Warning: This article contains spoilers about the series finale ofBlack Bird.
If you think that sounds right up Lehane’s alley, you’d be wrong.
“I don’t like serial killers and I don’t like prisons,” Lehane admits to EW.
Taron Egerton as Jimmy Keene in ‘Black Bird’.Apple TV+
“So that was two strikes against this material before I went and did it.
What if we looked at this through the prism of the male gaze?'
Then all of a sudden I was excited.”
Dennis Lehane.Amy Sussman/Getty Images
DENNIS LEHANE:He was very accessible.
The less accessible of the two of us was me.
He gave me all that.
I don’t like serial killers and I don’t like prisons.
So that was two strikes against this material before I went and did it.
What if we looked at this through the prism of the male gaze?"
Then all of a sudden I was excited.
Well, it’s both.
It’s his growth, but it’s also, we can’t help ourselves.
So it’s like, we can only grow so much, is where I wanted to put it.
But then after, he looks out that window and he’s once again reminded.
So it’s this idea that he’s just never going to be quite the same guy.
He looks out at those fields and he’s thinking about what Larry said about fields.
That’s where we’re going at the end.
Crafting the finale, what did you feel the need to dramatize vs. pull straight from what actually happened?
There was a map.
Jimmy was in that hole [in solitary confinement] for two weeks.
Nobody to this day can explain how that happened.
Nobody will go on record but he was in there for two weeks.
And they were saying, “We have no idea who this guy is.
We have no record of this guy.”
And because it was so nuts, nobody will go on record as to explain it.
And so we can’t get the facts.
So I had to surmise, what’s he doing with that time?
How do I visualize that?"
Another standout moment from the finale, of course, is the final showdown between Jimmy and Larry.
I was after this idea of Jimmy undergoing a really inconvenient attack of humanity.
I won’t know the ones he kills.
It’ll have nothing to do with me."
That’s his out.
In the end, he realizes he’s part of a continuum of the human race.
And you are your brother’s keeper.
You do owe other people who you don’t know a basic morality.
And that, in reality, is not what triggered Jimmy to blow his cover with Larry.
And I thought, “Yeah.
I mean, that’s great, but it’s not dramatically the story I want to tell.”
It’s totally irrational, and he blows it because he’shuman.
He blows it because he has a heart.
Oh, thank you.
That was something that we were fist-pumping in the air when Taron was doing that.
That was fun for me too, [to write].
I was popping along with Jimmy.
IwasJimmy by that point when I was writing the scripts.
It was worse actually.
They got me to dial it back.
It was just me saying, “You kill children who cry for their mothers.
You demented f.” So that was fun.
All that stuff he’s screaming at Jimmy when they’re holding him back, that was all improv.
That whole last encounter is so cathartic for Jimmy, and for us as the audience.
No, and we don’t suggest that either.
All we did was say what Jimmy did killed his appeal, that it shut down his appeal.
Larry Hall has never been convicted of anything except for the kidnapping of Jessica Roach.
He hasn’t even been convicted of killing her.
And he went for it.
No, I live for these types of stories.
I mean, just two people in a room is my favorite thing to do.
And he can’t find it.
And that’s the story.
It’s him searching for the right key.
And then when he gets that key, Larry’s going to open up.
Larry’s the door and Larry’s brain is going to open up.
That makes sense as a way in for you, given your aversion to serial killer stories.
I mean, it’s that subgenre.
When it’s done likeThe Silence of the Lambs, sure, it’s great.
But the vast majority of it is really bad and hypocritical.
And I find that just really annoying.
So I thought, “What’s cool about this story is the relationship.
And that’s horrifying.
He’s still a monster, he’s still irredeemable.
He’s still repellent, but he’s also very much a human being.
And that’s creepy, that’s hard to live with.
That’s hard to get your head around.
The finale packs a lot in, but was there anything that didn’t make the cut?
And it was beautiful and it was Taron’s best acting in the show.
It killed me when I had to tell him we cut it.
It dragged it down.
I have a habit of dragging my storylines out at the end.
And we were in editing and we were like, “Not this scene, not this scene.”
And then Apple was like, “Cut that scene, cut that scene.”
That was the scene.
It was a beautiful scene between the two of them and a culmination to their relationship.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
