Government Cheese Is a Delicious Slice of Redemption
- UpRising Editors
- 3 hours ago
- 6 min read
[THE MAIN EVENT]
Co-creators Aeysha Carr and Paul Hunter delivered a left-of-center series that digs into faith and perseverance. Carr details how they filled the show with spirit.
UpRising: How would you describe the actual government cheese program?
Aeysha Carr: There's a ton that I know about it. The dairy farmers had a surplus and they were all going to go bankrupt. So the federal government bought all this surplus milk and dairy. How you can keep dairy [from spoiling] is by turning it into cheese. So they turned it into cheese, and then they had this surplus that they put into this food program. What people don't realize is it was really good cheese. And so when you ask people of that time period, they have these nostalgic memories of what they made with this government cheese. I think that's why it stood out so much from all of the food that they did give out.
Why was this an appropriate title for the show?
It's an immigrant story. You take the bottom of the barrel [and make something]. Think about slaves and the foods that they made that are now staples of Southern cuisines. They took foods from the lesser parts of the meats and made it into something so beautiful, so tasty, elevated it. And I think that is what the core of the show is. Taking what you have, not being mad at it, not being frustrated. Where you stand in the world is not always easy, but it's taking that and turning it into something delicious. Turning it into something like a drill that you make yourself is the thesis of you can get out. There's always a way out. That's the heart of the story.
David Oyelowo is playing the character Hampton, who is looking at the world through that glass-half-full lens. Did you learn anything from him?
Apple has this thing, No. 1 on the call sheet. But we also always used to say, when you're doing shows, it's top-down, meaning whatever your attitude is at the top of this food chain, that is what trickles down and sets the tone for everybody. And so David, being No. 1 on the call sheet, the head of this beast, he came to work every day in good spirits, knew his lines, wanted to try things. I think it empowered all the actors to do that.
He was humble. He was kind and worked hard. We had so much fun on set and got all our work done. We also had really stressful days, but even on the most stressful days, David was down and dirty doing his own stunts, doing everything at the ninth hour with a smile on his face. And that permeated into everything.
Co-star Bokeem Woodbine is excellent in the show. He told me he’s probably not top of mind for casting agents when it comes to quirky characters, although that is his personality in real life. Gotta say him being quirky IRL is not something I could have predicted.
Oh, I do. It’s in the way he talks. You can see it in other characters [he’s played]. The one that really highlights him is Fargo. He had these really loquacious speaking tones and rhythms and was wearing these costumes that he made look non-costumey. It's funny, we wanted Bokeem, but didn't think we could get him at first. That's why we came to him in the 11th hour because we didn't think we could [get him with] our budget, our this or that. And then there was no one else; we're like, “Can we go back and just try this and you guys have to pay him what he's worth?” So he was top [of the list]. He's quirky, weird, an outlier to me.
The show handles Judaism with more than cursory knowledge. For instance, when Hampton is going to rob the synagogue, he puts on a yamakah, which is customary for men who belong as well as visitors.
Yeah, I think once we were going to rob a temple, we needed to treat it with a lot of care. It's a beautiful religion, a beautiful culture. And I think that was why we did so much to introduce it in the way that we did. The rabbi, he's a little quirky. It's a very neighborhood [type of temple]; not top-of-the-line. His cousin works there. We were really cautious in presenting it with love.
When Hampton scolds Bootsy for touching the Torah with his bare hands, I applauded the detail.
We did all the homework. There's certain things we wanted to do that didn't work out. [There’s a scene when] Hampton says “If you touch the Torah, you'll be buried naked.” Bootsy was supposed to somehow lose all his clothes and succumb to this. We weren't able to realistically bring that in. But yeah, we did all that homework.
Einstein’s character beats and love of pole-vaulting makes me think of Napolean Dynamite. Was that any sort of influence?
I understand that connection, but no. There's a quirkiness and the way Einstein stands in the clothes but no, we didn't really pull from there. He's the character who's a little more like [co-creator] Paul when you compare the brothers. Paul was always very forgiving of the father and loved his father.
Einstein has the most insight, and he's kind of not of this world. He doesn't partake in the grievances of everyone else. He's above it and is always imparting his weird wisdom and thoughts of how he sees the world on people. He's our magical character.
Einstein is a Yoda type — not Empire Strikes Back Yoda, but not Grogu’s age, either.
Not quite baby Yoda, but not the Yoda that knows what he's doing. Einstein doesn't necessarily know what he's doing. He's not doing it on purpose. He's just being and his being imparts wisdom, but he's not intending to. He's just sharing.
Was there something that Simone brought to the role of Astoria that wasn't on the pages?
Simone brought so much life and depth to Astoria. She brought a humor to the role. There were lines that she delivered that were not intended to be jokes or funny that she made so funny. It's a very nuanced humor, her looks make people laugh, her responses to things when she walks away and just kind of looks. That was all Simone really understanding and having a lot of conversations with us when we sat down.
The coffee commercial episode is pretty brilliant. Did you realize you had gold when you wrapped that one?
That [episode] was our problem child. It was the episode that people were like, we really want to go down this road? What about Hampton? And people didn't quite get it. And we stood in it and we were like, we're going to make this work. And I remember when we finally turned in our first outline that they had written, and people were like, oh, wow, this is great. I was like, look, see our problem child became the genius.
It lands.
We came off of shooting in the sticks and really grueling days of this camping [episode]. And so to be at home with Simone and have her navigating all her feelings and doing art and just seeing who she was. And the violin was also Simone. We found out she played the violin, and so we incorporated that. That was not originally in there.
And then the magic of it all was when we hired the little girl [in that episode]. The little girl came to set the first day and was like, oh, I play violin too. She was an amazing concert violinists. That just all happened there. But it was the depth that the writers had put into that script of seeing Simone for the first time and seeing Astoria for the first time. Astoria just pops off, she jumps off the screen.
That’s serendipity.
Yeah.
Hampton is based off of director Paul Hunter’s dad. You two did some intense sessions around his family. What did you learn about his father?
The thing that's amazing about Paul's dad and the thing that we had many conversations in therapy about in our writing sessions, for all of his flaws, he really would come out of jail and be like, let's go I’m bringing this family back together and just have really high hopes and high optimism in the face of what would be daunting to most people. He would just go into everything gusto. That core is what makes Hampton redeemable. Even on his worst days, when he's making bad choices, he is doing it all the time for this family. And with such optimism. That was really what we pulled out of Paul's father.
—Jermaine Hall
______
Stream Government Cheese on Apple TV+ today.
The UpRising newsletter is a mixtape for your mind filled with information that's intellectual and irreverent—no skips. Whether it's film, music, art, food or the culture full stop, UpRising will serve as the starting point to your deep dives.