John Alden (Shane West) and Mary Sibley (Janet Montgomery) in Salem's season one finale "All Fall Down." Photo copyright of WGN America.
In 17th century colonial Massachusetts, especially in the town of Salem, it was a very dangerous thing to be seen as being “different” from and by those around you. If your behavior in any way swayed to what the Puritanical government considered the “dark side,” you could be arrested, tried, convicted and put to death for being a “witch.”
At this period in history, witch hunts were at their peak, as dramatized in the hit WGN America TV series Salem. In the series opener, The Vow, ex-prisoner of war John Alden returns home to Salem only to find it as well as the townsfolk caught up in the witch hunting frenzy. Believing that he had died in the war, his former lover, Mary Sibley, who at one time was carrying their unborn child, took drastic steps to safeguard her life as well as her future. Mary’s decision impacts not only her but those around her as well, and events of the past 12 weeks come to a head in the show’s first season finale All Fall Down, airing Sunday, July 13th @ 10:00 p.m EST/9:00 p.m CT on WGN America.
Written by series co-creators/executive producers Brannon Braga and Adam Simon and directed by David Von Ancken, the episode stars Janet Montgomery as Mary Sibley, Shane West as John Alden, Seth Gabel as Cotton Mather, Xander Berkeley as Magistrate Hale, Ashley Madekwe as Tituba, Tamzin Merchant as Anne Hale, Elise Eberle as Mercy Lewis and Iddo Goldberg as Isaac Walton Guest-stars are Stephen Lang as Increase Mather, Christopher Berry as Petrus, Jennifer Griffin and Juli Erickson as the ancient witches, and Oliver Bell as a young boy.
Earlier this week, Shane West and Brannon Braga took some time out of their day to talk with me as well as other journalists about the season finale and hinted at what fans can look forward to in season two of Salem. The following is an edited version of that Q&A. Enjoy!
Mary Sibley (Janet Montgomery). Photo copyright of WGN America.
What type of cliffhanger are we’re going to get at the end of the season?
Brannon Braga: We’re very excited about the season finale, which is a culmination of all the story strands as well as emotional strands that have been building throughout the entire season. It’s pretty spectacular, and what’s really cool is that it’s kind of like five cliffhangers embodied in one episode. Episode 12 (Ashes, Ashes) more or less ended with a pretty great cliffhanger, and John’s and Mary’s story continues in the finale, along with Cotton’s and Increase’s story, the Mercy story, the Anne Hale story, etc. It’s a fairly packed episode, wouldn’t you say, Shane?
Shane West: Definitely. It’s a great way to end the season. We leave so many stories open-ended, and if you’re a fan of the show, in general, you’re going to be excited to see what happens to all these characters in season two. Maybe they all die, who knows? Perhaps the world of Salem blows up and there won’t be a second season. No, no, no, I’m only kidding.
BB: There are a couple of shocking twists that I think people will definitely be surprised about.
Do you already have it planned out as far as where you want things to go in season two?
BB: We have a strong sense of where we’re heading next season, absolutely. I mean, you can’t really talk about the end of season one without kind of knowing where you’re going with some of this stuff. Certainly the studio and the network at certain points were like, “OK, where are you going with this, because this is “crazy.”’ So yes, we’ve already started working on season two.
Cotton Mather (Seth Gabel). Photo copyright of WGN America.
Shane, your character seems really cool when Mary kind of reveals to him what she actually is. Can you talk a little bit about that kind of revelation and how he processes it?
SW: Well, I think what we’re trying to do differently with John prior to his trial and when he discovers that she’s a witch with their kiss, is that he was resigned to the fact that he has lost a lot of his life and he has lost the trust of his town, including the trust of the new friend he has made in Cotton Mather. In his mind it’s all over. John’s tired, and if he has to hang, he has to hang. At this point no one cares or trusts him anymore, so I tried to play him as more exhausted and resigned to the fact as opposed to abrasive and trying to break out physically as he’d normally do, especially at the beginning of the season.
I think with Mary, John’s not a total idiot, you know? He can sense some things; with everything that happens in these 13 episodes of this first season, there’s a lot out there that can clearly drop hints towards her potentially being a witch. What I wanted to play in the first scene was a range of emotions, including a little bit of anger, but a bit more the shock of why couldn’t you just have confided this to me? At the same time, John did the same thing to Mary when he hid his secrets from her, so it’s more a matter of him being upset with himself rather than with the situation.
BB: Just to elaborate on that slightly, too, Shane. He’s going to get moving. John knows that the authorities are going to come after him, and on top of that, he has his own baggage. One of the emotional payoffs to John’s murderous secret is that he and Mary both carry baggage. If anyone on this planet could accept Mary it would be John, but that’s not to say that he’ll accept her unconditionally, and part of season two will be the complete transformation of that relationship, and the renewed stakes emotionally in that relationship will be supercharged, which I think will be super cool.
Mercy Lewis (Elise Eberle). Photo copyright of WGN America.
What can you tease about where John ends up at the end of this season and where he’s headed for season two?
BB: Well, it’s safe to say that John’s life hangs in the balance, his love hangs in the balance, and returning to Salem will not an easy task. Also, what interest do the Indians have in him? They’ve saved him twice now, so there’s a mystery that we’re going to explore out in those woods.
SW: I’m looking forward to that and it’ll be a lot of fun. We’re expanding the boundaries of the town of Salem in season two, I think is what we’re leaning towards, and for more than just with John Alden.
It seems like viewers are going to be in for almost a completely different show thematically for season two; can you give us any hints on that?
BB: I think the show is going to explore the same familiar themes and characters, but at the same time we wanted to up the stakes and, as Shane said, expand the world. There’s a whole country forming out there around Salem, Salem being the epicenter of it all, and whoever controls Salem, perhaps, controls the fate of the country. You’re going to see characters on certain trajectories; some don’t survive, while others are in a state of transformation. We don’t want to stray too far from what this show is at its heart, which is a horror story and a love story. So I don’t see it as so much as a transformation but as an evolution of the natural story elements that we’ve put in place.
Even though Salem is inspired by history, is also has a cautionary tale about revenge. Shane, do you feel John could truly come to terms with the lengths that Mary has gone to survive without him?
SW: I think he could, and I think he has. I mean, he has gone through so much himself. John was in his head most of this season about what he thought was going on with Mary and everyone else that he felt were losing their minds in this town that was his birthplace. When he finds out by the end of this season what Mary has gone though, I think his heart opens up more. His heart was wide open for her right from the beginning, and he was just pushed away the entire season, on and off, and back and forth. Not to give too much away, but when he figures out what’s been going on in Mary’s life, I’m sure he’s open to understanding. She’s the love of his life, so of course he will be.
BB: What I like to is that there’s a great tragic element to their love story, which is that they’re doomed. Even though by the end of this season, they both decided somehow we’ll make this work, the forces of evil, for lack of a better phrase, are pushing them apart yet again.
Anne Hale (Tamzin Merchant). Photo copyright of WGN America.
How much more can you subvert some of the history involved that’s been the groundwork for the show? What else can we start to see in season two? Will we be seeing, for example, more of the Indians?
BB: We feel like we’ve barely scratched the surface. There were things that we hoping to do in season one, but we just ran out of (storytelling) real estate. As I said in interviews earlier on in the season, this point in American history is kind of untapped in that we’ve all seen The Crucible, but what else have we seen. There’s so much more that happened and that we can draw upon. Shane, do you agree?
SW: I do. As far as storylines and where we can go, I feel like it’s pretty endless, especially at this period of time and point in history.
BB: There are so many more characters to meet. We focused on a core group of characters this season, but going forward we want to bring in some new ones as well.
Shane, what we some of the initial acting challenge you found stepping into this role, and how did you see John grow and develop as a character throughout season one?
SW: When I first heard about Salem, I was up in Toronto and still working on (the TV show) Nikita. When I initially read the (audition) sides for John Alden, I looked at the period of time in the history of America that this story took place, and I decided that I was going to make this guy kind of the rough, gruff, first American hero, so to speak. I was obviously predating cowboys and things like but, but I felt that Alden has sort of a John Wayne-ish element to him, and that was where I at least wanted his exterior to be. What made it a little bit more challenging was being able to show the romantic aspect; what John Alden was like with Mary Sibley before in the past and then in the present, and then being able to balance that with my character’s gruff exterior.
Although this is a genre piece, it’s also at its heart a love story, and I think one of the biggest challenges for me was trying to balance both those sides. I was lucky, though, starting in the pilot, that John came in and was able to be more or less like a viewer and react to what the audience was seeing. I got to run into all these colorful characters in Salem and react to how my character might think they’re crazy, how he might be attracted to some of them, how he thinks some of them are insane, etc. It was, in fact, an easier balance, I think, for me, Shane, to get into the head of John than it may have been for some of the other actors and actresses to get into the heads of their characters.
BB: It’s funny, Shane, I actually felt like you had the biggest (acting) challenge, because initially John is, by definition, reacting. Here’s this hero returning home after a long absence and the town has gone mad. So the first episode or two, you’re just kind of like reacting, and that’s challenging in and of itself, at least I figure it must have been.
SW: It’s certainly not not challenging (he jokes), but for me, the way that I’ve always approached acting, in general, is, obviously, one of the best pieces of advice that not all of us do, is to listen and to react. That’s something that I’ve always done as an actor from day one, when I was 17 and starting out, to now. So for me, it was a little bit of an acting class in that sense, to listen, to watch and to react to Cotton Mather, Anne Hale, Mary Sibley, etc.
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