Black Sail’s Actors Stir the Crock pots by Gay Twist on Show
Thomas Hamilton (Rupert Penry-Jones) and James Flint (Toby Stephens)
in a scene from Saturday’s Black Sails episode.
Nothing like a TV show action hero coming out to stir up the crackpots, right?
We wrote about Black Sails‘ Big Gay Reveal yesterday and, as you might have noticed, the comments section for that post have gotten quite heated. Many people love that the Starz pirate series revealed that [SPOILER ALERT!] lead character Captain James Flint (Toby Stephens) had a same sex romance. Other fans of the show are apoplectic — shouting their disgust and accusing Starz and the show’s producers of caving in to the gay community and pushing a so-called gay agenda.
Funny, there never seemed to be an issue with Black Sails‘ copious graphic violence, heterosexual sex scenes — and even sexy lesbian characters jumping in the sack together. But the revelation that a male character’s great love was with another man — that is somehow reprehensible and worth abandoning the show over.
(l to r) Rupert Penry-Jones, Toby Stephens and Louise Barnes
Saturday’s big reveal filled in a lot of questions about what exactly had been going on back in England between Flint and Mrs. Barlow (Louise Barnes) and her sensitive husband Thomas Hamilton (Rupert Penry-Jones). So while we better understand Flint’s past, what does this mean moving forward? To find out, we talked with Black Sails creators Jonathan D. Steinberg and Robert Levine and, separately, with Toby Stephens about how long this character revelation has been in the works and what we can expect moving forward.
First up, here’s our Q&A with Steinberg and Levine:
TheBacklot: Tell us how you crafted the scenes between Flint and Thomas Hamilton. They’re so intimate and more emotional than I was expecting. Can you talk about those decisions?
Jon Steinberg: The story has always been there. It’s something that’s always had its own gravity within the construction of it. From the first season we knew where we wanted to go. The trick was, we wanted it to play as a reveal, to have the Miranda affair feel like it was the thing that was going to be in the forefront of everybody’s attention. So how do you build this romance in the background without tipping that it’s a romance? It’s tricky because everyone comes to it with their own preconceived notions. It’s hard to know where people’s assumptions are going to begin and end.
I think Rupert and Toby were really good at being able to convey this friendship that was very deeply felt. You got that they were bonding in what essentially amounts to very small snippets of screen time. By the time you get to that moment [the kiss], hopefully it’s surprising but feels earned and emotional and you understand what both of these guys are feeling and thinking and where their mutual attraction comes from.
I have to say, once I saw the episode, it definitely wasn’t minimized to one big sex scene which, with Black Sails and Starz, you could have gotten away with. It was about so much more than just sex.
JS: The governing principle for the story is that above everything else it’s an emotional connection. We didn’t want it to be a shock reveal for it’s own sake. We wanted it to be a reveal that was about an emotional and romantic connection that is driving so much of the story in the present day. To do that we felt like we needed to keep our eye on the ball and have it play as an emotional and romantic connection. The sexual component is obvious and clear and it has weight, but it’s not just a story about a sexual relationship.
Robert Levine: When you finally know all of it, what you’re realizing is not that he had something, but you’re realizing what is lost. At that moment he’s lost something that was much more than physical. It gave him a sense of purpose, gave him identity, made him feel love and accepted and it comes very quickly after the reveal. It falls a lot on Toby and Rupert and Louise just how much important it was and how devastating it was when it all fell apart.
I’ll be watching the scenes in the ‘present’ differently because of this information. Have you thought about the reaction of your audience and how they’ll see Flint moving forward?
JS: I think there are going to be a lot of different reactions. This is one of those stories that’s so baked into the show and so baked into who Flint is. I feel like it’s one of those moments as a storyteller you just have to plant the flag and know that this is the right story to tell and it feels emotionally correct and it’s doing all the right things. We just hope that people get it. It’s a charged moment. It’s unexpected but it feels right and I think that’s all you can really hope for at some point.
There are going to be audience members that are going to want to see this play out in future episodes and seasons. What would you say to people who ask why Flint isn’t checking out a gay bar in Nassau? Or at least having flings or relationships with men?
JS: I think what Miranda says to him in [episode] 2.05 is real. In this moment of pre-exile in the flashback, he is able to engage romantically and emotionally and sexually with Thomas, but there’s a part of him that is conflicted about it and that lives in a time where if you are a person who cares what people think of you and cares what your appearance is, it makes it complicated to wrestle with that component of your identity.
Remember in the early part of the season when Silver is throwing it at Flint– and when Miranda is throwing it at him: ‘You’re a person who cares about how people see you.’ That becomes real later. I think it will exist in negative space for a while, but it’s not forgotten. It’s an intent on our part to tell a story about a guy that no matter how politically balanced he can find a way to be or how motivated to be towards the money, or his ideals or Nassau or whatever, there’s a broken piece of his self image that he needs to continue to wrestle with. I think at some point we want to bring that back…and show what it’s like to be asking all the wrong questions about why you’re unbalanced and unsettled. It’s not like he has this moment…it’s traumatic. This one moment where he gives into not just a sexual relationship – I’m not sure that we think it’s his first homosexual sexual relationship – but a romantic one, a real one and one with someone with whom he has social connections. It feels likes to have that go as bad as it did, I don’t know that it could go worse than that for a first time. You carry that baggage with you. That’s a not a pool you jump back into again easily.
I’ve talked to Toby about being in control as Captain of a ship. Is it safe to say that feeds into all of this? The need to keep himself in control in every way?
JS: Totally. I think that’s where that comes from, the need to control things is so they don’t react to the things they can’t control. Places where you’ve been hurt before and making sure that it doesn’t happen again.
Now that we know Flint’s past, what will we see next on the series?
The Backlot: How was it for you this season to get more back story into Flint?
Toby Stephens: Yeah, it was fun, because I knew where it was going. [The producers had] already told me about the whole back story when I started filming. There was a question of whether we were going to start doing that the first season, but I think they made the right decision, holding off for the second season. Because even though it’s probably challenging for an audience, at times, Flint’s behavior, I think it’s kind of great that you’ve got this guy who’s just thrown up this wall. And you never know what he’s thinking. The audience is kind of questioning whether he is a psychopath or there is something else. ‘What is it that’s driving this guy?’
And what is this Mrs. Barlow about? What’s this whole thing? And then the second season starts revealing it piecemeal, and it’s like this puzzle that they have to put together. And I really enjoyed doing it. It was exhausting, at times playing basically two parts, almost the same time, because the whole, what’s the kind of fun thing is you’re playing somebody who’s a different, almost a different person.
I know I wasn’t used to seeing you so clean-shaven in the flashbacks!
TS: Yeah, but that’s great. I think an audience…I think it’ll be really rewarding in the end, because it will take them on this journey and they’ll suddenly understand. They think they know this person or they have preconceived views of him. In the second season they’re totally blown away.
Earlier in the season we see him trying to regain his status as Captain. How important is that to his identity to be Captain and maybe inform some of what’s going on internally?
TS: I think it’s enormously important to him. I think it’s also a question of control and I don’t think he can bear anybody else being in control. It’s not some ego thing where he wants to be Captain and he wants people to look up to him. It’s just, “I do not want anybody else, I do not trust anybody else to be in control of my destiny.” It’s not an arrogance, it’s just, “I know they’re not capable of it, and I am the only one here who can really do what needs to be done.”
So is it safe to say we’re going to see more of Flint’s humanity in this part of the story and it may inform what we’re seeing in the present day of the series?
TS: Yeah, I think he is much more human, but not in a kind of a sentimental way. I think it’s painful and it’s complicated and it doesn’t resolve anything. I don’t think you go, “Oh, I get it, now we can move on.” It’s not comfortable, it asks more questions, really, and you feel sad of the direction he ends up having to go in knowing what you know.
Given the past, would you say it’s hard for him to be around Mrs. Barlow because of the memories just her presence brings on?
TS: I think that’s part of it. I think it’s such a complicated and rich relationship. What I like about it is it’s so real in its complexity that he still loves her. He still loves her and she is the only person that really he can confide in and she’s the only person that has any kind of control over him.
Gates, to a certain extent, managed to find a way of dealing with Flint, where they were equals. But after Gates is gone, there is no one. I think Silver is trying to find his way in there somehow, but he can’t get in there. He’s got what the audience gets in the first season, which is the wall is up. He’s trying to get through it, but Flint won’t let him. But [Mrs.] Barlow has that access and there’s an interdependence. It’s very unhealthy and it’s not easy, but they rely on one another, and they love one another. There’s a kind of deep love there, and I find that part real because relationships are like that.
It isn’t always easy, but fundamentally there’s something that locks you in with somebody. And it’s interesting because– I won’t tell you what happens– but that still is kind of being played out in season three [which the cast is currently shooting in South Africa]. Things change massively during the second season.
How would you say you’ve been challenged differently in season two as an actor?
TS: I had to almost play a totally different character in the younger part. The more different he is in the younger version, the more you feel the weight of what he’s become and the tragedy of what he’s become, really, locked into this person. And also, the demands physically on me were much more. There’s nothing else that’s doing this kind of stuff, where you are having to do these intense acting scenes, long scenes, and then you’re having to do these enormous action sequences, which are really demanding as well towards the last end of the season, where things really build. And it was full-on. We were doing these huge, great big sequences that were incredibly elaborate and that was just exhausting. So by the end of the season, I was totally fried but in a great way. I’m not complaining about it because nowhere else would I get this opportunity.
Black Sails airs Saturdays at 9pm on Starz.
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