TCA Day 6: Peacock Promises a Rainbow of Voices Via Diverse Programming

While a timely subject, the project has been incubating since 2017 following a chance encounter between Helms and Schur. The latter apologized for the lack of a pilot episode. "Ordinarily we would have a pilot to show you, [but] with the pandemic shutting everything down that is not the case," he said. "We are scheduled to start shooting in about 3 or 4 weeks."

In exploring the Native American experience, the creative duo sought authentic voices and in turn assembled a diverse writing team led by Sierra Teller Ornelas, also an executive producer, and a member of Navajo Nation. "I was ecstatic, obviously, to join you guys because I love working with you two," she said to Helms and Schur. "Also, because you just never see Indians on TV and when you do it's like one guy and he has to transform into a wolf or something. It's just a bummer. So, people who wanted to make a project where Indians get to be regular people and get to be funny? I was so excited!

"We just kept developing it and once Peacock thankfully picked it up, we put this really great and funny diverse writers' room together," she continued. "We have five native writers on staff, including me, which I think is a first. It was definitely a first for me. We all saw things differently; we had different opinions on casinos and on border relations and it was really great to have that reflected in the show.

"We have a great cast [including] Jana Schmieding, who's a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Sioux," Ornelas continued. "She's a podcaster and a stand-up and was a staff writer on our show, then in the audition she just nailed it. We're excited to introduce her to the world. Michael Greyeyes is a Plains Cree, and just incredible. We have (non-binary actor) Jesse Leigh, Dustin Milligan, just basically a great group of people."

Concerning the timely conversation of historic revision, specifically the issue of removing representations of questionable figureheads and hearing from different voices, Schur said, "It was in the ether and we were talking about it before [recent events]. We're a little late with this, but for like 10 years you've heard a lot of groups of people who have traditionally been excluded from representation on television, movies and elsewhere saying the same thing, which is, 'We're just human beings. Just let us exist. Let us walk around, go to Starbucks, have bad relationships and make mistakes, and do all the dumb stuff that white people have been able to do on TV forever.' As long as you're doing that and showing people as three-dimensional within our lives, and with complicated relationships and daily struggles in the way that everybody else has daily struggles, I don't think you have to worry because you're not being disrespectful."

Also, in the virtual Peacock lineup was Larry Wilmore, who will host an 11-episode late-night chat show that he said will touch on a variety of topics. He sees the short series order as, "a trial, and a great way to test the series." He delved into the challenges of beginning a new series amidst a pandemic, operating in the new COVID-19 work environment. It couldn't be more different from his experience launching his previous talk show, over on Comedy Central. "Normally [the staff would] be choosing offices and getting to know each other, and we haven't been able to do that," he explained. "We'll be doing our guests remotely, but basically we're figuring out how to work in this new environment because it feels like we're gonna be in it for a while. Right now, all of it feels completely different except for the content part; that part feels the same [with] all the stuff that we have to talk about."

Amber Ruffin, a writer on NBC's Late Night with Seth Meyers who also became an on-air regular with her Amber Say's What? segments, will host her own Friday night chat show with Meyers (and fellow Late Night writer/performer Jenny Hagel) serving as executive producers. Meyers told reporters he first encountered Ruffin in Amsterdam ten years ago when both worked for a theater company called Boom Chicago and she impressed him. "In 2014, right as we were putting our staff together,she came through and did a really great audition for Saturday Night Live," he recalled. "It was such good fortune that she was back on our radar right as we were putting the staff together and it was this incredible foundational building block for our show. I can't imagine what it would have been like if Amber wasn't there with us from the beginning."

Meyers also credited the writer as the perfect voice for his show when it came to addressing issues surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement. "When the George Floyd protests happened, we were in this unique position to have Amber, who could speak to it in a way that was far more resonant and memorable than anything I could have said," he shared. "I think our show speaks to why it's so important for someone like Amber to have a show, and why we're so happy that she does. She's the right kind of person to have this kind of show."

"I love Peacock and it's still in our NBC family," raved Ruffin, who will continue her role behind the scenes on Late Night. "I love the fact that and I can literally be at my same desk and the work will feel very similar. I'll be walking two feet, handing a script to Jenny, [or rather] typing it up at my kitchen table emailing it. It will still be familiar. It's a huge step to have your own show, but when it's at work, everything is the same, and it still your same friends, and it's not that big leap at all."

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