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SALEM EXCLUSIVE: Show Creators Inspired By Historical Documents

Our sister station, WGN America, is gearing up for the second season of Salem, and 5NEWS is taking viewers behind the scenes. “The craziest stuff you’ll s...

Our sister station, WGN America, is gearing up for the second season of Salem, and 5NEWS is taking viewers behind the scenes.

“The craziest stuff you'll see on Salem is stuff we plucked from a document from 1690 or 1650. There's nothing crazier than what people have already believed,” co-creator Adam Simon said.

“Our writer’s room is festooned with books about the period and witchcraft,” co-creator Brannon Braga chimed in. “Sometimes we'll just be flipping through something and say, ‘Oh, what’s that? We’ve got to do that.’”

“I’ve done some scenes in this that were shocking, even for me, and I’ve done some crazy stuff,” Lucy Lawless (“Countess Marburg”) said.

“It feels so dark and creepy but also so thrilling and dangerous,” Seth Gabel (“Cotton Mather”) said.

The subject matter of Salem may be too much for some, but the creators of the show say they’ve been enjoying the darker side of entertainment, since they were kids.

“Brannon and I both grew up obsessed with horror fiction, reading H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne. This is just a chance to pour all that stuff back out,” Simon said.

And pour it out they have, even incorporating pieces of history that some would say are better left untouched. One of the new elements this season is the plague.

“Everyone is fighting for survival this year, from your average person in Salem to Mary Sibley,” Iddo Goldberg (“Isaac Walton”) said.

In light of the plague taking over Salem, autopsies are being done. This is why some very impressive corpse manikins can be found on the set of Salem.

“It’s not a green screen with it all painted in later. We have tremendous crafts people and artists who are making every little piece of it,” Simon said.

The new season of Salem begins Sunday, April 5 at 10/9C on WGN America.

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