We go deep with Black Sails creators Jonathan Steinberg and Robert Levine about Black Sails season 3.
Starz presented a panel onBlack Sailsseason 3to the Television Critics Association this month.
It also introduces Blackbeard (Stephenson) in a powerful, mysterious opening scene.
Steinberg and Levine took us through the new season with a look ahead to season four as a bonus.
What a dramatic introduction for Blackbeard in the shadows.
Did you plan that and write that, or was it the episode director?
Jonathan Seinberg:Its funny.
We wrote a version of the opening of the show and we shot it.
We got a few episodes in and we then realized it wasnt right.
You sort of start to meet these characters.
The collision between the actor and the character and how the actor inhabits it starts to inform itself.
I hope its just everything you want when youre meeting this character.
It all comes out before you even set eyes on him.
JS:Theres something civilized about it.
What was the original opening you scrapped?
JS:It wasnt as good as what we have.
Theres always this process.
They want to know where he is.
And he did, so we were very fortunate to bring him aboard.
Was it nice to get Flint off dry land after the end of season two?
You have to find things out there and find the challenges that keep him from getting home.
That leant itself to a first four-episode journey.
Each episode is different from the last and theyre all big in their own way.
Is this season the most youve spent on the water?
RL:Yeah, it turned out to be, I think.
They know what theyre doing and you achieve liftoff.
Suddenly youre able to just do things with better speed and efficiency.
Suddenly it makes more sense and then right away you start looking for ways to push it even more.
We dont want to do the same set piece and just do it a little bit bigger.
We want to do them differently.
Its just a constant process of asking the question, What havent you seen yet?
Does Flint have to win his crew back sort of?
JS:Yeah, I think there is a collision that happens in that first episode.
It offers them security and comfort.
That war against civilization is to leave.
Thats what he does to get them to do what he wants.
As a result, he plunges them into something that is hopeless and angry and ugly and scary.
RL:Which becomes a reflection of his inner state.
Is this a big season for the women too?
RL:In particular for Eleanor.
I think she in a way experienced a death of sorts at the end of season two.
She was stripped of kind of everything she had built her life around.
All the meaning of her life around.
He relationship with Woodes Rogers is informed by that.
That having achieved this wealth that thats the end of their story, that they found happiness.
It never has the meaning they think its going to have.
So until there are 18 month calendar years, these seasons are always overlapping.
A few years ago, NBC tried to do a sea show,Crossbones.
Did you get any gratification that they couldnt pull it off and youre still going?
Its all consuming, from story through the finishing of visFX.
