Q&A: Morgan Spector On Capturing Jewish Trauma For HBO’s Alt-History Miniseries ‘The Plot Against America’

You don’t need monsters or ghosts to tell a scary story. Politics can often be just as frightening as a snarling beast with sharp teeth. The idea of a democratic country slowly slipping into the hungry maw of fascism, of trusted leaders splitting the public into “us” and “them” is enough to give anyone nightmares.

Philip Roth knew this when he wrote The Plot Against America, an award-winning alternate history novel from 2004 that also serves as a semi-autobiographical account of the acclaimed author’s Jewish upbringing in Newark, New Jersey.

The book imagines a reality in which celebrated pilot Charles Lindbergh becomes president in 1940 instead of FDR. Known for his isolationist and pro-Nazi views, Lindbergh begins to use anti-Semitic and xenophobic rhetoric as a way to keep America out of the growing war in Europe. His myopic statements and blatant appeasement of Hitler’s Germany begins warping the United States into a proto-fascist state in which outward aggression against Jewish people is not only ignored, but encouraged.

Nearly two decades after its publication, The Plot Against America is receiving a six-part miniseries adaptation on HBO, the first episode of which premieres this coming Monday (March 16) at 10pm EST. David Simon and Ed Burns (both alums of The Wire and Generation Kill) are behind the masterful TV project, which faithfully brings Roth’s haunting and timely prose to the small screen.

The audience’s point of reference during Lindbergh’s political upheaval is the Levin family (based on the real-world Roths): Herman (Morgan Spector), Bess (Zoe Kazan), Phillip (Azhy Robertson), Sandy (Caleb Malis), Alvin (Anthony Boyle). Winona Ryder and David Krumholtz round out the core family ensemble as Evelyn Finkel (Bess’s sister) and Monty Levin (Herman’s brother).

As Herman, Spector gives a powerhouse performance, depicting the character as a fiercely proud American who refuses to believe that his own country is beginning to reject him like a newly-installed organ. Situated near the nexus of the show’s intersecting storylines, Herman is by far the most compelling character, particularly when he gets a chance to spar with someone like Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf (John Turturro), a deluded clergyman who truly believes Lindbergh is good for the Jews.

To better understand the leader of the Levin mispacha, I hopped on a phone call with Morgan Spector to learn how he first joined the project and got into the headspace of a Jewish man losing his grip on what he always believed to be true.

Josh Weiss: How did you first become attached to the project?

Morgan Spector: It’s an amazing story to me. I had auditioned for The Deuce, David Simon’s other show, maybe two years ago. They called and offered me the role, then they called [back] and said, ‘Actually, the first guy we were gonna give it to, he can do it in the end, we’re not gonna give you the role.’ [That] usually doesn’t happen and they were very apologetic about it. David wrote me a very nice email and said, ‘Hey, good audition, we’ll see you next time.’ It was a very classy way to handle that situation [but] I had no real expectation that it would amount to anything. 

And then last fall, I got a call out of the blue and they said, ‘We’re doing this adaptation and we’d like to offer you this part.’ I was completely dumbfounded because not only am I a huge fan of David Simon, but I’m a huge fan of Philip Roth. If I was gonna put down a kind of job in my dream journal, this would’ve been it.

JW: Had you read the novel beforehand?

MS: Yeah … It came out in 2004 and I think I had read it right around that time. I read it in 2004 or 2005. I read it in the context of the Bush Era, which, in my mind, I was an opponent of the Iraq War and saw the [rise of] The Patriot Act, saw what they had attempted to do with that program called Total Information Awareness. There was a lot about the Bush-Cheney Era that, to me, looked like this kind of creep toward a much more authoritarian government. 

I read the book then and [said] ‘Oh, this has an interesting resonance in this moment.’ But yes, when I got the job, I went out and got the book again and re-read it. Reading it in this era [was surreal] because it is about a kind of demagogue, a kind of real political outsider, who comes to power in a way nobody expects. The parallels are almost bizarre. 

JW: Beyond reading the book again, how did you prepare for the role?

MS: I am a real Roth fan and so I had read [his other stuff]. He has written about his family a lot and one of my favorite books of his is called Patrimony. It’s a non-fiction book about going through the end of his father’s life. I went and re-read that book [too] because I felt like that was gonna give the most insight into how Roth saw his father. There’s [also] a very brief autobiographical book he wrote called The Facts. I went back and read that [too].

I also just spent a lot of time thinking about my own family. My grandpa, Herbert, was sort of roughly the same age as Herman, born around roughly the same time. Some slightly different circumstances, but in this sort of similar milieu. I feel like I have a little bit of this through him, to my father, to me. I feel like I have a little bit of this energy, this inheritance in my body. I just spent time thinking about that and trying to amplify that sense of those men in my own imagination a little bit.

JW: Did you get any specific direction from David Simon or Ed Burns?

MS: I just remember this early conversation we had. We first got on Skype ... and I just remember one of the main things they said was, ‘The thing about this guy, is he’s not a hero.’

I remember turning that over [in my mind], but that was one of the first things, the big highlight that they gave me. As we shot it and as I read scripts, I really started to understand what they meant and when you’re playing a person who’s written in three dimensions, which is a hard thing to do—and I credit David and Ed Burns for really doing that with all of these people—is that they don’t have to be good all the time. 

They don’t have to be right all the time. The character can be 100 percent committed to what they’re doing and the audience can be allowed to see them as fools, or as blowhards, or as cruel. But we don’t cease to be compelled by them, we don’t cease to be interested in their story. I think to play a character like that, to get to work with writing like that, it’s a rare pleasure.

I’m very grateful to them for creating Herman that way.

JW: Watching the show as a Jew myself, I was constantly gripped by this sense of impending dread. Did you feel that on set?

MS: I would say yes. Things aren’t great in a lot of ways at the moment for a lot of people … I think sometimes you have to turn down the volume of what’s going on in the world in order to get to where you get [as an actor].

I found, working on this project, that I was unable to ever do that, that I couldn’t turn down the volume because we are essentially living in that space where the volume is constantly going up and up and up. I found myself getting a little more obsessive and a little bit more paranoid than I usually would, which is a fairly intense place to [inhabit] for six months.

JW: How did you work with Zoe Kazan and the actors who play your sons to cultivate an authentic family dynamic?

MS: Zoe and I, we’re both just really committed to creating a family that felt true to the era and true to this story. The thing I’m amazed by with Zoe, is that I’ll go yammering on about something for five minutes and then you’ll cut to her and you know exactly how she’s feeling and that the way she’s feeling, is absolutely the truth. 

I think the dynamic between them, is that Herman also knows that. I think when Herman checks in with Bess, he knows that she’s usually right and he usually defers to her, but he still has his process that he has to go through basically. Their relationship for the period is a pretty healthy and respectful one.

That was actually really nice, to get to play with a marriage that kind of works. When you’re building a relationship, you don’t always do that in a conscious way. Sometimes, you just come out of your trailers and you go on set and you do your thing. We really spent a lot of time talking about emailing and figuring out how to build this family and I feel really good about how that process worked. 

And with the kids, we just got lucky. They’re just both brilliant. They were mature on set, they were absolutely focused and committed to the project. They were also just fun, lovely kids so it was easy to love them and hard to let them go, in fact, when [shooting ended].

JW: Herman has this rather fraught relationship with his rebellious nephew, Alvin. How did you cultivate that tense relationship with Anthony Boyle?

MS: Anthony is also just a special actor. He’s wonderful until you step on set and you start playing [the part]. And it’s there, it’s there in the text. But he said something to me recently, that I brought something of that dynamic to our normal off-camera interactions, which I don’t know if I realized I was doing. That stuff does tend to happen, there’s leakage in that way … Those two men, there’s such a kind of visceral inability to be in the same space together without coming into conflict. 

They don’t have the tools to talk their way out of that dynamic. They’re trapped in it and so, I think we both felt like it was better to just let it percolate and simmer below the surface. But yeah, what it builds to, where that relationship ends up, we did actually talk through that and help each other figure out why it goes where it goes.

I think that was invaluable.

JW: Herman doesn’t have a ton of scenes with Rabbi Bengelsdorf, but there is a great exchange they have over the Shabbos table in one episode. What was it like acting opposite John Turturro in that scene?

MS: I have always loved John Turturro, but I think it wasn’t until being on set with him—that was a real pinch me moment for me. We talk about artists, we talk about masters [but] I actually think John Turturro is a real master of this craft. Just to get to be around him and hear his stories and work with him, was really incredible. 

Bengelsdorf is this absolutely self-interested, ambitious man of God who’s meant to lead his people [and he] makes this decision to lead them into this political abyss. I find that character pretty loathsome, certainly from Herman’s perspective. But John humanized him and I think there’s a way in which even Herman, in his deep distrust of this man, he can’t quite dismiss him. Not just because he’s the rabbi, but also because there’s a full humanity to that person that Herman feels and can see.

Those scenes were a real pleasure.

JW: Can you talk about being immersed in that late ‘30s/early ‘40s world every day while filming?

MS: In a kind of simple, stupid way, when you walk down a normal city block and you turn around the corner and there’s 40 vintage cars and every storefront has been done over to look like 1941, it just kind of blows your mind. It’s movie magic. You get to be the first to really appreciate that, but it’s especially weird shooting at home or shooting in New Jersey and seeing these places transformed in the way that only high end … television budgets can achieve.

It does something to you, it does something to the way you walk and the way you’re sort of living in the world—at least for that moment. It helps you get there.

JW: As the show goes on, Herman’s optimism and determination kind of begins to crack. How did you tap into that headspace? Was it in the writing?

MS: It was definitely in the writing. Tommy Schlamme directed the second half and he spoke about how this dynamic between Herman and Bess was like his grandparents. That his grandfather…he just felt, as I think many jews did, ‘I’m German! I’m not gonna be thrust out of this society. I’m integral to it.’

And [Tommy’s grandfather] didn’t want to leave and Tommy had said that it’s only because his grandmother prevailed in this argument, that they escaped just in time. Otherwise, they would have been wiped out. There are countless stories like that.

I [also] think a lot about climate change and how climate change is gonna effect all of our lives and the way that we live ... We’re all gonna be living with this question that I think tens of millions of refugees currently face. Of, ‘When do we have to leave? When are we gonna have to let go of this place we think of as our home and all the people that we love and try to go somewhere else for a better shot?’

It’s a question that’s in the air for all of us.