Warning: The following contains spoilers of HBO’s television series The Leftovers.
Visions, prophets, miracles, and dramatic unexplainable events. Charismatic leaders attracting disciples. Sacrificial rituals. Such elements are common to the founding narratives and traditions for many of the world’s religions — in other words, they are the things of myth, or at least the ancient past.
But according to Tom Perrotta, the co-creator, screenwriter, and executive producer of the critically acclaimed HBO television series The Leftovers, ancient religious myths and mysteries have also bled into the universe inhabited by his very modern characters. In a recent interview with ThinkProgress, Perrotta offers a glimpse into the thought process behind the show, which follows several modern day families as they cope with the aftermath of a supernatural event that saw the disappearance of 10 percent of the world’s population — or something akin to the Christian rapture. He explains that in the series, which concludes its second season Sunday night, the intersection of the mundane and the earth-shatteringly mysterious gives the world of The Leftovers an uncanny resonance with ancient religious origins: “These characters are, in essence, living in biblical times.”
The Oscar-nominated screenwriter is also known for adapting his novels Election and Little Children into Hollywood cult favorites, but Perrotta’s 2007 novel The Abstinence Teacher also explored the fiery tensions between God, sex, and politics among suburban evangelicals. And as Perrotta told ThinkProgress, his work on both the novel version of The Leftovers and its screen adaptation allowed him to get beyond today’s religious controversies and explore the very heart of religion itself.
Note: Our extensive interview with Tom Perrotta was an hour long, so we didn’t include all of it in the transcript below, which has been edited for length and clarity. But if you want to hear the full conversation, listen to the podcast!
Carolyn: So when did your fascination with religion begin?
My most recent fascination with religion actually began during the 2004 presidential election, when George Bush was reelected.
Tim: My most recent fascination with religion actually began during the 2004 presidential election, when George Bush was reelected. The cliché at the time was that Bush was reelected by exploiting the controversy around gay marriage, and by activating this evangelical, conservative Christian voting block. And I just remember being constantly surrounded by people in Massachusetts (where I live) who would just throw up their arms and say “Who are these people?”
I made a vow to myself as a writer that I’m going to write about this culture war, and when I do, I need to write about it from both sides and steep myself in contemporary evangelical culture.
Carolyn: In season 2 of The Leftovers, it seems that you’re exploring the idea that, if the rapture is devoid of any sense of meaning or pattern, it sort of becomes a tabula rasa — it leaves it to the characters to create something out of it. Was there a system to how you wrote that, such as an effort to see how many responses could mirror different existing religious traditions, myths, or archetypes?Tom: The show has become about almost abstract questions of faith, magic, and the presence of the divine. It really did start with a kind of direct response to Christianity, but now I think the show is…pan-religious. Now it involves myths, paganism, atheism — and there’s a lot of Old Testament in it and surprisingly little New Testament. Our only decidedly Christian character, Matt Jamison, is obsessed with the Book of Job and really doesn’t talk much about Jesus. I don’t know if the word Rapture has even been used in the show — it’s a funny absence.
The book version of The Leftovers started out being very much an American book, and all the cults were connected to distinctly Christian strains of American religion. Holy Wayne being the kind of charismatic person, cult of personality, [and] the Guilty Remnant was a sect based on self-denial, mortification, penance.
As the show got bigger and bigger, I think (cowriter) Damon Lindelof is much more attuned to say that the show’s world is myth, magic, and more open to faith in general. Religion scholar Reza Aslan came in and talked to us very specifically about shamanism and some other ancient religious practices.
Jack: About that — there are a few examples of new religious movements and cults in the show, such as the Guilty Remnant. Were you exploring what triggers new religious movements, or did you just naturally assume that would happen?Tom: Ultimately, the question that grabbed me is what would an authentic grassroots American religious expression be if we could turn the clock back? What if basically our very mature religions, which go back thousands of years and point to some ancient moment when God intervened on earth, when there were miracles and acts of direct divine intervention that people witnessed…What if we were those people, those people who were closely connected to the act that future religions would grow out of? How would we respond?
The idea was: What if the point zero in the timeline was now, rather than 2,000 years ago or 5,000 years ago?
Carolyn: Since you focus The Leftovers in the United States, what do think makes the expressions of religion in the show particularly American?Tom: My feeling about all religions — which I’ve learned in recent years — is that there is no point zero on the religious timeline. Every religion is borrowing from traditions, some of which are live, some of which are dead, some of which they’re unaware of but live on in other ways.
My feeling about all religions — which I’ve learned in recent years — is that there is no point zero on the religious timeline.
When thinking of the Guilty Remnant, the Shakers are in my mind. If I’m thinking of Holy Wayne, I’m thinking of Scientology or other charismatic figures that develop their own systems for real-life therapy. And I’m thinking about how in America there’s also a kind of joyful, hedonistic strain of religion. I’m trying to draw on my own awareness of what American spiritual practices have been. Though unlike a lot of other cultures at a lot of other times, there is a strong atheistic and rationalistic thought — not that the two are necessarily the same. But there are a lot of people that are hostile to a religious interpretation of the world, so I think a lot of the characters in The Leftovers are kind of bereft.
They don’t have a language to explain this event that defies scientific explanation.
Carolyn: Right — religion is oftentimes described as something that defies science. We see this in your show: the first season is mundane interaction with an extraordinary event. But the second season seems more elemental — you have fire, water, birth, earthquakes, etc. Is it a return to myth? A return to religious symbology?Tom: There was something from the first season that we thought we’d include but never got to put in. We thought about a stop on Tom and Christine’s road trip, where they would find themselves in a town that no one departed, that was in the process of being converted into a modern day Holy Land.
We couldn’t use it in the first season, but when we thought about season two and had this urge to shake things up in a big way, this idea was resurrected. And once we started talking about what makes a holy place a holy place, we started thinking directly about some of those questions. Like the land itself might have been somehow special, and what was kind of built into that idea.
People who talk about Jerusalem often claim to feel some special spiritual vibration. I’m inclined to say that’s a sense of history alive in that place, but others say no, there’s something about that place…So what makes a land holy? The land itself, or something that happens in that place? So there’s a chicken and egg thing whenever you talk about holy land…because these characters are, in essence, living in biblical times.
Jack: There is a lot of sadness in your show. Is religion only a response to tragedy? Is part of this story an explanation of what religion can give you amidst tragedy?
The phrase that I keep trying to use is that religion is a response to mystery.
Tom: The phrase that I keep trying to use is that religion is a response to mystery. Tragedy is part of mystery, but so is any huge event. The birth of a child, the creation of a family or community; or sex. It is something that has power that you can’t fully comprehend. So one of the exciting things about moving to Miracle is that you see people trying to cope not with tragedy, as the other people on the show are, but with the sense of specialness, or being spared. And that’s another thing about religion which is “We’ve been blessed.”
I think that’s interesting, that the show deals with that side as well. I am sensitive to that. I have a friend who is a religious Catholic. He was talking about the show to me and said he felt like there were almost monochrome scenes where people embraced religion because they were afraid, and I understand that it’s not that simple, and that one of the things about religion is this feeling of gratitude. Life isn’t just a series of tragedies. Tragedy is part of it, but so is love and so are feelings of fullness and wonder. I do think drama tends to push us towards dark places, but there is this another side of religion.
Carolyn: Has it been fun to engage religion like this?Tom: It has been fun, and one of the reasons it has been fun is that it has opened up possibilities that storytellers don’t often engage with. It has been a hard show to write because there is not a model for it. There aren’t a lot of other shows that take religion seriously and are borrowing from so many different religious sources. I feel like there is a sweet spot, and a lot of the writing process involves us trying to locate that sweet spot and what kind of stories can we tell.
For instance, when the bird in a box story came up, I was honestly baffled by it. My version of faith now is trusting that Damon and some of the other writers may be able to answer questions that leave me completely confused. But it has been exciting for me to bring up territory that isn’t always explored. I think we’ve also started to find places where it can be funny. Life is funny, and it wasn’t so much in season 1. It hasn’t always been in season 2, but we laugh a lot in the room, which I think also helps us because it can get pretty heavy. In fact, after season 1 one a lot of the writers were like “ehhhhhh I don’t think I can do another season of this.”
We all needed to rest from the material. But it is also intellectually part of the challenge to write the show, and that is fun too.
Jack: What does it mean to “take religion seriously” in a television show, and do you see anyone else doing it well?Tom: That’s a really interesting question. When I wrote The Abstinence Teacher, I was very much saying I want to represent contemporary Christians in a way that would allow them to recognize themselves, so there wouldn’t be this feeling that somebody was laughing or mocking. Because I’m not at all interested in that, and I often see that in certain kinds of “sophisticated” literary portrayals. It’s the idea of casting religious people as being the retrograde, or naive.
I want to represent contemporary Christians in a way that would allow them to recognize themselves…[not] laughing or mocking.
With The Leftovers, I actually think it’s a much more philosophical or even sociological question. Which is to say: What is religion at its root? And what does it do for people? And what is the human need that it answers? So I think it can be a different thing in different works. So The Leftovers isn’t so interested in representing any sort of realistic religious believer. The more the world of The Leftovers feels like different from our world, I think the better we can explore the kinds of questions we are exploring.
Take the fact that Matt Jamison is an Episcopalian priest, but now is working in some Baptist Church in Texas — it’s as if these distinctions no longer matter in this world. Whereas, if I was writing a novel about America, obviously, the nuances of theology and denomination would matter a great deal. In fact, Damon got so fed up with me and my persistent questions trying to figure out how something fit theologically or what kind of religious leader he was that it became a joke. If you go back to episode 3 — the first season — he’s in the casino and he’s just won money, and he asks for his money in cash and the cashier says “what denomination.”
He’s asked that question both in episode 3 of the first season and in his episode this year. Because I was bringing this sort of realist idea that we needed to be very clear about what we were representing religiously, and Damon kind of said we were operating in the a different space.
Carolyn: One more question: earlier you said a lot of your work started with engagement of presidential election cycles. How is this particular one feeding some of the new questions that you’re asking, or inspiring old ones?Tom: I’m not yet sure what is going to fascinate me about this election. I’ve had a little trouble connecting with it, only in the sense that the rejection of political expertise has been pretty fascinating to me. And I think Donald Trump and Ben Carson would be disastrous possible presidents. It’s unthinkable that one could be elected. And the idea that there are huge numbers of Americans who are at least willing to consider them as president makes me think that there is a new political configuration that is not that far off. There something about the very slow, very scary train wreck of paralysis in our political system that has people fed up. And I’m not an optimist, I don’t think anger leads to exciting possibilities.
But there is the sense that this unworkable, static thing that we’ve had — it will come down. And something new will come up. And maybe that will be a new party, and maybe that will be a disastrous populist movement — I don’t know.
Carolyn: Well, if we start getting earthquakes, I’m out of here. [collective laughter]Carolyn Davis is a Policy Analyst for the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress.