Mormon pioneers featured in "violent" Netflix historical drama "American Primeval"

Inside American Primeval, Taylor Kitsch and Betty Gilpin’s Bloody, Brutal Western Epic

The Netflix limited series forced its stars to do things they’d never done before: “I’m sure my liver is in my throat and my small intestine is in my ankle. Things have been rearranged in a way that will never go back together.”

By 

October 29, 2024

Courtesy of Netflix

Peter Berg did not use words when describing his vision for American Primeval. Mark L. Smith, the writer best known for The Revenant, walked into Berg’s office preparing to discuss a survival show in the vein of the 1972 Robert Redford Western, Jeremiah Johnson. Instead, Berg showed Smith a Stiletto ice axe—and nothing else. “Can we do this as a show?” Berg asked. Smith smiled, said yes. As Berg explains it, “We wanted to make a show that required us to go into the elements.”

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This turned out to be a bit of an understatement. Their breathless new Netflix miniseries demanded a 145-day shoot way up in the New Mexico mountains—“at altitude in the weather, with wolves and bears and snakes,” Berg says. “Films like this cheat, and go into sound stages or parking lots and use green screens. We were all very excited to not do that. It required getting up very early, four o’clock in the morning, driving an hour and a half outside of Santa Fe to different pieces of land, oftentimes different reservations that we were filming on—and setting up in the dark when it was extremely cold.”

Courtesy of Netflix

Berg needed to quiz his cast before hiring them: “Are you in physical shape? Are your knees good? Are your ankles good? Is your back okay?” They were given a month of “cowboy camp,” learning to ride horses in three feet of snow. Still, one star, Taylor Kitsch, broke his foot by the second episode and was in a boot for six weeks. His colead, Betty Gilpin, still thinks about filming intense action scenes on horseback while in a corset for months on end. “Anytime one of the guys would start to complain about being uncomfortable in their costume, my hand would rise to their trachea,” she says. “I’m sure my liver is in my throat and my small intestine is in my ankle. Things have been rearranged in a way that will never go back together.”