‘Lady in the Lake’ EP on ‘Reimagining’ the Bestselling Mystery With Natalie Portman, Approaching Its Massive Twist and Recasting Cleo (EXCLUSIVE)
08.05.2024 - 14:13
/ variety.com
Emily Longeretta Apple TV+’s highly anticipated adaptation of Laura Lippman’s mystery novel “Lady in the Lake” — starring Natalie Portman — will premiere with the first two episodes on July 19, the streamer announced Wednesday. The seven-part limited series follows a bored Jewish housewife (Portman) in the 1960s, who divorces her husband and moves to Baltimore to work as an investigative journalist.
She soon becomes fixated on the perplexing death of Cleo Johnson (Moses Ingram), a mother who struggled to provide for her family while navigating the political underbelly of Black Baltimore. The book was brought to famed director Alma Har’el (“Bombay Beach,” “Honey Boy”) by the late Jean-Marc Vallée and his producing partner, Nathan Ross; she jumped at the chance to adapt the complex novel, which has made headlines since its straight-to-series pickup three years ago.
In 2022, Variety broke the news that Lupita Nyong’o, who was initially cast as Cleo, had exited the show. Ingram stepped in shortly after, a casting move that was a “huge turning point” of the series, Har’el tells Variety in an exclusive interview.
The change happened “three or four months into filming,” she says, noting that they filmed the show by cross-boarding all seven episodes, filming all of Portman’s scenes first, which paid off. “We hadn’t started to shoot Cleo yet.” Ingram is from Baltimore, Har’el says, and grew up hearing stories from her parents about things that occurred in the same locations where they filmed.
“I think most people know Baltimore from ‘The Wire’ or from their own experience with Baltimore today and political challenges, the economical challenges that are taking place over there. The time we’re showing — Penn Avenue being kind of
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