With visionary director Alma Har’el (Honey Boy) at the helm of Lady in the Lake, the new Apple TV+ drama is already being considered “a vivid and engrossing feminine intervention with the noir genre,” according to Har’el’s longtime producing partner Christopher Legget (Honey Boy, Ask Dr. Ruth). The subversive thriller stars Natalie Portman (May December) as Maddie Schwartz, a Jewish housewife in 1960s Baltimore desperate to shed her secret past and reinvent herself as a journalist. Her thirst for total reinvention is sparked first by death — first of an 11-year-old Jewish girl, then a 33-year-old Black woman named Cleo (Moses Ingram), whose body was discovered in a lake.
“The noir genre, which I adore, has one trope that is very…” said Har’el, who trailed off to address the complicated trope. “[It’s] the femme fatale — this dangerous pretty thing that can kill you, but one you usually don’t learn a lot about in many of those movies.”It’s reductionist to say that, because there’s obviously been incredible movies that do the opposite.” Har’el, whose documentaries Bombay Beach and Love True turned heads before she went on to direct Shia LaBeouf in 2019’s Honey Boy, added:
But I feel like this is very much a different thing. Instead of following a certain trajectory where the woman is just kind of in the background or can kill you, she’s in the main seat and you get to really see a whole whodunit thing.
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Creating Her First TV Series and Working with Natalie Portman
Lady in the Lake
When the disappearance of a young girl grips the city of Baltimore on Thanksgiving 1966, the lives of two women converge on a fatal collision course. Maddie Schwartz (Portman), a Jewish housewife seeking to shed a secret past and reinvent herself as an investigative journalist, and Cleo Johnson (Ingram), a mother navigating the political underbelly of Black Baltimore while struggling to provide for her family. Their disparate lives seem parallel at first, but when Maddie becomes fixated on Cleo’s mystifying death, a chasm opens that puts everyone around them in danger. From visionary director Alma Har’el, “Lady in the Lake” emerges as a feverish noir thriller and an unexpected tale of the price women pay for their dreams.
- Release Date
- July 19, 2024
- Seasons
- 1
- Creator
- Alma Har’el
- Distributor
- Apple TV+
- Production Company
- Crazyrose, Bad Wolf America, Zusa, MountainA, Endeavor Content
- Writers
- Laura Lippman
- Streaming Service(s)
- Apple TV+
The gripping drama is the first TV series Har’el has created. “I think that I was more excited than nervous,” Har’el noted about also becoming the showrunner for the seven-episode drama. Briana Belser, Nambi E. Kelley, Sheila Wilson, and Boaz Yakin scripted several episodes, too. “I have a tendency to jump into pretty deep boiling water right away. And from project to project, I find that when I do something and I get comfortable with it, I immediately kind of try to do something harder.” She continued:
“So, I think I was extremely excited about that because that’s how I learn and how I grow. At the same time, when you are that kind of person [who] barely graduated from high school and you learn on the go, you also discover how much there is to do… when you direct all seven episodes and you’re showrunning. So, it’s usually the excitement that pushes me forward and not fear.”
Natalie Portman is also one of the executive producers on the project. Har’el went on to tell us that, “Working with Natalie as an actress [was] dreamy. And working with her as a producer, I would say, drama-free.”
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How Working with Shia LaBeouf on Honey Boy Influenced Lady in the Lake
You may recall the buzz that swirled around the release of Shia LaBeouf’s Honey Boy, the compelling 2019 drama that culled from LaBeouf’s relationship with his father. LaBeouf wrote and starred in the 2019 film, which Har’el directed. The plot tracked a young actor’s stormy childhood and early adult years as he struggled to reconcile with his father and cope with his mental health.
When asked how working with LaBeouf informed her on something as grand as Lady in the Lake, Har’el said: “I think that in everything we did here, even though it was of such big scope in terms a moment in history, there’s always the wish to find pockets of intimacy and pockets of authenticity and character work. So, I feel like that informed those moments, and the wish to find them, which is not always easy.” She added:
“The bigger you go, the harder it gets to get the plot, the extraordinary machine, to work. It’s like a clock. Everything has to move forward and tick for it to really create what we created in terms of story. But I think that making documentaries, making
Honey Boy
, making things that are coming from character and coming from intimacy helps set the goals to do something different.”
Catch Lady in the Lake on Apple TV+ beginning July 19. Watch the trailer below.