Inside Ken Burns’ The American Revolution: Filmmakers Discuss Craft, Casting, and Historical Surprises

PBS is unveiling one of its most expansive historical projects to date with The American Revolution, a six-part, 12-hour documentary series from Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt. Premiering November 16–21 and streaming for the first time on the PBS App in 4K Ultra HD, the series aims to re-examine the Revolutionary War through the voices, experiences, and contradictions of the people who lived it. During a virtual TCA session, the filmmakers offered a candid look at their decade-long process and the surprising historical revelations that shaped the project.

From the outset, Burns made it clear that the documentary aims to broaden our understanding of George Washington beyond myth and marble. Describing him as “a conflicted and complicated person and deeply flawed,” Burns acknowledged Washington’s “rash decisions on the battlefield,” including exposed flanks at Long Island and Brandywine, but emphasized that “he is the only person that could have kept everybody together.” What set him apart, Burns said, was “a combination of personal probity and virtue, a kind of political savvy… an ability to inspire people in the dead of night,” and a gift for “pick[ing] subordinate talent without fear of them overshadowing him.” As scholars Annette Gordon-Reed and Christopher Brown point out in the series, Burns added bluntly: “Without him, we don’t have a country.”

One of the recurring themes in the press conference was the sheer scale and brutality of the conflict — elements the filmmakers felt are routinely sanitized. “This is a revolution, a bloody, bloody revolution, superimposed by a bloody civil war, superimposed by a bloody world war,” Burns said, noting that the conflict’s scope and uncertainty were defining features of the era. “George Washington didn’t know he was going to be George Washington,” he reminded viewers, underscoring the contingency and chaos that shaped the outcome.

David Schmidt expanded on this point by stressing that the Revolution did not begin with the goals it ultimately produced. “Those three things, republic, union, and independence, were actually not the goals at the outset of this war,” he said. Instead, the initial spark was “standing up to tyranny, liberating Boston, restoring things to the way they used to be under the British Empire,” with independence emerging only when it became unavoidable. The result, Schmidt said, is that “so many different revolutions” unfolded simultaneously, a complexity the filmmakers worked to preserve.

Sarah Botstein recalled her own bicentennial memories and said what excites her most is how close the series gets to the human reality of the era. “It’s a world war. It’s a civil war,” she said. “It was making itself up the way that life does as it was going, but it’s an enormous underdog story and really a surprising story.” Recognizing how distant the period can feel, she added that “once you do [get close], it’s a very exciting and ultimately very patriotic story.”

Although viewers will inevitably draw connections between the Revolution and contemporary politics, Burns said the team avoided shaping the narrative around current events. “The rhymes and the echoes of the past constantly change,” he said. Still, he hopes the project offers viewers across the political spectrum “an ability to understand exactly why we came together… that might give us a chance to reinvigorate the Democratic and Republican, both small d and small r, ideals… to put the us back in the U.S.” He called the Revolution “one of the most important events in world history… the most important event since the birth of Christ.”

A major pillar of the documentary is its commitment to showcasing the extraordinary diversity of those who lived through the war. Burns said the team carried into the project “this absolute mandate to do a comprehensive job, bottom up as well as top down,” ensuring representation of “teenagers… women… Native people… free and enslaved Black people,” as well as Europeans and Loyalists. Schmidt noted that the abundance of surviving records surprised even the filmmakers. “A lot more people were literate than I had realized,” he said, attributing this to the unusually high literacy in colonial America. Because “there’s just an awful lot out there,” his process often involved spotting a short quote in another historian’s work and “digging deeper… once you go down the rabbit hole of footnotes.” This approach allowed the team to bring forward long-overlooked voices such as Betsy Ambler and James Forten, alongside newly contextualized quotes from well-known figures.

Botstein added that even for famous subjects, lesser-known correspondence provided new depth. She said the team repeatedly asked: “I wonder if Abigail Adams has something,” and continued searching until they found material strong enough to shape the series’ introduction and conclusion. “We fell in love with her while making the film,” she explained.

Sound design also plays an essential role in immersing viewers in the 18th century. Botstein said they sought “a soundscape that reflected North America in the 18th century,” blending classical, Baroque, Scotch-Irish, Native, Black, and folk influences. She described war as “both a very loud and scary and viciously violent sound and also very quiet and very lonely and very eerie,” explaining that the team spent meticulous hours deciding “when the music should take over, when the sound effects should take over, [and] when the voices should take over.” Schmidt noted that they even recreated the “whiz-bys” of musket fire, inspired by Washington’s own words describing “the sound of bullets whistling,” because by the Revolution, he “would not have recognized that young man,” having learned how terrifying the sound truly was.

Though the series arrives months ahead of the official 250th anniversary of Lexington and Concord, Burns said a fall release was a deliberate decision. “Not having a significant date is super important,” he explained, saying that a spring or July premiere risked being “drowned in fife and drum treacle.” A November debut gives students and viewers time to “digest the complexity of this story” before the semiquincentennial commemorations intensify. “Being in November… is a perfect way to sort of tee up… not just 10 more months of conversation about it, but 10 more years plus,” he said.

As with many Burns projects, a remarkable lineup of actors helps bring historical voices to life. Burns said the film includes readings from “Domhnall Gleeson and Tobias Menzies and Tom Hanks and Josh Brolin,” alongside dozens more, including Meryl Streep, Claire Danes, Laura Linney, Paul Giamatti, Morgan Freeman, Samuel L. Jackson, and Maya Hawke. He added proudly, “I would suggest that there is no other film or television series that has as impressive a cast list as we have.”

Ultimately, Burns hopes the documentary helps Americans see their founding not as distant mythology but as a shared origin story. “This is our story. It’s our creation story,” he said. While acknowledging how persistent the legends around the Revolution can be, he added, “We should be enormously proud, but not burdened by all the mythology that has attended to it up to this point.”

The American Revolution premieres November 16–21 at 8 p.m. ET (check local listings) on PBS and will stream in HD and 4K UHD beginning November 16 on PBS.org and the PBS App.