Apple TV's Imperfect Women Is the Pyschological Thriller You've Been Waiting For

Seven years ago, in 2019, Elisabeth Moss was at the airport on her way to Hawaii when a book called Imperfect Women caught her eye. She liked the title and the description, and immediately texted her new producing partner, Lindsey McManus, asking if she was familiar with the book by Araminta Hall.

“I said, ‘What do you think? Should I get this?'” Moss remembers. “And Lindsay said, ‘Yes! You have to get this.’ So I read it, optioned the book in Hawaii, and then we spent the next six years making sure we were going to be able to make it the right way.”

Of course, there was a pandemic, two strikes, and Moss’s commitment to a few seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale that made it a bit challenging to get off the ground in that time frame, but now, seven years after picking up the book, Imperfect Women is coming to Apple TV on Wednesday, March 18.

_{“Every time I see a poster with the three of us, I’m like, ‘How did we get so lucky?’,” Kerry Washington says. “And also, not just what you see on the poster. My producing partner, Pilar; Lizzie’s producing partner, Lindsey, and Lesli Linka Glatter, Annie Weisman, and Michelle Lee from Apple, it’s just such a good group.”}

Apple TV

“The book was about how friendship can be imperfect, and there was also a murder…so it had this combination of a fun, thrilling, soapy beach-read quality,” Moss says. “And it was really, really smart, and had this really unique structure that I fell in love with.”

The Emmy-winning Moss also wanted to have some fun. After “a decade making something very serious,” she was ready to shed the trauma that accompanied a character like The Handmaid’s June Osborne, and let loose. As Mary, a married, mother-of-two in Imperfect Women, “I had scenes where I was laughing, joking, and being flirtatious and gossiping. I don’t normally get to do that. That was really refreshing for me,” Moss says. “But, by the way, you’re going to see episodes six and seven of this show and be like, ‘What the fuck is she talking about?’ [Laughs] Six and seven are very, very serious. Obviously, we get to my episodes when the shit hits the fan, and that’s what I also love doing. But I did have a few episodes where I got to have some fun.”

Part of that fun was getting to team up with actors who Moss calls her fantasy football roster of performers, specifically Kerry Washington (who is also an executive producer on the series) and Kate Mara. They were Moss and the team’s first and only choices.

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