Lessons in Chemistry, the AppleTV limited series, is not a strict adaptation of Bonnie Garmus’s original novel.
While it still captures the spirit of Garmus’s novel, it does leverage the medium of television to visually orient the viewer in the late 1950s and early 1960s period in which the story is set. Lessons in Chemistry deals with early feminism and engages the audience in a broader conversation about women’s rights, just on the precipice of the major social upheaval of the mid-to-late 1960s.
With that in mind, it makes sense that series developer and executive producer Lee Einsenberg and his creative team would want to also bring the early 1960s Black experience into the story. Thus, the book’s supporting character of Harriet Sloane, a middle-aged white woman who hates her husband, became the limited series’s Harriet Sloane, a married mother who is just beginning her engagement in what would become the Civil Rights movement of the late 1960s.
She is beautifully played by celebrated actress Aja Naomi King.
“After reading the book and looking at what we were trying to do with the script, I thought, yes, the way I present is very different than the Harriet in the book, but at the heart of it, the essence of her is still the same,” King explained. “The relationship that they have with one another is something that I could very easily delve into — these relationships that women have.”
Here, in an interview with Awards Daily, King reveals the intimate details she included in the Sloane household to better relate to the character. She also talks about working with Brie Larson and portraying that strong bond that forms between the two social norm-challenging women. Finally, she talks about filming the challenging protest sequence and how that experience made her reflect on recent political events.
Lessons in Chemistry streams exclusively on AppleTV.
