Showrunner David Simon took the stage at the 92nd Street Y carrying a giant-sized bottle of Purell following a preview screening of the HBO miniseries, The Plot Against America, to air on March 16. Certainly, Coronavirus was on his mind, a point of concern, even paranoia, while he was promoting his program, famously a Philip Roth novel fearful about the future of democracy. Simon shared the stage with his actors Winona Ryder, Morgan Spector, and John Turturro. Why adapt this Roth novel now?
The Plot Against America posits Charles A. Lindbergh running for president during World War II, whipping up antisemitism and violence against Jews in our country, as Hitler was on the rise in Europe and Nazis wreaked havoc on European Jews. While the panelists felt free to comment on parallels with our current regime, Simon made the point about the fragility of our democracy: what happens when a country of rules no longer has them? Winona Ryder felt compelled to star in The Plot Against America, as Evelyn Finkel, in many ways a villain of the story as she, with Turturro’s Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf, helps promote Lindbergh against naysayers, her reasonably paranoid Jewish New Jersey community. Ryder spoke about her family history, how some had perished in the Holocaust, her parents’ outspoken politics, and her message was clear to all: VOTE.
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