Kurt Sutter spoke with Vulture to promote Southpaw, but he talked a lot about The Bastard Executioner instead. Sutter looks forward to returning to the small screen as the most depraved showrunner in town. He revealed some things we already know (“I’m really drawn to broken and conflicted heroes”) and a few semi-surprising tidbits. For one thing, Sutter isn’t planning on staying loyal to the “traditional Old English speech” because he thinks it sounds “goofy.”
Sutter admitted how the success of Sons of Anarchy gave him a lot of leeway when formulating this new show, but he swears it won’t be a formulaic endeavor:
“[FX president] John Landgraf, who I have a great relationship with, and we had talked about this project and his only concern with The Bastard Executioner was that he wasn’t sure if people would want to watch something where there was a head in the basket every week. And I said, ‘I know.’ It won’t be like a CSI: Wales. It won’t just be a formula and every week we have to find who owns the head.”
So there won’t be a weekly head in the basket, but was that the original title?
“That’s right, The Head in the Basket. But we’ve figured out an interesting way in, and how to work in the rebellion that was going on in Wales at the time, which, you know, ended up being great external pressure for our characters in the world. That all sort of happened in a really symbiotic way.”
What an excellent working title for a series, although it doesn’t sound very badass. At least the titular character won’t spend all his airtime chopping people’s heads off like a procedural show. (It’s bad enough how the third season of SOA turned into “Spring Break in Ireland.”) If the The Bastard Executioner trailer is any indication, this show will be one to dissect for years to come.
(Via Vulture)
