Set during an idyllic Caribbean vacation, “Saint X” follows two Black resort employees assumed to be responsible for the mysterious disappearance of a college freshman, the source of racial injustice that seeps into every part of the show.
“The beautiful setting and the fun, murder mystery gives it this appearance of being one show, but underneath it, we have a great umbrella that we get to really talk about real issues,” executive producer Leila Gerstein told TheWrap. “It’s something that the writers and I talked about all the time and how we were going to handle all of it; it was really important to us for it to come through.”
At the center of the thriller series, which premiered April 26 on Hulu, is 19-year-old Alison, who returns from her first year of college at a crossroads as her equality studies spill into her family vacation on a luxurious island trip while the resort town faces deep-seated poverty. Despite nagging comments to her parents, Allison shakes off her concerns to enjoy her vacation alongside her younger sister.
“She really loves her parents and really hates her parents and is really embarrassed of her parents and is very nervous that they might be racist, and is so scared that she’s accidentally going to be racist,” Gerstein said. “And she really wants to prove how anti-racist that she is, and really present herself on this island in a very specific way.”
The series weaves together the island murder mystery with a psychological thriller set 20 years in the future that follows Emily, Alison’s younger sister, as she continues to reckon with her sister’s death after moving to a Caribbean neighborhood in New York with her boyfriend.
TheWrap sat down with Gerstein ahead of the series’ release to discuss how the adaptation differed from its predecessor and how the team plotted out the sisters’ concurrent storylines.
TheWrap: How did you go about crafting the adaptation? What were some elements of the book you wanted to stay true to and what were some parts you wanted to change?
Leila Gerstein: We all love the book. We wanted to keep all the themes, and the ending is very well thought-out, and it’s very satisfying, so we knew we were we were driving to the same ending or similar ending.
Along the way, we made some changes — I really wanted Emily to have people to talk to and stakes that we could see on the screen, so I gave her a boyfriend and a best friend snd she had people to. We were entirely at this resort, and we decided to do it in that particular timeline in the eight days of the vacation, and so with that structure, it allowed us to give a little more voice to the other people who are staying at the hotel.
This story is told from several time frames. How did you envision playing out these two narratives at the same time?
Figuring out how to give the audience what information when it was one of the biggest challenges in the writers room. We knew it was going to be multiple timelines so we really wanted each one to inform each other. Every one we’re giving puzzle pieces and, by the finale, we have a whole full puzzle, and then we’ve seen everything and we will understand everything by the end.
We meet Gogo and Edwin very early into the series. How did you want to craft these characters?
Gogo and Edwin are incredible characters, and they are very layered … and they are both dealing with identity issues and different timelines. It was really important to see their friendship and the nature of their friendship from childhood to help us inform without revealing too much what happened on the night, and to see their dynamic and to give us empathy and to see them in a settings other than their workplace. I really wanted to make sure that we all knew that this wasn’t just a workplace friendship, this was a deep-seated friendship from childhood.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
“Saint X” is now streaming on Hulu.