“The Perfect Couple” Showrunner Jenna Lamia on Her Nicole Kidman-led Whodunit on Nantucket

When showrunner Jenna Lamia set out to bring Elin Hilderbrand’s beloved novel The Perfect Couple to life, we were just getting reacquainted with our obsession with mystery and drama. The limited series format, which has seen success in shows like Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers, and The White Lotus, ushered in an era of mystery, scandal, and a fascination with pulling back the curtains on the imperfections of the uber-wealthy. 

Lamia says even now, she can only dream that The Perfect Couple would be uttered in the same breath of comparison as a show like The White Lotus. But the reality is that the six-episode series perfectly indulges in the same qualities of intrigue as its show predecessors — complicated family dynamics that take only a slight tug to unravel, all under the illusion of perfection.

The series centers on the wedding between Benji Windbury (Billy Howle) and his fiancé, Amelia Sachs (Eve Hewson). Benji comes from an elite family that is used to getting what they want and is willing to pay a hefty price to ensure it. Amelia, however, is the black sheep in Benji’s life who can’t quite seem to fit into the polished lifestyle Benji’s mother so desperately wants for him. The night before the wedding, a body is discovered, and thus, the unraveling of family secrets begins.  

What was your vision for bringing Elin Hildenbrand’s novel to life on the screen?

It’s been five years, actually. But to sum it up, I was sitting in Maine at this dockside restaurant called the Contented Soul and eating a lobster roll…and I had an email from Gail Burman saying, ‘Hey, I have this book that I just got the rights to. I think you could be the right writer for it. I don’t know if you know the author, Elin Hilderbrand, but I can send you the book so you can read it.’

That sounds like the perfect setting to get that email.

I didn’t even finish reading the email; I just replied immediately. I was like, ‘You don’t need to send me the book; I read it the moment it came out. I’m a huge fan of Elin Hilderbrand, and this is her only murder mystery to date — because it was at the time — I am definitely the right writer.’ I then flew out to L.A. to talk to Gail and Elin — who couldn’t be a more dream author to collaborate with — but we talked a little bit about how I would adapt it and how much it meant to me to get Nantucket right, and to portray New England authentically. She trusted me a hundred percent and said, ‘I write the books, you write the screenplays. Do your thing; I’m your cheerleader.’

You changed the main character’s name from the book from Celeste to Amelia. What was the thinking there? 

Truly, that happened after Nicole [Kidman] came on board to play Greer because she plays an iconic character in Big Little Lies, Celeste.

What I love about this show, in particular, is that the more you get to know the characters, the more you realize they’re all kind of terrible, but they’re terrible in their own specific, relatable way. Was the goal to make them all so uniquely flawed that the real killer would be very hard to pick out?

Definitely. And I love the way you said that because I think that’s true in real life. I think people that you judge to be, you know, just a bad person or unlikable person at first — stick around because maybe they still aren’t great people, but there are reasons why people act the way they do. Now, I’m not advocating for taking on, you know, mental illness in your life, but I’m just saying that I think our society is at a place where we’re so quick to judge and write others off, be they on the other side of the political spectrum, or they have a different set of beliefs or a different approach to life from yours. And I think it’s important to remember that most people, at their core, are probably decent and good and have had a completely different life experience than you have. So stick around and talk to them, and get to know what makes them tick. I mean, not if they’re treating you horribly, but if they seem like a judgmental jerk or something, there’s probably a reason.

So you complicate the “who done it?” aspect by giving all the characters shades of decency and devilish behavior?

I love that you had that experience watching this show because I ultimately love all of these [characters]; they’re real people to me. In the writing of the show, I got to know them better, not only as individuals but also in terms of their relationships with one another. It is a murder mystery, but I think the audience can also look forward to reveals other than just “who done it?” Meaning, what drives certain characters to act the way they do? To care so much about what others think? Or not really care what others think. I think that’s what I love so much about Amelia; she doesn’t seem concerned with the judgment of others, and I think she is an incredible superpower that I wish I had at her age.

As a viewer, the constant calculation of who the killer is never stops churning….

As you watch the show and get to know them all, they do become more layered and nuanced, and the ones who seemed perfect at first clearly will not be. And the ones who seemed perfectly rootable at first will be revealed to have weaknesses, too.

There are many subtle ways the viewer finds out things are terribly amiss in the Winbury household like Greer looking for the bracelet receipt and realizing Tag is cheating on her. Do you work these types of subtle moments into the script? 

That’s absolutely something I worked into the script from an early stage, only because that’s how life is; we almost never state the subtext in our everyday conversations, and the [Winburys] certainly don’t. Especially this kind of family, they are not direct. And there are ways in which you can be harsher when you’re not direct because they have to figure out just exactly how angry you are or just exactly how upset or disappointed you are because you didn’t come right out and say it. I do think that that’s how this kind of family communicates with one another, and I just wanted to be true to that.

So even though the Winburys seem like an atypical family—hugely wealthy, clearly dysfunctional—they’re quite typical in how they communicate with each other.

The only writing choice involved is authenticity. If you can ultimately achieve a certain level of authenticity, then you will naturally achieve humor, intrigue, and drama because life has those things. Even the most serious moments in life have a tad of humor in them. So that’s what I was looking to capture in these scripts. 

I want to return to what you said about the rewriting for certain cast members. Do you mean you adapted their dialogue once you saw how they played the character?

Well, that did happen a bit on set. There was some rewriting once I saw things in the mouths of the characters. Also, just for instance, so Susanne Bier came on board to direct, but we didn’t have a cast yet. She had a relationship with Nicole Kidman, and she thought that there was a chance that Nicole might find this fun, and wanted me to take a look at the first script with Nicole in mind. And the fact is, I already had Nicole in mind for months, but I didn’t dare to dream that we would ever actually get her. But I did spend that Christmas rewriting the first episode with Nicole front of mind — which is an incredible exercise for a writer because having a real person whose work you’re lucky enough to already know very well in your mind when thinking about the monologues and some of the scenes, it just brought a whole new layer to the script. And luckily, when Nicole read it, she said yes, which was just…it changed everything. 

Find out more from Lamia tomorrow, including how she crafted the crucial penultimate episode five cliffhanger, how Meghann Fahy brought the character of Merritt Monaco to life, and more.