How ‘Wilderness’ Got Its Theme Song – Variety

Courtesy Prime Video

spoiler ALERT: This story contains spoilers for the limited series “Wilderness,” now streaming on Prime Video.

The script for Amazon Prime Video’s new limited series “Wilderness” contains the blueprints for a massive revenge saga set against the backdrop of America’s national parks. But amidst those finer points, writer and creator Marnie Dickens also includes songs she imagines playing along with the action. A curated playlist for vengeance, if you will.

Based on the book by BE Jones, ‘Wilderness’ follows Liv (Jenna Coleman), a British expat living in New York City who discovers that her attractive husband Will (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) is having an affair. , ever since they got together. American soil. Haunted by the resurfaced trauma of her father’s infidelity, Liv begins plotting to kill her husband while they embark on a belated honeymoon road trip through America’s natural wonders such as Yosemite and the Grand Canyon.

He thinks that sightseeing will save their marriage. She thinks that the forest is a place where tragic accidents happen all the time.

As the two delve deeper into her deadly itinerary, Liv retreats to the music in her headphones as things go awry (killing Will isn’t as easy as she thought) and new obstacles emerge (her The unexpected arrival of Mistress Kara, played by Ashley Benson). Liv’s internal moments of reflection are songs by Britney Spears, St. Vincent, and Tkay Medza – all female artists whom Dickens identified in his script to illustrate his heroine’s complex psyche. But one drop of the needle remained empty.

Executive Producer Elizabeth Kilgarriff explains Diversity That he and Dickens (who is avoiding interviews due to the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes) wrestled over what the series’ theme song should be — a conversation that shot for the stars, and actually led to a Managed to reach.

“Marnie messaged me one day and said, ‘Obviously, the best song would be Taylor Swift’s ‘Look What You Made Me Do,'” Kilgariff says. “It would be incredible, but it’s probably never going to happen.”

The song, which serves as the lead single from Swift’s 2017 “Reputation” album, embraces the redemptive power of karma — a core tenet of Liv’s inspiration. Dickens and Kilgariff were initially undecided about whether to ask whether using the song was a possibility: until they realized they had nothing to lose.

“It really was a fairy tale moment,” Kilgariff says. “And it was as simple as Marnie wrote her a letter, which we sent to her label with the first two scripts, and it was forwarded to her team.”

It is here that Kilgariff laughs at the disbelief she still has as to what happened next.

“Somehow, it reached people very close to her and we got messages back that she would like to be involved,” she says. “From there it just became a constant conversation. Honestly, it was this random approach that turned into such happiness.

This is not the first time that Prime Video has included a yet-unreleased “Taylor’s Version” track as part of its ongoing efforts to re-record Swift and her early albums. This summer alone, Prime Video’s teen drama “The Summer I Turned Pretty” premiered “Back to December (Taylor’s Version)” ahead of the release of “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” and “Delicate (Taylor’s Version)” in July. )” released. From the upcoming re-record of “Reputation”.

But unlike “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” which introduced nine Swift songs in its second season alone, “Look What You Made Me Do (Taylor’s Version)” is far more woven into the fabric of “Wilderness.” In August, Prime Video launched a teaser set of songs, allowing fans to hear the new version for the first time. As initially conceived by Dickens and Kilgariff, it also plays with the series’ opening titles, another poem is heard in episode 2 and also inspired the tagline – “Look what he made her do.”

Narratively speaking, the song also revolves around Liv’s story quite well. The first lyrics sound like they were written to be part of Liv’s narration in the series – “I don’t like your little games / Don’t like your tilted stage / You played the fool with me / No, I’m you does not likes.”

Now armed with the anthem of his dreams, Kilgariff says he and Dickens are still struggling to make “Wilderness” more than just another revenge story. To do this, he hinders Liv’s plans.

In Episode 2, her mission to push Will, who is afraid of heights, out of the Grand Canyon or plan his drowning on a whitewater rapids excursion are both foiled. Instead, the couple find themselves going on an outing with another woman, Cara, who joined them on holiday, and her inattentive boyfriend, Gareth (Eric Balfour).

Confronted with her husband’s lies more acutely than ever before, Liv’s drunken rage overcomes her on a stormy night, and she pushes a man she believes to be Will off a cliff. , but he discovers that Kara was the one wearing his coat.

“The whole part of Episode 2 was about leaning into ‘the other woman,'” Kilgariff says. “But at every step, we try to reduce it and remove layers. So, at the end of the episode, Liv realizes that Kara is not the enemy, and that Will has let her down. He is another victim in this triangle. Then, for her character to die, we really have to think carefully about it and how Liv will carry that weight from that point forward. But if anything, it heightens the need and feeling of revenge – because it’s almost as if she’s taking revenge on both of them.

By the time they return home from the honeymoon from hell, Liv and Will are more caught up in each other’s lies than ever before. He is hiding his affair with a dead woman, and she is supporting his lies to escape his guilt. By episode 6, they are forced to expose everything between them, especially when Liv learns that Will has another woman in his life. With nothing left but hatred for her husband, Liv launches a deliberate tirade against him in front of her coworkers – a far cry from the tone she used when she met him in the premiere as the dutiful wife.

“We always talked throughout the season about Liv’s journey from mouse Liv to wolf Liv,” Kilgariff says. “We wanted to get to that moment where the gloves were taken off. No one could save this marriage. It’s over, and it was like actually being able to enjoy that fact.

She says that Coleman and Jackson-Cohen were especially excited to face off against each other in the finale’s climactic standoff, which followed Will’s arrest for Cara’s murder. Visiting her ex-husband in prison, Liv confirms her suspicions of his involvement, and laughs off his request to wait until he is released from prison. In return, he gets a glimpse of the self-centered survival tendencies that he often hides behind a smile.

“This is the moment, this is the confrontation we’ve been building up to,” Kilgariff says of the scene. “From the beginning, this whole thing has been about betrayal, and when they set out on this journey, it was about revenge. But that revenge doesn’t come until that final moment in jail. “And it’s delicious for Liv.”