A Chat with Castle Rock Writer Marc Bernardin

It is not often that you get a chance to have your longtime obsession cross paths with your social life. When it does, it can produce beautiful and nerdy results.

Stephen King has been a part of my life since the bright young age of 8 (not normal, but hey, that’s life) and when I first heard of the project called Castle Rock a place mentioned throughout King’s work, I was filled with intrigue. It was not long after that I had come to find that writer and co-host of Fatman on Batman, Marc Bernardin would be a writer for the show. Marc and I were first introduced last year by way of a playlist on Spotify that I curated. I had also been a fan of his writing and Fatman on Batman for a while. Fast-forward to the era of Black Panther hype and I was once again in contact with Marc to create graphics for related events happening in LA. He reached out after #WhatBlackPantherMeansToMe went viral and has been a very silent mentor (in my head) in a way for me. So getting the chance to chat with him at San Diego Comic-Con about his new show was a dream come true.

 

Kayla Marie: What first brought you on to the project?

Marc Bernardin: Well, it’s a long, twisted story which involves me being at Entertainment Weekly. I was the editor there for 13 years, then for [two of those years] I had an assistant, Scott Brown, who was the worst assistant. Like, kept messing up scheduling, he could never get expenses right, but he was a phenomenal writer, and we all sort of knew it. It was one of those, “Yeah, you’re gonna be the one.” And when I leave here, they’d say, “Well he hired Scott Brown, so that made it, okay.” He would then be the [New York Magazine] theater critic, he wrote the Beetlejuice musical that will be on Broadway soon, he was on the first 3 seasons of Manhattan where he started working with Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason, who were then running Castle Rock. He was gonna be in that room. And they were looking for a nerd because they realized that they needed one. They all came from story writers and prestige TV, nobody was a deep King fan. Scott was already on the job said, “You need to read this guy,” and so he slid them a script, and then I get a call: “Can you go to Bad Robot for a meeting?” I put on my fanciest duds, and I go and do a little tap dance and three weeks later, I come to work.

KM: That’s fantastic! So what was your first introduction to Stephen King’s work?

MB: I’m a wimp. So it was never the scary stuff, it was never like… I still haven’t read IT. I’ve read The Tommyknockers… I read Carrie, because that felt like the one you’re gonna do. I eventually read The Shining, but Eisner the Dragon that was my very first Stephen King book. Because I was a Tolkien nerd and it was like, “more fantasy?!” And then on from there,  Firestarter and from there to The Stand and the stuff that’s not quite so scary. And the short stories collections which are awesome. But yeah, it was never, like, being scared at 3 o’clock in the morning in my bedroom.

KM: I remember my first introduction. I was actually 8 and this was a huge argument between my parents. I vividly remember them yelling at each other, ’cause my dad brought me The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. It wasn’t necessarily scary, but I felt like I could take it and it terrified me. So yeah, I feel like that’s a good introduction to it and a lot of people don’t realize that King’s work is very nuanced, it’s not so much that it’s scary. Just kind of makes your mind think.

MB: Yeah, one of the things we spent a lot of time in the room talking about was what makes Stephen King’s stories work. Why is he the most prolific and popular horror writer ever? And we eventually discovered that it’s because he’s a character writer, but he is the most unheralded character writer in American letters and you fall in love with his books because of these characters, and then he crashes into those character stories with demon dogs and haunted cars and evil hotels, all of that stuff. But it’s, who are these people and why do you care about these people? And the inner lives of these characters are fascinating and awesome. And so we just have to copy that.

KM: So what was that like going into it, knowing the precedent behind the work, what is that feeling like?

MB: I can’t speak for Sam and Dusty, who were wrestling with it far longer than we were in the room. They pitched it to Bad Robot a year before we got to work. I think that it was daunting knowing how much I love Stephen King and how much the world loves Stephen King and knowing we have to get it right and it has to feel right even though we weren’t adopting any one story. And we weren’t dealing with any specific characters from the work and then you eventually plan to bring in Alan Pangborn and other people who you’ll see later on, with Shawshank being a big part of the series. But it was always like, we gotta get it right it because they’ll know. The fans will know and we talked very early like listen, If we find ourselves having to King-splain King to King fans, it’s not a good look. No one will respond to that.

And look, the most popular Stephen King properties are not the horrors, it’s the Stand By Me, it’s Shawshank, It’s Misery. The Shining is great, but it’s like the one that everybody knows. It’s the ones you’re surprised to know its Stephen King. That was another sort of light to navigate.

KM: When it came to picking how you wanted to tell that story and how you wanted to frame it around Castle Rock, how did you approach that?

MB: [When] we went in, it was about the characters and the character of Henry Deaver. It was about this idea of this kid whose father died under mysterious circumstances that he was blamed for his entire life, he has always been an outsider and he was a Black kid in lily-white Castle Rock, Maine. And then what that experience is like, always having eyes on you for reasons out of your control. And what drives you away from that town and what attracts you back? As long as we can keep telling that story, we can begin attaching people to the spine of that story. Like this is his path and then who’s colliding with that path, what are their motives and motivations and what do they want from him, what does he want from himself that he doesn’t yet understand, and how did the people in his life deal with him returning to the town that wants to forget him. How does he affect their lives, as a whole?

KM: So there are a lot of nuanced stories, especially within the horror genre being told by a people of color. For you, how does that feel coming on to this project and being able to bring yourself into it?

MB: It’s hard to think from the inside, because I have been the diversity hire before. I was not the diversity hire on this one. And so I wasn’t brought on because I needed to be like Black guy to help us tell the Black guy story, which is great. In fact, I have to remind people that we CAN tell the Black guy story, especially today. People are a bit afraid of getting into it. No, we can get into it to and we should. I definitely felt a sense of responsibility as we all do, when we’re the one in the room and being able to find a way to still do the good work while not buckling under the weight of the responsibility. But genre is always about the world around, it’s always a reflection of the world we live in, and the fact that horror and science fiction can do that so well. And we’re at a time where we need to be talking about people of color in places they’ve never been before. I think that it’s cool to every now and again swing at that pitch and help make sure that it feels right.

KM: I think that’s good because with Andre coming on as the lead, we had The 4400 and The Dead Zone where the lead was typically a white male. So this is very unique and I think that’s what was exciting for me and seeing him on the screen. It’s like that instant connection.

MB: There was a moment I went on set for my episode, shooting in the middle of nowhere, Massachusetts, doubling for Maine. And the director is Kevin Hooks, who used to be an actor. So it’s Andre Holland, the star of this high-end, prestige cable drama, a Black director of this episode of this high-end, prestige cable drama and me, a Black writer on this high-end, prestige cable drama. We’re all like, “this has never happened before.” So we all just took a moment. Like, “do you realize where we are?”

Castle Rock premiered July 25th on Hulu with the release of the first three episodes. With the success of IT and Netflix’s Gerald’s Game, expectations were high and, for many, immediately met. With fully fleshed out characters and an excellent script, even those who are unfamiliar with King’s work outside the more popular titles have found the show entertaining and easy to follow. Andre Holland’s portrayal of Henry Deaver leaves the viewer on edge at the close of every episode.

 

About the Author

When she’s not busy saving the world one panel/cosplay/comic book at a time, Kayla Marie is a freelance social media curator and writer. She doesn’t sleep between live tweets, convention appearances, and podcast recordings. Human mom to a nerdy and rambunctious 8 year old, fur mommy to a dog and 2 cats, life is nuts. But she wouldn’t have any other way.