TNT limited series I Am the Night was well-received when it came out in 2019. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has an impressive score of 74% based on reviews from 70 critics. The six-part show starred Chris Pine and India Eisley. It was created by Same Sheridan, with Pine and Patty Jenkins also serving as executive producers.
I Am The Night tells the real-life story of author Fauna Hodel who was given up for adoption by her teenage mother when she was a little girl. While digging up information about her true parentage, she discovered that gynecologist George Hodel, the prime suspect in the Black Dahlia Murder Mystery was not only her grandfather but might have fathered her too. Here are some behind-the-scenes facts about the series that fans probably didn’t know.
The Title Was Changed
The original title for the TNT series was One Day She’ll Darken. This was directly taken from the autobiography of Fauna Hodel titled One Day She’ll Darken: The Mysterious Beginnings of Fauna Hodel.
The series was later renamed to I Am The Night since the network felt that this would be a more fascinating title. The decision was also made because even though the series is based on real events, plenty of other events are fictionalized for dramatization purposes. For example, Chris Pine’s character didn’t exist in real life.
Chris Pine Went Off-Script A Lot
And it turned out to be a good thing. According to series creator Sam Sheridan’s interview with Indiewire, Pine improvised a lot of things on the go because he had done his own research about PTSD. He shaped his performance on the go and made plenty of instinctual reactions.
For example, in the fourth episode, his character Jay Singletary fights a man while trying to protect Fauna Hodel. He then begins screaming endlessly. This wasn’t in the script.
Chris Pine’s Interest Led To The Creation Of His Character
Since Fauna Hodel’s best-selling memoir doesn’t feature a major male figure apart from her grandfather, there was initially no room for a male lead. However, as Chris Pine was working with Patty Jenkins on Wonder Woman, he expressed to her his desire to play a man with PTSD.
Since Patty’s husband Sam Sheridan was the person in charge of I Am The Night, she asked him whether Chris would be a good fit for the project and he agreed to create a character for him. What resulted was the reporter Jay Singletary who suffers from PTSD, having served in the military before.
A Dialect Coach Was Needed
India Eisley, who played a young Fauna in the series, told Variety that since Fauna was raised in the south, a dialect coach was brought in to help her get the accent right. And she sure did manage to nail the accent.
Accents are never easy to master but India did an incredible job. One could easily assume she was from the south too, but she actually grew up in Los Angeles. She said: “We had a really fantastic dialect coach named Samara Bay — I’m like a walking billboard for Samara, she was wonderful to work with.”
The Real Fauna Hodel Died In 2017
Sadly, the real Fauna Hodel died on September 30, 2017, due to complications from breast cancer. She was 66 at the time. She had two daughters, namely Yvette Gentile and Rasha Pecoraro.
Her work mostly touched on issues she had first-hand experience in including adoption and race relations. When she was not writing, she worked as a motivational speaker. Hodel also made an attempt to write and produce a movie based on her life titled Pretty Hattie’s Baby but it was never released.
Fauna’s Daughters Were Always On Set
India Eisley revealed that Fauna’s daughters were always on set. During an interview with Collider, she said: “Her daughters, Rasha and Yvette, were there on set a lot of the time, and they are just such special souls and such lights of human beings. They walk in the room and they literally light up the room.”
Despite the presence of her character’s daughters, Eisley said that this didn’t bring any kind of pressure. On the contrary, it made the set a fun place to be in. They were also very willing to answer any questions about accuracy.
Filming Was Done At The Real Sowden House
Fauna Hodel’s grandfather George Hoden once lived at the infamous Sowden House. It is at this house that George was reported to have committed a number of murders back in the ’40s and ’50s.
The producers of the show were given permission to shoot scenes by current owners Dan Goldfarb and Jenny Landers. The haunted Los Angeles-based home which is located at 5121 Franklin Avenue was built in 1926 for the photographer John Sowden. Its design is inspired by the Mayan temples.
Patty Jenkins Wanted To Do The Project A Long Time Ago
According to her interview on GQ, Patty Jenkins was introduced to the real Fauna several years ago. Fauna told her about her story and she was really impressed, hence she vowed to make a movie.
However, scheduling conflicts came in the way. It wasn’t until years later that she told her husband the story and he suggested making a TV series instead. A deal with TNT was thus struck. Sadly, the real Fauna died shortly before production started and never got to see the finished product.
Fauna’s Grandfather Allegedly Sabotaged The Release Of Her Film
Before I Am The Night, Fauna had written and produced a film about her own life. In a ’90s interview, she revealed that there were two days of filming left when production was halted due to legal reasons. The film had cost $7.5 million.
Faun believed that her infamous grandfather, George Hodel, was the reason why the movie was never released. He sabotaged it using legal means because his reputation would have been tarnished. Too bad for him because there is now an even better and longer version of the story.
The Mini-Series Had Three Directors
Patty Jenkins directed the first two episodes but she had to leave in order to begin working on Wonder Woman: 1984. Carl Franklin and Victoria Mahoney also directed two episodes each.
Victoria is best known for directing the Netflix series You while Carl is best known for his work in Devil In A Blue Dress. Despite the mini-series having different directors, the tone is consistent. This is probably because there was a unifying factor in Sam Sheridan, who wrote the entire script.
