Want to know how to make Robin Wright smile in two seconds? Tell her that you binged her six-episode series The Girlfriend in one Saturday night sitting.
"Good!" she says. "That was our intention. I mean, look at all the competition that we are against. I think audiences are getting a little bit too much fast food, which can become numbing. We were trying to base our show in reality while understanding that melodramatic things do happen."
Oh yes, they do. The tantalizing Prime Video series, which premiered in September 2025, centers on a complicated and messy love triangle... between a mother, her son and his girlfriend. Wright plays Laura, a posh art gallery owner in London whose life becomes upended when Daniel (Laurie Davidson) brings home his new love, Cherry (Olivia Cooke). Granted, Laura is ultra-close to her son. But she’s convinced Cherry is shadier than a poolside umbrella. The series cleverly shifts perspective between the two women, who ultimately go to extreme (and tragic) lengths to win over poor Daniel. The series is based on the 2017 novel of the same name by Michelle Frances.
"Cherry is the more reactionary character," explains Wright, who also serves as executive producer and directed the first three episodes. "So when she gets pushed or someone is suspicious of her — which Laura is from the beginning — then it gets her antennae up and she says, 'Well, watch this.' You never know how far she’ll go."
For Wright, the limited series enabled her to return to the medium she calls home. Indeed, though the actress is a regular big-screen presence and synonymous with two bona fide classics — 1987’s The Princess Bride and 1994’s Forrest Gump, of course — she got her break in the mid-80s on the NBC soap opera Santa Barbara. Decades later, in 2013, she played a key part in the streaming evolution by way of her role as cunning FLOTUS Claire Underwood in Netflix’s House of Cards. Similar to The Girlfriend, she took on executive producer duties as well, directed 10 episodes and earned eight Emmy nominations in the process. "I love to direct because of all the collaboration," she says. "We’re all building an architectural piece called a TV series."
Amid a busy press day, Wright hopped on a Zoom from a hotel room to talk about her work with The Television Academy. And warning: Spoilers abound!
Television Academy: How would you describe your directing style in those first three episodes?
Robin Wright: The camera style was very pre-planned and premeditated. You get a different emotion when the camera is holding with the person that you're supposed to be focusing on. That’s why you see the camera on me when I’m checking out my son’s hand on Cherry’s inner-thigh. And yet the lighting is very warm and inviting.
Davidson and Wright in a memorable scene from The Girlfriend
So would you say that Laura has an unnaturally close relationship with her son?
I’ve got one word for you: Weird.
It is weird!
And that’s not okay. I know there are some parents who are like, “I still kiss my kids on the lips.” And I’m like “How old is your child?” And they go, “42.” I’m like, “No, no, no.”
Laura could have been just overprotective without the physical element to it. Why add that?
Because it's so perverse. At the end of the show, you really get a sense of it because we brought in Daniel's perspective very subtly. He's in the middle between these women, so you want things to be weird and awkward. We actually added the scene where she catches him masturbating because we were trying to one-up ourselves — like, what else could we put in there? Oh my god, I can’t believe she walked in on her son doing that!
She catches the couple in the act in the first episode, too.
We actually had a scene that got omitted. I think it was in Episode 4. Daniel just had his fall off a cliff, and he’s recovering in Spain with his mom and dad. There was a scene written that was set in the bathtub. He can't wash his back because he hurt his arm, so Mommy's in there with the coral sponge massaging his back. We had a close-up of me scrubbing my son's back, he gets an erection in the water and he's embarrassed. They cut that out. We didn’t think Amazon would go for it.
That said, Laura really does have the correct instincts in trying to get rid of Cherry.
Yes! After the accident, Laura was told by the doctor that maybe Daniel had a 20 percent chance to live. So she was like, "Well, I'm just going to nip it in the bud and just get her out of our life."
In the finale, Cherry and Laura have a huge fight and then Daniel accidently drowns Laura in the pool. Is it true you came up with that twist? It’s different from the book.
Yes, I thought that my son should kill me. We see in the very beginning that someone has died. It would have been too obvious that either Laura was going to kill Cherry, or that Cherry was going to kill Laura.
What’s the symbolism of the water?
Water is mother. It’s the womb. It was an ongoing motif because in the opening scene, you think somebody is attacking Laura in her own pool. It’s shocking violence, and you don’t know who it is. Because it’s her son, there’s an element of a Greek tragedy.
What are your memories filming that scene?
We were in the pool, and it was freezing cold. We were just trying to get takes. And I remember saying to Andrea [Harkin, who directed the episode], "Don't you think Cherry needs to see what the love of her life is doing?" He's physically drowning his own mother.
Do you think Cherry wanted Laura to die?
No, no, no. She just wanted her to stay away from Daniel. She didn’t want Laura to ruin this love.
Laura is dead at the end, right?
[Shoulder shrug]
But if she were alive, wouldn’t she have her phone? It’s Daniel who ends up finding it months later.
Good point. The phone was knocked out of her hand by Cherry prior to the fight in the pool, right? But she could still be in a coma. And Daniel is a doctor!
After doing House of Cards and now The Girlfriend, what’s your take on the streaming era?
Succession, Big Little Lies, and White Lotus are my Top 3 shows. I love them. What’s so compelling about those shows is that there is a hook at the end of every episode. There’s some mystery. There's something to dissect and figure out before the next episode on Sunday night.
I don’t think Amazon does that — they just want to give it all to the viewer. Because of that model, we felt obligated to make it a binge-worthy show. So the fun and challenging part of making The Girlfriend was what kind of hook do we end each episode with to keep the people going to the next one?
So, as a viewer, do you prefer watching week-to-week?
No, I like it all on my plate. It’s a little bit of decadence.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Girlfriend is streaming now on Prime Video.
