Steven S. DeKnight on Spartacus: Gods of the Arena: "We Try Not to Censor Ourselves — We Go Places That Other Shows Don't"

Steven S. DeKnight has a point of view. Premier Guide Miami asked the questions. Here is what we learned.

"Spartacus: Gods of the Arena" — the highly anticipated prequel to Starz's hit series "Spartacus: Blood and Sand" — premiered Friday, January 21 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Starz. The series tells the story of the Champion of the House of Batiatus in a more ruthless time before Spartacus's arrival, when honor was just finding its way into the arena. Executive producer, creator, and head writer Steven S. DeKnight spoke with Premier Guide Miami about the show's bold creative vision.

On what makes Spartacus: Gods of the Arena unlike anything on TV: "We've got the support of Starz, which has been fantastic. They let us tell the story that we want to tell. They don't try to rein us in and if you've seen the first episode, you know, we go places that other shows don't, quite frankly. We try not to censor ourselves. We try to tell the best story we can with what we have. Also visually — we've taken a page from Zack Snyder's book. We loved his work and decided to shoot the whole thing indoors on green screen and give it a very graphic, novel look and feel. And in respect to the action, we do feature-level action on this show that is extremely grueling, time consuming and other shows just don't tackle it on such a grand scale."

On the relationship between Gaia (Jaime Murray) and Lucretia (Lucy Lawless): "Jaime Murray's character, Gaia, comes into town and you find out she's an old chum of Lucretia's from back in the wild days. And Lucretia is trying to become more respectable. But Gaia is still the wildcard — unlike Ilithyia and Lucretia in Season 1, Gaia actually loves Lucretia, will stand by her through thick and thin, but is not adverse to hulling her into a bit of old-time trouble. And they're very, very friendly. I'll just leave it at that."

On casting Liam McIntyre as Spartacus for Season 2: "Season 2 is shaping up to be a hell of a ride. We're obviously deeply saddened that Andy couldn't continue with us. He was a huge part of the show's success. And we wish him the best and a speedy recovery. We did an exhaustive search to find somebody not to replace Andy, but to step into the role of Spartacus. And we feel very fortunate that we were able to find Liam, who we really felt truly embodied everything we were looking for in the character moving forward."

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