‘Foundation’ on Apple TV+: How David S. Goyer Worked With the Asimov Estate to Update the Sci-Fi Classic

It’s a miracle that Apple TV+‘s Foundation even exists. Hollywood has been trying to figure out how to adapt Isaac Asimov’s sprawling series for decades to no avail. Not until David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman teamed up with Apple TV+ to adapt the influential sci-fi series as an original series. When Goyer became the show’s sole showrunner he also became the modern day custodian of Asimov’s masterpiece. But how to translate a series that spans centuries, zips across a decaying galaxy, and features, uh, very few women for the 2021 screen? That would be the crisis that Goyer would have to tackle face on.

“David has read all the books,” Foundation star Jared Harris told Decider. “He’s got an encyclopedic knowledge of the books. You can’t catch him out. And he has done an amazing of being able to pull story from all of those books and that’s actually quite a tough thing to do.”

“On some level, those books are philosophies. They’re dialectics. And everywhere where there’s narrative in those books, he’s found it and pulled it out,” Harris said.

Asimov’s books leapfrog around various timelines and planets, but at the nexus of each story is a man named Hari Seldon (played by Harris in the Apple TV+ show), a mathematician who develops a radical new way of thinking called “psychohistory.” Using math, Seldon claims he can predict the future. At least he can forecast what huge groups of people will do. And Seldon wants to warn the all-powerful Galactic Empire that civilization is on a crash course to ruin. Humanity will enter a horrific dark age spanning 30,000 years unless Seldon can convince the powers that be to create a “Foundation” to preserve science, culture, and civilization.

The Apple TV+ show follows this basic story to a tee, but focuses its main storylines on three characters who are quite different from how they appear in the books. The series is narrated by Seldon’s canonical biographer Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell), who is reimagined as a young woman of color from a religiously conservative homeworld. The show’s “hero” is Salvor Hardin (Leah Harvey), a young woman who was born and raised on the sight of Seldon’s Foundation colony on Terminus (and who is, again, male in the novels). And Foundation‘s most bewitching performance comes from Lee Pace playing “Brother Day,” who rules over the Galactic Empire in perpetuity with his elder and younger clone brothers. Needless to say, the clones are also new to Foundation. In fact, a lot is.

Goyer calls his Apple TV+ adaptation a “remix” of Asimov’s work, much like how Damon Lindelof and his esteemed writers’ room remixed Alan Moore’s Watchmen for HBO in 2019. Apple TV+’s Foundation works to retain the big ideas of Asimov’s work while introducing a wider universe of interpersonal drama. Characters who are presented as white or male in the books are now women of color. The Empire is lorded over by a triumvirate of clones. Romance actually exists in this show, and it’s sensual and sweet.

But how did a Foundation nut like Goyer decide what from the books had to stay true to Asimov and what could be changed? Goyer explained how he approached this “narrow tightrope” to Decider.

“I had read the trilogy many times and reread it again. So I just have a little legal pad and I start writing down: What are the key points? What are the most important aspects of this?” Goyer said, explaining he had the good fortune of being able to ask the Asimov Estate — specifically the author’s daughter, Robin Asimov — if he was on the right track with his adaptation.

“Fortunately they knew it would be impossible to do a one for one, line for line adaptation of something that was written 70 years ago. The audience for it is completely different, the world events that are happening around us are completely different. [Asimov] was writing the trilogy in a post-WW2 environment; we live in a completely different world now,” Goyer said. “So my job then is to come up with characters that embody those themes.”

And that’s how Goyer came up with the idea of Brother Dusk (Terrence Mann), Brother Day, and Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton) as the “new” forever rulers of the stagnating Galactic Empire. Goyer told Decider that “the genetic dynasty is a perfect example” of new creations for the show that are directly inspired by Asimov’s themes.

“Hari Seldon says the empire is going to fall. It is the most successful piece of civilization that’s ever existed. It’s been around for 10,000 years. They don’t wanna fall. People in power are resistant to change, and so I said, ‘Well what’s the epitome of that? What’s the perfect expression of not wanting to change?'” Goyer asked, answering himself: “‘If the same man were cloning himself over and over and over again?'”

“That’s an example of using character to embody theme and that was essentially the approach,” Goyer said.

But Goyer didn’t just introduce new characters to fit a theme. He also gender-flipped many of the most prominent characters in Asimov’s work. “There were virtually no female characters in the first novel whatsoever,” Goyer said. “It was the first question I posed to the Asimov’s estate: ‘How do you feel if I gender flip some of the characters?’ And they fully embraced it, they said, ‘You know, Asimov himself would have embraced that.’ So, in a way that was the easiest decision that I had to make.”

Lou Llobell plays one of those gender-flipped roles, Gaal Dornick, and she told Decider that changing the gender of some of the characters was a “genius thing to do.”

“I mean, I think if we looked at all of the characters, and we had them all the way they were in the books we’d have…8 or 9 main, like lead roles, with all men. Which does not reflect the world we live in today so I do think it’s important to have this kind of diversity. I also think it’s important to have someone- a woman, a woman of color, be a character in this series and be the narrator and the person that takes the audience throughout this journey,” Llobell said.

Leah Harvey plays Salvor Hardin and they had an even more nuanced look at the gender-flipping: “I, myself, personally am non-binary so I feel like I’m both and everything and none at the same time. I kind of look at characters like that, too.”

“So I don’t think that [Salvor] being female changes anything about the character. I think that Salvor is cheeky and smart-ass and no-nonsense and just lots of fun to play so I hope that really relates over to the fans. She’s just a human being and Isaac Asimov wrote human beings,” Harvey said.

One “gender-flipped” character that Goyer absolutely refuses to take any guff from purists about, though? The Empire’s android confidant Demerzel, played in the show by Laura Birn.

“I will say, I’m a bit amused by the people who feel that I’ve gender swapped Demerzel, because…Demerzel is a robot. Demerzel has no gender! So, that one I find a bit puzzling, but beyond that I understand it,” Goyer said.

The first two episodes of Apple TV+’s Foundation premiered on Thursday night, introducing hardcore fans and newbies to Asimov’s universe to Goyer’s passion project — and the scene that meant the most to his Foundation fanboy’s heart. Goyer told Decider that the scene he was the most excited to shoot was the crux of Episode 1: Hari Seldon’s trial on Trantor.

“It’s such a big part of the first story and we shot that in Berlin and it was a kind of out of body experience to have Jared Harris, you know, in some cases invoking Asimov’s lines as Hari Seldon at the trial,” Goyer said. “It’s certainly something that, as a 13 year old when I first read the books I never imagined I would be taking part of.”

Where to stream Foundation