The American Cinematheque in Los Angeles hosted a conversation about Barry Jenkins’ new 10-part anthology series The Underground Railroad with female lead Thuso Mbedu, cinematographer James Laxton, editor Joi McMillan, costume designer Caroline Eselin, hairstylist Lawrence Davis and makeup artist Doniella Davy.

Historically, the Underground Railroad was a network of both, Black and White people who helped enslaved escapees from plantations in the South make their way north by offering transportation, protection, and shelter. It was started as early as the turn of the 19th century by the Quakers but was only first mentioned by its name in 1831. The most famous person to be associated with it is Harriet Tubman. She fought, among other issues, against an old law called the ‘Fugitive Slave Act of 1793’, which turned the capture of runaway slaves into a lucrative business that was carried on until the Civil War.

Golden Globe winner Barry Jenkins adapted the novel by Colson Whitehead and turned it into a historical drama with fantasy elements. Filming began in August of 2019 in various locations in Savannah, Georgia and carried on in other places in that state, like Dawsonville, Macon and Newborn, until September 2020 when Jenkins announced that he had wrapped. The series stars Thuso Mbedu as Cora Randall, Aaron Pierre as Cesar Garner and Joel Edgerton as the slave catcher Arnold Ridgeway.

Many members of Jenkins’ crew have worked with the director before, going all the way back to Moonlight, his breakthrough film, such as hairstylist Lawrence Davis who described the challenge of creating a look for Cora that shows the harrowing journey she has to go through: “My right hand is saying mess her up, my left hand is saying fix her up, so that was definitely a struggle” says the man who spent a lot of his career styling many movie stars to look only their best. Makeup artist Doniella Davy looked to costume designer Caroline Eselin for guidance on the nuances: “I’ve been lucky to have worked with Caroline so many times, so often we coordinate in the beginning. And then production design, too, I find really fascinating to check in with, like what interiors of rooms will look like, that seems to help me understand and get inspired.”

Eselin called the director a great collaborator on wardrobe: “Barry is such a great storyteller through the costumes … all the way from Moonlight to If Beale Street Could Talk and this series. Cora’s costumes are dictated by every state she escapes to. We did it very methodically as to where she would have gotten her clothes from and what would happen on the journey to her clothes. What carried through was honesty, restraint and limits. Working with Barry is always less is more until it’s not, but he knows you need options. In some cases, we had four or five dresses and Barry is like, ‘no, no, no, that’s too much.’ We need only three dresses for when she is in Indiana’.”

Lead Thuso Mbedu spoke about how much the costumes informed her acting: “I arrived in Savannah two months before the rest of the cast and had the chance to go see the wardrobe, consult with Donni and Lawrence and go through the sets. I had the chance to say, this is too much for me, this is too much to take in, let me keep my eyes down and only take in the world as Cora because of how all the departments came together so well. With every interaction, I was seeing Cora through someone else’s eyes and that was a learning experience for me. I am developing her from the book, but what I am getting from the different departments is adding to that and bringing in new layers.”

Cinematographer James Laxton describes the story as having a metaphoric element: “It could have tipped into science fiction and this crazy world, but we wanted it to be rooted in reality.”

Added editor Joi McMillon: “Chapter 1 and Chapter 10 take place in the same location, so I was editing them at the same time.” She called Ep 9 the most challenging to cut: “It’s a massive episode. Cora starts out pristine and falling in love and then the whole place is burning down. Featuring the characters in these long, detailed shots is tricky to cut.”

Difficulties notwithstanding – both on the technical side and the emotional toll a harrowing story like this one takes on the cast and crew – none of them would have wanted to miss it: “It was one of the great challenges of my life, it will never leave me. Working with Barry you always feel that connectedness,” said Caroline Eselin and James Laxton agreed: “The love that was on the set was really felt because otherwise, we wouldn’t have made it through, honestly.”

Barry Jenkins, recognizing that the subject matter of child slavery is very heavy, had a psychological counselor on the set, that everyone had access to, because as Doniella Davy put it: “It was really hard to grapple with this part of history in our country, and physically, mentally, emotionally the hardest thing I’ve ever worked on.”

Thuso Mbedu described the close-knit film crew as her best emotional support system: “I get asked a lot of times how I got through this and the truth is I was supported by every single person on that set, from getting fetched from home to me getting into hair and makeup to Caroline dealing with me with the costumes to the guy from the camera department sneaking popcorn to me. Every single person on that set took great care of me and I do not take it for granted, I will be forever grateful for that.”

Mbedu laughed thinking back to her first reaction to the series when she saw it before it came out: “I watched it twice, the first time I was just criticizing my own performance all the way through, the second time was when it premiered and I was ‘oh my gosh, this is an amazing project’, and now I wanna go back and really study it.”