John Legend won a well-deserved Best Song Golden Globe two years ago for Glory, his collaboration with Common for Ava DuVernay’s Selma. The musician, songwriter and actor has since taken a more active creative role in Hollywood forming his own production company, Get Lifted Film Company, whose first big project, Underground, is currently airing on WGN. The series is a heroic drama about the Underground Railroad, the abolitionist network that aided Southern slaves to escape to the north before the Civil War. The show was presented earlier this year in Sundance, the festival where another story of slavery, Nate Parker’s Birth of a Nation, took center stage in an emotional screening at the Eccles Theater. That is a room Legend is well familiar with; having himself played a stirring musical tribute to Nina Simone on that very stage two years ago. We spoke to him about his first effort as a producer and the enduring significance of the subject matter.

For our exclusive interview with Undeground executive producer  Misha Green, CLICK HERE.

To explore the way costume design establishes and expands the themes of Undeground, CLICK HERE