Is 'American Primeval' Based on a True Story? Here's Where Myth Meets Reality

On Jan. 9, 2025, Netflix released a new original series: American Primeval. The jaw-droppingly brutal series explores a time in American history that covers the late 1800s. But was the series real?

As it turns out, American Primeval is an artful blend of fact and myth, reality and fantasy. Here's what we know about how much of the series is based on a true story, how much of it is fabricated, and how the actors feel about plying their trade against the backdrop of brutality that the series embraces.

American Primeval is a Netflix series that stars Betty Gilpin, Taylor Kitsch, Shawnee Pourier, Derek Hinkey, Saura Lightfoot-Leon, Shea Whigham, plus many more. It's a grand-scale type of show, encompassing both personal stories and an overarching story arc that has some major "big picture" moments.

And it's brutal. Really, really brutal. But exactly how based in reality is it?

According to Forbes, the series is based around the 1857 Utah War and incorporates some real-life events such as the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

Additionally, some of the characters are based on real-life pioneers and indigenous people, including Jim Bridger, Brigham Young, and Wild Bill Hickman. While Winter Bird isn't herself a real historical figure, she is based on a real-life tribal leader who "was purported to be a lesbian [and had] multiple wives."

Several of the main characters, including Sara and Devin Rowell, Isaac Reed, and Two Moons are all fictional.

Fort Bridger is also a real place, named aptly for Jim.

And while many of the events that played out on screen were sensationalized for the television adaptation of the events, there's enough truth to be harrowing.

In an interview with FOX 32 Chicago, Taylor Kitsch (Isaac Reed) and Betty Gilpin (Sara Rowell) sat down to talk about how filming such an intense series with so much brutality really puts life into perspective.

Betty explained, "It certainly gives perspective on how good we have it and how 'cush' our lives are. You're seeing — while we definitely really were out there in the elements, the starkness and brutality of the time was really important to us that that felt real and authentic, and not, sort of, 'cool.' We wanted it to feel terrifying and disgusting where it needed to be, and it was."

And although the series is a dramatic interpretation of real-life events, Taylor did experience a real injury. Near the start of filming, he broke his foot. Taylor shared, "You know the skinning camp, where we go down the hill, Episode 2?" He added, "I tackled, he's a big boy, probably had 100 pounds on me. I tackled him, and it went wrong. His knee landed on my big toe and broke it." He joked, "It was a blast. So fun. When I'm limping terribly, you'll understand why."

American Primeval is an interesting blend of fact and fiction, but the overall impact it leaves is that this part of American history was violent and brutal. While that wasn't the case for all American pioneers and indigenous people of the time, it's a good reminder that the sanitized history we read in our schoolbooks leaves out the very real human cost of so many of these pivotal moments in time.