‘The Perfect Couple’ Changed Lead Character’s Name to Avoid ‘Big Little Lies’ Similarities After Nicole Kidman Signed On

Kirsten Chuba
·3 min read

Readers of Elin Hilderbrand’s The Perfect Couple are familiar with the story of Celeste, the book’s main character who is about to marry into one of the wealthiest families on Nantucket. In the Netflix adaptation, though, the character — played by Eve Hewson — is instead named Amelia, and it turns out that change can be traced back to Nicole Kidman.

Kidman stars in the series as Greer, Amelia’s future mother-in-law who has spared no expense in planning her son’s wedding; on the morning of the ceremony, however, a body turns up on the beach, as the family’s secrets slowly unravel. There are a number of changes between the book and the show, as showrunner Jenna Lamia said Hilderbrand gave her full freedom to depart from what she had written.

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“It was a five-year development process for various reasons, so it did go through a lot of different forms, and it was closer to the book early on,” Lamia told The Hollywood Reporter at the Los Angeles premiere on Wednesday. “And then this wonderful director Susanne Bier came on and her influence shifted some things, and when we had cast attached that shifted some things — things as small as Nicole’s character is Greer but then there’s the character that Eve plays, who in the book was named Celeste. But Nicole plays a Celeste in Big Little Lies — that’s the Celeste, so just to avoid any potential confusion, a very small reason, that is actually why,” she opted to change it.

Lamia also added a third son of Greer and husband Tag (played by Liev Schreiber) to throw in a storyline about first love, and “even as far as things that are internal to the characters in the book, I had to find a way to pull them out and make them active and external, which is why the ending is different — sorry, no spoilers!”

Hilderbrand has written 30 novels but this is the first onscreen adaptation of her work; with others currently in the pipeline — including The Five Star Weekend at Peacock — she emphasized, “Hopefully this is the domino that sets it all off, that’s all I can hope for.”

The author also echoed her willingness to have her story changed, explaining, “I wanted them to make the best possible television show, I wasn’t worried about how they changed the book. I said to Jenna right from the beginning, I do not feel precious about this. People can go and read the book later or before; it’ll be a different experience because it is a little bit different, they can see how they changed it, and I just wanted it to be excellent television.”

The show, a star-studded murder mystery centered on the elite, has drawn comparisons to Big Little Lies and The White Lotus, and happens to feature stars from both. Along with Kidman — who told red carpet reporters of the genre, “I like things where you just don’t know how they’re going to end and you go on the ride. So hopefully this show is a great ride” — Meghann Fahy also appears in the series, after her work on season two of The White Lotus.

Fahy said building up her murder mystery resume hasn’t been intentional, though: “I think it’s less about what I like and more about what the people seem to like which is obviously this, because that’s why it keeps popping up all over the place. It wasn’t really something that I sought out in that way but also it’s the kind of show I would like to watch.”

The Perfect Couple, which also stars Billy Howle, Dakota Fanning and Jack Reynor, is now streaming on Netflix.

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