The Making of the Movie From Page to Screen

When a story leaves the page and comes to life on screen, something transformative happens. Words become worlds, imagination becomes imagery, and a single narrative unfolds in new and unexpected ways. That is undoubtedly true of Washington Black, Esi Edugyan’s acclaimed novel and now a major television series — a tale that soars from the cane fields of Barbados to the icy harbours of Nova Scotia, tracing one boy’s desperate flight from bondage and his quest for freedom.

Yet behind the fictional Wash and his balloon-borne escape lies another story — one every bit as dramatic and profound, and, crucially, true. Rogues in Paradise, my book on Barbados’ untold histories, explores the real people, places, and events that shaped the world Edugyan reimagines. It’s the historical heartbeat beneath the fiction, the lived reality that anchors her soaring narrative.

Adaptation: The Same House, Built Bigger

Edugyan herself describes the screen adaptation of Washington Black as “a kind of translation or interpretation” — not a word-for-word retelling, but a reimagining shaped by the demands of visual storytelling. Screenwriter Selwyn Hinds calls it “the same house, just bigger.” That expansion allows the series to push beyond the novel’s pages, enriching character arcs and exploring deeper emotional terrain. We see Tanna’s Solomon Islands heritage woven into the story, a romantic rival challenging Wash’s journey, and new dramatic dimensions emerge — all while staying faithful to what Hinds calls the tale’s “emotional DNA”: the pursuit of hope, agency, and self-determination.

This process of adaptation is more than embellishment. It’s a reminder that stories evolve across media, each one offering a different lens. What fiction can dramatise — the intimate interior of a character’s heart — film can visualise, mapping those emotions onto landscapes, faces, and gestures. Both illuminate truths in their own way.

History Beneath the Imagination

If Washington Black uses fiction to illuminate forgotten truths, Rogues in Paradise works from the other direction — uncovering the realities that fiction draws upon. It tells of rogues and rebels, of enslaved people who resisted and survived, of ordinary Bajans whose courage shaped an island and influenced a hemisphere. It traces the links between Barbados and Canada: the slave ships that once sailed northward laden with sugar and rum, the migrants who later followed in search of opportunity, and the communities they built across the Atlantic world.

This is not a world of invention but one drawn from archives, oral traditions, and lived memory. It is the soil from which stories like Washington Black grow — and, often, the history that official narratives sought to bury. Where records are silent, fiction can speak. Where fiction soars, history grounds it.

Two Journeys, One Truth

Together, these works — one fictional, one factual — form a dialogue. They approach the same questions from different angles: What does freedom mean? How is identity forged in the shadow of empire? What endures after the chains are gone? The answers lie partly in Wash’s fictional odyssey and partly in the real lives chronicled in Rogues in Paradise.

For viewers captivated by the series, the history enriches the experience. And for those immersed in the historical record, the fiction offers a new way of feeling its weight. Both are essential, complementary ways of engaging with a story that is not just Barbados’ or Canada’s, but part of our shared human inheritance.

Listen and Explore Further

This essay is a companion to our podcast episode on Washington Black and Rogues in Paradise, where we delve deeper into the line between imagination and history — and why both matter.

🎧 Listen to the episode here →

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Related Links:

Washington Black series; Esi Edugyan; Rogues in Paradise; Barbados history; Halifax Nova Scotia; Underground Railroad Canada; Caribbean migration; adaptation vs history; Errol Barrow Nova Scotia; Tanna Solomon Islands