taking a relatively unknown and making him the star of the show. And he gave a phenomenal performance.”

Nobody can take Andy’s place, DeKnight says. “That’s a given. But finding someone who can carry the show forward, that’s very, very difficult. You’ll find someone who looks right, but doesn’t have the sympathy, or you find someone who has the sympathy, but doesn’t have the body. It’s a very tall order. We’ve got some people that we’re very, very interested in — that are strong, strong possibilities, fantastic actors, they look fantastic. But this is kind of unprecedented where you’re going on with a show and you lose the lead.”

When asked for specific names, DeKnight demures: “They’d kill me.”

“It’s a very difficult decision, and we want to make sure we make the right decision,” he says.

How many episodes are they planning in season two?

“Anywhere from ten to thirteen episodes,” DeKnight says. “It might be slightly less than thirteen, because season two is so much more expensive than season one. It becomes an epic show. The stories we’re planning are gigantic. Without losing the emotional anchor, there’s a lot of big stuff going on once the rebellion breaks out.”

As to where the season will take place geographically, “We will definitely move outside the city of Capua,” he says. “We’ll be Capua-adjacent for season two, then we’ll go farther and farther from Capua to follow history. [The historical figure] Crassus [an historical figure charged with ending the Spartacus-inspired slave rebellion] will probably pop up in season two. We talked about adding Veronus, who is one of the guys who goes after Spartacus, and other guys from history.”

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Q: Oh Oracle! [genuflects]. Many posts here at TheTorchOnline.com have reflected on what constitutes “fantasy.” And you have, thankfully, taken the broadest view. I like that you’ve challenged us to consider, for example, that Star Wars is actually fantasy in disguise as sci-fi (and I agree).  But I wonder if the reverse can be true, and some other stories are only disguised as fantasy, but actually are not. Case in point:  A Game of Thrones, the first of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series, which has been getting a lot of press lately because of the series in production. But the few fantasy elements in this book are so embryonic and unexplored in comparison to the rest of the tale, that they seemed to play no real role. I ended up hypothesizing that Martin had used the fantasy elements to entice an audience he might not otherwise get to read what is actually a work of medieval fiction: actually not fantasy at all. The book was mostly about kings, lords, courts, alliances, betrayals, city-states, battles, and so on. I have not yet read book 2, A Clash of Kings, but I gather it’s more of the same: just a few incidental turns of fantasy amidst great and lengthy medieval machinations. Does the series ever step into the fantasy realm whole-heartedly? Do you think individual books or the series as a whole really qualify as fantasy? – Bob, Durham, NC

The Oracle Speaks:

It’s a fair question.

First, yes, all the books (so far) are like that: mostly medieval character studies and political maneuverings, with the occasional reference to magic and legendary creatures.

That said, there are dragons, kracken, manticores, zombie-like wights, ape-like giants, mammoths, and dire wolves.

And there’s plenty of magic too: in the Guild of Faceless Men (who can change their appearances), the witch Melisandre, and The Others north of The Wall, who clearly command much power.

I’d say this is all more than enough to classify the books as “fantasy.”

Here’s what I think is confusing you (and, it should be noted, many other readers who make the same complaint): it’s not the books’ lack of fantasy elements that make them different from most other works of fantasy — it’s their shocking realism.

Unlike most fantasy, these stories of “yore” are not romanticizing the past in any way — they’re stories told as if magic and monsters, not to mention all the shocking brutality of medieval kingdoms, are absolutely real.

(Indeed, mammoths and dire wolves really did exist on Earth and are, of course, extinct now.)

And what if magic was real? It would surely inspire enormous panic and superstition (as in the books). But at the same, it might require great effort, and would be used only sparingly.

It would basically be very, very mysterious.

The threat of monsters, meanwhile, would be omnipresent and overwhelming. But at the same time, for humans to exist, those monsters would have to have been dealt with in some respect, shunted off to one side, at least in most parts of the world.

That’s the whole point of The Wall, I think: “We gotta block that magic and those monsters out completely!”

This all strikes me as perfectly plausible, given Martin’s realistic take on things.

Martin is also practicing subtly, understanding that sometimes “less is more.” When used sparingly, these fantastical elements have more of an impact when they do appear.

The one very compelling argument in your favor that these are not true works of fantasy is that, in addition to being so realistic, Martin chooses not to have any of his main or POV characters be magic-users (which is another bold break from fantasy convention). This makes magic seem even less “significant” in this world than it already is.

I can’t speak for Martin, but I suspect he’s doing two thing here: (1) deliberately breaking from fantasy conventions (which, let’s face it, need breaking!), and (2) subtly trying to create that “realistic” sense of magic and monsters that his characters feel, by deliberately using these elements sparingly and keeping them at arm’s length.

Q: How is Andy Whitfield doing anyway? — Megan, San Diego, CA

The Oracle Speaks:

In March, Spartacus star Andy Whitfield was, of course, diagnosed with with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, which can rapidly become fatal if untreated.

But Whitfield was treated, and reportedly responded well and has been
given “a clean bill of health.”

“Andy looks better than I have ever seen in my entire life,” says Spartacus executive producer Steven DeKnight. ” He looks fantastic. He’s in great spirits. He’s recovered, he’s training. He’s actually talking about bulking up bigger this year. So yeah, he’s doing great.”

Q:With all the attention being paid to the new Comedy Central show MAD, I can’t help but wonder why anyone cares about MAD Magazine. Does anyone even read it anymore? — Ed, Trenton, NJ

The Oracle Speaks:

You didn’t give your age, but I’m assuming you’re under the age of, say, 35.

For better or for worse, I believe the major influences on comedy over the last thirty years were (1) Saturday Night Live, (2) David Letterman, (3) Jerry Seinfeld, (4) The Simpsons, and (5) Judd Apatow. They’ve shaped the crude but ironic and cynical modern comedy sensibility we now all recognize.

But preceding (and influencing) all of the above was MAD Magazine, founded in 1952 and directly influencing most of today’s top humorists, especially at the peak of their influence in the early 70s, when circulation topped 2 million. Basically, they were ironic, openly cynical, seemingly dumb, but often deceptively smart back in the days of Sid Ceasar and Carol Burnett (who were funny, but irony-free).

Their sensibility became modern humor.

Of course, the magazine and its influence has long since been eclipsed by the work of all the writers and comedians who were inspired by it, which makes the new Comedy Central TV show an homage, at best.

And why is this a fantasy-themed question? Eh, it’s not, except that plenty of fantasy geeks were also devoted readers of MAD and saw both as major antidote to simple-minded provincialism. Me, for example.

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Q: Given all the sex and violence in Spartacus: Blood and Sand, will there be anything new in the “uncut” DVD version? — Wayne, Lakewood, CO

The Oracle Speaks:

“There actually isn’t a ton of stuff on the cutting room floor,” Spartacus executive producer Steven DeKnight recently told a gathering of critics in L.A. “Especially in television, you don’t over-shoot like you will on a film. There are some things, mostly of a sexual nature, on the DVD. One involving — I believe we put this shot back — an extra shot of, if you remember the gladiator Segovax that came to a very painful, unfortunate end when they castrated him at the end of that episode. There is an extra shot of him in there that you might not want to see.”

As for sex, he said, “There’s also in episode, I believe it’s [episode] six, in the gladiator orgy scene, there is some additional material. But  practically everything we shoot ends up on the screen.”

Q: I don’t mean this the way it sounds (or maybe I do!), but why did God create the Tree of Knowledge? He had to have created it — he created everything, right? But he already had that knowledge, so why create it at all? It seems like the whole point was to tempt Adam and Eve — I mean, who doesn’t want knowledge? And why is wanting that a bad thing? Would you invite your friends over, make this incredible-looking chocolate cake, and then say to them, “But you can’t have any!” I’m trying to be fair to God here, but it seems like He was being a major jerk. – Justin, Friday Harbor, WA

The Oracle Speaks:

The sad truth is that God comes off like an off-the-charts jerk in much of the Old Testament – which is precisely why it can’t, and shouldn’t, be taken literally.

The Bible isn’t an historical record: it’s a collection of myths and legends designed to explain a certain philosophical and spiritual point-of-view. (In the pre-scientific, non-rational ancient world, it was also used to explain natural world truths, but using it the same way today, in a post-scientific world, is, well, stupid.)

What philosophical point is the story of the Garden of Eden and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (its full name) trying to explain?

That the world is far from a perfect place and that, seemingly unlike most other creatures on this planet, we are “cursed” to have an awareness of our plight and of our own mortality.

The Tree of Knowledge also represents free will, a fundamental component in most Western religious thinking. In God’s defense in the story, free will is pointless, symbolically and literally, without other choices. Since God gave Adam and Eve free will, he had to give them the option to “opt out” of paradise.

(Although the story doesn’t quite hang together here, does it? Isn’t free will meaningless without knowledge?)

Furthermore, the Garden of Eden story establishes perhaps the most fundamental component of the Judeo-Christian world-view: that human beings are fundamentally flawed and incomplete, and can only be made whole through a relationship with God (and religion).

Incidentally, I personally disagree with most of the points of the Garden of Eden story and its extremely negative view of the human condition: I don’t agree that human beings are fundamentally flawed in needing of salvation, or that human knowledge is a curse, or that the desire for it is a bad thing.

In this Oracle’s opinion, the limited world-view of the Garden of Eden story would infect Western religious thinking for generations to come, with the forces of religion being on the wrong side of almost every intellectual leap forward, before and since the Enlightenment.

And now The Oracle must go lie down. His head hurts. Next week, we go back to talking about Lucy Lawless’s breasts.

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Last week, we reported on Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, the six-episode Spartacus “prequel” series coming in January, created as a result of star Andy Whitfield’s bout with cancer.

But what of the second full season that the producers were already working on when Whitfield’s cancer was discovered?

“The thing about Season 2 is it’s a bit of a different show,” showrunner and executive producer Steven DeKnight tells us. “We start down the path of what most people know about Spartacus — how this rebellion came together. But what always interested me is not that everybody broke out and it was, ‘Rah rah! We’re together! Let’s band together and form an army!’ It’s very contentious. There are a lot of mistakes made. It takes quite a while before they build anything close to an army.”

In other words, if it wasn’t already clear, Starz’s TV Spartacus is a far cry from the version of the story seen in the 1960 Kirk Douglas movie.

“As much as I love the Kubrick/Kirk Douglas movie, [the real history] was not a merry band of people,” DeKnight says. “There was a lot of this faction breaking off and looting and pillaging and then coming back, and there was a lot of infighting. What I take from that, and what I want to illustrate in the show, is that all that infighting comes from personal perspective and people’s desires and passions: some people wanting to be purely free and others wanting revenge. It is all a big mess.”

And, of course, the character of Spartacus will be in the center of the mess.

“One of the things I love working with Spartacus is he’s a hero, but as we’ve seen in Season 1, he doesn’t always do the right thing,” DeKnight says. “He can be reactionary, and he can let his passions drive him, which is something we want to explore. We want to explore how to take this man from that to a true, true leader. We saw a little of that at the end of Season 1.

“Tempers certainly flare quite a bit [in season 2]. Even among heroes there are betrayals, and people who think they are doing the best thing, and people who do the wrong things for the right reasons. It’s a slippery slope. It’s a learning curve for everyone involved in the story.”

What of the first season’s cliffhanger-like ending, where it wasn’t quite clear who was alive and who was dead, especially Lucy Lawless’s Lucretia character?

“I’m of two minds with the cliffhanger season finale [in general],” DeKnight says. “Sometimes it works: I have to go back to Season 2 or 3 of Star Trek: The Next Generation with the Borg and Jean Luc and the cliffhanger ending. But honestly in this day and age with so many channels, you just don’t know if you’re coming back, so my goal with this show is to have a thrilling conclusion to each season, but it’s a conclusion.

“So if it doesn’t come back you can say, ‘Yeah, I would have loved to know what happens next,’ but it’s not like this person is in a burning building and this one is going down in an airplane. Who lived? What happened? I want to put a firm exclamation mark on the end of each season. We’ve got a damn good one coming up in Season 2 and, I think, at the end of the prequel.”

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“We had all these juicy nuggets from Season 1 that we never got to explore,” says Steven DeKnight, the showrunner and executive producer of Starz’ Spartacus series, explaining the motivation behind the six-episode “prequel” series, Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, coming in 2011.

“Of course, the big thing was the chance to have John Hannah [who played Batiatus] and Lucy Lawless [who played Lucretia] together again for six episodes,” DeKnight adds. “I adored working with John, loved writing for him. It was a thrill to do that again.”

Spartacus: Gods of the Arena tells the story of Batiatus’ ludus prior to Spartacus’ arrival.

“We allude to a lot of things in Season 1 that happened in the past but you never see,” DeKnight says. “For instance, we talk about how Ashur was crippled in the arena. We talk about Crixus. And there’s a lot between Thelonius and Batiatus. In Season 1, we just picked up where they hate each other, but where did that come from? You’ve got the whole affair going on between Crixus and Lucretia. How did that come about?”

At one point in the show’s first season, the audience learned that Doctore [played by Peter Mensah] had a wife, but it was only a couple of lines.

“We really wanted to explore that,” DeKnight says. “What happened? You get the feeling that something bad happened but we never say what it was. … We were all very excited to get back in that gladiator world and explore some of these stories, and really bring some of those characters to the forefront that due to time constraints and the weight of the story, we weren’t able to do in Season 1.”

Had star Andy Whitfield not been diagnosed with cancer earlier this year, the prequel probably wouldn’t have existed at all - - although the producers had been considering telling some of these stories in graphic novel form.

“The first thing that happened after all of our concerns was making sure he was okay and giving him enough time to go through treatment and recover,” DeKnight says. “We immediately shut down production in New Zealand. The writers kept working [on Season 2] because we were waiting for the full prognosis and how long the treatment would be. We got close to halfway through the scripts when we got the full prognosis on Andy what the extent of his treatment would be. Cancer is never good, but we were very thankful it was such a strong prognosis.”

Given Whitfield’s expected medical treatment, and given the recovery and training needed to get the actor back in physical shape, the second season had to be pushed to at least summer 2011.

“That would have meant the show would have been off the air 16-18 months, which was obviously a concern,” DeKnight says. “We didn’t want people to forget the show or lose interest.”

The producers’ first idea was doing a two-hour special event.

“I was planning on doing a flashback episode in Season 2 because John Hannah said he loved working with us so much, he graciously said, ‘If you ever want to have me back, let’s see if we can work something out.’ So we were planning a flashback episode, and I figured, ‘Well, why not blow it up into two hours?’”

Starz wasn’t enthusiastic about a two-hour movie. “So [co-creator] Robert Tapert said, ‘Well what about four hours?’” DeKnight says. “Four hours is an odd duck from a writing point of view. You don’t have enough time to build intricate storylines, but it’s too long to do a nice, tight story.”

Finally, Starz gave a counter-offer: how about six hours? “At that point, everybody was in,” DeKnight says. “That’s how the prequel came about.”

Is DeKnight concerned about disappointing fans?

“Oh, absolutely,” he says. “It keeps me awake at night. It’s always very, very dangerous to change the formula that works. It’s a testament to Starz that, even though they had the same jitters, they said, ‘Nope. Creatively we understand what you’re doing, so go for it.’ It is a different show, without a doubt. Will people enjoy it as much? I hope so. I hope they enjoy it more. But it’s definitely a roll of the dice.”

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Robert Tapert (left) and Steven DeKnight

After writing and/or producing stints on Smallville, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Dollhouse, Steven DeKnight knows genre television.

Now DeKnight finds himself ensconced as head writer and executive producer of a show he helped create, Starz’ Spartacus: Blood and Sand.

Last year, when I interviewed Spartacus co-creator Rob Tapert (who also co-created Xena: Warrior Princess), Tapert credited DeKnight with the day-to-day handling of the show.

That was all I needed to know. With the show a solid hit (and having firmly won over most of us here at TheTorchOnline.com), I was eager to do a mid-season check-in with DeKnight, to find out exactly how the show ended up where it did — and get a sense where it’s going next.

TheTorchOnline: You have to be pleased with how the show has been received so far.

SD: Very pleased. Very pleased. It got off to a little bit of a rocky start. The reaction to the pilot was not as favorable as we’d hoped, but working on the show … we very quickly found our footing, and it became a much more complicated, intricate show. The pilot is pretty cut and dry.

TTO: I don’t think the pilot was representative of what the show became. It was the weakest episode.

SD: Exactly. I’ve been very, very please that people have stuck with it. The overriding comment I’ve seen on the internet is that each episode keeps getting better and better.

TTO: I think my favorite theme of the show is that this is a society infused with violence, in the ring, but also in the different social strata. In the palaces and in the streets, among Lucretia and her friends, it’s the same thing that’s going on in the gladiator ring. They’re all having these tournaments, just in different ways. Was there an “Ah ha!” moment when you realized the two halves of the show were two sides of the same coin?

SD: Oh yeah. I mean from the start we’d planned it that way, to mirror the violence in the arena with the violence in the upper strata of the Romans. Just with our research and talking to our consultants, it was just a fascinating culture where they were really raised from birth to not shy away from violence. It’s a republic, and eventually an empire, built on conquest. That’s deeply, deeply ingrained in the people.

Yes, there are some incredibly gory fights in the arena, but there’s also some incredibly violent stuff that goes on in the “civilized” arena of the Romans. You’ve seen in Episode 9 where things go shockingly awry.

TTO: It hasn’t aired yet, so I don’t want to give anything away, but it’s a great episode, with particularly interesting turnaround for Lucretia. Usually when someone is writing about Ancient Rome, they are trying to make a parallel, whether subtle or more obvious, between Ancient Rome and contemporary America. Is that a part of this show?

SD: A very, very subtle one. My first order of business is to tell a rollicking good story. My connection with the present and the past has always been that we went through a large economic downturn, and part of that resulted in something that’s been building for years, the squeezing out of the middle class. Basically, there are the rich and there are the poor. The middle class is slowly disappearing, and the wealth is concentrated among very few.

That’s the one thing I wanted to explore this season, and I think you’ve see it most with Batiatus. The drought is his economic downturn. Here’s a guy in the middle class trying to claw his way up into the upper class, willing to do anything he could to do that. Of course, the slave class, the poor that work for outrageously low wages in modern times, were actual slaves in ancient times with that kind of uprising and revolt against the system.

TTO: That’s one of the other things I like most about the show, the sort of Upstairs/Downstairs quality to it, where the slaves are obviously real people to the viewer, but they’re subhuman to the folks over them. Is that how you, as a contemporary writer, are making a judgment about these Roman characters, by showing us their society through the eyes of the slaves?

SD: Yeah, but at [a recent press event], I mentioned when we eventually bring in Marcus Crassus, we’re going to get a different viewpoint of slavery. Marcus Crassus was the biggest slave owner in Rome at the time and made his fortune.

But the thing about slaves, and the thing we couldn’t really explore and expand on this season because in the ludus they’re just slaves, but it wasn’t always just slavery as we imagine it, beaten and locked in a cage. A lot of slaves were highly skilled craftsmen and artisans, and they were basically working for the master. They had their own homes, they had their own families, but they were not technically free.

As we progress the story, and we bring in Marcus Crassus, I want to explore the other side of slavery in Ancient Rome, and actually give the Roman side of it. The fact is, without these slaves, the society would not have flourished, and without Roman society flourishing, where would modern civilization be?

I remember when I said this at [that press event], the next day I read on the internet, the headline was: “Steve DeKnight Puts A Positive Spin On Slavery.” That’s not at all what I’m saying. But realistically, not all slaves were beaten or tortured or mistreated in Rome.

TTO: One of the most shocking elements is the degree to which people accept the system. Ultimately, where you’re going is that one of them won’t accept the system and will try to overturn the system, but the degree to which the gladiators take on this idea that allowing yourself to be killed is honorable, and if you don’t do it, you’re shamed. Shocking from a modern perspective.

SD: Exactly. They’re so far into that system. For instance, take a look at Barca and Ashur. They are slaves, but they are allowed to go out unchained and do things for their master, and they come back. They don’t just disappear. That’s another mindset I found very interesting. They could just skip out, but they don’t.

TTO: The real chains are in your head, I guess.

SD: Exactly. And that’s something we’ll definitely explore as these seasons continue. Crixus is another great example. In Episode 5, Spartacus really grills him about why are you doing this? Crixus is a very interesting character for me, because he’s completely bought into the system, and by the end, he starts to realize how the system has destroyed him.

TTO: He was eventually Spartacus’s right hand man, wasn’t he?

SD: Yeah. Spartacus, Crixus and Oenomaus led the three factions. It was another interesting thing that I find looking forward, in designing this season, I didn’t want want Crixus and Spartacus to be buddy/buddy, chummy, let’s-go-out-together. These are two men who are trying to find common ground, but will never truly be friends.

Historically, if you look at the record, when they do break out, there was a lot of contention. It wasn’t one big happy band. Crixus sets his goal. Historically, they separate, then come back together. They weren’t always on the same page, which is very important. The last thing I want going in to Season 2 is Robin Hood, everybody together with their Merry Men. It wasn’t like that.

TTO: You’re writing Season 2 now? Where are you and what can we expect?

SD: Yes. We’re on Episode 3. It’s an interesting change. Anybody that knows the history of Spartacus obviously knows where this has to go. I always read on the internet, based on Rob’s work with Hercules and Xena, everybody says, “Well, Rob doesn’t care about history.” That’s absolutely not true. Rob does care about history. We are following the broad strokes of the Spartacus story. We can’t be slaves to every detail of what happened. I’m sure you’ve heard many times: We bend history, but we try not to break it.

But this is the story of Spartacus, which is a slave rebellion, so we will be exploring that.

TTO: Do you have a five year plan? A seven year plan? How long is it going to take you to tell this whole story?

SD: I have a five to seven year plan. Definitely enough for five. It could go longer, depending on Starz and the viewership, but definitely at least five planned out. There are so many great moments in the Spartacus story and in history that I’ve never fully seen explored. I also really want the chance to explore the “villain’s” side. The Romans didn’t think they were the villains. They thought Spartacus was the villain. That’s something I really want to explore.

Moving forward, and this will be gradual thing, is not all Romans are bad. Even Batiatus, yes, he’s bad, but he has many different shades to him.

TTO: He has a point of view, but boy, when he promised Spartacus that he’d be reunited with his wife… It hits you like a slug in the gut when you realize the true evilness of that character. His code of honor is such that he’s technically fulfilling the promise he made to Spartacus even as he’s killing this guy’s wife.

SD: Batiatus is looking at a big picture. The thing I love about that character is that he is consumed by trying to get out of his father’s shadow and not being the guy that ruins the family business. That, for him, is just the overreaching goal. It becomes more and more prominent as we go on in the series.

TTO: I confess that I’ve already been shocked many times by this show.

SD: The fantastic thing about Starz is that they let us go to places a lot of other shows won’t go to.

TTO: As a result, the experience for the viewer is that you really don’t know what’s going to happen. Anything can happen, and that’s so rare to be able to say about television.

SD: Anything can happen and anybody can die. We definitely continue that moving on.

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In a presentation today at the annual Television Critics Association conference in Pasadena, the producers and stars of the upcoming series Spartacus: Blood and Sand emphasized that it pushes the limits of what’s been seen on television, with graphic violence and plenty of sex and nudity, but that it’s all in the service of a well-told story involving compelling characters.

“Nudity?” said co-star Lucy Lawless after being asked if she gets naked in the the first season. “I’m afraid so. Not entirely, no, and I’m kind of praying that day never comes.”

According to executive producer and co-creator Rob Tapert, “There’s a great deal of nudity, both male and female, and some guys are not as well endowed as others, so we had to create [a prosthetic penis which we called] the ‘Kirk Douglas’ so that certain actors would have [something] they could wear and feel comfortable.”

The prosthetic penis was named in honor the star of the classic 1960 movie, Spartacus, he said with a laugh.

As to which actors did or didn’t wear it, “We can’t give away our trade secrets,” he said.

The Starz network actioner, debuting January 22rd, tells the story of the rebel slave Spartacus who led a revolt against the Roman Empire in 73 BC. The show, which has a reported budget of $2 million an episode, approaches feature film quality, the producers said.

“When Rob and Joshua [Donen] came up with the idea, I was fascinated by it,” said executive producer Sam Raimi. “[The story of Spartacus] is such a great story, and only some of it is recorded, from the point he became a leader of this rebellion. Before that, no one really cared enough about this poor slave to record anything. … It’s the story of a man who was deemed worthless and found great stuff within him. The stuff of great drama.”

Lawless was asked if she was drawn to the project because it’s a period piece, much like her break-out show, Xena: Warrior Princess.

“I never think about the costumes, never about that,” she said. “It’s about the role and the company you’re in. I nearly didn’t take the role, I was so nervous. I was so happy living in LA, and [by returning to New Zealand, where the show is filmed], I felt like I was going back to Idaho or something. But the role is such a knock-out. Brilliant women’s relationships, very deadly, very subtle. Subtle and deadly, that’s what attracts me.”

Later, she added with a laugh, “Were you surprised to hear me use the word ‘subtle’? I’ve been deadly before, but not often subtle.”

Tapert acknowledged that the look and style of the show, much of which is created using green-screen technology and CGI backgrounds, is already being compared to the movie 300, which used the same technology.

“[300 director] Zach Snyder brought that hyper-realistic style to a period piece,” he said. But “Sin City prior to that had been all-digital backgrounds, along with other shows from Blue’s Clues all the way to Sanctuary. What 300 did so well was make a great deal of money.

“It was easy to point to that and say, it worked in that style,” he added. “It allowed us to actually bring this [elaborate, effects-heavy story] to the screen. There was no way to do it without the artifice, so to speak.”

Several of the participants emphasized that the general tone of the show is very different from that of Xena, on which Lawless, Tapert, and Raimi all worked.

“There’s no nudge-nudge, wink-wink,” Lawless said. “Tonally, it’s like nothing else I’ve done. It’s very real.”

“Spartacus was really a chance to be part of something that was entirely different than what Hercules and Xena was,” Tapert said. “It’s serious, it always tries to be genuine, it’s part of a natural [creative] evolution.”

As for the intense action scenes and graphic violence, head writer Steven DeKnight said, “Everyone knows that action is just a component, a tool that allows you to have a resolution happen differently. You still have to have great drama. This is a show that has action, blood, and sex, all the things you don’t see on network television. But all of that is just the initial wave behind which really good drama is waiting.”

“[The characters] don’t run along the same mores as we have,” Lawless added. “We strikes me [about the time in history] was the singular lack of empathy, and humans are just chattel, and it’s all about status, and if you’re of low status, I can kill you tomorrow. High stakes for people of low status and even for those of higher status.”

Twelve of the show’s first thirteen-episode season have already been filmed.

Renee O’Connor, Lawless’ co-star on Xena, will not make a guest appearance, at least in the first season. “Once Lucy’s there, it’s just not appropriate, that makes it a different thing,” Tapert said. But the show does make use of many of the same behind-the-scenes crew from that show.

“The time we were doing Hercules and Xena, that was a very special time,” Tapert admitted. “And we knew at the time that that would never happen again. We had pretty much untold creative freedom, we could do musicals and comedies.”

With Spartacus, he says, they have a different kind of freedom, including a network that is encouraging them to push limits.

“I [once] said to myself, ‘We’ve gone too far,’ and the executives from Starz got the director on the phone and said, ‘You haven’t gone far enough.’ And so the director said, ‘Now I’m gonna show them!’”

As for the crew he worked with before, “They know this is a different ride, entirely different than Hercules and Xena, but will boldly go where no one has gone before. Action is just a component, it just builds the characters, rather than stops to show you an action scene. What I’m happiest about is that it’s a well written show.”

“With an amazing new star,” added Lawless, referring to Andy Whitfield, who plays Spartacus.

Might the show have a musical episode as Xena once did? “I did Viva Laughlin,” DeKnight quipped, referring to a 2007 musical series that was a notorious bomb. “I don’t think they’ll be any musicals.”

Other than the behind-the-scenes joke about the prosthetic penis, does the series include references to the classic 1960 film? “I was blown away by [that movie] when I saw it as a kid, and then when I was older, I realized what it was really all about,” DeKnight said. “You will hear [the classic line] ”I am Spartacus,’ but it’s very different.”

The trailer for Spartacus: Blood and Sand