"Let’s just tell immigrant stories as regular stories," said Joshuah Bearman.
When Bearman, the journalist and executive producer of the Apple TV+ anthology series, "Little America," sat down with Doug Gordon for WPR's "BETA", he explained right away where the original idea for the series came from.
Lee Eisenberg, a well-known writer and show runner in film and TV, approached Bearman with the pitch at the beginning of 2017 right around President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Eisenberg had been reflecting on how different his relationship to America was from his father’s, who is an immigrant.
Bearman said, "The reality of the new political era was setting in, and that’s when he called and he said, 'Do you wanna do something like this?'"
Bearman was already well known for finding stranger-than-fiction true stories for the big screen. He wrote an article for Wired in 2007 that later became the basis for the 2012 Oscar and Golden Globe award-winning film, "Argo."
"It was sort of astonishing," said Bearman. "I thought, like, eh, it’s pretty good ... they know what they’re doing. And you know, it came out and sort of right out of the gate, it felt like something different."
Fast-forward to the creation of "Little America," Bearman feels a bit like it’s lightning striking twice.
"It’s very hard to get anything actually made, much less make it good," he said. "But the reception has been much greater than I imagined, and the full-throated enthusiasm. And it feels like, oh, maybe there’s something special going on here in a way that we hadn’t even anticipated."
Finding Stories To Tell
Bearman and Eisenberg joined fellow executive producers Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon, who co-wrote 2017’s hit film "The Big Sick," for the "Little America" project.
Bearman said finding stories was a very time-consuming: "We probably started with 100-plus leads."
From there? After around 75 interviews, about 40 in-depth follow-up conversations, Bearman eventually published 15 profiles. From there an initial batch of eight episodes of "Little America" were filmed.
"We had stories from Idaho and Kansas and Florida and Ohio and Texas," said Bearman.
He said that, even as the stories were taking shape, they could tell the show would work well as a sort of mosaic portrait.
"We wanted stories that were widely representative," he said. "People from different parts of the world living in different parts of the country. People who were here as refugees or to study in school. People who have just arrived or people who have been here for decades."
The Politics Of Immigration Stories
The content of "Little America" naturally comes up against United States immigration policy. But Bearman said they chose not to be overtly political.
"But they’re political by virtue of just sort of telling stories from the lives of immigrants and portraying them as people with the same struggles as everybody else," explained Bearman. "And sort of trying to break the notion of a narrative where there’s an 'othering' of people or a simplification of all immigrants and refugees."
"At its basis, the show makes a more general point of everybody is the same," Bearman said.
"When people come here, they have the same hopes and dreams, or fears and frailties that we do. And there’s no 'they' or 'we' anyhow, really," he said.
Bearmen mentions a certain level of irony related to the final episode of Season 1 when production came up against actual U.S. immigration policy.
The episode, titled "The Son" tells the story of a gay man who flees his home in Syria after his life is threatened by his family. He is eventually granted asylum in the U.S. where he could live more freely, and meets his now-husband.
"That’s a very emotional and inspiring story and says some very nice things about what America represents," said Bearman.
However, America’s current travel ban restricted many of the episode’s actors from entering the country.
"And so, here we are telling a story about how America, like, opens its doors, let’s people who have to flee for their lives so they can be themselves, and we couldn’t actually shoot that episode in America anymore. We had to move production to Canada. We shot it in Montreal," he recalled.
The Secret Ingredient Is Truth
The first episode in the series is called "The Manager" and tells the story of an Indian family of three who own and operate a small hotel in Utah.
When the parents make what they believe will be a brief return to India to sort out their immigration status, their 13-year-old son is left to manage the hotel in Utah.
But then the paperwork took 10 years, and the son grows up managing the hotel alone, while in the care of an indifferent family friend.
When his parents finally return to the U.S. 10 years later, their reunion is melancholy as they realize their son is now an adult, and they don’t know about each other’s lives anymore.
That story might be hard to fathom, which is why Bearman thinks that the viewer knowing the stories are true is the secret ingredient for the series.
"Those things would read as false, right, if they were invented. But because they’re real, you can connect to them in a different way," he said.
And now that "Little America" has been renewed by Apple for a second season, Bearman and his staff are looking to expand on their already-large storytelling palette.
Bearman believes the first season had a good range of stories and styles. "But I think we might even try to stake out more territory and experiment a little bit more in a couple places," he said. "You know, widen the range a little bit, so that it’s not just eight more really good episodes like last time. They’re taking sort of different risks."
