While it made us excited for the series’ premiere on April 11 and reminded us why we love Wynton Marsalis, the teaser trailer for HBO’s Treme didn’t provide much information about Wire creator David Simon’s latest drama. All we really knew for sure: It would be set in post-Katrina New Orleans and it had to do with musicians. The TV gods (otherwise known as the 2010 Winter TCAs) must have heard our prayers, because today Simon shed some new light on what the show will cover.
Find out what specifics we’ve learned after the jump.
- It’s about 10 people living in New Orleans three months after Hurricane Katrina — so the fall of 2005.
- John Goodman was recently added to the original pilot. He plays a college professor and husband to a local civil rights attorney played by Melissa Leo.
- Wendell Pierce (Bunk from The Wire), a New Orleans native, will play Antoine Batiste, a musician trying to make a living and reconnect with his family.
- Others in the cast include Steve Zahn (Davis Rogan, “a rebellious” radio disc jockey), Kim Dickens (Janette Desautel, a popular chef), Khandi Alexander (Ladonna Batiste-Williams, a bar owner and Antoine’s ex-wife), Clarke Peters (Albert Lambreaux, a “displaced Mardi Gras Indian chief”), and Phyllis Montana LeBlanc (a real life survivor featured in Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke).
- There will be musical guests, including Allen Toussaint, Dr. John, Elvis Costello, Steve Earle, Kermit Ruffins, Donald Harrison Jr., Galactic, Trombone Shorty Andrews, Deacon John, and the Rebirth and Tremé Brass Bands.
- The major theme is re-building, but it will also deal with issues like education and crime as the show progresses.
- It’s not just devastation porn. Simon says: “New Orleans, to me, represents a place where it’s a triumph of American urban culture. It’s what — it’s the best that an American city can be and also the worst in a lot of ways, as I said before, but it has created a culture that has gone around the world.”
- Pierce thinks that New Orleans natives will be happy with the show because, “David and Eric (Overmyer) had a unique ability to find the specificity in a culture and depict it in a way that was authentic [on The Wire]. And so that’s happening, and that’s evident, and I’m happy about that. New Orleanians are very protective about their culture, and I think they would be happy about the specificity in the show.”
Comments (6)
can’t wait!
I’m a three centuries native New Orleanian, and I’m not holding my breath. Just looking at the casting it’s dubious. The real social structure here will be homogenized into White Bread American, John Goodman is a good actor but not one of us, and having been here at three months I promise, no film crew can recreate the uber weirdness. It would require a major film budget- and I’m not talking about wrecked houses either. Still got plenty of those.
Then there’s the really quite minor Ninth Ward, which is a teeny fragment of the city and had no worse destruction than Lake View or Holly Grove. It just happened to be where the press went to exploit one little group of people. The white Granmas who swam for their lives in deeper water? Nobody talks about them.
But damn we’re tired of hearing about the Ninth Ward when the same things happened all over town. And no lines about diverted FEMA rent checks for cars please? We got called enough ugly things by Pat Robertson, then those jerks at FOX stir that pot on their post K show by writing in criminal activity with government granted rent checks. That were actually needed folr inflated rents! And then an “upper class” that doesn’t exist here. We have Nice Old Families. Black and White. Los Angeles white collar crimes don’t occur to people here. We live in genteel poverty, not tit implant greed.
How are you going to explain Indian Chief to Americans? To give this culture a gloss insults it. You have to come here and smell the Gulf salt in January’s warm humid air to catch a clue. And the very thought of Fake Mardi Gras makes me want to retch….
If David Simon is involved, I’m watching. The Wire was the best show I’ve ever seen.
Cook
I have lived in New Orleans and volunteered with the Red Cross when Katrina hit. I know New Orleans, and I have seen and read much of Simon’s work…this will not be the ignorant show you think it will be.
Before Simon’s The Wire, there was Homicide: Life on the Street. Nothing tops that show in regards to script (at least through season 5, latter seasons were still good, but not AS good)!
Looking forward to checking out this new show as well.
It takes a lot of nerve, and talent, to create a show AFTER katrina! Looking forward to it.
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