In the 1987 blockbuster Fatal Attraction, Glenn Close was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Alex Forrest, the jilted, bunny-boiling “other woman” in an affair with a married man, played by Michael Douglas.

However, the actress has publicly rebuked how her character was portrayed solely as one of cinema’s great villains. The new Paramount+ series adaptation, starring Lizzy Caplan in Close’s role, takes a different view of the character, executive producer Alexandra Cunningham tells ABC Audio.

And that’s due to Close, she explains. “Actually reading the interviews with her about all of the work she put in to flesh out the character for herself from a performance perspective was kind of where a lot of the ideas about the mental health of the character came from, and wanting to explore that.”

She continues, “Because she had spoken to psychiatrists at the time in the mid-to-late ’80s, and none of them brought up diagnoses or terminologies or anything because we didn’t talk that way in the ’80s.” 

Cunningham adds, “Now, thank God, we’re much more open to conversations about mental health, and the stigma is slowly moving away. And so that actually was inspired by the way Glenn Close talked about the way she felt about the character that she created.”  

Fatal Attraction also stars Joshua Jackson, Toby Huss and Amanda Peet. The first three episodes are now streaming on Paramount+, with a fourth episode dropping Sunday.

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