Communicating a Tone and a Feeling on the Page: An Interview with ‘Lawmen: Bass Reeves’ Creator and Showrunner Chad Feehan

Revealing the untold story of the most legendary lawman in the Old West, LAWMEN: BASS REEVES follows the journey of Reeves (Oyelowo) and his rise from enslavement to law enforcement as one of the first Black U.S. Deputy Marshals west of the Mississippi. Despite arresting over 3,000 outlaws during the course of his career, the weight of the badge was heavy, and he wrestled with its moral and spiritual cost to his beloved family.

Who says TV is bad for you? Not us. Turns out, you can learn a thing or two about history and culture – especially the stuff they don’t generally teach you in school in America – or what is generally skimmed past, unfortunately. Thanks to the creative force behind Lawemen: Bass Reeves, the latest historical mini-series from Paramount+, a man who made history is finally getting his full-fledged debut on-screen.

Creator and showrunner Chad Feehan recently spoke with Script about how he came aboard the project and what initially attracted him to the material, working closely with executive producer and star David Oyelowo, collaborating with the writers’ room, and the importance of research and consultants for historical accuracy, and communicating tone and feeling on the page. 

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: What was it about this character, this man's journey, that intrigued you as a storyteller to dive into this world?

Chad Feehan: I had a family member growing up in Texas who was quite a storyteller and told me about Bass when I was a kid. And that memory never escaped my consciousness. I'd hear more and more about Bass as the years went on, especially recently, his story gained some momentum - The Watchmen and obviously did a little homage to him; Texas Monthly wrote a big spread about him a couple years ago. And, again just deeply fascinated by this by this man's life. And Taylor [Sheridan] and I have sort of been circling each other for a number of years. And when David [Oyelowo] was looking for a writer, Taylor recommended me. And David and I, we went to dinner and immediately bonded, sort of felt like a kindred spirit. And that was sort of the genesis of my involvement.

I can tell you, initially, I didn't fully understand the breadth of Bass's life. I knew that he was a Black Deputy Marshal in the wild west and had this legendary career, but I didn't really understand how his life began with enslavement, and being forced to fight for the Confederacy, and then having a 10 year stint as a farmer. I knew about [the] Reconstruction [era], sort of intellectually from school, with what little was taught about it in school, but I didn't really fully grasp what that time period was all about, and what it meant to so many people. And so those things are the things that really captured my imagination.

In addition, we tried really hard to not just make a show about a man who is a badass with a gun and apprehending outlaws. David and I are both dedicated fathers and dedicated husbands and by the nature of the job that we do, which we're blessed to do, we have to leave oftentimes for months on end. And that is something that we identified very quickly in Bass and chose to lean into that difficulty of being away from your family for an extended period of time and coming home and feeling as if you're an outsider and feeling as if your kids have changed dramatically in three months. Inevitably, I think that once you're in a long-term relationship, and you have those big periods of separation despite the love still remaining there, remaining true, a lot of times people's lives continue on, it's impossible not to. And so, we wanted to lean into that as well. And those are the things that really captured me.

And then obviously, me being white, and being from Texas, there are a lot of things that I couldn't understand and couldn't relate to. And I've always viewed TV writing as a team sport. And so, my job first and foremost was to hire a wide array of talented voices, that could educate me on the things that I didn't know and didn't understand and continually steer the ship in the right direction. And I think we did a pretty good job of that, I had the greatest collaborators on this show, and I'm so grateful to them as well to help me craft the narrative.

Sadie Dean: I’m sure there was a lot of time spent in the research phase of this for the writers’ room. I’m curious, did you have direct access to consultants, not only for historical purposes but also the language of the American Indians?

Chad: It was a very fast process. I got hired, and it was, ‘Go, go, go, go go.’ David had a window and they wanted to get the show out in 2023. I think I got a started in April, and we were in production in January.

Sadie: Wow.

Chad: Yeah, it was fast. For better or worse, I'm a bit OCD. [laughs] And so, I immediately got that obsessive gene working in my favor and was consuming everything that I could find about Bass, whether articles, books, podcasts. And I was actually on a plane with my family coming home from my kid’s spring break, and I stumbled upon this little known novel, called Follow the Agnels, Follow the Doves’ written by a professor at TCU, in Fort Worth, right down the street from where I grew up – and I read the free excerpt on Amazon and was like, ‘Oh, this guy clearly has done his research,’ and I called Sidney [Thompson] ordered the book, read the book right away. And I found out that Sidney had spent a decade of his life researching Bass before he sat down to write anything. 

And what was really captivating about Sidney’s first book, in particular, was the way that Bass escaped enslavement. Everybody has reported and assumed that it came out of a dispute over a card game. And the way that Sidney was able to dramatize that card game and sort of a real-life scenario really inspired me. And so, we optioned his book, we hired him as a historical consultant. And he was there as sort of our backstop for historical accuracy if you will.

In terms of the Native American or as I've been educated, American Indian is what some prefer to be called now, we hired Mo Brings Plenty who was introduced to me by Taylor, who has worked with Taylor on the majority of his projects, and Mo was really there to make sure that we got the language right. We got the historical accuracy right, he introduced us to a number of native Creek speakers, native Choctaw speakers who came in and translated the scripts. And then coached David in learning the languages. 

And what I'll say about David is I mean, his aptitudes for transformation are unlike anything I've ever seen. In episode two, there's a whole sequence that takes place in Choctaw. I mean, he learned all of those words, and speaking with a dialect that the translator was marveling over within a matter of days, it was quite remarkable to see. And then we had other historians on staff. But I would say those are the two that we relied on most heavily.

In terms of the Black experience, we had Jewel Coronel, who's from the south, who knows the plantation that her ancestors originated from. We had a man named Terence Anthony, who had done a bunch of research and had written a beautiful play about the experience of enslavement and escaping enslavement. We had a phenomenal writer named K.C. Scott, who used to work in politics, and so had that whole angle coming to us. So, we had a really special group of people helping us.

The last one I'll shout out to is, it was important to me to try to get the experience of a law enforcement agent correct. And although being a law enforcement agent in the 1870s is very different from being one and 2024, we hired a special agent in Appalachia, a man named J. Todd Scott, who moonlights as a novelist, who I've actually adapted one of his books before. And he was in the writers’ room with us as well and really impressed upon us the trials and tribulations that those folks go through on a day-to-day basis, and ended up becoming one of our biggest themes, which was the weight of the badge, and how heavy the moral responsibility is to carry a badge and theoretically put people, in his case away for decades, not life, versus Bass, putting people away, and sentencing them to their death. And so, all those things created this great soup and this great team of people who have their specialty that they really excel in.

Sadie: What a melting pot of minds to have access to. In working with all these departments, and these incredibly talented people, what were those conversations in terms of keeping the tonal consistency of this show and really honoring the character and the theme? For me as a viewer, one of the biggest themes, which is touched on within the first few episodes – the search for hope.

Chad: It definitely starts on the page. I'm big on communicating a tone and a feeling through the action lines. Which I know a lot of people don't do, a lot of people will just sort of put the basic information of how people are moving through the scene. For me, it's really important to communicate the tone on the page first and foremost. And that's hard to describe. But something like this, it's looking at Cormac McCarthy, for example, who does it so beautifully well, and I should say mind-blowingly well. The script originally opens with a line, "A flame, see the child before it." Which in Blood Meridian, it starts with, ‘See the child.’

And then with department heads, it's talking about the themes, and then primarily talking about authenticity, if didn't exist at the time, it does not belong in the show. That goes anywhere from materials used to build to the makeup they use to put on the actors to the clothes that they wear. And then, you said it hope, I would say is the triumph of the human spirit. We're in a very intense time culturally. And I choose to remain hopeful that we'll come through it. And I try to do my best to infuse that hope into the material, and hopefully, audiences feel that too.

Lawmen: Bass Reeves is now streaming on Paramount+.