Freeform’s newest show Motherland: Fort Salem begins March 18, and the show’s creator, writer, and executive producer, Eliot Laurence (TNT’s Claws), took the stage earlier this year at the Freeform TCA Press Tour to preview the new series which we believe will be your next Freeform obsession.
The Bad Guys | If you’ve watched any trailers for Motherland: Fort Salem, then you know at least one of the enemies to the witch army is a faction called the Spree. According to Laurence, there are other enemies out there, but this season seems to focus mostly on the turmoil surrounding the Spree. “For now it’s the Spree, but I’m not ruling out fighting with other nations. There are border conflicts and proxy wars that the U.S. is involved with in this timeline, but it’s mostly the Spree. That’s the big enemy.”
Magical Inspiration | There are a lot of ties to Wiccan rituals and beliefs in the show, but Laurence says that wasn’t his only source of inspiration. He went much deeper and even reinvented some old beliefs. “I look a lot at Wiccan stuff, but I look deeper than Wiccan, too.
“Everything in the show is kind of an homage to — not everything, but a lot of stuff on the show is an homage to witch history. For example, the marks that the witches are born with that change when you have sex, is sort of a reclaiming of the marks that were used to indict and identify witches during the burning times. So, that idea. Reinventing.”
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Journey to the Screen | Motherland: Fort Salem has been nine years in the making. Laurence tried to make the story into a book and movie before deciding that television was the best platform to tell this story.
“It’s closer to nine years, and then I got busy with other stuff, but there’s been years of me kind of like letting go into the nerd river of my mind. It’s, like, making up so much stuff, but I tried to do it as a book series a long time ago and we tried to get it off the ground that way, and movies, and then I got busy with other stuff. And then Kevin [Messick, Executive Producer] called me a couple years ago and was, like, “This is a TV show.” I was, like, “Yeah, it always has been.””
The Role of Sexuality | Fort Salem creates a world where women are in charge, and the writers and creators had to think of what it would be like to live in that type of society. “We talked a lot in the writers room about what female sexuality looks like in the absence of patriarchy, because in this show the army is a matriarchal culture within the larger culture, and we came up with a lot of good stuff.
“I mean, for these young women, their sexuality is not something that complicates their lives or labels them in a certain way. It’s something that informs their very power, and it’s something that they’re able to employ to astonishing effect.”
Using Magic | It’s common nowadays to watch witch shows on television where the witches are using elaborate spells or arm movements to cast magic, but in Fort Salem they use their vocal cords. They don’t sing in a way that you would normally think of it, but they almost sing chords with one another to perform powerful spells. Laurence wanted to do something different that was based in something real.
“I wanted to have this be fantasy through a science fictional lens. So, I wanted all of the magic to be based in kind of real stuff. So, instead of magical words you find in a spell book, it’s sounds and combinations of sounds and these very intricate frequencies that the witches are able to create. So, I just wanted to crack open what magic is. We actually don’t use the word magic in the show at all. It’s called work. Because it’s hard and it costs and yeah. So, I wanted to just crack open when magic could like and sound like.”
Will We See Old Salem? | Much of the basis for Fort Salem is ‘what if the Salem witch trials turned out differently,’ so you would assume there would be several flashbacks to that time. But Laurence says not so much this first season. “Yeah, we’re not going to see a ton of Salem in season 1. But I have plans to bring that into the following, to the next season if we’re lucky enough to do one.” Here’s to hoping they get renewed because I would love to see some Old Salem!
Motherland: Fort Salem premieres Wednesday, March 18 at 9pm on Freeform.
