For all the familiarity of the American Revolution, Sarah Botstein came away from making ‘The American Revolution’ with a very different understanding of the conflict.
“We came to see it as—yes, an integral national origin story—but also an essential and universal human story,” Botstein said.
In this interview, Botstein discusses the decade-long process of making ‘The American Revolution,’ including how she, Ken Burns and David Schmidt approached directing the six-part series collaboratively. She reflects on how the project changed her own understanding of the Revolution, particularly its dimensions as both a world war and a civil war, the challenge of moving beyond familiar Founding Fathers to tell a more expansive story, and the difficulty of reconstructing a conflict that predates photography. Botstein also discusses working with historians across different specialties, the importance of approaching the project as a “journey of discovery,” and how the series seeks to present the Revolution as both an American origin story and a universal human story.
The epic documentary series offers an expansive look at the virtues and contradictions of the war and the birth of the United States, tracing how thirteen colonies defied the British crown, secured independence, and established a radical new system of government that reshaped a continent and inspired democratic movements worldwide for centuries to come.
Directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt and written by Geoffrey C. Ward, ‘The American Revolution’ featured the following historians appearing in the film or consulting as advisors: Rick Atkinson, Friederike Baer, Maggie Blackhawk, Ned Blackhawk, Darren Bonaparte, Christopher Leslie Brown, Vincent Brown, Colin G. Calloway, Stephen Conway, Iris de Rode, Philip J. Deloria, Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Kathleen DuVal, Joseph J. Ellis, Charles E. Frye, Annette Gordon-Reed, Don N. Hagist, William Hogeland, Maya Jasanoff, Edward G. Lengel, William E. Leuchtenberg, Jennifer Loren, Holly A. Mayer, Nathaniel Philbrick, Jeffrey Rosen, Claudio Saunt, Barnet Schecter, Stacy Schiff, Alan Taylor, Michael John Witgen, Kevin J. Weddle, Serena Zabin, and the late Bernard Bailyn and Gordon S. Wood.
Narrated by Peter Coyote, ‘The American Revolution’ includes the first-person voices of nearly 200 individual historic figures, read by a cast of actors, including Adam Arkin, Jeremiah Bitsui, Corbin Bleu, Kenneth Branagh, Josh Brolin, Bill Camp, Tantoo Cardinal, Josh Charles, Hugh Dancy, Claire Danes, Jeff Daniels, Keith David, Hope Davis, Marcus Davis-Orrom, Bruce Davison, Leon Dische Becker, Alden Ehrenreich, Craig Ferguson, Morgan Freeman, Christian Friedel, Paul Giamatti, Domhnall Gleeson, Amanda Gorman, Michael Greyeyes, Jonathan Groff, Charlotte Hacke, Tom Hanks, Ethan Hawke, Maya Hawke, Lucas Hedges, Josh Hutcherson, Samuel L. Jackson, Gene Jones, Michael Keaton, Joe Keery, Joel Kinnaman, Tracy Letts, Damian Lewis, Laura Linney, Josh Lucas, Michael Mando, Carolyn McCormick, Lindsay Mendez, Tobias Menzies, Joe Morton, Edward Norton, David Oyelowo, Mandy Patinkin, Wendell Pierce, Jon Proudstar, Matthew Rhys, LaTanya Richardson, Liev Schreiber, Chaske Spencer, Dan Stevens, Meryl Streep, and Yul Vazquez, among others.
All episodes of ‘The American Revolution’ are available through the PBS app, the PBS Documentaries channel on Amazon, digital retailers, or physical media.
AF: It’s so nice to meet you today. How are you doing?
Sarah Botstein: Nice to see you. How are you?
AF: I’m doing well. I happened to attend the preview in Chicago last year.
Sarah Botstein: Wonderful.
AF: ‘The American Revolution’ was a long time in the making. How much planning went into making the documentary series?
Sarah Botstein: I mean, a lot. We have very long lead times. We decided to make the film in 2015 when we were finishing the Vietnam series and realized we could and needed to tell this story. We have kind of a very set production schedule that’s also very fluid and flexible. So we research and shoot interviews and at historic sites as Geoff Ward is writing and then we have a kind of set editing and post-production period. But these are big endeavors. It’s kind of like six feature-length films that are sewn together as a series.
AF: With three people directing, how did you all divide up the directing duties?
Sarah Botstein: People ask us that a lot. We don’t really divide up. It’s not like Ken directed one episode and I directed one episode and David directed another. We work very collaboratively. So we’re constantly, the three of us, talking about how to film things, you know, what to ask, how to make, what does the film look and sound like? And we do a lot of that all together in the editing room where the three of us are in the editing room with the editors. And then, of course, we talk to each other along the way about, we’re shooting here, we’re shooting there. One day Ken could be in New Hampshire, I’m shooting in upstate New York, David’s on a production trip in Williamsburg. So we work—we’re all doing everything. They aren’t set lanes that way.
AF: How as the shorthand improved while working with Ken Burns through the years?
Sarah Botstein: I’ve been extremely fortunate to have worked with Ken for 30 years. I speak to him everyday. There is a shorthand between us because we know each other very well. We are always in conversation about the film we are making: what music to play, what image to use, etc. We are constantly talking about how to make the work as good as it can be.
AF: How did your own knowledge of the American Revolution change while working on the film?
Sarah Botstein: Oh, well, of the three of us, I knew the least about the American Revolution so I would say I learned the most. I haven’t really understood how much the American Revolution was a world war. If you think about it for a second, very technically an actual civil war. How many of us are aware that we didn’t win without the French? How many countries on the global stage were watching to see what would happen? How divided families and communities were.
It was really interesting intellectually to work on this film after making Vietnam because there are so many themes of the Vietnam War in the American Revolution, but on the opposite side of the coin. You have to consider the cost of a counterinsurgency war, how violent and bloody. It’s kind of a subject that, as Ken would say, gets wrapped in a kind of bloodless, gallant myth. But it was a terribly bloody, horrible civil war and also a huge war for rethinking who is a subject, who is a citizen, how a government could work. And so all of those things interconnectedly make it, I think, a really interesting and fun story to tell 250 years later.
AF: You mentioned that one of the things that changed your understanding of the Revolution was seeing it as a world war as well as a civil war. How did that broader perspective affect the way that the three of you approached telling the story?
Sarah Botstein: We never come into a project with a set story we want to tell. What you ultimately see on the screen reflects, as Ken would say, a journey of discovery. People often think of the American Revolution as a story of the Thirteen Colonies, but it was much broader than that. Our approach never changed, it’s just that what we found was a richer, fuller story than we had known. We came to see it as—yes, an integral national origin story—but also an essential and universal human story.
AF: There are so many notable names associated with the American Revolution, whether on the American side or the British. How did you all decide which people to include and which to leave out?
Sarah Botstein: Yeah. Well, I think one of the ways we approached the subject, if you step back, is that you want to weave the narrative of the famous names George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Abigail and John Adams—you want to weave those important names from our past with people no one’s heard of. Betsy Ambler, Joseph Plumb Martin, even people like Nathanael Greene and Benedict Arnold, sort of lesser known characters in the war. And then there’s Mercy Otis Warren, Elizabeth Freeman, there’s Dragon Canoe. We want to include a very diverse kaleidoscope of different people invested in this war: Native American communities, free and enslaved Black people, women.
You want to just—everyone’s living amongst each other, everyone’s asking what side to be on, how the war would affect them, wishing the war would go away, to not make the loyalists cartoonish. So you want to weave kind of the unfamous with the bold-faced names, the leaders of the time with the people whose lives are impacted by the decisions being made around them. That’s inherent to every film we make.
AF: Was there anything in particular that surprised you during the research stage?
Sarah Botstein: I mean, everything surprises me. I mean, every day is a surprise. I feel so lucky to go to work and learn so much every day and just be open and to be aware and to pay attention. I think all the things I was just saying about just how difficult and bloody and awful the conditions were fighting the war, how tragic it was for different families and communities, and how long it took to decide it. It was almost a decade.
AF: What was the most challenging aspect in making ‘The American Revolution’?
Sarah Botstein: I mean, a couple of things. There aren’t people alive who lived through it so you’re reliant on a historical record. As we were just saying, it’s before photography and newsreel so you’re reliant on interpretations of the time visually. We always start with whatever evidence there is from the past. Less than two percent of people had their portraits painted so what did people look like? What did they sound like? What did they feel like? Trying to imagine that was probably, in addition to getting the subject right, those are kind of probably the big challenges.
AF: With there being so many books about this period of America throughout the years, what is the biggest challenge in telling the story and still managing to keep it fresh for audiences?
Sarah Botstein: We’re working with the best historians working in the space today. People like Rick Atkinson really have a great handle on the military story. And then Maya Jasanoff on the loyalists, Jane Kamensky, sort of more generally. Alan Taylor, obviously, so important in how we understand the different history. And then Gordon Wood and Bernard Bailyn from an older generation, Frederike Bear on the Hessians, Iris de Rode on the French. We want to just show and talk to historians from different expertise and weave those together with the narrative.
AF: You mentioned working with historians from many different areas of expertise. How did bringing those different perspectives together change the way that you all structured or shaped the series?
Sarah Botstein: Our process is always the same. With every film we make, we work with distinguished historians, writers, thinkers, people who help us get the story right. We feel extremely privileged to have worked with this group of people. It’s our job to listen and learn, to piece that history together, and to give it back as a finished series.
AF: Were there any historians that you all tried to get, but scheduling didn’t work out?
Sarah Botstein: I don’t think so. We could have interviewed 50 more people, but at a certain point, we just either ran out of time or—I don’t remember anyone not being available that we really wanted to interview. We did shoot a fair amount of this in Covid, so there were a few things that we ended up not being able to do because of the pandemic.
AF: Were you on set when Gordon S. Wood was interviewed?
Sarah Botstein: I was not. I came late that day. David Schmidt and Ken were both there. It’s very sad that he recently died.
AF: Yeah, I know.
Sarah Botstein: Really tragic.
AF: It was so nice to meet you.
Sarah Botstein: Okay. Great. Well, it’s really nice to meet you. Thank you for coming in Chicago, and this is great.