The creation of the atomic bomb makes for a good story, at least in the eyes of Hollywood. That period of history has given us some good films, such as The Manhattan Project. In WGN's new television series Manhattan, we see the story again, but from a different perspective: through the eyes of the men and women who worked and lived on the Los Alamos military base during the project.
Why revisit this period in history? "We're living in a moment when a lot of the issues and problems and kind of moral conundrum of the Manhattan Project loom really large," says series creator and writer Sam Shaw. "It's not as if this show is a classic piece of allegory, but it did feel like a way to write about the present day and write about issues of military secrecy, government secrecy and transparency, as well as the ethics of military force, and the kind of complications of the relationship between science and politics."
Shaw states that writing about the present day is difficult as events take place in real-time. However, using history to connect a story to what's going on in today's world, is a viable way to tell that story. Most importantly, though, Manhattan looks at things on a more personal level.
"From a human standpoint, it was such a complicated time, and the people were living in this bizarro secret city in the middle of the desert surrounded by barbed wire fences, creating a weapon with an effect on human history that was completely unknown at the time."
A lot of research went into the development of Manhattan as a series, starting over five years ago. Shaw read many books about the Manhattan Project, including books from the 1940s and 1950s that are currently out of print.
"For me, it was just the process of a few years of reading everything I could get my hands on, like lugging suitcases of books on every vacation I went on," says Shaw. "And it's ongoing for us as writers. We spend a huge amount of time researching and talking with researchers and talking with physicists to make sure that we get the texture and details of the storytelling right."
Although they did their research, the writers decided early on not to focus on specific historical figures, although some do appear on the series, such as J. Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie R. Groves. Shaw found the stories of those less known far more compelling.
"What it was to me, these junior scientists, these guys, are kids, basically," he says. "The average age of this place was 25 or 27. So you have all these incredibly brilliant people, a lot of who aren't socially totally formed, in the way that really brilliant people sometimes aren't. They're eccentric and they're thrown into this weird apocalyptic summer camp, this incredibly beautiful austere place with a lot of other people. And they're hit with all these rules and secrecy."
The show, however, isn't just about the scientists, but also about their wives and families who accompanied them to Los Alamos.
Although the time period suggests that most women were still banned to the kitchen, Shaw states that his research found that this wasn't always the case.
"There was this moment, during the war, with a lot of men exported to Europe and the Pacific to fight, when there's this different kind of opportunity for women," he says. "So there are a huge number of brilliantly accomplished women who came to Los Alamos who found themselves in the position that Liza is in our show. She gives up a huge amount. She actually has this rich intellectual life and a marriage of equality with her husband. Then they come to this place where, because of the rules of secrecy, not only is she not allowed to do the work that is meaningful to her, but she also suddenly isn't able to have the kind of connection with her partner that she had before."
The show also features a lone female physicist, Helen (Katja Herbers), working on the project. Interestingly enough, there were two women physicists at the real Los Alamos.
"It's amazing to think about that," says Shaw. "For me, it was not so much a thing like setting out with any kind of political agenda, in writing Helen. You'll see that she's progressive and that she's got some complicated storytelling. But part of it was thinking how complicated it would be to be the lone woman in this very male field, and what was that like every day? What do you have to sacrifice to do that work? And what expectations are put on you, and what do you feel your role or responsibility is as a trailblazer?"
Finally, the character of Abigail, or Abby, (Rachel Brosnahan) is a stretch from the two female scientists on the show. Abby is a housewife and mother and comes from a background of privilege. In describing the changes she goes through on the show, Shaw compared it to college.
"You arrive at this place and you realize that you suddenly have the opportunity to recreate yourself," he says "It's a clean slate and you can be whoever you want to be." That's part of the story the writers are telling with Abby. Although she comes to Los Alamos with narrow expectations, by being in Los Alamos, where her personal freedoms are taken away, it's also liberating. "You don't have the burden of expectations that you had," Shaw says.
