Dickinson Trivia | 30 facts about the Apple TV+ series

Dickinson is an American comedy-drama television series about the life of the American poet, Emily Dickinson.

Let’s find out more about it!

1. Dickinson is an American comedy-drama television series about Emily Dickinson.
2. It was created by Alena Smith.
3. It was produced for Apple TV+.
4. Hailee Steinfeld starred as Emily Dickinson.
5. The series aired over three seasons from November 1, 2019, to December 24, 2021.
6. «Dickinson» had 30 episodes.
7. Dickinson takes place “during Emily Dickinson’s era with a modern sensibility and tone.
8. It takes viewers into the world of Emily, audaciously exploring the constraints of society, gender, and family from the perspective of a budding writer who doesn’t fit in to her own time through her imaginative point of view.
9. Dickinson is Emily’s coming-of-age story – one woman’s fight to get her voice heard.”
10. Principal photography for the series commenced on January 7, 2019, in Old Bethpage, New York.
11. In March 2019, it was reported by The New York Times that filming had concluded.
12. In November 2019, Steinfeld confirmed that filming for season two was underway and had been for several months.
13. Filming for season three began on March 17, 2021 and concluded on June 15, 2021.
14. Some scenes were filmed at Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, New York.
15. Many scenes from Season 3 were filmed at the Jay Estate in Rye, New York.
16. Many characters are named after real life contemporaries of Emily Dickinson in Amherst. For example, Abby and Abiah are inspired by real people but, contrary to the ‘mean girls antagonist’ personas portrayed they were both close friends with Emily and remained life-long correspondents with her.
17. This is Hailee Steinfeld’s first regular role on a television series.
18. The real-life Dickinson never found fame in her lifetime, and it remains unclear how much she actually sought to be known though her writing. What’s even less clear is how much can be understood about Dickinson through her writing. Fewer than a dozen of her poems were published while she was alive, all of them under a pseudonym. It wasn’t until her sister Lavinia discovered a cache of her sister’s writing after her death that Dickinson’s work was widely published for the first time. Many of her poems weren’t even shared with friends or family, suggesting at least some ambivalence about putting her writing up for mass consumption.
19. Despite Anna Baryshnikov playing Lavinia, the youngest of the Dickinson children, she is actually 4 years older than Hailee Steinfeld.
20. In several episodes some of the dialogue is based on real statements found in letters by, or referring to, Emily Dickinson.
21. A number of scholars, notably Martha Nell Smith, have argued that Emily Dickinson had a romantic relationship with her close friend Susan Huntington Gilbert, who ended up marrying Dickinson’s brother, Austin, though that lesbian relationship has never been confirmed.
22. Showrunner Alena Smith took that theory and decided to flesh it out in this series. She also told The Hollywood Reporter that she expects pushback from both the gay and straight communities, saying, “It’s funny because I think there are going to be people who think the representation of Emily and Sue in this show is not queer enough just as much as the opposite.”
23. On May 30, 2018, it was announced that Apple had given Dickinson a straight-to-series order
24. The show’s first season seems to be set in 1854-55, after the publication of Walden by Henry David Thoreau, but before the historical date that Emily’s father joins the US Congress.
25. During an interview, Hailee Steinfeld and Ella Hunt said they had a lot of fun filming their sex scene in season 3, episode 9, but said it wasn’t as sensual as it looked on film. It was very tightly choreographed and shot with several close ups and from different angles with the director telling them how to move. They didn’t have the opportunity to really experiment or go with the flow as actors. Hung said, “It’s the least sexy thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
26. This is the second time somebody Hailee Steinfeld plays has a best friend that ends up with her brother. The first was The Edge Of Seventeen.
27. «Dickinson» ended with season 3 because the creator had always «envisioned» the narrative to have a three-season run.
28. The 3rd season highlights Emily’s correspondence with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a feminist and abolitionist who wrote for The Atlantic. This historically accurate interaction shows Emily’s expansion from writing her poems on scraps of paper in her bedroom to sharing them with prominent figures in literature.
29. The first season of Dickinson received generally positive reviews.
30. The other two seasons gained universal acclaim, making them even better than the first one.