Abraham Lincoln was not the saintly visionary that he often comes across as in contemporary accounts. Instead, he was an eminently practical politician who understood that to abolish the shame of slavery, he would have to compromise and cede ground to his foes. The Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright and author Tony Kushner joined Chris Hayes on Saturday to explain just how his views of the sixteenth president changed as he worked on the screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, now in theaters.

Of course, Hollywood will take some liberties with history. Jon Wiener’s latest examines Spielberg’s oversight in ‘Lincoln.’