Natalie's a very desperate housewife: NATALIE PORTMAN on her first TV drama Lady In The Lake, set in segregated 60s America - a broken marriage, a dark past, a murder to solve
- The noir thriller stars Oscar-winner Natalie Portman as Maddie Schwartz
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A frustrated housewife leaving her family to fulfil herself may not sound very original.
Yet in Apple TV+’s highly anticipated adaptation of Laura Lippman’s 2019 novel Lady In The Lake, not only do the twists keep coming, but our housewife also uncovers secrets that she would rather had remained buried.
The seven-part noir thriller stars Oscar-winner Natalie Portman (Black Swan) as Maddie Schwartz, a Jewish housewife in 1960s Baltimore who leaves her husband of 20 years and her teenage son behind and helps the police investigate the brutal murder of an 11-year-old girl.
From this, she lands a job on the local newspaper, a dream she’s had since childhood.
And there she becomes obsessed by the story of Cleo Johnson (The Queen’s Gambit’s Moses Ingram), a young black woman whose disappearance and drowning matter little to anyone at the paper but Maddie.
Natalie Portman stars in her first TV drama Lady In The Lake on Apple TV+
As she sets out to discover the truth about Cleo’s life and death, the two women’s worlds collide, and the foreboding voice of Cleo rings out in Maddie’s head from beyond the grave: ‘Your writing dreams ruined your life. Now you wanted those same dreams to rewrite it. But why did you need to drag my dead body into it?’
Stunningly filmed by director Alma Har’el, Lady In The Lake sees Natalie leading her first TV series as the driven and not altogether likeable Maddie.
And for Israel-born Natalie, the story has a particular resonance. ‘My own grandmother was from Baltimore and she was around the age of Maddie in the 60s, which is such an interesting time in American history, and in women’s history,’ she says.
The series acutely conveys the prejudices festering in the segregated city: the death of African-American Cleo, which raises barely a murmur, and the lengths to which Maddie goes to conceal her affair with a black police officer, Ferdie (Y’lan Noel).
Laura Lippman drew upon two real-life 60s Baltimore murders for her story – Esther Lebowitz, an 11-year-old Jewish girl who was killed inside a tropical fish store by the owner, and black 35-year-old divorcée Shirley Parker, which remains unsolved. Laura’s former husband, writer David Simon, created another brilliant crime drama set in Baltimore – TV series The Wire.
The twists keep coming and our housewife also uncovers secrets that she would rather had remained buried
The series was filmed entirely in Baltimore, and Alma Har’el spent six months researching its history, saying, ‘I wanted to capture the details of everyday life that might have escaped bigger strokes in history books.’
To that end, it explores the underground lottery system that was rampant at the time, particularly among black people, which provides a key plot point later in the series.
While fans of the novel will already know its shocking plot twist, Alma implores them to ‘buckle up and go on the ride’, promising yet further surprises.
- Lady In The Lake, weekly from Friday, Apple TV+.
