‘The Plot Against America’ on HBO: Why That Beerhall Scene Was So Chilling

Nothing truly awful happens in the first episode of HBO’s The Plot Against America, but the tension is almost unbearable. In the worst, most uncomfortable scene, hardly anything happens. The Levins, a Jewish family from 1939 Newark, New Jersey, are driving around a neighborhood, house-hunting. The car slows to a stop outside a raucous German beer garden where drunks are celebrating aviation hero — and historic anti-Semite — Charles Lindbergh. Insults are exchanged, the dread rises, and then the Levins drive off.

“Goddamn fascist bastards!” Herman Levin (Morgan Spector) curses, right in front of his sons.

The younger son, Philip (Azhy Robertson), quietly asks, “What just happened?”

What happened was cataclysmic for the family and a sign of the horrors yet to come.

The Plot Against America is legendary showrunner David Simon’s six-part adaptation of Philip Roth’s semi-autobiographical novel about how his life — and history — would have changed if Charles Lindbergh had become President of the United States in 1940. Lindbergh was one of the most famous Fascists living in America at the time and there were rumors that he was considering entering the 1940 race on a far right, anti-war platform. The war he was against, of course, was World War II. The cause he championed was Adolf Hitler’s.

The Plot Against America follows the Levin family — father Herman, mother Bess (Zoe Kazan), and sons Philip and Sandy (Caleb Malis) — as this alternative history unfolds. Episode 1 establishes their calmly idyllic life in Newark, New Jersey and only hints at the horror to come. However, star Morgan Spector explained to Decider that the beerhall scene is far more devastating for Herman than it might appear at first glance.

“For Herman, buying their own house in a beautiful suburban neighborhood, that’s the American dream. That’s everything he’s ever wanted in his whole life,” Morgan Spector told Decider during an interview at Winter TCA. “But the minute he sees those guys, he knows, ‘I’m not going to get this. I’m not going to be able to get this for myself. I’m not going to be able to provide this for my family. This has ruined this.'”

“It’s that sense of disappointment and fear and anger, but that’s what they’re taking away from him. It’s not just a sense of possible violence. It’s, ‘The thing that I’ve been working toward all these years, I don’t get to have because of you,'” Spector said.

Spector also said that in preparing for the role, he mined the work of author Philip Roth, looking to understand the writer’s father as much as possible. “Herman Levin is not Herman Roth, not by any means,” Spector said, “I stole as much as I could from Roth, as much as I could take.”

Spector explained that the reason why the family’s last name was changed from Roth to Levin in the show was due to Philip Roth’s request. It was one of the few stipulations he gave David Simon when the writer and producer met with Roth to discuss adapting the novel.

Whether he’s Herman Roth or Herman Levin, the character that Spector plays feels all too familiar for folks who grew up with working class fathers and grandfathers from Newark or Long Island. In fact, it was that quality in Herman that resonated so deeply with Spector himself.

“That sense that you describe, that this feels like [your] father and his father, I had that same feeling. This guy feels like my father and my grandfather,” Spector said. “These kinds of East Coast guys, just hard workers [with] no sense that anything was going to be given to them. Life was a daily battle and not necessarily one that you were expected to win, but that you were going to go out and fight everyday. You were going to struggle and do your best for your family.”

Where to stream The Plot Against America