The television adaptation of Y: The Last Man will spend a bit of time on world-building before it gets to the heart of the main dilemma — every male on Earth but two have suddenly died.
Showrunner Eliza Clark said the 2002-2008 60-issue Vertigo comics series, co-created by writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Pia Guerra, presents a jarring situation, but viewers need to get to know the characters. “I definitely do [want the big time jumps]. I think that’s part of what’s so fun about the book, is that it gives you the opportunity to play with time, play with genre. I love the way Brian drops you into the world, and you have to figure out where you are,” Clark said in an interview with Polygon. “But I felt like the first season needed to be about who the characters were, and what they had become. I felt like sticking with them was important, so the audience could see those changes.”
Clark also is doing more than the comics in terms of characterization. As main protagonist Yorick Brown (Ben Schnetzer) and his pet monkey Ampersand — the only two survivors of a mysterious plague that kills every mammal on Earth with a Y chromosome — travel the United States, they are pursued by and protected by women with various agendas. Clark wants to present these characters, especially transgender and gender-nonconforming people, in their full intricacy.
“I was so interested in getting past that binary way of thinking. I never wanted the story to feel like ‘Women are from Mars and men are from Venus.’ People are just so much more interesting than that, and the way women treat each other is really interesting to me,” Clark said. “And the relationships women have to other women are fraught and complicated, and romantic, and beautiful.”
Y: The Last Man will premiere its first two episodes on Sept. 13, exclusively on FX on Hulu. The season will feature 10 episodes in total. The post-apocalyptic drama wrapped filming on the first season in July, which was shot entirely during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Y: The Last Man is produced by Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson’s Color Force (Pose, American Crime Story). Based on DC’s Vertigo series by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, the show stars Ben Schnetzer, Olivia Thirlby, Ashley Romans, Diane Lane, Laura de Carteret and Missi Pyle.
Source: Polygon
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