(Photo by: Monty Brinton/Paramount+)
Fatal Attraction is coming to Paramount+ later this year, and series showrunner Alexandra Cunningham recently spoke about how the upcoming thriller series will differ from the 1987 film, which starred Glenn Close and Michael Douglas.
In the movie, New York lawyer Dan Gallagher (Douglas) has an affair with a book editor named Alex (Close). In the end, Dan decides to stay with his wife and Alex infamously does not take the news well. Lizzy Caplan and Joshua Jackson (above) take over the roles for the new series version.
Cunningham said the following about the differences between the two projects, per Entertainment Weekly:
“I did a lot of reading about the film and Glenn Close talking about the empathy she had for Alex, and how she felt that Alex was out of control and obviously not evil, which I definitely agree with because I don’t believe in evil. Glenn talked about how, when she was doing the character work on Alex, she brought the script to two different psychiatrists, and neither one of them brought up mental illness, because it was the ’80s and nobody did that. She’s become such a mental health advocate since then, and it makes me sad that she’s said that she feels responsible for a lot of the stigma toward mental illness in pop culture because of her portrayal of Alex. She’s also said that she felt that it would be interesting to literally tell the exact same story, but from Alex’s point of view, and I kind of sparked to that.”
Caplan also spoke about how she sees Close’s character in the Paramount+ series:
“In the film, Alex is the villain of the story, and Dan is the hero and there is no gray area. Now, audiences have changed so much, we are no longer primed to believe in this villainous woman story. She’s clearly mentally ill and that’s not something that is really touched upon at all in the movie. There’s a lot to unpack with her. She has a full backstory and a full point of view in our show. With a limited series, there’s an opportunity to take more time getting to know all of these characters.”
A premiere date for the Fatal Attraction series will be announced later.
What do you think? Are you planning to check out this limited series on Paramount+?
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