Ken Burns, a two-time Oscar nominee and five-time Emmy winner, is arguably America’s greatest documentarian. And with his new six-part, twelve-hour series, The American Revolution — codirected with Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt and written by Geoffrey Ward — audiences finally have Burns’s definitive retelling of the events leading up to, and beyond, “the shot heard ’round the world” at Lexington and Concord. Just in time for America’s two hundred fiftieth anniversary, the series is available to stream and will be rebroadcast in its entirety on July 4, 2026.Transcending a jingoistic hagiography, the comprehensive series zooms in on the roles played by indigenous nations and enslaved people during the Revolutionary War — here seen as a kind of civil war between Loyalists and Patriots — and the impact of those earth-shattering events on them. At a time when US history is being manicured and purged of unflattering thought crimes under the second Trump administration, Burns’s probing camera boldly presents America, warts and all.In this interview, Burns discusses his views on America’s Revolution, its flaws and aspirations, what it’s legacy and place in history really is, and how his team was able to make a cinematic documentary long before the existence of photography.Ed RampellWhy do you open The American Revolution with a quote by Thomas Paine, voiced by Matthew Rhys? Unlike the vast majority of Founding Fathers, he wasn’t born in America — he was an Englishman.Ken BurnsAs we worked on this film, the words of Thomas Paine kept resonating with us, and we ultimately named each of the six episodes after a quote from him. It’s true he was born an Englishman, and we chose Matthew Rhys to voice Paine since he is British, but Common Sense did more than any other writing to spur on the revolution. As the historian Stacy Schiff says, “Common Sense takes off like an accelerant through the colonies. Everyone reads it.”Ed…
