 APRIL 16 • 2020 | 27

Arts&Life

TV

The acclaimed TV creative 
discusses the Jewish response 
to his alternate-history drama.

ANDREW LAPIN EDITOR
D

avid Simon is the 
creator of some of the 
most acclaimed TV 
series of all time, including 
The Wire and Treme. His new 
alternate-history miniseries 
The Plot Against America, based 
on the novel by Philip Roth, 
concludes its six-episode run 
on HBO April 20 (the entire 
series is streaming on HBO 
Now). It follows a Jewish 
family in Newark in the early 
1940s as anti-Semitic war 
hero Charles Lindbergh wins 
the presidency and begins 
targeting Jewish Americans.
Simon, who touched on 
his own Jewish identity to 
write the show, tells the JN 
it’
s about “intolerance of all 
kinds.”

This interview has been 
condensed and edited.

JN: There are a lot of Detroit 
connections in the show: 
Lindbergh, Henry Ford. Hank 
Greenberg is heard on the 
radio, and Detroit’
s one of the 
first cities to riot in the climax. 

Simon: It was all in the book. 
We added a few cities to give 
a sense of the civil disturbanc-
es marching east from the 
Midwest. But we held Detroit, 
because there was no reason 

not to. Roth seemed to have a 
sense of where he thought it 
should start. Hank Greenberg, 
is there a better Jewish ball-
player of the era? We didn’
t 
have Koufax yet. So there’
s that. 
And Henry Ford, that’
s again 
Roth. He was the Secretary of 
the Interior in the book. Ford’
s 
anti-Semitism is well-known.

JN: What kind of role do you 
think a show like yours can 
play in helping communities 
like ours reckon with our own 
dark histories?

Simon: I’
m hoping it’
s more 
generic than Detroit. Honestly, 
as this thing plays overseas, I’
m 
hoping that other countries 
that are experiencing this turn 
toward totalitarianism [see 
it]. Because it’
s happening in 
a variety of places around the 
world. 
Also, I’
ll be very clear. The 
allegory is for who is the most 
vulnerable in our society. And 
in 1940, at the height of the 
[German-American] Bund 
and isolationism and “
America 
First,
” Jewish Americans were 
othered and made to feel as if 
they were less than first-class 
citizens. And that was the vul-
nerable cohort. 
Right now, anti-Semitism is 
decidedly on the rise because 

continued on page 29

David Simon 
on the Real ‘Plot 
Against America’

MICHELE K. SHORT

