Alex still won’t be ignored. Aside from that, some things have changed since the 1987 film “Fatal Attraction” first struck the fear of retribution into every cheating hubby’s um, heart.
As such, the series of the same name that starts streaming at the end of April will use the movie’s plot as a “jumping-off point” for a more modern spin on the story rather than a faithful remake, co-star Lizzy Caplan told ET Online.
Caplan plays jilted lover Alex Forrest to Joshua Jackson’s philandering Dan Gallagher, the role originated by Michael Douglas. Unlike the movie, this story opens with Gallagher attempting to take responsibility for his actions in the affair after being convicted of Forrest’s murder. He has already spent 15 years behind bars.
“Every day that I have been in here I have thought about Alexandra Forrest because I need to understand what I did, how she died, and why,” he tells a judges’ panel.
In the finale of the original, the stalker Forrest — played by Glenn Close — is shot by Gallagher’s wife, played by Anne Archer, in self-defense. The new version features Amanda Peet in the wife’s role and has Gallagher serving time.
Both film and series feature a weekend fling between Gallagher and Forrest, followed by Forrest’s subsequent obsession and stalking of her perceived paramour and his family.
However, it veers from the original in “exploring marriage and infidelity through the lens of modern attitudes toward strong women, personality disorders and coercive control,” according to the series creators.
The series “also is about entitlement and midlife crisis and how some of the sausage gets made in our broken justice system,” said showrunner, writer and executive producer Alexandra Cunningham at the Television Critics Association winter press tour, according to TV Guide.
In addition, the new incarnation delves into the psychology of personality disorders, Cunningham said, another way the series uses the movie as a touchstone.
“Culturally, we’ve come a long way since 1987,” star Joshua Jackson told Entertainment Tonight. “So, I think that there’s some things that we’re able to explore and delve into in our show that they didn’t have the space to — but they also wouldn’t have conceived of.”
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