Stories about women – the way that they live, the roads that they take, and the strength that the possess are something that we love to watch. Women are complicated creatures, but the simple thing that binds us all? Well, that would be that women (most people really) want nothing more than to be loved.
In Starz’s latest television series – Three Women – the characters are being asked to share about their lives. The gist? Well, that would be that “writer Gia convinces three women to tell her their stories; entrepreneur Sloane, homemaker Lina, and student Maggie are on a crash course to radically overturn their lives.”
Three women and their stories take center stage in the show that has already aired in its entirety in Australia. It was shot for Showtime but is airing on Starz. The 10-episode series feels like a series of short stories wrapped into one long drawn-out book, but that’s not such a bad thing. Why? Because that’s the way life is. Sometimes it is drawn out. Sometimes it feels like a little bit of an overtelling.
Talking with star Betty Gilpin, we wanted to learn more about her character of Lina. It’s always interesting to hear how an actor describes their character.
“Lina is a woman who lives in suburban Indiana. She has two young kids, and we meet her at a point in her life where she’s had enough. She’s someone who desperately wants to be kissed and touched and celebrated, and her husband will not touch her, will not even kiss her. She realizes that they maybe have never even kissed ever. She decides I literally cannot live like this anymore or I will die and takes her life into her own hands and has an affair with her high school sweetheart. We watch her life both implode and soar at the same time.” she says when describing her character.
Like so many of us, Lina is just wanting to be loved and seen. Never having that in one’s life can leave anyone feeling lost and alone.
But because this is an adaptation of a book, one has to wonder if Gelpin is worried about the way that people will perceive her playing the role. Would fans of the book be able to resonate with Lina on screen as deeply as they did with the book?
Gilpin says, “I, as a fan of the book was afraid of that as well. I was pretty obsessed with the book when it came out. I think part of the book’s success is there aren’t any images. You’re able to put yourself in each of the women’s stories. You can see yourself so clearly at different phases in your own life. Sort of fit with the words exclusively in a vacuum and process it just you and this character that you’re holding in your hands, literally the words in your hands. I think that part of doing service to the book and to these real women is that these are three very different people, but people who deserve to be protagonists and three souls that deserve to have their time in the sun.”
She then continued, “Strangely, I think that the book and then this series helps literally do that. It was emotional for me to think about while we were filming it, particularly the scenes where Lina felt so invisible to the people around her. She was living the wrong life and that in her head, she was the lead of this romantic, epic, and she looks around and she’s in a beige minivan. Keep your wants to yourself world. In that, we’re filming a TV show about it. She was the lead in her own romantic epic. I felt weirdly like we were giving this character what it wanted 15 years later.”
Having grown up and knowing people who live in the Midwest, I have to admit that I resonated with Lina and seeing her on the screen. She is as relatable as in the book.
See the interview with Betty below –
