Yahoo News Barry Jenkins on ‘The Underground Railroad,’ Then and Now
Barry Jenkins’ 10-episode limited series “The Underground Railroad” is a modern masterpiece. Many said as much when it first debuted, back in May 2021, and many more have discovered its incomparable beauty, power, and grace in the years since. On June 25, The Criterion Collection will recognize the series by releasing a four-disc Blu-ray set — marking its physical media debut — complete with audio commentary by Jenkins, his companion film “The Gaze,” deleted scenes, making-of featurettes, a graphic novel adaptation of an unfilmed episode, and more.
Being featured in a collection as prestigious as Criterion’s — which Jenkins himself compared to the Library of Congress, saying, “This is where films go to live forever” — will undoubtedly introduce “The Underground Railroad” to even more viewers. It deserves them, just as it deserves to join the exclusive collection featuring heralded titles (with ties to TV) like “Dekalog,” “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me,” and “Small Axe.”
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What it doesn’t deserve is to be interrupted with commercials. Just as “The Underground Railroad’s” original premiere on Amazon Prime Video frustrated some supporters by dropping all 10 episodes at once (rather than spreading them out over weeks or months), its current availability via streaming is marred by advertisements — ads that weren’t there three years ago; ads that Jenkins and the rest of his team never knew would be tossed into their adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel; ads that were thrust upon Amazon subscribers as the default option to a paid streaming plan that had always previously been ad-free.
“I have not seen that, and I don’t want to see it. I have not seen that, and I don’t want to see it. I’ve not seen that, and I don’t want to see it,” Jenkins said in an interview with IndieWire, his misgivings escalating with each repetition. “Watching the show in a theater, that’s a great venue to watch the show. Then you step away from that, watching it at home on a screen, watching it on an app, etc. — [they’re all great ways to watch.] Watching it with commercials… where they would go, what they would be about, I can’t imagine.”
In a separate interview, Jenkins’ romantic partner and fellow filmmaker Lulu Wang — who directed and co-wrote the 2024 limited series, “Expats” — said she asked Amazon executives to remove ads from a specific episode.
“The commercial breaks were rolled out after [‘Expats’ was released],” Wang said. “I never knew they were going to do that. So obviously, I’m not thrilled about it, but I did talk to Amazon about the fifth episode. I said, ‘Look, guys, this was always meant to be a film. Do you guys put commercial breaks in the middle of your movies?’ And they don’t. They’re only putting [them] in the middle of television series. So that was my excuse. I said, ‘Well, the fifth episode is a feature and I want people to experience it as a whole. You can’t intercut.’ So they actually gave that to me. They allowed me to do the fifth episode without any commercials in the middle.”
The same argument wouldn’t apply to “The Underground Railroad,” but Jenkins isn’t worried. He holds no ill will toward Amazon, for past collaborations or the present alterations, preferring to take the long view when it comes to trends in media consumption.
“The first time I watched ‘Die Hard’ was probably on a television with commercials. And I remember —because back then you couldn’t fast-forward [through commercials] — I would run to the kitchen and get some water or get some Kool-Aid, and then run back to not miss anything,” Jenkins said. “So it kind of is what it is. I’ve had the experience of sitting in a theater watching this entire show with an audience, and I’ve also had the experience of sitting in a booth watching it for this Criterion release. So it exists in all these different formats, however people want to engage it.”
For as tempting as it is to say the Criterion release arrived just in time (Prime Video only added commercials in January 2024), that’s not Jenkins’ position. The Oscar winner behind “Moonlight,” “If Beale Street Could Talk,” and “Medicine for Melancholy” (who also produced the latest season of “True Detective: Night Country”) just seems happy that his work is out there to be found. Surely, someone who falls in love with his next movie (“Mufasa,” the highly anticipated prequel to “The Lion King”) will seek out more from the finely dressed, oft-laughing cinephile — a cycle that should repeat for the rest of his career. In our Zoom interview, Jenkins touched on everything from how supportive Amazon executives were of “The Underground Railroad’s” Criterion release, to his current feelings about that old release controversy, and whether he would come back to TV, given the current state of the industry.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
IndieWire: How did the process of “The Underground Railroad” joining the Criterion Collection start? What were those conversations like?
Barry Jenkins: We were doing “Medicine from Melancholy” [for the Criterion Collection], and I think “Underground Railroad” came up in conversation. I was like, “Oh yeah, but that’ll never happen because it’s at a streamer.” They’re like, “No, no, it can definitely happen.” And I was like, “Oh, OK. Well… I would like that to happen.” So we just started working on it.
Criterion has released other Amazon Prime Video films (including “One Night in Miami,” “Sound of Metal,” “Nanny,” and “Small Axe”). Was there any hold-up from them this time?
No, no hold-up. They were game from the jump. This show, on the platform, I don’t think it was as watched as they wanted it to be or hoped it would be given the resources that we put into it. It did make the Nielsen charts the first two weeks it was out, but only the first two. Maybe the all-out release wasn’t the best thing for it.
But [Amazon] wants it to be seen. So the moment that myself and Criterion approached them about it, it was a quick and easy yes. Whether that’s because the Criterion [release] will drive views back to the platform, I don’t think so. I think they just felt like, “Yeah, we would love for this thing to be seen as widely or as much [as possible,] or whatever way people feel they should.” So respect to them for that.
Thinking back to when it came out, is there anything you wish would’ve been done differently? You mentioned the all-at-once release being an issue, which was something critics were very vocal about at the time.
Oh no, I know! It’s funny, people talked more about the show being released as a binge than they did about the show itself. I do think there was a moment where we were debating weekly [vs.] binge and then this sort of [hybrid release where] we’d roll it out over a month — two or three episodes [at a time.] For a while, that was going to win out. We were going to release a couple episodes [each week] over four or five weeks, I think it was. And yeah, if there’s anything [I would’ve done differently]… But there’s no do-overs in life.
Always, first and foremost, make a fucking great thing. Make a great show, make a great short, make a great film. You cannot control [the rest.] I have friends who’ve made absolutely amazing things that just don’t penetrate. Sean Baker just won the Palme d’Or — holy fucking shit. Everybody, every American, everybody on the globe should be watching the work of Sean Baker, and now because of this thing, perhaps they will. So just make a great thing. The release, this and that, for the career, I do have to be concerned about those things, but it is what it is.
It’s interesting. We showed the entire show in March at the University of California, Berkeley, at the Pacific Film Archive. We showed the whole thing in a theater, including “The Gaze.” It was awesome. I made a set of [Digital Cinema Packages] just for that. I was like, you know what? I’m not Christopher Nolan. I’m not going to make a whole set of 35 millimeters, but I made a set of pristine DCPs just for that screening. The Criterion announcement happened, I believe, that week, and it was like, you know what? This thing that we made, it exists. And even beyond the moment [it first premiered,] it exists and there’s nothing different about the content held within. So yeah, I’m good with it.
I went to Prime Video to try to look at a few scenes, because the Criterion Blu-ray hadn’t arrived yet, and I forgot about the ads, which are now the default viewing option. So ads are going to play twice or more during each episode of “The Underground Railroad.”
I have not seen that, and I don’t want to see it. I have not seen that, and I don’t want to see it. I’ve not seen that, and I don’t want to see it. Watching the show in a theater, that’s a great venue to watch the show. Then you step away from that, watching it at home on a screen, watching it on an app, etc. — [they’re all great ways to watch.] Watching it with commercials… where they would go, what they would be about, I can’t imagine.
And yet, the first time I watched “Die Hard” was probably on a television with commercials. And I remember — because back then you couldn’t fast-forward [through commercials] — I would run to the kitchen and get some water or get some Kool-Aid, and then run back to not miss anything. So it kind of is what it is. I’ve had the experience of sitting in a theater watching this entire show with an audience, and I’ve also had the experience of sitting in a booth watching it for this Criterion release. So it exists in all these different formats, however people want to engage it.
What is the significance to you of having not only a physical release of “The Underground Railroad,” but a Criterion release?
Especially in the time that I came up, [when I was] aspiring to become a filmmaker, I just remember feeling like it’s almost like the Library of Congress. This is where films go to live forever. It’s not out of some sense of needing to leave a legacy or achieve some kind of greatness. This is legitimately where if they sent a golden record into space, the Criterion Collection is going to be on it. So from that sense, it’s incredible, man. It’s incredible.
I went to the Criterion closet and some people laughed at me for taking so many things. It’s like, you have no idea how much shit I have at home. You have no idea. There are many more discs I would’ve taken if I didn’t already have them.
And it’s becoming a little more essential to do that. If a movie or show is a priority for you, then you need to secure a physical copy.
That’s the other thing. It is becoming essential to do that.
So what’s the process like at Criterion? What was it like revisiting the series and helping to craft this new release?
Curtis Tsui at Criterion, he did a really great job. I mean, we made this together. We have been hand in hand on this thing for about two years now. I recorded a [commentary] track for every episode of this show, [and] Joi McMillan, our lead editor, and James Laxton, the cinematographer, they joined me for a few episodes because nobody wants to listen to me prattle on for 10 straight hours. Where Curtis is so great is, at the end of the run-through, the recording, we’d go back and he’d be like, “Oh, at this point you mentioned this. What was that about?”or “You were speaking toward this and then you cut yourself off because other scene started. But I think we should continue to [explore that thought].” So it’s like an interview in a certain way, but the subject gets to speak for an hour straight, and then the moderator comes in and it’s like, “Well, I’m not going to let you off the hook about that thing you were talking about.”
Oh my God, Ben. Curtis did such great research. One of the things I talk about — and I set this up on the disc — is the reason why we filmed the show in the order that we did [was because] there were episodes that had to be cut before we even began. There was one episode that we did not get to film that Curtis loved the idea of so much he commissioned a graphic novel of that episode, which is included in the package.
They just took such care with it. It’s four Blu-Ray discs, which means it’s not 4K UHD, and yet I still think the end code is the best of the best because it would’ve been, I think, nine or 10 discs if we had done 4K UHD. And those financials just are not going to work. I don’t even think people want to be popping in a disc for every episode, but we started out thinking it would be three discs, and because of the image quality, they upped it to four. So they’re really, really great folks over there.
As someone with such a healthy admiration for cinema, looking back now on your first experience in TV, what did you take away from it?
Making this show, there are some things that you can achieve with the character, with aesthetics, with a certain level of formalism [that’s unique to television]. The way the light appears in Episode 1, then Episode 3, then Episode 7. By Episode 9, just the appearance of a particular light can elicit an emotion in a viewer and that is– There are masters who do that within 20 minutes of a feature. You watch Tarkovsky, you watch peak Malik, there are people who can do it. But there’s also this other thing you can do just as well by telling a story over a duration, by watching an actor perform so many scenes that their movements become not even instinctual, they just are.
So I am intrigued by [television]. In the middle of it, I thought I would never do this ever a-fucking-gain. And then by the end of it, when we were coming through the edit, I just realized that there were things we had done that I didn’t imagine. I’m not saying these things were the best things ever, but I couldn’t intellectually project that this is what we were going to do.
The character Jasper, in the first “Tennessee” episode — Ben, that episode was meant to be one hour, and this guy [Calvin Leon Smith] just showed up, and he just was. He was everything! Telling this story in a long format gives you the ability to go, “OK, you know what? This guy’s telling everything. I think the audience needs to spend time with this, and the pacing needs to be this, the camera needs to be this. We need to be drifting. Now we’re floating. Forward momentum? I’m sorry, it’s gone. We are just in this moment right now, and then we’ll pick up the plot in the next episode.”
So yeah, I would do it again. There’s something very unique and singular to televisual storytelling, serialized storytelling, long-format storytelling that is really interesting. That said, I do love making features. I like having my life. [laughs] But yeah, this confirmed my suspicion that there was something special about telling a story over this duration of time.
Before I let you go, I have to ask about my favorite Colson Whitehead book: “The Intuitionist.” There have been discussions about adapting it, as well. Is there anything you can share?
Yeah, there’s a script, and the script is awesome. We’re just trying to put it together, but that is still in the offing. It’s my favorite book by him, too, which I tell him all the time. […] He loves the show, which is so meaningful to me. But I always tell him, “Hey, we got to get this other one. We got to get this other one. We got to get it.”
“The Underground Railroad” is now available from the Criterion Collection. The series is also streaming via Amazon Prime Video.
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