There were even a few pleasant surprises during the series premiere, coupled by über frightening scenes that will indeed keep some viewers awake at night. Many of the actors are well cast (Xander Berkeley, 24!), especially Montgomery as Mary who goes from timid village girl to an all-empowering supreme wild thing. My every feeling is she will drive this show forward the most, giving people someone to root for and hate just the same.
Here’s the gripes… Shane West is a man out-of-place. He comes of like a guy that got transported from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Witch Hunt and wound up in the 17th Century. Not that I’m knocking his acting skills or anything, but everyone else is speaking with accents — or with strange, pilgrimish dialect — and he comes off no more than a reverse Sleepy Hollow. And does anyone know when the word “bullshit” was created? Around this era? I don’t think so. Using such modern slang didn’t seem like the right fit for this time period.
Or, hell, maybe I’m just witching.
After the preview screened at WonderCon, Salem had a brief panel and brought out their newest law firm: Braga, Simon and West. The audience was positive in its applause after the preview so the group were met with a warm welcome. Here are some of the highlights:
- Braga and Simon, respectively, on the desire to make the show: “Not a lot has been said in this particular time and place. Once you start to delve through the transcripts of the Salem Witch Trials there’s stuff in there that is far weirder and more horrific than anything I’m seeing out there today.” / “Go back and read about that period and realize everybody believed in witches (even the people who thought the trials were a mistake). Let’s show the world as they perceived it to be. Let’s do this in their consensus reality instead of ours.”
- Braga and Simon, respectively, on the show’s level of fiction: “This isn’t the History Channel. We were inspired by real people and real events but most of it is fictional. This is an alternate reality.” / “John Alden was a real guy. Total American hero. Came back to Salem and was one of the first guys to stand up and say this is wrong only to find himself in the firing line of being accused of [witchcraft].”
- West, on why his character stays in Salem: “His father helped settle this town. He’s one of the first-born of the New World. And the other thing is his love for Mary. He knows he’s not being told the truth.”
- Simon, on bringing more witches into the series: “Witches, like all of us, came here like immigrants. These are the Essex witches. There are German witches too and French witches.”
- Braga, on Isaac the Fornicator: “He’s like the little scarred angel of Salem. He’s a wonderful character. He represents all the pain and suffering the people in the town have endured. Mary really cares for him. He’s the one person Mary connects to before John arrives.”
Salem airs on Sundays on WGN at 10/9c.
(Flip the page for WonderCon coverage on future TNT smash, Legends!)