When it comes to the first season of Prime Video’s thrilling crime mystery series Scarpettathe adaptation choices made by showrunner Liz Sarnoff — until the end of the season — have managed to impress the book series’ author, Patricia Cornwell.
“When you have Liz Sarnoff in the writer’s room, and these producers, and they’re thinking about how to turn this into a drama on TV, there are things you can condense here,” Cornwell said. Hollywood Reporter Tuesday night at the series premiere in New York City about what changes fans can expect in the on-screen version of her story about Virginia Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta. “One of the things people ask when you think about a medical examiner or a homicide detective or a criminal profiler is what happens when they close the door and it’s just them? The audience is going to have a really great experience with all of that.”
The first season, which Cornwell described as a bit of a crime drama with a “little bit of soap opera,” was about giving viewers a little more than they might get in the book, especially around the killer, Sarnoff said. “I spent a lot of time with the writers saying, ‘Who should it be?'” And when we got to that, the decision was clear to all of us. Then it was about how to keep it alive throughout both timelines. “When you see all eight, you’ll see why you can’t end it there,” added star and executive producer Nicole Kidman of the series, which has already been greenlighted for a second season and begins production next week.
Hailing from Blumhouse Television and executive producer Jamie Lee Curtis’ Comet Pictures, the series follows Kay Kidman and Dorothy Curtis, two sisters who witness the murder of their father in their youth. Kidman said the event, which they experience differently, changes their paths — including their relationships with death and each other — forever.
“The way they react to their father’s murder, which they saw and happened to them when they were young, had huge ramifications for each of them. It bonded them, but it also put them in conflict,” Kidman explained.
In their adult lives, the two experience a strained sisterhood, the complications of which seep into their other relationships. There’s Kay’s husband, Benton Wesley (Simon Baker), an FBI criminal analyst who returns with her to Virginia where Kay works to solve a series of gruesome murders similar to the case that launched her career. She’s joined by Pete Marino (Bobby Cannavale), a homicide detective who has worked with Kay for decades and is now married to Dorothy. Also caught up in their twisted web of constantly strained familial relationships is Dorothy’s daughter, Lucy (Ariana DeBose), largely raised by Kay, who formerly worked for the FBI. This was before her wife Janet (Janet Montgomery) died, which led to Lucy making her dead wife an artificial intelligence program on a computer.
“The medical stuff and the murder stuff are very deep. That’s a visceral fear — an immediate reaction. But the family stuff is emotional pain, and that’s understandable and relatable,” Baker said of how the multi-genre series presents its twists and relationship drama. “It’s a mix of mystery and thriller here and family drama there. You’ll be able to see the implications of this life around death and how that seeps into the core of who these people are. As they say, the surgeon is This is close “To a serial killer.”
“A lot of them are afraid because of the life they’ve lived, which is in close proximity to so much darkness, that they’ve been infected in some way,” Sarnoff said. “So it was interesting for me to see how far they could go without acting. It was great to build that part for Nicole throughout the season before she finally exploded. Everyone has a breaking point.”
How each of these characters reaches their breaking point is shaped by how the series uses multiple genres – thriller, crime and family drama, but also occasionally mystery and horror with an emphasis on the psychological – across eight episodes. The story also unfolds across two timelines, one set in the late 1990s and the other in modern times, allowing Scarpetta To depict the development – or decline – of the entire family over two separate murder series and multiple decades.
Building and shaping the identity of these characters across two timelines and two casts was an effort led by Kidman and Curtis, Sarnoff said. “Jamie had a lot of ideas about what she wanted to look like and what she wanted to wear and her hair. Nicole, too. Suddenly she was speaking in a deeper voice. Everyone shifted into their characters and really built it with us.” [writers]”.
“We also did a great thing, which was we took time to practice,” she added. “Two weeks before we started filming, we had rehearsals with everyone together and separately with people playing the same character, past and present. This really created a very familiar dynamic from the beginning.”
The group brought together this work with the vision of frequent Curtis collaborator David Gordon Green. “[Jamie and Nicole] I love really scary stuff, and they were like, “We’re so committed to keeping the show scary.” “They really wanted it to be a mystery, but also terrifying and beautiful. I think thanks to David Gordon Green, who directed five episodes of the season, we achieved that because he had a way of making it so beautiful to look at while at the same time looking at terrible things,” Sarnoff explained.
“He just knows. He knows how to create suspense, but he’s also very loose and very easy, and that’s why there’s humor in this as well,” Kidman added. “I mean he did Good gemstones. So you can mix that with HalloweenAnd you’re like, “Okay, let’s go.” Whatever you want, David, I’m there.’
As Kidman notes, while gruesome murders and suspicious family relationships abound, Scarpetta It’s not all death and sadness and secrets. For Sarnoff, it’s the AI character — who is neither alive nor human — that best embodies the lighter elements of the show.
“I chose that particular actress because we are close friends and she is one of the warmest, sweetest human beings,” Sarnoff recalls. I told her: You are the heart of this show. As she gets into conversation with more and more people, she sees that she notices more. She’s honest. No one else would be honest. She became a great character for me because she didn’t have anything at stake. “She died, so she could speak the truth freely.”
Although there are actual AI actors now, Montgomery was chosen, according to Sarnoff, as Janet had to be human like the rest of the group. “We don’t want to use it. The whole point of art is for people to make it,” the presenter said, explaining why they wouldn’t consider an AI-powered actor. “It’s frustrating to me that people think we can be replaced in any way. We won’t get accurate performance from AI. “I needed to show how human she was and we couldn’t get that from anything artificial.”
Scarpetta It begins streaming March 11 on Prime Video.
