Ronald D. Moore Explains How and When ‘For All Mankind’ Changes History

For All Mankind is a show all about “what ifs”? Set on an alternate timeline where the Soviets conquered the moon first, setting off an aggressive space race to the stars, the Apple TV+ series shows us a version of American history that could have been. In this timeline, technology zooms ahead, making way for cellphones in the ’90s, John Lennon survives his assassination attempt in the ’80s, but Margaret Thatcher does not.

One of the biggest changes For All Mankind‘s super-charged space race has had on history is political. Chappaquiddick never happens and Ted Kennedy becomes president. Similarly, Gart Hart becomes president in 1984, ensuring his own sex scandal never derails his political future. In For All Mankind‘s 1992 election, Ellen Wilson (Jodi Balfour) runs as a John McCain-esque Republican against Bill Clinton, and she wins. Ironically, in For All Mankind Season 3, the biggest threat to Ellen’s presidency is starkly similar to two scandals that rocked Clinton’s administration.

First, it seems that Ellen and her husband’s closeted affairs have been rooted out and now rival politicians are trying to catch Larry (Nate Corddry) out on perjury by bringing up the rumors in interrogations. Second, Ellen finds herself also forced to address LGBTQ+ rights and she lands on the messy “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” solution.

Decider asked For All Mankind EP Ronald D. Moore why they decided to saddle Ellen with many of the same scandals that stuck to the Clintons.

“We approach each of the decades and say, ‘What are some of the defining things of those decades in pop culture and politics and society?'” Moore said. “And certainly, Clinton and the Clinton scandals of the time were a big part of that, so was ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.'”

“Alright, what’s our version of dealing with some of those same issues and sort of reminding the audience of our own history and sort of looking at other ways to look at some of those problems? It felt right to sort of go down those paths with Ellen at that point in the ’90s.”

Okay, but what inspired decisions like the one to, uh, let the IRA successfully assassinate Margaret Thatcher? How do they pick what changes and what stays the same in each season’s opening newsreel?

Moore said those changes are a point of a lot of discussion.  “A lot of these things are debated in the writer’s room,” Moore said. “We start with a lot more ideas than we ever use and a lot of alternate versions of different things.”

“The Thatcher thing, there was an actual near miss. The IRA did try to assassinate her so that felt not so much random. It wouldn’t have taken much for that to have worked so let’s do that in this alternate version. John Lennon escapes the bullet.”

“Some of that is just kind of interesting ‘what if?’ scenarios to play cos how would those affect subsequent events?” Moore said.

So, no, the For All Mankind writers are not secret revolutionaries. They just chose Thatcher because of how close it came to happening.