JUST FINISHED WATCHING: MARE OF EASTTOWN (2021)

JUST FINISHED WATCHING: MARE OF EASTTOWN (2021)

A detective in a small Pennsylvania town investigates a local murder while trying to keep her life from falling apart.

TRIVIA: According to director Craig Zobel, Kate Winslet was the only actor confident enough to go back to her native accent in between takes; every other actor was terrified to let it go. For the cast and crew, witnessing Winslet immediately switch from a Delco accent to her normal English accent nonchalantly was an astonishing sight.

Even though Mare was an athlete in her youth, Kate Winslet didn't want her to be overly fit in her 40s. "I didn't want her to make her an impossible, superhuman 40-something-year-old. Mostly women aren't like that. We do what we can in the midst of the juggle of everything else."

HBO initially hesitated when they found out that the character of Mare would be without make-up, have unwashed hair and possess unlikable qualities. Kate Winslet was adamant though. "We could have still done the film or TV version of that character, we could have made her hair barrel curl-perfect each day, and she could have been the kind of character who would have put on some simple makeup before going to work. But I didn't believe for one second that she would, first of all, have time, and secondly, care about looking in the mirror."

Guy Pearce's first day on set was on March 12, 2020, one day before production was shut down. When production resumed in September, he and Kate Winslet had to quarantine together. Winslet, who had a childhood crush on Pearce, found Pearce's seriousness on recycling hilarious. "I was like, 'Darling, why am I going through the bins with you? This was not in my fantasy when I was 11 years old and fell in love with you on Neighbours(1985)!"

Evan Peters stated that the dynamic between him and Kate Winslet mimicked the dynamic between their characters- with Peters being intimidated and learning from Winslet. He was constantly amazed by how incredibly detail-oriented she was in preparing for the scene: "She would walk up to me and be like, 'Okay, so it's 2:38pm. We just came from the Deacon's place and we probably stopped for a coffee and lunch. Now we're here and we're doing this thing.' I would look at her and be like, 'Damn. Was I supposed to do that? I didn't prepare like that.'"

Kate Winslet relished in adding more to the character than what was initially written. She wanted to capture the realness of Mare, and not downplay how exhausted and miserable Mare would be. A lot of her traits, such as her fatigued expression and adding spray cheese to her cheese ball, were added by Winslet on the day. When the director assured her that he could touch up some of her scenes, Winslet outright refused. By her request, the show's poster had to be reworked twice to accurately reflect a middle-aged woman with wrinkles and blemishes. "Faces that change, that move, are beautiful faces, but we've stopped learning how to love those faces because we keep covering them up with filters."

Kate Winslet and Jean Smart would improvise some of their scenes together. The crew had to continually suppress their laughter to not ruin the takes. Additionally, Evan Peterswould try and inject some humor into his character, as a contrast to the show's dark material.

At first, the producers just wanted the accents to be a general New York sound. It wasn't until Kate Winslet decided to have her accent be authentic to the Philadelphia area that the production got on board. Because the story is set in the fictionalized version of Easttown, Chester County, Pennsylvania, there were discussions about whether to use the "Delco accent", a version of the Philadelphia accent common in Delaware County. It was Winslet who insisted that the accent be used, despite being a particularly difficult accent to learn, because she felt that the community was essential to the story, and thus required an authentic dialect.

Audience viewership increased weekly, due to such positive word-of-mouth. On the evening of the finale, on May 30, 2021, the HBO Max streaming server crashed for several hours, mere minutes from the episode airing.

One of the only productions to attempt the Philadelphia accent, much less master it. The cast received universal acclaim for their portrayal of the harsh Philadelphia sound; notoriously known as one of the hardest accents ever to imitate. The production was so committed to having authentic accents that dialect coach Susan Hegarty was the second person hired after Kate Winslet. The vowel sounds are so wildly inconsistent from word to word that linguistic professor Betsy Sneller suggested that it is easier to go over each word individually. "It's really, really difficult to learn even in a natural language setting, so the fact that Kate Winslet [and the cast are] doing it is very, very impressive." Craig Zobel recalled that Winslet would show up to set with her script completely covered in markings of the specific vowel sounds.

Depicting Easttown as realistically as possible was of utmost importance to the cast and crew. Attention to local detail was so strong that the crew would scout Wawa, a convenience store, to get a sense of what people in the area typically wore. "Our costume designer [Meghan Kasperlik] would constantly be texting me pictures from the Wawa convenience store, just of people in the line," Craig Zobel said.

During a scene where Colin is drunk at a bar, Evan Peters was sober but drank small cups of apple cider vinegar every half hour to trigger sense memory. The night before, he improvised "let me put my bagel down", which director Craig Zobel loved and insisted he keep in. During filming, Peters was sure he was doing a horrible job and cried to Zobel after the last take. When the episode aired, Peters' performance received universal acclaim from critics, with many calling it the most realistic drunk scene in history.

In celebration of its featured restaurant, Don's Deli held a premiere event to honour the show. The owner, Michael McKinney Jr, created a sandwich called "The Mare", after the title character.

Guy Pearce's character drives off in the same model Jaguar convertible that his character in Memento drove.

Jean Smart requested hip and butt pads to be sewn into her costumes to create a more realistic portrayal of an older woman. When Smart asked the costume designer, she was overjoyed, exclaiming "actresses never ask me for that!" 

Because of the filming break due to COVID, production took a cast of Izzy King's teeth, in case he lost a tooth. When filming began again, King still had all his teeth, but he had grown two inches.

MY VERDICT: I loved this show. It’s a great who-dun-it with a lot of heart, emotion and attention to detail. The accents are phenomenal (not that I come from this area so I’m no expert, but it sounds amazing). I think a little too much is made of the fact that Kate Winslet is wearing no make-up and we can see her wrinkles, she looks incredible and real and I hope we see more women looking this way on tv, and normalizing real women’s real aging faces. I love a good crime show and this one is great and pretty hard to predict with more than one crime happening and the full implications of these crimes shown and realised with action and drama and humour and great acting. I strongly recommending watching this wonderful tv mini series. 

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