‘Filthy Rich’s Tate Taylor Hopes Evangelical Fox Series Will “Polarize In The Best Way Possible”, Talks Potential Guest Stars – TCA
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Filthy Rich has had quite a journey to get to Fox, but now that it is set to premiere at the beginning of 2020, show creator Tate Taylor is ready for the masses to see it — and he hopes that it will spark conversation in the current social climate.
“Anything I do, whether it is film or television, I like to bring together people with vast differences,” Taylor tells Deadline. “To have Fox be so brave to make a show about faith and religion and the difference we have in America but not do it in a satirical or bias way — that’s what I am most excited about. There’s no right or wrong. It’s not pro or anti-Christian.”
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Written and directed by Taylor, Filthy Rich, based on the New Zealand series of the same name from Filthy Productions, is a southern Gothic family drama in which wealth, power and religion collide – with outrageously soapy results. When the patriarch of a mega-rich Southern family, famed for creating a wildly successful Christian television network, dies in a plane crash, his wife (Kim Cattrall) and family are stunned to learn that he fathered three illegitimate children, all of whom are written into his will, threatening their family name and fortune.
With projects like The Help, The Girl on the Train and the forthcoming Eve with Jessica Chastain, Taylor puts women front and center in his projects — and being from Mississippi, he often focuses on southern women. That said, he is very much an advocate of inclusivity and putting a deserving shine on women.
“You are who you are by the way you were raised and I was raised by strong southern women — I was raised by a single mom,” he said. “There’s a comfortability there. In general, females in the world have a much longer road to hoe than men do. When a character is a female, there’s much more complexity to them and they have more things to overcome because that’s the way the world is.”
He adds, “Many times I have done a movie and there have been male characters and I try to make as many of them women as possible because it makes for more complex characters.”
With the footage they showed at TCA, it is very much southern-fried and it hints at lots of twists and turns that suggests it might be a soapy epic — but Taylor says that’s the exact opposite of what it really is.
“There are certain tropes that should be celebrated in this format and I certainly do, but this is a water cooler show,” he remarks. “Like the movies I make, I wanted to create debate and discussion — some heated, some not. I wanted it to be polarizing in the best possible way.”
With Cattrall at the lead and the narrative presented in this Southern drama, there’s bound to be room for special guests — and Taylor said that he has a running wishlist that he is keeping under lock and key.
“A lot of women I just worked with on Breaking News In Yuba County are all saying ‘I would love to do something on this show’,” he revealed. “I have a repertoire!”
Taylor just wrapped Yuba County and, if you have been following the casting news, it’s a star-studded roster of actors including Allison Janney, Mila Kunis, Regina Hall, Awkwafina, Juliette Lewis, Ellen Barkin, Samira Wiley, Wanda Sykes and Bridget Everett — perhaps we might see a couple of them pop up in the forthcoming episodes of Filthy Rich.
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