“The Perfect Couple” has all the makings of a prestige drama akin to the likes of “Big Little Lies” and “The Undoing”: a star-studded cast, a murder mystery that unravels the façade of an upperclass community and, of course, Nicole Kidman.
But the Elin Hilderbrand adaptation had a much different start as a network pilot, which initially went into development at Fox in 2019 as a coproduction between Fox and SideCar. It was then SideCar’s Gail Berman who emailed Jenna Lamia (“Good Girls,” “Awkward.”) about the potential of coming onboard as a writer — and Lamia was immediately sold.
“I didn’t even finish reading the email — I wrote back, ‘I am definitely the writer. You do not need to send me the book. I read it last summer when it came out … I’m a huge fan — what do I have to do to convince you that I’m a writer?’” showrunner Lamia told TheWrap. “So it was a rare thing where I was just hugely passionate from day one, and I could see what I thought the show should be, the colors, the textures, the roller coaster shape.”
After officially landing the greenlight from Berman and meeting with Hilderbrand, Lamia went to work writing the pilot for “The Perfect Couple,” though it didn’t end up getting off the ground at Fox. It wasn’t until Lamia met with the team from Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps regarding a separate matter during the pandemic that the pilot came up again. With 21 Laps having just upped their deal at Netflix, Berman and Levy agreed to partner on the series and bring it to the streamer.
“It already had a lot of life before we even got it to Netflix,” Lamia explained. “But happily, once Netflix was on board, it really freed me up creatively to write whatever version we all thought was the best and the most dynamic.”
Once the series had moved to streaming, Lamia recalled how she and the producers “dared to dream about prestige casting,” with Kidman at the forefront of Lamia’s mind.
“We’ve been living through this time where movie stars are doing television, and where the really exciting, sexy projects can be limited series or even ongoing series,” she explained. “I always knew that, of course, Nicole Kidman would be the ideal dream, but I didn’t even dare to hope that I would ever be in the same atmosphere as she is in any way, let alone cast her in this show.”
Still, Lamia began writing the proud Winbury matriarch, Greer, with Kidman in mind, thinking of the A-List actress down to the details of her wardrobe. “She was this fantasy in the back of my mind that I don’t even know if I talked to Elin about,” Lamia said, adding that the specificity that she imagined for Greer via Kidman helped the script take on “new life.”
“Even daring to dream that I might get a prestige cast, I think, elevated the script, and we all started to think of the show in a different way,” she noted. “Then as we started to scout locations and think about the authenticity of Nantucket, it also became elevated in all of our lines and in some of the materials we were carrying back and forth in our writing process.”
Susanne Bier (“The Undoing,” “The First Lady”) joining as a director and executive producer also elevated the project further as she described the show as “elegant popcorn,” according to Lamia. With Bier having worked with Kidman on “The Undoing,” Bier challenged Lamia to sprinkle some more “special sauce” over the script during the holidays before bringing it to Kidman. By New Year’s, Kidman was in.
With Kidman onboard, a star-studded cast became to form around her in Liev Schreiber, Eve Hewson, Meghann Fahy, Dakota Fanning, Jack Reynor and Billy Howle, among others.
“Each of them has a quality that’s incredibly compelling and a great piece of an overall palette that we were trying to build,” Lamia shared. “Because if you think of the show like a painting, there are dark tones, light tones — it’s an incredibly tough balance. The humor is not something I think people are going to necessarily be expecting.”
Hewson stars as Amelia, a young woman marrying into the Winbury family through the middle son, Benji (Howle), whose perfect wedding weekend comes crashing down when a member of the wedding party is found dead. From when “The Perfect Couple” started as a network pilot, Lamia said the character of Amelia — who was renamed from Celeste in the books — went through several versions before landing on the edgier outsider seen in the Netflix series.
“Celeste was not going to have a stutter anymore, which is a big part of her character in the book,” Lamia said. “It became clear to me that I needed the audience on her side very early on, and she does a few things that are hard to root for … She’s romantically confused, and her motivations for getting married are not necessarily pure, though they are altruistic. She had enough going on that giving her a physical obstacle was one thing too many.”
Whereas Greer’s other daughter-in-law, Abby, (Fanning) has conformed completely to the Winbury lifestyle of monogrammed robes and extravagant parties, Amelia resists the traditions, not out of maliciousness, but simply out of authenticity — which quickly creates what Lamia identifies as a “rivalry” between the two women.
“[Amelia is] not from the world that Greer has clawed tooth and nail to dominate, and she really doesn’t care if that world accepts her or not, and that is terrifying to somebody who has spent most of their life crafting their public-facing image, and putting most of their energy and self worth into what others think,” Lamia said. “Along comes this young person who doesn’t give a s–t that would totally destabilize you and anger you, because it basically says you’ve wasted your life.”
Like all façades, the image of perfection that Greer has willed the Winbury family to embody slowly comes crashing down amid the murder investigation, much to Greer’s chagrin. “From a young age, Greer has been telling her children to sit up straight and … wear this pressed button down shirt to the first day of school — you can’t miss the message, which is, we must appear well raised at all times,” Lamia said. “There are reasons for that that will be revealed.”
“The Perfect Couple” will be available to stream Thursday, Sept. 5 on Netflix.
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