From creatorBrad Ingelsbyand directorCraig Zobel, the seven-episode HBO limited seriesMare of Easttownfollows small-town Pennsylvania detective Mare Sheehan (Kate Winslet, who’s also an executive producer on the project), as she investigates a grisly local murder that threatens to tear the community apart. At the same time, Mare’s own family life is a mess, which is starting to bleed into her career in a way that will lead to unavoidable consequences.
During a virtual junket for the series, Collider got the opportunity to chat 1-on-1 with writer/executive producerBrad Ingelsbyabout how this project evolved into a TV series, why he connected so deeply with Mare, the creative experience he shared withKate Winslet, knowing the last scene before he wrote the opening scene, the show’s complicated relationships, and how he hopes audiences will feel by the end.
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Collider: You’ve written films before, but this is the first long form project you’ve done. What made you create this character and want to write this story, and how did you know that you’d need more time than you’d get with a film?
BRAD INGELSBY: That’s a good question. It started with the character. I was just really interested in this Mare character. I had her in my mind. I have a buddy on the east coast who’s a cop and I was talking to him one day, and he was telling me about his life as a cop. He said, “It’s me and about eleven officers working at this converted train station. We have one detective working with us, who handles all of the cases.” I just was interested in that idea of this small town detective, and Mare, specifically. I didn’t know what the story around her was. I just was interested in her. But then, when I began to populate this place with these other characters, I became interested in them in a way where a movie wouldn’t accommodate their storyline. It was like, if I’m gonna invest time in Dawn and I’m gonna invest time in Erin, I have to have more time. There’s no way that would work in a two-hour movie. The scope of the story was bigger than I could accommodate in a movie. And obviously, the world was changing at that time. TV was ready to accommodate a lot more stories than it had in the past, so it made sense, at this time.
What was it about Mare, as a character, that made you connect so deeply with her?
INGELSBY: I grew up with a lot of women in my life. I have a lot of aunts, a mother, and sisters. On Thursday nights, over at my grandma’s house, my mom and all of her sisters would be in the kitchen, chatting and gossiping, and we’d hang out. I grew up with a lot of strong, incredible women. I guess, maybe naively, I’ve never been afraid to take that on. It’s just a character. I never really see it as writing a woman or a man. It’s about, am I telling this character in an honest way? That’s really always how I measure it. Having grown up there helps a lot. Knowing the rhythms and rituals of life in this very specific part of the country helps to make it convincing. I hope it’s convincing. I grew up there and I spent time with my wife, in the neighborhood she grew up in Her uncle lives a couple houses down, her aunt lives a couple houses down, and they all get together for pizza, every Friday. I think it helps to tell an honest story to have experienced it yourself.
What did you most enjoy about writing this character, and then seeing someone like Kate Winslet bring her to life?
INGELSBY: I loved writing her because I just thought she was awesome. I just loved that she was like tough. I just loved Mare. I still love Mare. I think she’s an awesome cop and also a friend. There are times when you don’t like her, but you always are cheering her on. I really liked writing her. But then, giving it over to Kate, even in movies, there’s always a moment of having to give up ownership of a character when you give it to an actor and it becomes theirs, in a way. What Kate did was just elevate this, in such an incredible way. She created backstory and she deepened the character and she just completely dedicated herself to diving in emotionally with what this character had been through. Some of the strongest scenes are when she’s just talking to the doctor and the therapist, and that’s because she just became so emotionally attached to the backstory of this woman. What’s great about Kate is that there’s a lot of humor in the show too and she’s really good at bringing the levity to balance the darkness of the show because it goes to dark places at times. Kate really was always aware that we needed a level of humor. And Jean Smart helped a lot too because she’s wonderful. It was just a wonderful creative experience working with Kate.
In a crime drama where you’re solving a crime, you have to keep putting the pieces of the puzzle together. How did you figure out where you wanted to put the twists and turns, the misdirections, and the shocking moments? Did you know which characters would meet their demise, from the beginning, or did some of that surprise you, along the way?
INGELSBY: It’s funny, in movies, I’d never, ever do that. I never have a very carefully outlined script, just because it’s never been my preference to do that. But with this one, I have to say that it was such a different thing. I had to know the last scene in the whole series, even before I could write the opening scene. I have never had that experience on a movie. Maybe because my movies aren’t murder mystery plot-driven things and are much more characters going through life and dealing with things. In these murder shows, you have to stick the landing, otherwise the audience is like, “Eh.” You have to be surprising, but not only do you have to be surprising, you have to be emotionally surprising. I was just acutely aware that I had to get the ending right. I hope we got it right. Only viewers will tell us, if we did. But I very much had to have the ending in my head, even prior to starting the opening scene. If you know where it ends, then you can cheat some things and have the audience leaning here when they should be leaning there. It was a learning experience and I hope we’ve pulled it off. We’ll see what the viewers think.
Mare is a character who has very complicated relationships with the men in life, from her ex-husband living right behind her, to her partner at work, to the random professor that she meets. What did you enjoy about exploring her through those relationships?
INGELSBY: It allowed us to illuminate the conflict and the status of her life. At one point, she even says, “Hey, this is not the right time. I’ve got my ex-husband living in my backyard. I can’t do this right now.” And yet, there’s an appeal to each of these men in her life. I think the triangle help to add some level of conflict. I hope that you’re like, “I kinda like Zabel, but I kinda like Richard. I don’t know which one I like.” And I think Mare, herself, is quite torn. There are certain charming aspects to each of them, but it’s also the last thing she needs in her life right now. What I love about Mare is that she’s like, “I’m okay on my own. I can deal.” I admire that about her. She’s been through a lot, and maybe she needs to take some time on her own.
I love the mother-daughter relationships in this, seeing Mare being a daughter to her mother, but also being a mother to her daughter and her grandchild. Was that something that you also thought a lot about, as far as how you wanted to present and explore that?
INGELSBY: Yeah. From the earliest drafts of the script, I wanted to have four generations in one house, if you include Drew, the child. In terms of the narrative, having these three generations of women under one roof, was just really interesting to me. They each have their own issues. Siobhan has a lot of resentment. Mare has a lot of resentment. Helen and Siobhan are on the same team. It felt rich soil to explore. I just love all of them, in different ways. I love Siobhan because of the feistiness in her. I love Helen because there’s something about her that reminds me of my grandmother, in a lot of ways. She was a hard woman, but has really softened, over the years, because of the tragedy she’s been through. Eventually these women have to come together and there has to be some olive branch, but what does that look like and how is it not cheap and how do you earn that level of trust or reconciliation amongst these three women. And you have a couple of amazing actresses there, with Angourie [Rice], Kate and Jean. It helps a lot when you have wonderful actresses playing those parts.
By the time we get to the end of this story, how do you think audiences will feel and how do you hope they’ll feel?
INGELSBY: I hope that they’ll be surprised, but in a really in a really good way and that they haven’t been cheated in any way. We’ve invested so much time in this town and these people that I hope an audience trusts that we’ll do right, in terms of the ending. It’s not gonna be one of those endings where it’s like, “If you blinked in Episode 1, it was that weird guy in the woods,” or something like that. It won’t be that type of ending. I hope the mystery is surprising and compelling, but I hope what they walk away with is that they got to spend time with the group of people that they got invested in and they cared about and were hopefully like them in some way. Hopefully watching Mare have to deal with this grief and cope and confront this thin, that’s haunted her will illuminate their own lives in some way. And hopefully it’s moving. That’s what I always try to have a story be. I want it to be moving, in some way, and I hope that happens with this one.
