Power shift
ELIZA CLARK’S Y: THE LAST MAN ADAPTATION NAVIGATES A NEW WORLD…
In the early 2000s, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s Y: The Last Man comic became a bestselling thriller about an event wiping out all male mammals on Earth but one: everyman Yorick Brown. Two decades later, the story is now a series for FX on Hulu (Star on Disney+ in the UK) starring Ben Schnetzer, Diane Lane and Amber Tamblyn.
As a playwright, how did you come to adapt the comic and why?
ELIZA CLARK [EXEC PRODUCER]:
I read this comic book 10 years ago and fell in love with it. I think it is a beautiful story about survival, and it examines characters in a landscape that is constantly pressing on really interesting ideas about power and about systems of oppression. But the comic book is also 20 years old. One of the things I was most interested in doing with this adaptation was taking all the things I love so much about the comic book, [while] also updating it. Our show is gender diverse. We’ve made the representation of this world, in some ways, very different from the way it is in the comic book. And Yorick’s maleness is not what sets him apart in this world; it’s his Y chromosome that sets him apart. In the world of the television show, every living mammal with a Y chromosome dies. Tragically, that includes many women; it includes non-binary people; it includes intersex people; but that’s also true of the survivors.
Yorick isn’t particularly special, so how did you dial into his predicament as saviour?
BEN SCHNETZER [YORICK]: I think a lot of it was keying into everything that Yorick is unaware of. Yorick discovers a lot about the world, post-Event, as the audience does. And I don’t know if anyone would say that he’s the saviour. That’s certainly up for debate. [laughs]
Diane, what was it that especially attracted you to this project? DIANE LANE [PRESIDENT JENNIFER
BROWN]: I wanted this opportunity to work with an ensemble that was going to bring an iconic piece of writing to life. I remember speaking with various people in my life, and I was always so surprised at who was a fan of the graphic novel. So, I found that intriguing, and that made me think, ‘Huh.’ I just found it surprising, and it made me want to lean in and take the risk on a new type of format.
Kim is a brand-new character for the series. Talk about her dilemma.
AMBER TAMBLYN [KIMBERLY CUNNINGHAM]: Kimberly is a conservative. She is a woman who cares deeply about family values, and her entire identity is carried through her relationship to, and with, men, through her husband, her three sons, her father, who is the President of the United States. And, obviously, given the circumstances of the show, all those people die in the pilot. So, something happens to her, and within her, and her quest for power, which I think in her entire life she’s never had because it’s always been adjacent to the power that the men around her have had. Tara Bennett
Y: THE LAST MAN STARTS ON DISNEY+ ON 22 SEPTEMBER.