Cherry Laine (Olivia Cooke) is doing her best to hide a mysteriously dark past from her new boyfriend, Daniel (Laurie Davidson). But good luck keeping it from Daniel’s intuitive, overprotective mom, Laura (Robin Wright). That conflict sets in motion one deadly rivalry in this six-part psychological thriller premiering in full on Wednesday, September 10, on Prime Video.
Based on Michelle Frances’ novel of the same name, The Girlfriend follows Laura, a woman who seemingly has it all: a glittering career, a loving husband, and her precious son. Her perfect life begins to unravel when Daniel brings home Cherry, a girlfriend who changes everything. After a tense introduction, Laura becomes convinced Cherry is hiding something. Is she a manipulative social climber, or is Laura just paranoid? The truth is a matter of perspective, and both women go to extreme lengths to prove that their truth is the one to believe.
Fascinatingly told, this series takes viewers back and forth from each woman’s perspective in every episode. These contradicting POVs are intended to show how each woman felt during their increasingly bitter interactions, a.k.a. depicting the truth as they see it, not objectively. Each scene is similar enough, but key changes will blur your sense of what really happened.
“It is the way different people perceive the way someone said this line,” Wright (who directed three episodes) tells TV Insider. “Maybe it was a statement and not a question, but it was a question to the other person. We were playing with that so much of the time so that you could see the scene in a different way, the way somebody else perceived it. And then you choose as an audience member what to believe.”
Do they ever tell the truth? “One of them does in the end,” Wright points out. It just might be too late. Cooke says that the truth eventually ceases to matter.
“Their emotions are so acute. Whenever emotions get in the way of facts, it always leads to discrepancy,” the House of the Dragon star explains. “So I don’t think they can [be trusted to tell the truth]. It’s all in such a heightened state, and also they’re vying for Daniel’s loyalty and affection. Even in their point of views, it goes beyond the point of truth. We are beyond facts. We’re in a post-truth world when it becomes so emotional towards the end, especially.”
Christopher Raphael / Prime Video
So, what is true in The Girlfriend? For starters, Cherry grew up rather poor in comparison to Daniel’s generational wealth. She has to work harder for her money, and her ability to climb the social ladder is stunted by nepo babies with better social connections at the real estate firm at which she works. Daniel and Cherry’s first meeting is truly by chance as well, and their attraction to each other is genuine. But there are dark things in Cherry’s past that are reasons for concern, things that she goes to great lengths to hide. And people from her past pop up to warn Laura about her allegedly problematic behavior. Cherry also really wants Daniel’s family to like her. She tries to appear intelligent and well-connected to cover up her lack of wealth. Laura clocks this immediately when Cherry tells a pointless lie at their first dinner to try and impress Laura and her husband, Howard (Waleed Zuaiter).
“There’s a lot of things that Cherry admires in Laura initially, and she really wants to get into her good graces and to have this sort of surrogate family, but then that becomes just untenable,” Cooke explains. “That’s not an option at all.”
Cherry believes the disconnect is because Laura can’t let go of her precious son — or at least that’s the picture she paints of the art gallerist. Laura, meanwhile, is hellbent on proving that Cherry is lying to take advantage of the family’s wealth. There are good and bad sides to Cherry, and she’s driven by a sense of shame but also a powerful desire for a life that’s very different from her childhood, but just what exactly was bad about her childhood — and who caused the hard times — is a mystery that slowly gets solved.
“She has a huge defense mechanism and her walls are up because A, she’s omitting truths about her upbringing and herself, but also because the truths that she’s omitting are the reason people have turned their backs on her before,” Cooke explains. “And so there’s a real need for approval, especially in someone like Laura, who is just so beautiful and graceful and eloquent and has this life that Cherry is aspiring to. To be seen by someone like that is to be chosen. And so yeah, she desperately wants Laura’s approval and affirmation until she feels wronged by Laura, and then the grudge that she holds is everlasting.”
Laura and Howard’s first child died young before Daniel was born. This grief has defined how they parent Daniel, and Laura’s overprotectiveness resulted in Daniel being a bit of an adrenaline junkie who likes high-risk physical activity.
“The last thing in the world she wants is to lose another child, hence [Laura being] overly protective, his high-octane sports desire,” Wright shares. “She’s just petrified of something hurting him physically because he is such a risk taker, and he hides that from mommy for these reasons. It will just make her full of anxiety. The result of that is [her] being very overprotective of someone that is hitting 30 years of age.”
Howard and Daniel interpret Laura’s protective nature in bad faith at times. Before Cherry arrived, they saw Laura’s behavior as obsessive but innocent. Cherry makes them question if Laura’s care for Daniel is actually emotionally incestuous.
Christopher Raphael / Prime Video
“No one believes her,” Wright admits. They believe “that she’s conjured all of this because of her paranoia, and she needs to cut the cord with Daniel,” she continues. “Howard tells her, ‘You’ve got to leave him alone. Let him be a man. Let him grow up.” The Princess Bride star says there’s a lot of misogyny baked into this. Howard and Daniel, and even at times Laura’s best friend Isabella (Tanya Moodie) and her daughter Brigitte (Shalom Brune-Franklin), think that Laura deeply fears being replaced by her son’s could-be wife. This perception is something Laura is constantly fighting against, and something that Cherry doesn’t have to deal with by nature of her youth, giving her an edge in this fight.
“It’s huge,” Wright admits. “Her husband says it to her, ‘You’re afraid that you’re going to be replaced and you’re becoming completely neurotic about it.’ And everybody around Laura believes that [Cherry’s] a good girl and she’s in love with Laura’s son, and Laura thinks there’s ulterior motives.”
“I don’t even think that’s a question in her head about being replaced,” Wright argues. “It’s just she doesn’t want this woman in her son’s life because she senses that she’s up to no good, that she tells white lies all the time. Why does she tell white lies? Why can’t she just be herself? And we find out why she can’t just be herself.”
Both women lie repeatedly to try and beat the other. The women are well matched — as Cooke says, “Laura has the same energy for vengeance as Cherry does.”
“That is an engine that will never run out of gas,” she continues. “And usually, Cherry is like a dog with a bone. Usually, people will just give up and roll over, but not Laura. Energetically, they are very well met.”
“In another world, they would’ve been BFFs because they’re very much alike,” Wright says. “They’re very determined and don’t like no for an answer. And they both want the team, the family on their side.” There’s even an episode that shows how well they could get along if only they could put aside their differences.
May the best woman win, but also ask yourself what they need to be best at in order to win this family feud.
The Girlfriend, Series Premiere, Wednesday, September 10, Prime Video
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