Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/760821
DGA QUARTERLY 49 PHOTO: GUY D'ALAMA/FX For the look of the show, Siega took a cue from the script, riff- ing on Wells' disappointment that the future into which he arrives, while technologically advanced, is far from the harmonious utopia he had envisioned. "When he gets here, he's profoundly disappointed," Siega says. "It's ISIS and war and beheadings. For the look, I didn't want him to get here and have the world be this poppy, glossy world. I'm on ABC; my hands are tied a little bit. But it's slightly desaturated. I pulled a little bit of the color out. I was very specific in the wardrobe and production design to not get very poppy." Choices like these help Siega avoid what he calls "the network meat grinder," where it doesn't matter what you stick in on one end, it's going to all come out in little strings on the other end. An Emphasis on Nuance and Roping the Viewer In S I T S T A R T E D, I WA N T E D t o g e t my Cary Fukunaga [who directed the entire first season of HBO's True Detective] on and just direct all eight episodes of [Queen Sugar]," says Ava Du- Vernay, who recruited a group of female direc- tors to handle the reins after the first install- ment. "Then it became 13, then they ordered a second season of 16." Queen Sugar is based on the best-selling novel by Natalie Baszile, in which two adult siblings—Charley Bordelon West, a single moth- er living in Los Angeles, and Ralph Angel, her troubled brother back home—inherit a Louisiana sugarcane farm after the death of their father. When Winfrey turned her onto the novel and the idea for a series formed, DuVernay—best known for her breakout feature, 2014's Selma—wanted to deliver for black viewers a rare, nuanced family drama, while also establishing a big, dramatic set piece in the pilot without losing viewers early on. (Her one rule for subsequent directors was no inserts, adding that she "wanted directors who came in to feel free to explore and do things with camera or fram- ing that were true to them.") "If you're going to see an independent film, you know what you're signing up for—people talking in rooms," she says. "In television, I was very aware of the fact that folks have got a remote in their hands, and at any moment they can change the channel." In addition to adding an older Bordelon sibling (Nova, a journal- ist-activist and free spirit), she made Charley, the younger sister, the wife of an NBA player living a glamorous, and perfect, Hol- lywood life, all of which comes crashing down when her suppos- edly faithful husband gets caught up in a sex scandal, and Charley storms the court during a game to confront him. "It was really a deliberate move," DuVernay says, asked about her decision to stage a big confrontation between an NBA player and his spouse. "To sit side by side with a desire for people to get to the end of this very leisurely paced series to witness the death of the father. I can't overstate the dearth of nuanced, unheightened, un- A