fatal attraction like a story that for decades has been about how women went crazy over what the men in their lives were doing. Initially, it was not a story that sympathized with its female characters. A new television series based on the 1987 film gave a more open-minded take on Alex Forrest. In execution Glenn Close in the 1987 film, she was called a “crazy” woman. She is played in the television series Lizzy Caplan and she gave a little more nuance to not only her mental health issues, but her relationship with Dan Gallagher (played by Joshua Jackson).
When Alexandra Cunningham decided to take a fresh look at the series (as showrunner), she focused the story on not only making Alex more sympathetic, but what it all did to Ellen. Dan Gallagher had a young daughter in the movie, and in the series Vivienne Lyra Blair play Ellen when she’s younger, during an affair. But we also see Ellen’s father come back into her life years later as he tries his best to prove he didn’t kill Alex Forrest.
The show twists who kills Alex. In the film, Dan’s wife Beth (played by Ann Archer) eventually kills Alex. The show features Arthur, a man who was friends with Dan and Beth and who later married Beth (played by Amanda Peet) in the modern part of things. What the show really highlights is that Ellen is the only character who is sort of left alone with no answers, and we see the repercussions of that in the finale.
Ellen was not protected in the film
It’s easy to forget about Ellen when you watch the movie, but the show goes out of its way to make sure that the adult Ellen she plays Alyssa Jirrels, is explored, and we see exactly how Alex’s death, Dan’s betrayal, and how her mother and stepfather dealt with it affected her in the end. Speaking about the finale with The Hollywood Reporter, Cunningham talked a lot about how her motivation for being on the show was to find out how Ellen felt about the situation.
“One of the things that really hooked me was the daughter,” she said. “I always watched Ellen go through all these emotional traumas, and I wondered:“ How does she go through all this? The film ends with a cold shot of the family, as if everything will be fine. As if they had escaped from the clutches of this harpy and now they can move forward. I thought to myself, “It’s 1987, maybe they could decide to deal with it by just never talking about it again and hoping Ellen forgot.” But we don’t forget anything, so how does she deal with all the emotional abuse she’s been through in the past few weeks? And how will she carry it into adulthood? Especially considering that her father, who is supposed to be her protector, is the one who started it all? What does this mean for love, trust and relationships?”
She went on to talk about how being on the show meant she could explore Ellen’s dynamics and what Alex’s memory did to her. “It was something that I could really explore if I was going to be on the show. I could explore the effect of this on Ellen and how the body keeps score. And also writing about fathers and daughters, which fascinates me. Besides doing a show where Hugh Laurie played a neuropsychiatrist [in Hulu’s Chance] which was based on a real person who was our mental health consultant who read all the scripts and then talked to the actors when they had questions and learned about personality disorders and the genetic pathways that are needed to root them and also learn about people who are injury advocates and how hard it is for a person who has bad days not to take their emotions out on someone who is less powerful than you, who is going through chaos [Alex works in victim services in the L.A. court system where Dan is a prosecutor].”
fatal attraction because the show is about how we can revisit a story that we know very well with a modern lens, and the show does that incredibly well. Check out the trailer below:
Source: Collider
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