'Game of Thrones' creators respond to 'alternative-history show' backlash

There was nothing unexpected about the furious Twitter response to HBO's forthcoming Confederate, a drama in which the slaveholding American south won the Civil War.

Executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (of Game of Thrones) and Malcolm and Nichelle Spellman expected it all along, and spoke to Vulture on Thursday about their instantly-controversial show.

“You’re dealing with weapons-grade material here," Malcolm Spellman recalls telling his colleagues in an early meeting.

First of all, it's worth noting that in Confederate, the South didn't win the Civil War -- it's just that the North didn't.

"It was a standstill," explained Malcolm Spellman. "They maintain their position, the North maintains theirs."

"It goes without saying slavery is the worst thing that ever happened in American history," Weiss said. "It’s our original sin as a nation. And history doesn’t disappear. That sin is still with us in many ways. Confederate, in all of our minds, will be an alternative-history show. It’s a science-fiction show. One of the strengths of science fiction is that it can show us how this history is still with us in a way no strictly realistic drama ever could, whether it were a historical drama or a contemporary drama. It’s an ugly and a painful history, but we all think this is a reason to talk about it, not a reason to run from it. And this feels like a potentially valuable way to talk about it."

Benioff and Weiss reached out to the Spellmans, who they had known for 10 years, because they knew they needed black writers and producers if they wanted to do this right.

"There is not going to be, you know, the big Gone With the Wind mansion," said Nichelle Tramble-Spellman. "This is present day, or close to present day, and how the world would have evolved if the South had been successful seceding from the Union. And what was also exciting to me was the idea that in order to build this, we would have to rebuild world history … Okay, if this had happened here, how did the rest of the world change? That was another huge bonus factor for me — the idea of rewriting some of the history of, like, the French Revolution. What happened in the entire world if that one event had ended differently?"

The show description states that in the present day, the divided States are in a third Civil War. The endurance of slavery means an enduring enmity between the nations north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line; Confederate's producers imagine 20th- and 21st-century civil wars in addition to the one in history.

The team also clarified that they haven't written any scripts yet. They don't even have character names, so it's a relatively blank slate.

"People don’t have to get on board with what we’re doing based on a press release," Malcolm Spellman added. "But when they’re writing about us, and commenting about us, they should be mindful of the fact that there are no sellouts involved in this show. Me and Nichelle are not props being used to protect someone else. We are people who feel a need to address issues the same way they do, and they should at least humanize the other end of those tweets and articles."

You can see some of the original Twitter reactions below:

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You can read the full interview on Vulture.