The stars of Paramount+'s reboot discuss how the series, which launches in April, is different from the classic '80s movie.
Paramount+'s Fatal Attraction series has a premiere date!
The eight-episode reboot, led by Joshua Jackson, Lizzy Caplan and Amanda Peet, will premiere with its first two episodes on Sunday, April 30 on the streaming service in the U.S. and Canada, it was announced Monday at the Television Critics Association press tour.
In the U.K., Australia, Latin America, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and France, the series will premiere Monday, May 1. The premiere date in South Korea will be announced later. Subsequent episodes will be dropped weekly in all territories.
The reboot series, which follows two separate timelines (one set in 2008, the other in 2023), is a deep-dive reimagining of the classic 1987 psychosexual thriller that starred Michael Douglas, Glenn Close and Anne Archer. The new Fatal Attraction will explore fatal attraction and the timeless themes of marriage and infidelity through the lens of modern attitudes toward strong women, personality disorders and coercive control.
Caplan plays Alex Forrester, the role Close originated in the film; while Jackson portrays Dan Gallagher, originally played by Douglas; and Peet plays Dan's wife, Beth, previously played by Archer.
According to showrunner Alexandra Cunningham, the new Fatal Attraction will be a bit of a departure from the original film and will "spend more time with Alex and her point of view."
Caplan said it was difficult for her to rewatch the original movie, which she saw "a couple of times" before beginning production.
"The '80s audience sees this as a very binary, black-and-white, villain versus hero story. If you watch the movie again, I find it very, very difficult to see Alex as a straight villain, to not ask yourself as an audience member, 'What's going on with her?' And also, 'What about consequences for him?'" Caplan said, referring to Jackson's Dan. "The lens in which we view things now has altered so dramatically from the '80s that so much of the work is apparent now, almost done for us."
"We're poised to ask more questions about characters and in this case, it's not an hour-and-a-half-long film, it's an eight-hour series. We have lots of time to dig more deeply into Alex's backstory, her childhood, where she's coming from, seeing things through her eyes," she continued. "And yes it's a remake but it's really more of a jumping off point. You'll be familiar with the characters but what we're trying to do is ask the questions that would have been impossible to ask in a film because we wouldn't have had the time and also questions that people didn't care to ask back then."
Jackson piggy-backed off Caplan's comments, agreeing with her take on viewing the movie when it was originally released versus now.
"It is amazing to watch the movie now and... I watch it for Dan," he said, acknowledging that his iteration of Dan may also not be mentally stable. "The lack of responsibility, culpability, guilt that Dan feels -- he really is just like, 'Babe, can you believe it? This lady, we had a little [thing] and now she's going crazy or whatever!' And he just goes about his business, like, it's hard to watch now. We were just in a very different place. They don't have to explain it to us, we were just like, 'Yup, he's the hero. He's the victim here. And he needs to just murder this woman and everything will be OK.'"
As Jackson explained, things go haywire for Alex and Dan because they're both meeting at the worst possible time, creating a toxic reaction that leads ultimately to a catastrophic reaction.
"I do think there is at least weight given that it's not just that Alex has issues and bumps into a person, it's that Alex has issues and Dan has issues and they met at exactly the wrong moment," he said, "to create this toxic soup together. We introduce other characters who [Alex doesn't] have this massive reaction with. It is Dan's responsibility that he's the wrong mix; he's the nitrogen and she's the glycerin and they meet at this moment and it's everything he does post this tryst that creates this explosive scenario."
See first look photos from Fatal Attraction below.
Close spoke with ET last May about the Paramount+ remake and her hopes for what she hopes the show will explore.
"I hope they tell her backstory, her side of the story," Close said of Alex, her Fatal Attraction character. "I mean, I would be flattered if it was the one that we came up with [originally], but obviously I'll be very curious."
The actress also shared advice for Caplan, who steps into the shoes of Alex in the new series. "[Alex] is a human being in need of great help," Close said. "She's a fragile person."
Caplan on Monday credited Close for being tuned in at the time of the original film's release and asking difficult questions about Alex's mental health and the complexities behind the drive for some of the decisions she makes.
"You watch it now, the work that Glenn Close did and it's so exacting. And she was asking those questions. She saw Alex as someone struggling with mental illness and she did all that work. But you can watch that movie and enjoy it without knowing any of that, and then if you rewatch it knowing all that work has been put into it, you see just how layered and incredible the performance is, no matter what prism you're watching it through," Caplan said.
"She was the one doing it. She was the one fighting for this [alternate] ending and all of these things that were anything other than, 'This really nice guy did one bad thing and this horrible woman came and messed up his life and needs to die and we won't be happy as an audience until we watch her die.' It's absurd! Getting to do this and rolling up our sleeves has been endlessly satisfying," she added.
As for whether the new Paramount+ series will have direct references or scenes from the film, Cunningham played coy: "I'll plead the Fifth."
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