Here's your first look at Betty Gilpin and Taylor Kitsch in Netflix's brutal American Primeval

The new Netflix series from Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights) and Mark L. Smith (The Revenant) premieres on January 9.

By Mary Kate Carr | October 29, 2024 | 12:00pm

Photo courtesy of Netflix

TV News American Primeval

Here's your first look at Betty Gilpin and Taylor Kitsch in Netflix's brutal American Primeval

Netflix is expanding out west. The genre has enjoyed a revival of late, but the brutality of the American Primeval first look makes Yellowstone look like a fluffy primetime soap opera in comparison. The inciting incident of the series, which premieres January 9, is the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and director Pete Berg (Friday Night Lights) and writer Mark L. Smith (The Revenant) don’t shy away from the shocking violence of the era, earning a firm TV-MA rating for the historical drama.

“This is America…1857,” reads a synopsis from the streamer. “Up is down, pain is everywhere, innocence and tranquility are losing the battle to hatred and fear. Peace is the shrinking minority, and very few possess grace — even fewer know compassion. There is no safe haven in these brutal lands, and only one goal matters: survival. American Primeval is a fictionalized dramatization and examination of the violent collision of culture, religion, and community as men and women fight and die to keep or control this land.”

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Betty Gilpin stars in the series as Sara, a mother “who’s searching for her husband and trying to keep her young son alive amid the bloodshed,” according to Vanity Fair. She’s guided on her quest by Isaac (Taylor Kitsch), a “grieving local” who “was raised on a Shoshone reservation after being sold off as a young child.” The story required meticulous research for the creators and cast alike (Kitsch is “fluent in the Shoshone language, basically,” Gilpin claims). The production took things a step further by shooting on location “at altitude in the weather, with wolves and bears and snakes,” Berg said.

“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,” the director told VF. “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.” You can see the chill and desolation for yourself in the American Primeval first look, below.