When it came to adapting Alice Feeney’s bestselling 2020 psychological thriller His & Hers for the screen, Netflix took a few creative liberties.
While mostly minor, the changes made to the six-episode limited series — starring Tessa Thompson and Jon Bernthal as estranged spouses who each suspect the other of murdering a woman from their complicated past — are still significant.
From altered character arcs to new motivations, here are the biggest differences between the book and the show, which is currently topping Netflix’s Top 10 list.
*Warning: this article contains major spoilers for His & Hers*
Anna’s triumphant return to work
In the show, Thompson’s Atlanta news anchor Anna shows up to work unannounced, requesting her previous evening time slot back after an unofficial, year-long hiatus following the death of her young daughter. When her boss tells her she’s been tentatively replaced by rising star Lexy Jones (Rebecca Rittenhouse), Anna concedes and requests to be sent as a field reporter to cover the murder of childhood friend Rachel in her hometown of Dahlonega, Georgia. Her boss agrees to send her along with Lexy’s cameraman husband, Richard (Pablo Schreiber), to report on the case. There, Anna reunites with her estranged husband, Detective Jack Harper (Bernthal), who is the lead investigator on the case.
Not only does the series change Lexy’s name from Cat Jones, but the novel also depicts Anna’s demotion a bit differently. In the book, Anna was actually covering Cat’s news anchor position while she was on maternity leave, and once Cat returns, she’s the one who slyly suggests Anna cover the murder.
In both versions, Anna is unaware that her rival co-worker is, in fact, Catherine, a vengeful girl who was in the woods on the fateful night of Anna’s 16th birthday.
Rachel’s much older husband’s role as a potential suspect
Following the discovery of Rachel’s body in the book, her frail, bedridden and wealthy, 82-year-old husband is immediately ruled out as a potential suspect, due to his age and failing health. Readers don’t even meet him directly.
The series, however, decides to make Rachel’s widower, Clyde (Chris Bauer), considerably younger and physically capable of committing the crime. Thus, putting him in the pool of potential suspects.
Anna’s struggle with alcoholism
The book cleverly paints Anna as an alcoholic, commonly unaware of the previous night’s events due to routine blackouts. Because of this, readers are cautioned against accepting her accounts as fact. This is expertly played out in one scene, in which Anna emerges from a drunken state to find that her room has been cleaned. Anna innocently believes she must have tidied up the space in her intoxicated haze, but it turns out her mother, Alice (played by Crystal R. Fox in the series), came over and straightened up the space. The unreliable narrator trope comes into play toward the end, when Anna wonders whether she’s really the killer and simply can’t remember because of a big bender.
Conversely, the show makes Anna’s alcoholism a moot point. While in an early episode, she is shown guzzling half a bottle of wine, her drinking is never portrayed as excessive. So by the time the major plot twist arrives in the final scenes, she is of a clear mind when she reads her mother’s letter confessing to the murders of Anna’s childhood friends.
The final deadly confrontation
In Feeney’s novel, Anna is only lured into Cat’s parents’ secluded lake home after hearing Richard’s screams. Inside, she discovers Richard on the brink of death with multiple stab wounds and a severe head injury. She also finds Cat hanging from a noose, but soon realizes that Cat has faked her own death to trap Anna. Anna manages to escape from the house, where she finds her supposedly dementia-ridden mother bumbling around outside in the dark.
Amid the chaos, Jack arrives at the lake house, followed closely by his partner Priya (Sunita Mani), who has grown suspicious of his involvement in the murders after finding out about his affair with Rachel.
Cat chases Anna and Alice and ultimately stabs Alice. Still, Anna manages to get her mom into a getaway car, and just as Anna drives away, she runs Cat over. Yet, miraculously, Cat survives. But just as she raises her knife to attack Anna, Priya fatally shoots her.
It’s later inferred that, in the aftermath of the night’s traumatic events, Anna comes to believe Cat is responsible for the murders of Rachel and her friends — Helen Wang (Poppy Liu) and Jack’s sister Zoe (Marin Ireland) — as revenge for the gang rape they orchestrated against her at Anna’s 16th birthday. In the series, it’s Anna who ends up being raped after saving Lexy from the attack.
Meanwhile, the adaptation removes all of the additional gore and opts for a more straightforward retelling: Richard brings Anna to his in-laws’ home, and after the two get into it, Anna locks him in the basement just as Lexy arrives. Anna and Lexy then face off, and once they’re both bloodied and exhausted, with Lexy capturing Anna’s gun, Priya manages to shoot her dead, saving Anna. Unlike in the book, there is no Alice, and Richard survives and is arrested for aiding Lexy.
Alice’s jaw-dropping confession
In the TV show’s conclusion, Anna learns the shocking truth — that her mom indeed killed Rachel, Helen and Zoe. In her mother’s confession letter, she reveals that her killing spree began after coming across old footage from Anna’s 16th birthday of her daughter being raped.
The novel’s twisted ending is a bit more muddled than that. While Alice similarly confesses to the murders, her motives are much more layered. Since it was Cat who was raped in the book, Alice assumes that the guilt of not intervening weighs heavily on her daughter’s conscience, which caused her to flee Dahlonega. Blaming Rachel, Helen and Zoe for her daughter’s disappearance, Alice decides to kill them and pin it on Cat.
His & Hers is available to stream on Netflix.
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