Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s new FX series Kindred is a 21st-century adaptation of Octavia Butler’s iconic sci-fi novel. It’s a haunting show about a modern-day Black woman who is continually snatched back and forth through time from her home in 2016 Los Angeles to a Southern plantation in 1815.
In her first leading role, Juilliard graduate Mallori Johnson portrays Dana James, an aspiring TV writer trying to find her place in the world after her grandmother’s death. However, just as she begins to settle into her new home in LA, she is violently ripped from the present and thrust into the past, a place that has intrinsic links to her bloodline.
Ahead of Kindred’s Dec. 13 premiere, Shadow and Act sat down to chat with Jacob-Jenkins and Johnson about the beauty of Butler’s work, updating the story, and why it’s never been more relevant.
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