The “T” word — Trump — is not spoken in The Man in the High Castle writers’ room but how can current events not bleed into a series about what America would be like if the Germans and Japanese had won World War II and divided the country into the Greater Nazi Reich and Japanese Pacific States?
Rufus Sewell is American Obergruppenführer John Smith in the series set in conquered America circa 1962. Smith is a complicated man who does everything he can to protect his ill son Thomas from being euthanized as a defective in the Greater Nazi Reich. But it’s scenes of the Obergruppenführer in uniform and on the job which pose problems for production filming in Vancouver. Crew post warnings and keep swastikas hidden but one very public shoot backfired a few weeks ago at the old Canada Post building. Most of the crowd were outside because of a fire drill at the office tower opposite and took it as it is — fiction. But Nazi symbols and salutes were not what some people wanted to see in the week after the Charlottesville neo-nazi rally at which an American white supremacisit killed a young woman by driving his car into a crowd of protestors.
A Heil Hitler salute as the Obergruppenführer enters the Ahnenurbe Institute aka the Canada Post Building.
The Man in the High Castle is based on the acclaimed anti-facist novel by Philip K. Dick.
The Man in the High Castle took precautions yesterday filming at a green screen set in northeast False Creek and screening off the filming.
Rufus Sewell on set to block scene.
His co-star on the green screen steps.
By the time Sewell returned to set, the scene was no longer public.
The real not-a-Nazi Rufus Sewell.
Oh, John. #HighCastle #highcastleseason3 @FredrikSewell pic.twitter.com/EQMwEjiUHU
— Joel de la Fuente (@joeldelafuente) July 16, 2017
Wow very well done .Great Job to all of you who took Part