Do you have Three Women’s premiere circled? The STARZ series is on the 2024 TV schedule and premieres next Friday, September 13. As someone who has seen the show early, I can say it’s not a drama series to be missed. Based on the book by Lisa Taddeo, the series tells the true stories of multiple women from different sides of the United States and each of their unique connections with pleasure. When CinemaBlend spoke to Three Women’s Shailene Woodley, she shared with us just how the series related to her upbringing.
In the series that moved from Showtime to STARZ last year, Shailene Woodley plays a fictional stand-in for the book’s author Lisa Taddeo, who road tripped across the U.S. to formulate her 2019 New York Times bestseller. During my interview with Woodley and Three Women author, Woodley spoke about collaborating with Taddeo. The actress specifically discussed meshing her own experiences with the notes from the novelist:
There's so many things that Lisa [Taddeo] gave me that helped playing Gia or helped me formulate Gia and figure Gia out. And I've been lucky enough in my life to have lived on the road for six months and cross country and ended up sleeping on the side of the road in many places and waking up to people being like, ‘You can't park in my front lawn’.
Three Women tells the true stories of a trio of women: a mother living in Indiana, a high school student living in North Dakota and a restaurant owner residing in the Northeast. Lisa Taddeo protected two of the three's identities by changing their names. The third is known to be Maggie Wilken, who took her high school teacher to court for having a sexual relationship with her when she was 17.
The series delves deeply into each of the women’s lives, detailing their fears and desires. Shailene Woodley’s Gia is at the center of the story and is a writer who buys a van and travels all over on the hunt for a good story to tell. As mentioned above, Woodley could identify with the character because she has her own experience being on the road.
Back in 2014, the same year she was in Divergent, The Fault in Our Stars and was cut as Mary Jane Watson from The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the A-lister spoke about her experiences on the road. She told USA Today that she had combined her things into a single suitcase and was homeless purposefully after she spent only 15 days at her home the year prior.
In 2016, Shailene Woodley also went on the road with her mom’s 17-year-old motorhome to lead a cross country road trip from Los Angeles to Philadelphia to the Democratic National Convention to support Bernie Sanders. She ultimately ended up keeping it going for two months. She previously revealed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that she would often stop at Walmart parking lots and on the sides of the road. Aside from the roadie memories the show gave her, she also said this during our interview:
And I think just the biggest thing that I love so much about Three Women is that it's so easy, especially now with social media too, for us to live in these echo chambers thinking that our experience is the experience. And it's because, you know, we live in coastal communities or we live in a particular area in the south, or we live in the Midwest and all we know is what we know. And I think there's something so expansive and wonderful about the way that Lisa chose to live her life and the way that she portrayed these women in her book and in this show that shows that we all have varying experiences in life, and yet somehow they're all relatable.
This is an upcoming book adaptation that’s totally worth your time, even if you have yet to read Lisa Taddeo’s novel. As the Descendants alum shared, she feels the series may encourage people to realize there’s a breadth of experiences occurring across America -- many that aren't typically examined but can allow audiences to see new perspectives. As she continued:
And the wonderful thing about the United States is it is sort of this weird macro microcosm of people who live on opposite sides of every spectrum coexisting together. And to me that that is what the road trip, that is what the journey across the states really offers is that we all might look different. We all might believe different things and think different things, but the feeling outside of the context is the same. And that is a universal truth that we can all relate to. And it's one of my favorite things about Gia's storyline.
This is definitely one of the best Shailene Woodley performances I’ve seen, and the role fits the actress so well. If you’ve been waiting for Big Little Lies Season 3, you’ll enjoy this series. Except, rather than the drama focusing on residents of Monterey, California, there are several unique experiences at play here. Please do yourself a favor and check out STARZ's Three Women!
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