08-05-2025
'Government Cheese' on Apple TV+: Why Quebec brothers are the crime family in David Oyelowo show
While Government Cheese on Apple TV+, created by Paul Hunter and Aeysha Carr, starring David Oyelowo, brings us into this incredibly detailed world of the late 1960s San Fernando Valley in California, there's a Canadian reference that will likely pique your interest. In the series we meet Hampton Chambers (Oyelowo) while he's doing time for cheque forgery, leaving prison with an idea for a new invention: a self-sharpening drill.
When he returns home, planning to sell his invention to a company called Rocket Corp, he hits a significant snag. He owes $2,000 to a French-Canada crime family, the Prevost brothers, and Hampton doesn't have the money.
With Hunter basing the Chambers on his own family, there was an interesting connection that led to Hampton having to manage the threat of a Quebec mob family.
"How that connected for me, my family is from New Orleans, so we kind of have a French vibe. And so I was thinking, how do you sort of connect that world," Hunter told Yahoo Canada. "We knew some family that was called the Prevost that we grew up in the valley, so it was just great to sort of dig into that."
"I thought it would be interesting to have characters be in the San Fernando Valley, ... they kind of had finished whatever drama that they had going on out in Canada, so the next step was to come out to California. ... Got into the valley and dealt with the motorcycle gangs ... and now they have their little corner. And I just thought it'd be a lot of fun. You hadn't seen, for me at least, those kind of characters in the San Fernando Valley."
With Hunter brining so much of himself, his family and his upbringing to this story, he was an incredible resource for everyone working on the series.
"I asked him so many questions. I had to see pictures. I had to understand who all these people were," Carr said. "And so it was really a joyous, sometimes therapeutic process of just really getting to know each other."
"Paul's whole family was all over all of it. His daughter was in our writer's room, she was one of our writer's assistants. With Paul, it's always a family affair."
Additionally, Hunter's mother, who inspired the character Astoria (Simone Missick), Hampton's wife, was on set, and even makes a small cameo in the show.
"Initially I was very emotional about it. ... She came around just before the set pieces actually, when we were just really building the set, and she walked through and it's like showing her, 'Hey, Mom. This room is inspired by you.' Purple was her colour that she loved, so we painted the room a lavender."
"I think we really took a lot of time and care in the creation of Astoria, and I think we painted her beautifully, as she is such a beautiful woman, and really came to parenting in this left-from-centre approach," Carr added in a separate interview.
Two things really stand out with Government Cheese. There is an unpredictability with the format, with each episode having a different feel to keep you on your toes as a viewer, and there is an incredible amount of detail put into this show, from the cars to the set pieces and costumes.
As Carr described it, "clear lines" were established for the narratives of each character, "where they were coming from, where they were going, and all the things that needed to happen to them in between."
"I think once you draw that story map, you can paint all the different segments a different colour, because you're very clear on what you need to get across in those moments," Carr said. "And so once stay true to that, you can have so much fun with the style and the tone a little bit, because you're very clear about what you need to get out of each episode."
But Hunter also highlighted that he really wanted to "shake up" the traditional format of a TV series, while also playing with genres.
"I resisted coming to the television space for a long time, just because of the way things sort of lay out. ... When the streaming came in, it allows you to have different time lengths, play with format. My thoughts coming in was to sort of inspire everyone to think, let's shake it up. And I wanted each episode to feel like a short film so that we could play with it and push it around. ... I directed the first couple of episodes and then some in the middle, and then I thought the other filmmakers would have fun to be able to play."
When it came to the characters, the actors were drawn to the script, including Bokeem Woodbine who plays Hampton's friend Bootsy, who's instrumental in trying to help Hampton get the money he owes to the Prevosts.
Woodbine initially turned down the project because his schedule wouldn't allow for enough prep time, but luckily things changed and he was able to join the show.
"I felt like I knew who Bootsy was and I had an idea how to approach the character, so I called my agent ... and I said, 'Hey, man, this a drag that this isn't going to work out, because I really love this show, and I love this character.' And he said, 'Well, guess what? I've been on the phone with them and they decided to give you some more time to prepare, which was all I needed to hear," Woodbine said.
"Bootsy is a veteran, a combat veteran from the Vietnam War, and I had worked in a few pictures prior to this that dealt with that subject matter, the Black experience in the Vietnam War, which is a very specific type of challenge. And there's a book called 'Bloods' that deals with that. And so I reread several chapters that spoke to me the most from the book 'Bloods,' and then I talked to Paul about his memories. And then I have my own interpretation of who Bootsy is, and I just kind of used that as my basis to prepare."
There's one particular moment that stands out between Hampton and Bootsy, when the pair end up robbing Temple Hillel, ad it's a stand-out for Woodbine as well.
"Working on that scene was some of the most fun I've had in my 30, however many years I've been doing this. It was so fun," Woodbine said. "I couldn't believe they were letting us do this."
"If you've ever been a kid and got to stay up past your bedtime for whatever reason, ... you feel giddy. ... You don't even really do anything, but it's just the thrill of being awake past the time you were supposed to be asleep. That's what it felt like the whole time we were doing those scenes. ... I read several parts of that twice, like, am I reading this correctly? Let me put my glasses on. I know they're not going to let us do this. And then, sure enough, they let us get loose, and they let us express ourselves."
But what remains at the core of Government Cheese is a story about this family, with Hunter pulling from memories of his own childhood.
When Hampton first arrives home, his wife isn't particularly enthused by the events that led to his arrest, neither is his son Harrison (Jahi Di'Allo Winston). But Hampton's son Einstein (Evan Ellison) is that person who always sees the world with positive light.
"One thing I wanted to make sure was [that it was not] one note the entire time, because he is very matter of fact, kind of off the cuff," Evan Ellison said about playing Einstein. "So there was that fine line of trying to bring nuances to the character and actually have an arc to the character, but I think ultimately, it was a blast kind of being that curious, optimistic guy in the room."
"I think he was eager to have a fellow intellectual back in the house that he can invent things with together."
A significant evolution in the show comes when Hampton takes Harrison on a fishing trip, where you really get deeper into this father-son relationship, which is different than what Hampton has with Einstein. It's where Hampton also talks about how, while Harrison doesn't understand the decisions he's made, he tells him everything is led by providing for his family. Thing then take another turn when Hampton leaves his son alone in a tent that night to go on the robbery job with Bootsy.
"It was really like being on our own adventure, being out there," Winston said.
"Up until that point Harrison, the way we see him, is sort of one-dimensional. He's very deadpan, very sort of jaded and closed off, but we finally get to see him soften and be that little kid that is just looking for that sense of affection from his dad. So it was really fun to shoot. And actually, I was fortunate enough Paul showed me a little short snippet, probably close to when we were done shooting, and just watching it, I felt the weight of the emotion watching just the little tidbit of footage that he showed me."
Leaning into the absurdist quality of Government Cheese, Woodbine highlighted that it was appealing to see a Black family leading a story with this tone, instead of the more typical civil rights-related stories we usually see with a Black protagonist.
"One of the things that might be kind of jarring, but in a positive way, is the depiction of the Black family in a kind of setting that is usually reserved for say a Wes Anderson picture, or Tim Burton-esque imagery," Woodbine said. "You generally don't see Black people depicted in that quirky, eccentric kind of surrealist manner."
"So you're seeing elements and genre mashups that are disparate, but we brought it all together into this unique examination of a time period and a family. It has universal overtones and it's just not been done before."
