This story was created in paid partnership with FX.
The FX for Hulu limited series Under the Banner of Heaven is inspired by the true-crime best-seller of the same name by Jon Krakauer that tells the story of a graphic murder that rattled a quiet, insular Mormon community in 1980s Utah — unburying truths about the origins of the LDS religion and the violent consequences of unyielding faith in the process.
Adapted by Oscar winner Dustin Lance Black, the series brings together three different narratives set in three time periods to tell its story.
The first follows the tragedy of Brenda Wright Lafferty (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a woman who had married into a prominent Utah Mormon family and who was found murdered along with her baby daughter in 1984. The second takes place in the 1800s, recounting the journey of the early Mormon church by Joseph Smith and connecting the dots between, as Black explains, “LDS history and the [religious] texts, the rules that history created and this murder. Who was being empowered and why? Who was being pushed down and made small and why?”
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For his adaptation, Black also added a third time period reflective of his own experience while reading Krakauer’s book: a 10-day investigation window of Brenda’s murder by fictional Mormon detective Jeb Pyre (Andrew Garfield) and his non-Mormon partner, Bill Taba (Gil Birmingham), which offered two perspectives in approaching the content.
Throughout the series, the time periods interweave and coalesce to tell one cohesive narrative about how well-intentioned faith can go wrong — and who gets hurt because of it.
Read on for the interview with showrunner-creator Black, production designer Renee Read and costume designer Joseph La Corte
How did you land on the look and feel for each period you wanted to portray?
BLACK: I am very interested in authenticity and getting things as right as possible — that kind of authenticity only aids the thriller aspect of the show, which was necessary for people to actually tune in. The smartest thing a writer and showrunner can do is bring the right artists in to do that.
LA CORTE: We prepared for the aesthetic by researching and diving into the complexities of the Mormon church and the requirements of its members. As the story is set in a small town in Utah in the early ’80s, it’s important to understand that there was no internet or cell phones back then. Not to mention much of Utah was five to 10 years behind in fashion.
READ: We spent large swaths of every day researching. Every object that came to set had to pass several tests: Is it period-accurate? Would this object be in a Mormon home? Would it be in this home in 1836? Does this belong in a Lafferty home? Or in Brenda Wright’s home? Only after passing all those tests would we ask, “Does it actually serve the design of the show?” And then it would be allowed on set.
What did your research process look like?
BLACK: The first year I spent just doing firsthand interviews. Then I started digging through more traditional sources like court transcripts and news articles. I thankfully had wonderful assistants over those years who helped me organize photos into Dropboxes, where you could go into those files and see where people lived, what their home looked like, what they wore.
READ: We underestimated the amount of research that still needed to be done. We had this massive library from Lance that was so enormous and exhaustive, but there was an entire education around the Mormon faith that the rest of us don’t have. We started to look at the historical nuances to honor exactly what happened, because they are very much alive in the consciousness of Mormons today. The Celestial room inside the Salt Lake City Mormon temple is a good example of that as well. We re-created it using rare photographs and firsthand accounts from people. The general public is forbidden from going inside the temple, and it’s reserved for LDS who have proved themselves worthy.
LA CORTE: Temple garments are also extremely hard to come by since they’re sacred and no one has access to getting them unless you are an active member of the faith. Because we had so many different decades, the construction and the fabrics changed over the years, and it took a massive amount of research and prototypes to get all the pieces vetted by a Mormon historian as accurate.
What role did lighting play in shaping the different periods?
BLACK: In Calgary, where we filmed the historical unit work, the sun is very low in the sky for a very short amount of time then, which gives everything in the history unit a subtly distinctive look. There’s not a lot of green, so everything becomes a little more amber. I was absolutely opposed to going sepia tone, but that made it unique.
READ: After I read the script, I was immediately obsessed with light and shadow and how that relates to the themes in this show — of why it’s important this show is made — because this dialogue has been missing and has remained in the shadows. The DPs and I worked very hard to light as many sets with practical lights so that an actor could step in and out of darkness naturally. A good example of that would be the casino set. The crew rigged an entire grid with lights, but by the time we were finished, we were like, “We don’t need to turn it on. We’re just gonna let the set light the actors and let darkness fall.”
BLACK: That casino set is unbelievable. And it’s a set — not visual effects. And near the end of it, Renee walked me up those stairs … I have to be a warrior when I’m running a show. I want to cry every day, but I can’t. And that was one of those moments where I shed some tears on the balcony. Just feeling like we were such a great, creative team. Just tears of gratitude.
