25 years after ‘Band of Brothers,’ a veteran-made documentry examines its legacy
Chase Millsap isn’t sure how many times he’s watched “Band of Brothers” over the last 25 years, but he’s seen it a lot. A Marine who later served as a Green Beret, Millsap said he watched it while at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, then in training and then when deployed to Iraq, as DVD copies were passed between outposts.
“It has always been there in the background, as a reminder of leadership, service and what we owe the people beside us,” he told Task & Purpose.
Now Millsap has a new documentary on the making of the show and its impact, out on Sept. 9 to mark the 25th anniversary of the series. “Band of Brothers: Legacy” premieres on HBO, a quarter-century after the original series debuted, two days before the start of what would become the Global War on Terror. It features interviews with the cast, behind-the-scenes footage of filming and previously unseen clips from the show’s interviews with the real paratroopers of Easy Company.
The documentary didn’t start out as a project about the show’s anniversary. Instead, some of the actors wanted to honor the paratroopers by doing a static line jump out of a C-47 over Normandy for the 80th anniversary of D-Day. Millsap was approached by an Army officer he knew to help film the effort. It started as a short project from New War Productions, a filmmaking company founded by him and other veterans. But once in Normandy, the project began to grow and change.
Army Gen. Christopher Donahue, the then-head of XVIII Airborne Corps, sat down to talk about how much the book “Band of Brothers” and the real Easy Company inspired him. Then, Damian Lewis, who played Maj. Dick Winters in the show, said he wanted to talk.
“Hearing him talk about the two days he spent with Dick Winters, and especially how much he still misses him, made me realize these actors hadn’t simply played these men and moved on,” Millsap said. “They had carried these relationships with them for 25 years, and that became a huge part of what ‘legacy’ meant to us.”
That’s when it began to turn into a film about the 25th anniversary of the show. Playtone, which produced the series, met with them and “Band of Brothers: Legacy” took shape. They got access to HBO’s archives, where they found hours and hours of footage of interviews with the real Easy Company veterans. Parts of those conversations bookended each episode, but the documentary shows previously unseen footage, including from some Easy members who didn’t appear in “Band of Brothers.”
The documentary follows the arc of the show, from boot camp to filming, but rather than actors reminiscing about days on set, “Legacy” soon leans into them talking about meeting with the people they were playing, joining some of them in the former battlefields in Europe, and realizing the sheer scale of what they’re working on. The actors speak of the real soldiers with a mix of deep respect and amusement, often talking about the challenges of getting the veterans to trust the people portraying them.
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The show’s first episode aired just two days before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Retired Marine Capt. Dale Dye, who ran the boot camp for the actors and appeared in the series, said it connected with members of the military because it “premiered on HBO in the wake of a world-shattering event, at a time when America needed to reflect on things like resilience, patriotism and courage.”
Millsap said that when he interviewed the actors, he told them, “You guys got it right on screen, and that helped me and my friends get it right when it mattered for us. For that, I’ll always be grateful.”
Veterans recognize themselves in the show, he said. Even if they didn’t jump into Normandy or freeze in Bastogne, they recognize the personalities and relationships. Easy Company, he said, is a specific story that manages to represent millions.
“That connection was also deeply personal for the team that made this documentary, many of whom are veterans themselves,” Millsap said. “This was a team effort from beginning to end, and I’m incredibly proud of the people who came together to help carry this story forward.”
“Band of Brothers: Legacy” premieres on HBO on Sept. 9.
