by Nataliia Serebriakova
New drama The Girlfriend isn’t just another entry into the crowded field of psychological thrillers. Directed by and starring Robin Wright, the series adapts Michelle Francis’s best-selling novel into an unsettling story of rivalry, obsession, and identity, all filtered through the intimate triangle of a mother, her grown son, and the young woman who threatens to upend their bond.
At its core, The Girlfriend is about perception: who gets to define the truth, whose emotions are trusted, and what happens when two women lock into a battle over love, control, and survival.
Speaking with us, Robin Wright, Olivia Cooke, and Laurie Davidson unpacked the unique challenges of making the series — from directing while acting to staging emotionally volatile scenes that left the cast both shaken and laughing.
ACTING, WRITING, DIRECTING
For Wright, having female perspectives in the writing process was essential. “We had a mixture of male and female writers, but yeah, it’s a language that we females speak differently, we feel differently, we emote differently, and I think it was really beneficial to have a seamless unity. This is how a woman would say this to a younger girl that she doesn’t trust. This is how a mother would protect her son and how she would try to just basically demand that he listened to her.”
That attention to emotional truth became the bedrock of Wright’s dual role, both as director and performer.
It wasn’t Wright’s first time juggling roles, but the stakes were uniquely high. “I had my hands in all of the departments. So you were overseeing the writing and working with the writers and playing with the arc, amending it, going, ‘Ooh, wouldn’t this be interesting?’ and helping add. I didn’t really feel that was such an isolated, disparate thing. It’s a light switch that you turn on. I’m in a director’s cap, I’m doing that thing, I know what I need to achieve in the scene, the other actors, for myself.”
Still, the dual role led to moments that Cooke found delightfully surreal. “It’s so bizarre to be in the scene with Robin and I can see her directing me with her eyes, but she’s still in character. I can see her gently trying to manipulate me into what she wants to receive performance-wise, and I would alter my performance to get her reaction to be different.”
And if something wasn’t working? Wright had the freedom to self-correct. “Then I would call cut on myself, which is so great because when I was terrible in a take, I’d just be like, ‘Cut. We’re going again’ … Well, because then it’s not even in the editing room ever. I just go, ‘Scratch that take.’”
Wright describes her character Laura as an artist plagued by fraudulence and inner fracture. “Laura actually confesses to her best friend, ‘I’m shepherding a movement, a very high-end art, very wealthy buyers, and I don’t feel it at all. I don’t believe in it. I don’t identify with it.’ There’s a fraudulent part of the artist, Laura, and that’s why I think she kind of loses her mind a little bit, because it’s a midlife crisis in a sense.”
Visually, Wright leaned into cinematic realism, working closely with cinematographer Mattias Nyberg. “Tonally, I wanted to make sure that we shot it more like a film. Because while you could label it as melodramatic, it’s based in reality when you get down to the brass tacks of the human condition and human reactions. … Mattias Nyberg, my DP, the day I met him, he goes, ‘Do you want to show your mood board first or mine?’ He goes, ‘Let’s do it at the same time.’ We flip open our laptops and we had the same pictures in our mood board.”
That shared vision shaped the show’s ominous, almost voyeuristic atmosphere. Wright recalls telling her cast that “I don’t want to use too many cuts so that it doesn’t feel like a network television show, so keep it moving like there’s an ominous being in the room, fly on the wall watching.’ It was more of a dance that we created.”
FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT
At the heart of the series is the combustible relationship between Wright’s Laura and Cooke’s Cherry. For Cooke, the tension sprang naturally from their collaboration. “It was all there on the page and also just… Talking with Robin and having that shorthand and that truncated relationship where I was acting with her, but she was also directing me at the same time. I feel like I can draw on life experience as well. … So I feel like I am able to metabolize this world quite well.”
The physical intensity of their scenes left both actresses needing release. “Olivia and I were like, ‘I don’t want to do this to you in this scene,’ and we would get into our cat fights. Episode six, that was really intense physically. After we would wrap the scene, we would just hug each other and giggle like, ‘Oh, did I hurt you?’”
Cooke adds: “So intense, so intense. And we’re screaming and I’m smashing a glass against my head and she’s got me by the throat. You then go home at the end of the day and you’re like, what was my job today? What is it that I have to do on a daily basis? But it’s very fun.”
Cooke reveals her inspiration came from closer to home than fans might expect “You know what, my sister’s going to kill me, but Cherry really reminds me of my sister. … There’s an engine and there’s an energy to my sister and also she’s very, very glam. So it’s like the blowout, the nails, the lashes, the fake tan. And also she speaks her mind as well, and she’s very front-footed, so I feel like I’m channeling Eleanor Cook a little bit.”
Even as Cherry manipulates, Cooke insists there’s humanity there. “I think Cherry just loves a little prank. I think she’s just a little mischievous girl who loves a little prank and it just goes a bit awry. I think she is trying to better herself. She’s got boundless ambition. She’s seeking to better her life in job opportunity and romance as well.”
HE SAID SHE SAID SHE SAID
If Laura and Cherry embody clashing forces, Laurie Davidson’s Daniel is caught in the emotional crossfire.
“I think one thing that I always held onto is that Daniel just is obsessed with these two great women getting on. And so he’s quite blind to a lot of what goes on and some of those things he literally doesn’t know, isn’t aware of. But some of those things he’s choosing to just turn a blind eye because it’s easier to ignore. … He thinks this is the beginning of the best chapter of his life.
“Daniel still defends his mother to Cherry. And he’s always defending Cherry to Laura. He wants to see the good in them and uphold that. And even if he questions that, he wants to protect the way they’re seen by other people. We see that so often in relationships, especially with parents as well.”
Playing scenes from multiple viewpoints gave Davidson a unique challenge. “What was quite fun is that I got to play the same scene. But when we’re in Laura’s perspective and when we’re in Cherry’s perspective, I was playing it differently whilst trying to keep it all within the realms of the same character. … The truth lies somewhere in the middle. But I was able to lean into both of those things and sway in the same way that the audience is constantly swaying.”
With The Girlfriend, Wright, Cooke, and Davidson deliver a tense, layered psychological drama that feels as much about perception and power as it is about love and betrayal. The show’s dual perspectives ensure viewers will constantly question who to trust, who to fear, and whether truth is ever truly knowable.
The Girlfriend is streaming now
