Mark Duplass admits that when he got approached about starring in Hulu’s Natalia Grace drama “Good American Family,” he was “very skeptical.”
“Look, there’s a documentary, there’s a movie called ‘Orphan’ that has similar themes, it’s been in the press. Why do we need another ripped from the headlines story?” Duplass told Variety Thursday night at the show’s Los Angeles premiere (and FYC event) at the Directors Guild Theater.
But after Duplass sat down with showrunners Katie Robbins and Sarah Sutherland to hear their idea of telling multiple different perspectives to explore hidden biases, he found the “Rashomon” type-structure compelling. “That was really exciting for me because it hasn’t really been seen in the miniseries format.”
The eight-episode Hulu series tells the true story of married couple Kristine (Ellen Pompeo) and Michael Barnett (Duplass), as they adopt Natalia Grace (Imogen Faith Reid), a young girl from Ukraine with dwarfism. But as the couple begin connecting with Natalia, they suspect that she’s not telling them everything about herself, and later go on to claim in court that she lied about her age.
Sutherland said the entire series getting greenlit was contingent on finding the right person to play Natalia. After an international search, they received a tape from newcomer Reid out of the UK.
Disney
“I mean, she not only has to play over a wide range of years, she also plays Natalia from two different ages and different people’s perspectives,” Sutherland said. “Imogen blew everybody away. As soon as everybody saw her tape, it was clear she was the one.”
In order to nail her first major series role, Disney set Reid up with an acting coach. “From there, we broke down the script, broke down the character and I talked with the directors, EPs and a dialect coach to find my own version of Natalia,” Reid said.
For many of the cast members, getting the time to conduct research and look at varying perspectives allowed them to get into character. But Christina Hendricks, who plays Cynthia Mans, explained that she only found out about the part around 30 hours before being expected on set.
“By the time I came along, Imogen had already been working on the show for a while,” Hendricks said. “She had her rhythm, she had the character down. So I was nervous when I got to set and just kind of followed her lead. We had immediate chemistry and she made it easy on me.”
Notably, “Good American Family” marks Pompeo’s first leading television role following her 20 seasons starring in “Grey’s Anatomy.” She hopes that by the time people get to the end of the new series, they will understand the full scope of the story.
“I want people just to think about how they look at things and what kind of judgements they make based on the way people look,” Pompeo said. “I think we just need to check our own biases and question why we believe what we believe.”
The first two episodes of “Good American Family” debut on Hulu March 19, with the additional six episodes released weekly.
