How Apple’s ‘Lady in the Lake’ Series Differs From the Book

Warning: This post contains spoilers from the eps. 1 and 2 from Apple Lady at the Lake

In Lady at the Lake, the new show launching on Apple TV+ on July 19, two chilling murders change the course of a woman’s life in 1960s Baltimore. The seven-episode limited series, which was adapted from author Laura Lippman’s popular 2019 thriller novel of the same name, stars Natalie Portman in her first TV role. Portman plays Madeline “Maddie” Morgenstern, a bored Jewish housewife turned aspiring journalist, whose obsession with the fatal disappearance of a young Jewish woman (Bianca Belle) leads her to investigate another crime – the forgotten murder of a young black mother. called Eunetta. “Cleo” Johnson (Moses Ingram), whose body was found in the fountain of a lake in the park.

Lippman’s book was inspired by two real-life, unrelated murder cases which took place in Baltimore in 1969, an 11-year-old Jewish girl named Esther Lebowitz, who received widespread media coverage and whose body was found just days after her disappearance, and Shirley Parker, a 35-year-old black woman, whose body was found in the Baltimore Zoo’s lake fountain months after her disappearance because someone wrote to the local newspaper’s help column asking why the fountain’s lights were off. In the novel, Maddie’s ambitious—if, at times, self-centered—journey to become a journalist and forge the new life she wants is told through the perspectives of those she interacts with, from her landlord’s anxious daughter to her sexist co-workers at the newspaper. ; Meanwhile, Cleo’s ghost provides haunting, omniscient narration.

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The book is fundamentally a mystery, but it is also a clear examination of the restrictive social structures of the time – for example, Maddie cannot sell her car without her ex-husband’s signature and resorts to committing insurance fraud with her wedding ring, while Cleo is subject to constant racial discrimination, even in death, when her murder is deemed “not important” enough to be reported in Maddie’s newspaper. And although they come from very different worlds and backgrounds, what Maddie and Cleo share is a desire to live life on their own terms, free from the expectations and customs of others.

For director and writer Alma Har’el, who also served as an executive producer on the series, the parallel lives of Maddie and Cleo provided a compelling glimpse into the rapidly changing landscape of Baltimore and, more broadly, society during this period.

“What really spoke to me was Maddie and Cleo and the idea of ​​a murder mystery that has so many twists and turns but at the same time tells the story of the town and its politics and the social aspects of the time,” she tells TIME. “In a way, I felt like it was like a double-edged sword — there’s a police officer who killed these women, but also what’s inside ourselves that we have to investigate and discover so we don’t become the people we don’t want to be.”

Here’s what you should know Lady at the Lake and the book that inspired it.

What are the biggest changes from book to screen?

Although Har’el and the other writers who worked Lady at the Lake By rooting the show in the novel, they wanted to give a broader look at the world of 1960s Baltimore in the adaptation, which meant making some major changes.

The biggest of these changes may be the expansion of the character of Cleo Johnson, the titular “Lady in the Lake,” who has a more richly developed personal life and backstory in the series. Likewise, Maddie’s Jewish heritage and inner life (an important part of her decision to leave her marriage and pursue a career) are explored in more depth on screen, as are the secrets of her past. For Har’el, showing the role both communities played in the development of Baltimore during the era was an integral part of the story.

Read more: A crime writer looks at the sinister side of Baltimore

“The story is about two murders that happened and Maddie trying to solve those murders. Her connection to the entire city and to Cleo specifically is what informs the tension of the entire show,” says Har’el. “Both as characters show us a picture of Baltimore at the time. There is something about the relationship between black people and Jews, who suffered a lot of struggles, that changed in the 1960s. I really wanted to bring these two stories to life and make these two women characters as complete as possible to explore the conflict and differences that emerged.”

Additionally, the details and circumstances surrounding Tessie’s disappearance and death are more fleshed out and give a personal connection to Maddie. Maddie’s investigation into Tessie’s killer, Steven, and his mother also receives a more complex plot.

Why were some characters replaced and new characters added?

Although many of the main figures Lady at the Lake Stay true to the book, there are some notable changes when it comes to some of the supporting characters. Some people in the book were replaced by new characters, such as local dry cleaning businessman and Senate candidate (and Cleo’s secret lover) Ezekiel Taylor, whose role in the story became two new characters in the series: Myrtle Summer, a former Cleo’s teacher is running for Senate against the wishes of local thug Shell Gordon; and Slappy Johnson, Cleo’s comedian husband. Others, like Cleo’s roommate Latetia, change slightly (Latetia becomes Dora, Cleo’s best friend and singer at Pharaoh’s club). Still others, like Shell’s right-hand man Reggie Robinson, are entirely new creations made for the show.

Har’el said the motivation for these changes was to imagine the rich, nuanced worlds of Maddie and especially Cleo, whose storyline is expanded on in the series.

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“We wanted to create an entire world and write new characters that weren’t in the book, like Slappy Johnson and Reggie. [Robinson]as well as Pharaoh’s club and the political world it [Cleo] was involved,” says Har’el. “A lot of it came from researching some of the stories that inspired the book, including the black woman Shirley Parker, whose disappearance and murder were never solved, and from reading about her life and the women in those circles and the jobs they did, the kind different from the code switching they did to survive every month.

Other characters were changed and combined to simplify the plot and highlight the themes of the overall story. Although in the book Maddie does not have a personal connection to Tessie, the young Jewish girl who is murdered, whose body she finds in the same lake where Cleo’s body would be found months later, in the show, Tessie’s father is Maddie’s son. ex-boyfriend, whose reappearance in her life brings back memories of the clandestine affair she had with her father which resulted in a secret abortion.

Why is Cleo’s story so different in the series?

Of all the characters in Lady in the Lake, Cleo may have the most dramatic transformation from book to screen. While Cleo’s ghostly narration of the afterlife provides much-needed context to the book, the series presents a different and much fuller character portrayal of her.

Cleo is portrayed in the book as a young single mother who works as a dancer and bartender at the Flamingo, a club owned by Shell Gordon, on Pennsylvania Avenue in Baltimore. Although she is a loving mother to her two young children, whose parents are out of the picture, they live with their mother and father, while she lives with a roommate, Latetia. Cleo is described in the book as being hungry for life and dating club men as a way to supplement her income, although she is secretly in a relationship with a wealthy married man, Ezekiel Thomas, who is running for a Senate seat, when she mysteriously disappears.

In the series, while Cleo is still a bartender working at Shell’s club (reimagined for the screen as Pharaoh’s club), she is also his accountant, leaving her privy to the illegal numbers game he runs – even though she is constantly looking for ways to sever his ties with Shell and its business, for the safety of his children and because his father left town due to gambling problems with Shell. Instead of dating club men like she does in the book, she is married to Slappy Johnson, an unlucky comedian with whom she shares two children.