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SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from Episode 4 of the Starz series Three Women.
Starz explores the depth of female desire through the lenses of a trio who has more in common than may initially meet the eye in its latest limited series Three Women, based on the bestselling nonfiction novel by Lisa Taddeo.
There’s Lina (Betty Gilpin), a homemaker in suburban Indiana, who is a decade into a passionless marriage when she embarks on an affair that quickly becomes all-consuming and transforms her life. Sloane (DeWanda Wise), a glamorous entrepreneur in the Northeast, has a committed open marriage with Richard (Underwood), until two sexy new strangers threaten their aspirational love story.
Then, in Episode 4, audiences get to know Maggie (Gabrielle Creevy), a student in North Dakota, who must weather intense scrutiny after she accuses her high school teacher of an inappropriate relationship. While all three of these stories are both tragic and beautiful in their own ways, Maggie’s is by far the most harrowing.
While all three women’s stories are true, only Maggie chose to use her real name both in the book and the series. She also consulted on the project, giving extra context to her story which helped adapt it for the small screen.
In the interview below, showrunner Laura Eason, who also penned Episode 4, discusses the nuances of telling Maggie’s story.
DEADLINE: What compelled you to write this episode yourself?
LAURA EASON: The show is adapted from Lisa Taddeo’s New York Times bestseller, and we were true collaborators on the project. We were talking about what episodes we leaned into or characters we were particularly drawn to. Although my experience was not anything like Maggie’s in terms of the road she ended up going on, my freshman year of high school, I moved to a new city where I didn’t know anyone, and I had two teachers approach me kind of inappropriately that now I’m able to look back and realize was like early grooming. It always stuck with me that it really was very easy. I was alone, and I didn’t know anyone, and these were teachers who were smart and interesting, and it would have been very easy for me to have fallen into a relationship with with one of them, and that has kind of always stayed with me. So that was one of the reasons I was really drawn to her story, as I saw aspects of my own 15-year-old self in her. I think, unfortunately, it’s a much more common story, because when people talk about Maggie’s story, they so often say, ‘I had an experience, or my very good friend had an experience.’ So I think it’s not just my own resonance, but also knowing that it’s a story that could resonate for a lot of people.
DEADLINE: Admittedly, I haven’t read the book. But, I’m curious about the decision to make this Episode 4. Was that a creative decision on your end, or does that follow the structure of the book?
EASON: That was a creative decision for the TV show. Maggie’s actually first in the book. She is first and last in the book, so kind of frames it in a way. Knowing that a lot of these stories do have an aspect of desire and trauma, interweaving, we really wanted the show to be as open a door at first as possible for people to step into the world of the characters. Knowing that Maggie’s story is, first of all, she’s the only person who’s a real person, named. They’re all real, but the others are pseudonyms. She uses her real name. It’s her real story, and it’s very hard. What happened to her is really devastating. Although she’s doing great now, she’s so brave and so inspiring, and she really is doing great now, but what she went through was really harrowing. So to start there, we felt like the show had a lot of other colors and a lot of other sensibilities that we wanted to set the table with first, so that people were already really connected to the show when they came to Maggie. So that they would bring that level of investment and interest to encountering her story, which is hard.
DEADLINE: She consulted on the show, too, right?
EASON: She did consult. She doesn’t have an official credit on the show, but she did speak with us and was so open about her experience. One of the gifts of that is there are details that are in the show that are not in the book that we were able to discuss and discover in conversation with her during the writing of the show.
DEADLINE: What are some of those details?
EASON: Well, I think there’s a couple of things that we wanted to emphasize that I feel like aren’t quite as emphasized in the book. One is her male allies, which is something that really came up, that she had these very strong support systems in a cute few key men in her life. Her father, [as well as] Mike Ness, who was the special investigator, who we meet in the show — he’s mentioned in the book, but he’s not really a character in the book. That relationship, we learned from Maggie, was really strong and important. So we loved bringing him more to the forefront of the story. Her therapist as well is was an important support to her, someone else we wanted to dramatize.
Then one other thing that thematically became interesting is Rocky is a movie that she loved, and her dad loved, and we make reference to it in the show. The very last moment of the episode is her at the ice rink, and I kind of quote that scene from Rocky, where he’s on the ice, and she kind of does the arms in the air. We know that what she’s about to go into with the court, with the trial, is very, very harrowing, but we wanted to really showcase her strength, her bravery, and that she really is reclaiming herself and her story in this really strong way. We wanted to underline that, so we pulled in that Rocky story as an echo. Because, of course, Rocky doesn’t win, right? He loses the fight, but he’s found himself and his strength. We wanted to echo that, because that’s what Maggie’s doing too, which, although the story is hard and it doesn’t go the way that I feel it should have…there’s so much to admire in what she did, in her strength and her courage, and that is really worth dramatizing in a major way.
DEADLINE: I really loved that scene with Maggie and her dad. Can you talk a little more about crafting it?
EASON: Her father mentions the skating rink in the pilot, and that is something that was true of Maggie, that she was a ice skater when she was little…so I thought of that…as a cool set piece for the show. I don’t exactly remember when it really, truly entered the script, but I remember the first time I wrote it. To be able to show Maggie flying through the air was so moving to me and to see her being cheered on by her dad in this really beautiful and supportive way. It was really moving and so beautifully directed by Cate Shortland and gorgeously shot by Ula Pontikos, our DP. Gabrielle Creevy as Maggie, her performance is just astonishing. So every element just couldn’t have been better in terms of supporting the scene and making it just as beautiful as it could be.
DEADLINE: There are several key moments in the episode that are quite painful for the characters, including when Maggie tells her parents about her teacher and when her sister finds out she was intimate with that other man. How did you navigate those scenes with the actors?
EASON: The whole production, we tried to approach really thoughtfully, really talk through everything. Talk through the difficult scenes, and just be really prepared about what was going to happen when we got to set, so there weren’t a lot of surprises, and all of our directors took great care with the depth of emotional content that the show has. But it really is a big ask of the actors — this episode and the whole show. We just really tried to create an environment where people felt seen and heard and supported. So walking into the scenes, if they needed a minute, if they needed a break, if they had questions, if they had ideas, there was space for them in the process. Our hope with that environment is that everyone did feel safe, did feel a part of it and then were able to really be fully in the process in a way that both the content was being taken care of, but the artists were as well.
DEADLINE: What would you say was the most challenging part of adapting Maggie’s story, specifically?
EASON: I think it’s challenging, because until Maggie’s older and can really see the abuse for what it was. In the past, it was a love story to her, and she really thought this was her true love, and it was important for us in writing it and the way we shoot it from her point of view, that we really honor the love story aspect. So I think that was challenging for all of us in moments, because there are moments we felt like we wanted to be protective of her and almost foreshadow. I think you sometimes see these stories and the teachers, you can see from a mile away that they’re trouble. But it was very important — and Jason Ralph, who plays Aaron Knodel, was really brave in his portrayal — to allow it to really be a love story in the past. I think definitely was challenging.
DEADLINE: The episode begins with text explaining that this story is from Maggie’s perspective, even though the real Aaron Knodel was acquitted of three of the charges and two others were dismissed. I find this really compelling, because I often think when the law determines there hasn’t been wrongdoing in these cases, the woman’s point of view almost gets erased. Why was it important to you to keep this story focused on Maggie and her idea of what happened?
EASON: The episode is very, very consciously framed around Maggie’s interview — her intake interview, and her first interviews with the special investigator, Mike Ness. We made that choice so that Maggie is really the narrator of her own story. There’s other voiceover with Gia as our the figure that connects all the women and goes on to have an amazing story of her own. She narrates through the season. But Maggie’s story, to a large extent, is narrated by Maggie, and that was really important. Not only the way we shot the episode and the way we would talk about it being from her point of view, but she is literally narrating the story of what happened for us. That was just really important, that she gets to be the narrator of her own story, and we’re not just looking at her objectively, judging or seeing who through other people. Our goal with this show, and with the book, was to tell Maggie’s story from Maggie’s point of view. So rooting the narrative in her voice felt essential. It’s essential in the construction of the TV version.
DEADLINE: What can you tease about the rest of the season?
EASON: Well, there are just, I feel like, amazing unexpected surprises in the rest of the season. And if you think it’s been sexy so far, just wait.
