Entertainment
Adapting 'Lady in the Lake' for TV meant centering the women at the core of the story
The seeds of “Lady in the Lake” were planted in 1969 with the disappearances and deaths of an 11-year-old Jewish girl and a 33-year-old Black woman in Baltimore. These crimes inspired Laura Lippman to write her 2019 novel, in which multiple narrators tell the stories of aspiring newspaper reporter Maddie Schwartz, a Jewish woman trying to establish herself as a journalist as she breaks away from her traditionalist family; and Cleo Sherwood, a Black waitress who gets on the wrong side of her criminal employers.
Now “Lady in the Lake” has been adapted into a seven-episode limited series, created by Alma Har’el and premiering Friday on Apple TV+. The story, about women pushing against hard glass ceilings, a city on the brink, and the different ways that different people look for freedom, has undergone significant changes on the path from the streets of Baltimore to the pages of a bestseller and now to the screen. In separate interviews, Lippman, Har’el and members of the cast, including stars Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram, shared their thoughts about bringing “Lady” to life.
The novelist
Lippman is a Baltimore native and former reporter at the Baltimore Sun. As a child, she read about Esther Lebowitz, an 11-year-old girl who in 1969 went missing and was later found dead. But it wasn’t until Lippman went to work at the Sun that she learned of Shirley Parker, the Black woman who received almost no coverage in the city’s white, mainstream press when her decomposed body was found in a lake fountain soon thereafter.
“I grew up reading the newspaper, but I had to go work at the newspaper and take the rewrite guys’ tour of Baltimore to find out about the Lady in the Lake,” she said in an interview from her Baltimore home. “I was very much interested in the idea that a little girl died and everybody knew, and a Black woman died, and we’ve never even had an official cause of death. They’ve never even been able to rule it a homicide, and at this point, there’s not going to be any determination made in that death.”
This discrepancy fascinated Lippman. But she didn’t want to just write a novel about these two deaths. When she writes fiction, she doesn’t do deep research into specific cases.
“I don’t reach out to the real-life families who might have connections to these cases because I don’t want to inflict pain,” Lippman said. “I’m thinking about this all the time. There have been some crime podcasts that do this that I have really had trouble with.”
Instead, she set out to write a novel with a very specific theme: “I decided to go really meta and write a story about a white woman who exploits Black pain for her own gain.”
Moses Ingram, left, stars as Cleo Johnson and Byron Bowers as her husband, Slappy Johnson, in “Lady in the Lake.”
(Apple)
Enter Maddie, played in the series by Portman — in her first recurring TV role — and Cleo, played by Ingram (“The Queen’s Gambit”), whose surname is Johnson in the adaptation. The disappearance of the little girl sends Maddie into an existential tailspin. She leaves her husband, moves into a predominantly Black neighborhood and rekindles an old passion for journalism. She grows increasingly obsessed with the missing girl, and then with Cleo, who chides Maddie, perhaps from the grave, for missing the big picture.
“Lady in the Lake” plays differently on the screen than on the page — Maddie is a little more redeemable in the series than in the novel — and the myriad narrative voices in the book have given way to a dialogue of sorts between Maddie and Cleo.
Lippman, who calls the series “terrific,” has no problem with such changes. The author, who was married to David Simon, creator of the quintessential Baltimore series “The Wire,” said she knows a lot about how TV is made but that she doesn’t write for the screen.
“I don’t think of it as my story anymore,” Lippman said. “I didn’t from the moment I sold it. I come to adaptation as a novelist.”
The creator
Har’el, who was born and raised in Israel but is now a longtime Los Angeles resident, was struck by how the story handled Maddie’s Jewish identity when the project was first brought to her by producers Nathan Ross and the late Jean-Marc Vallée.
“The idea of Jewishness creates an opportunity to explore persecution, racism, and both oppression and being an oppressor,” she said in a video interview from her Los Angeles home. “It also lets you look at assimilation, or having the possibility to even assimilate.”
Alma Har’el, creator, writer and director of Apple TV+’s “Lady in the Lake.”
(Rob Berry)
These ideas swirl around Maddie, whose family eats kosher and observes the high holidays, and who rebels against her culture’s expectations of her as a wife and mother.
But the Black characters in “Lady in the Lake” intrigued her as well, particularly the different ways they represent the idea of freedom. Har’el’s romantic partner, comedian Byron Bowers, inspired her to create a husband for Cleo, Slappy “Dark” Johnson, whom he plays in the series. Slappy is a Richard Pryor-like comic testing creative boundaries in the mid-‘60s (both novel and series take place in 1966) and exploring topics that resonate within the Black community. Bowers was also a consulting producer on the series, and several of the series’ writers are Black.
“Everybody in the series is fighting their own war inside, and finding freedom outside of what society says, which is something I try to do in real life,” Bowers said in a separate interview. “This is a world of Black people I didn’t even know. I came up in the crack epidemic. But this is when families still were families and Black people had hope before heroin and the Vietnam War.”
Tyrik Johnson, left, and Byron Bowers in “Lady in the Lake.”
(Apple)
Where Lippman’s novel incorporates multiple narrators, some more reliable than others, Har’el immediately zoomed in on the voices of Cleo and Maddie, two women desperately trying to break free of the strictures created by a very patriarchal society. Maddie can’t even sell her own car without her soon-to-be-ex-husband’s signature; Cleo lives largely under the thumb of her gangster/club owner boss, played by Wood Harris, who combines Black Power rhetoric with a ruthless command of the city’s numbers racket.
Har’el, who was the lead writer and also directed all seven episodes of the series, sees the characters as part of the same push-pull duality that fuels the entire story.
“There’s a Jungian underbelly going on in the show that is trying to seduce you to maybe see beyond the politics of it all and into human experience,” she said. “It turns that experience into something that, hopefully, the characters get to touch.”
But without her stars, she says, the ideas mean little.
“The credit goes to the actors,” she says. “They come to that emotional place with authenticity, and it’s pretty magical to see them do that.”
Natalie Portman, left, on set with Alma Har’el.
(Apple)
The stars
Portman was attached to the project from the beginning, as a star and executive producer. At one point Lupita N’yongo was slated to play Cleo, but the character ultimately wasn’t cast until shooting had commenced; “Nobody could agree,” Har’el says. “But when Moses came in, it was so clear. Everybody saw it right away.”
Ingram and Portman rarely appear on screen together, but they’re linked from the moment they see each other in the first episode. In the opening scenes, blood from the lamb that Maddie has purchased for her family’s dinner has spilled onto her dress, and she eyes the outfit that Cleo is modeling in the window of a department store. For Portman, this moment speaks volumes.
“In that initial scene of them together, where she’s looking at Cleo in the dress, she’s really just looking at the dress,” Portman said in a video interview alongside Ingram. “It’s kind of symbolic of how she treats Cleo. She’s using her as a vehicle for her own needs and to further her own ambition.”
The moment Maddie (Natalie Portman) and Cleo (Moses Ingram) first meet in “Lady in the Lake.”
(Apple TV+)
And yet, the series takes pains to connect them, thematically and visually, in the editing process, through crosscutting that links them throughout different periods of their lives.
“I think they’re living in a very similar world that’s affecting them both in similar ways,” Ingram said. “Being women, being mothers, taking care of the husband and the children and also trying to figure out what they might want for themselves, let alone how to get it — those are all things they share.”
In the series, Maddie is a bit softer than she is in the novel, a little less single-minded in the way she uses Cleo’s story to establish a journalism career. But she’s still deeply flawed and somewhat blind to the lives she writes about. (Lippman: “I joke that if you want to be a human-interest writer, it helps to have some interest in humans”).
For Portman, the fact that Maddie is no angel made the role more interesting, and more human.
“It speaks to the tragedy of the fact that, even if you’re oppressed, you can still be an oppressor,” she says. “That’s something that we have to be very conscious of, because I think the opposite story is usually told: ‘Oh, if someone did something to you, you don’t do it to someone else.’ And that’s just unfortunately not very true.”
For Lippman, a somewhat kinder, gentler Maddie speaks to the different roads taken in a different medium. And she’s quite happy with the results.
“Natalie Portman’s Maddie is much bigger, much more layered and complicated than my Maddie,” she said. “How can I not love that? There’s a big difference between asking readers to come along with a not particularly likable character and asking people to watch that character in a limited series, especially if it’s a female. I really respect the choices made in this adaptation, because they’re thoughtful.”
Movie Reviews
Movie Review: Travolta’s “Propeller: One-Way Night Coach” is One for the Ages — All Ages
Back in the good ol’days — the ’90s — John Travolta would love to get off the topic of “Michael,” “Pulp Fiction” or “Get Shorty” in interviews with film journalists like me and regale us with how utterly besotted he had been with his first flying experience, how that drove his passion for piloting and buying planes and airfield-adjacent luxury houses.
He didn’t even seem to mind having to move house when this or that development balked at him flying his Boeing 707 out of there on the way to locations.
Travolta would tell any journalist who asked that he was writing a kid-friendly book, “Propeller: One Way Night Coach,” based on his first flights as a child in old propeller driven airliners — cheap red-eye overnight treks with too many connections for your average jet age traveller to tolerate.
I remember picking up the book when it came out later in the ’90s — at an airport gift shop — and thinking “Well, that’s as cute as I figured.”
And now, decades later and trapped in the B-movie hell of his post “Gotti” career, Travolta’s turned that cute book into the most delightful, fanciful and colorful bon bon of a movie.
“One Way Night Coach” is a child’s fantasy of flight and flying the way it used to be — with pristine, uncrowded, futuristic airports, an early ’60s era of jets and prop planes with over-uniformed stewardesses in white gloves, the days “Back before every Joe Sweatsock could wedge himself behind a lunch tray and jet off to Raleigh-Durham,” as Sideshow Bob memorably sneered on “The Simpsons’.”
It’s a fictionalized account of Travolta’s childhood about an only child (at least two Travolta siblings have bit parts in this movie) of a never-made-it/never-will actress/single-mom (Kelly Eviston-Quinnett) who indulges her aviation-obsessed eight-year-old with a cheap cross-country overnight flight.
Little Jeff (Clark Shotwell) will revel in almost every Idlewild to Pittsburgh to Dayton to Chicago to Kansas City to Denver and Los Angeles minute. He strolls into the cockpit to meet pilots, charms the stewardesses and checks out the sleeping bunks on the TWA Lockheed Super Constellation, loving even the delays if not the Chicken Cordon Bleu he’s offered on legs of the journey that offer a meal.
And as he’s an observant child, he comments (Travolta narrates) on his 50ish mother’s vamping and posing, her choice of cigarettes (Newports) and drinks, the solo traveling men whose attention she pursues and earns.
“I was her best audience,” adult Jeff remembers of the mother who’d read him plays as bedtime stories and delusionally hopes that this trip to Los Angeles might be her “big break” even though she’s pushing 50.
“Hollywood called,” she’d explain about their overnight cheap flight arrangements to ticket agents and crew. “They told me to take the next flight!”
At every turn, Jeff meets or sees kindness — stewardesses who indulge his many questions and bump them up to first class on the mostly-empty planes, a captain who fixes his toy model of a Constellation, a mentally ill flyer who flips out but is calmed by a flight attendant who isn’t overworked and frazzled in jet-powered tin-can jammed with Joe and Jane Sweatsocks who think nothing of traveling in their pajamas.
Normally, I cringe at pictures this reliant on voice-over narration. I recoil from stars who populate their picture with Sandler etc. offspring. But “Propeller” is unfailingly sweet and never cloying.
Sure, it’s fictionalized. But if you’ve followed Travolta’s life and career, a lot of him is in this — his raptoruous engagement with flying, an indulged child who developed a taste for fine food and creature comforts, a mother who was his guiding star as an actor.
I get why there are less adoring reviews than mine floating around “Propeller.” It’s unfailingly sweet. Mom’s man-hunting is seriously dated. This TWA tale is decorated with Gershwin’s majestic “Rhapsody in Blue” — United Airlines’ signature tune. And Travolta’s been around long enough for recent generations to come up and not feel a connection to the “Saturday Night Fever/Get Shorty” star whose career has fallen off and life has been visited by too much tragedy.
But I’d hate to be seated next to anybody who doesn’t appreciate this adorable, pristine and nearly perfect aviation fantasy on any flight, much less an overnight one.
Rating: TV-PG
Cast: Clark Shotwell, Kelly Eviston-Quinnett, Ellen Travolta, Ella Beau Travolta, Olga Hoffmann and John Travolta.
Credits: Scripted and directed by John Travolta, based on his book. An Apple TV+ release.
Running time: 1:01
Three years ago, Mattel Inc. struck box-office gold — or rather, pink — with the billion-dollar success of “Barbie.”
In its first return to theaters since the female-forward phenomenon, the El Segundo toymaker is turning to the brawny He-Man for another box-office lift.
Its latest film, “Masters of the Universe,” opens this weekend, as Mattel looks to build on that previous success and continue extending its signature toy brands into the entertainment arena.
“The movie is very much in tune with culture,” said Mattel Chief Executive Ynon Kreiz. “Everything is much more contemporary relative to what was created more than 40 years ago, but it’s still very true to the origin story and to the DNA of the brand.”
The new film arrives at a pivotal time for Mattel, which is facing pressure from investors to grow its business. The maker of Hot Wheels, American Girl and Uno has recently confronted a challenging market for toys, beset by tariffs on goods produced overseas and weaker-than-expected demand for Barbie dolls and Fisher-Price preschool products.
Amid uncertainty in the toy market and the fallout from tariffs, Mattel’s net income dropped 25% to $398 million in 2025. And since the company announced disappointing holiday sales totals in February, its stock has dropped more than 30%, closing at $14.34 on Wednesday.
“Masters of the Universe” toys at Mattel headquarters in El Segundo.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The share price slide prompted investor Southeastern Asset Management to send a letter last month to Mattel leadership suggesting the toy maker should sell itself and go private. Southeastern manages about 4% of the company’s stock on behalf of its clients.
“The frustration among investors has been the fact that if you look at the business from 2021 through 2025 and even this year … the business really hasn’t grown,” said Eric Handler, a Roth Capital senior media and entertainment analyst, referring to Mattel. “This is a company that needed something fresh in the portfolio, and there’s a wide range of investments being made, of which ‘Masters of the Universe’ is one part.”
Kreiz pushed back on the idea that the company is not growing. In the fourth quarter of 2025, net sales were up 7% to $1.8 billion, though the result was not as strong as the company expected.
Mattel has spent $1.2 billion in the last three years to buy back shares, with an additional $1.5-billion share repurchase planned for the next three years.
“We’re investing in our own stock because we believe it is undervalued,” he told The Times in an interview at his office, which has floor-to-ceiling windows that give an expansive view of El Segundo. “We absolutely agree that the share price doesn’t reflect the progress that we’ve achieved over the last few years financially, operationally, our place in culture, the strength of our brands, and the continued expansion of the business. And more importantly, the potential that we have down the road.”
“Masters of the Universe” is a key variable in that equation.
Ynon Kreiz, chief executive of Mattel.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The movie, which had a budget of roughly $170 million, is expected to bring in $25 million to $35 million in the U.S. and Canada during its debut weekend. That’s a far cry from the $162-million opening haul of “Barbie,” but box-office analysts say that film captured the cultural zeitgeist in a way that’s hard to replicate.
The ‘80s-era “Masters of the Universe” is “a property that was famous with a certain group of fans, but it hasn’t had much of a pop culture presence,” said Shawn Robbins, who directs movie analytics at Fandango and founded the forecasting site Box Office Theory. The movie has notched a respectable 74% approval rating from critics on aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
“There’s been so many callbacks to nostalgic franchises,” he said. “Some people are always on board for them, and maybe the positive reviews bring people in who were on the fence. But people are also ready for something fresh and new and exciting.”
Kreiz said he’s often asked how the company will match the success of “Barbie.”
“The answer is, we don’t need to match ‘Barbie’s’ success for movies to have a meaningful economic impact on the company,” he said. “Not every movie will be ‘Barbie.’ If we create quality content that people want to watch and create quality experiences that people are engaged with, good things happen, and these brands will resonate and will be here for years to come.”
While theatrical revenue is important, the measure of success for “Masters of the Universe” could also include its eventual reception on streaming platforms and, of course, toy sales, analysts said.
There are hundreds of products tied to the movie, from collectible action figures of Nicholas Galitzine’s He-Man and Camila Mendes’ Teela, to branded Uno decks, Legos, clothing and skateboards.
Skeletor from “Masters of the Universe.”
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
“For us, it’s a huge win already,” said Robbie Brenner, president of Mattel Studios and chief content officer, who also served as a producer on the film. “We have reinvigorated and relaunched this brand that has been around for decades … and done it in a way with just the best-in-class toys. Obviously that’s our bread and butter. And then to have made an epic, incredible movie … is a huge win.”
While Mattel does not yet have sales totals for its “Masters of the Universe” toys, executives said during an earnings call in late April that product sales were “growing double digits” amid strong customer demand, particularly from adults.
When Kreiz was named CEO in 2018, he saw the potential for Mattel to expand beyond toys. In an entertainment landscape dominated by known franchises and intellectual property, the former TV and media executive wanted to leverage the company’s IP in new ways to attract consumers.
Hence, Mattel has expanded into real-world experiences such as a Barbie pop-up at Coachella or a traveling Hot Wheels monster truck show. In February, the company fully acquired Mattel163 mobile game studio after buying out a stake held by Chinese tech firm NetEase. The studio has released games based on Uno, Skip-Bo and other Mattel intellectual property.
And on the film and television front, the Mattel Studios division now has 51 people — most of whom are based in El Segundo — focused on projects across platforms.
After “Masters of the Universe,” Mattel Studios plans to release a “Matchbox” streaming movie in October. The division has more than a dozen films in development that have been announced, including an American Girl movie with Paramount, Polly Pocket with Amazon MGM Studios, as well as a live-action Magic 8 Ball series from M. Night Shyamalan.
“The journey for the company was to evolve from being a toy manufacturer that was making items to become an IP company that is managing franchises,” Kreiz said. “It’s not that we’re not creating toys — it’s obviously a big part of our business — but the opportunity is to expand so much more than the physical product.”
“Masters of the Universe” was in development for years at several different studios before it was picked up by Amazon MGM.
That partnership stemmed from Mattel’s work on the “Barbie” movie with Courtenay Valenti, then president of production and development at Warner Bros. Pictures who is now head of film at Amazon MGM.
“Masters of the Universe” felt like a good property for Mattel to bet on because of its nostalgia factor and deep bench of colorful characters, from the green tiger Battle Cat to the heavily armored Ram Man and ever meme-able Skeletor, which the company hopes will attract new audiences, Brenner said.
The movie is directed by Travis Knight — chief executive of stop-motion studio Laika who also led the 2018 “Transformers” spin-off “Bumblebee” — who Brenner said “nailed” the narrative’s tone. (It didn’t hurt that Knight was already a fan of the franchise and had sported the He-Man haircut as a child.)
“It’s a property that’s kind of out there,” said Brenner, who grew up watching He-Man and his twin sister She-Ra. “It’s got all these crazy characters. But just riding that line between what is funny and kind of irreverent and then kind of heartfelt, that is a very hard thing to put in a blender and to get right.”
Let’s just say that the wedding band has never occupied the most exalted rung of the ladder in music.
Playing “September” and “Celebration” is often what’s most required. As one member of the Bride and the Groove, the band at the center of John Carney’s new film, puts it: They’re not rock stars. They’re human jukeboxes.
But in “Power Ballad,” a wedding band singer and pop star cross paths. For one night, all of the stratification of the music world falls away. “Power Ballad” starts like a fairy tale.
Since 2007’s “Once,” the Irish writer-director has focused his films on the redemptive capacity of music. Carney, who was once a bassist for the Frames, knows from experience. From “Sing Street” to “Flora and Son,” he has made unabashedly earnest tales where a song, or just picking up an instrument, changes lives.
This can, undoubtedly, lead Carney into sentimental territory. Lucky for him, his chosen subject — music — is more worthy of sentiment than almost anything else. Yet the song doesn’t quite remain the same in “Power Ballad,” a movie that begins with the gentle sweetness Carney is known for, but detours into something more discordant.
Rick (Paul Rudd) is an American musician who gave up on his once-promising rock band’s future to instead live with his wife (Marcella Plunkett) and teenage daughter (a spunky, underused Beth Fallon) in Dublin. His former group was called Octagon, a perfect former band name if there ever were one.
But for years, Rick has fronted the Bride and the Groove. It’s an unromantic day job (or rather a night one) that hasn’t entirely sapped his belief in his own songwriting. During an encore at one wedding, he plays an original tune and is mentally transported to an arena full of swaying fans. When he snaps out of it, he’s staring at an empty dance floor and faces that say: That wasn’t Kool & the Gang.
At another wedding at at a castle, the band is asked to let a friend of the newlyweds sit in. They reluctantly agree, and are surprised to see the very popular boy band veteran, Danny (Nick Jonas), step on stage. He sings Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish,” and it’s great. Though Rick had just dismissed Danny’s music as “manufactured content for young, excitable teens,” he discovers Danny is a genuine musician.
But, later that night, something even more remarkable transpires. Rick bumps into Danny, and the two quickly hit it off. They begin jamming together and sharing songs that need work. They are both so jazzed by their unlikely collaboration that they play into the next morning.
The actual moment of artistic creation, and the craft it requires, is something the movies almost always skip over. But capturing collaborative juices flowing is exactly what Carney excels at. You can feel his joy in it. So it’s fitting that one of the unfinished songs Rick plays for Danny, “How to Write a Song (Without You),” is about creative invention.
It’s here when you wonder where “Power Ballad” is headed. Is this, for Rick, the beginning of a beautiful friendship? Will they turn into the next great songwriting duo, lifting Rick out of weddings and proving to the world that Danny is more than a boy-band pretty face?
That is very possibly the movie Carney might have made a decade ago. But “Power Ballad,” which he co-wrote with Peter McDonald (who also co-stars as a band member), shifts six months ahead in time. Rick is standing in a shopping mall when the familiar lyrics of “How to Write a Song” softly float through the stores. He stands dumbfounded in the gleaming halls of commerce, a befuddlement that slowly turns into outrage the bigger and bigger Danny’s smash hit grows.
“Power Ballad” loses some of its steam in its second half, which follows Rick’s struggle for justice. Making things considerably harder is that he can find no recorded demo of the song. His family and his band don’t even really believe him.
But even as the movie struggles to sustain its opening refrain, Carney’s film is always riffing on ideas of authenticity and aspiration in music. That Jonas is, himself, a former boy band star who has at times gone it alone, lends the movie a direct connection to contemporary music, where tussles over authorship are increasingly common.
Jonas has been good in other films (notably the “Jumanji” movies), but this is his most ambitious and convincing performance to date. It’s a testament to the movie that Danny’s theft isn’t a purely villainous act. He gives the song a bridge and the vocal power to take it to another level. He’s under mounting pressure from his label to deliver a hit. An executive (Jack Reynor) wants “Danny 2.0” but has little faith he can supply it.
But it’s an even more well-tailored role for Rudd. He memorably and very goofily played a bassist in the 2009 comedy “I Love You, Man.” But while he sings well, it’s not his musical chops that lift the performance. It’s more that Rick, a contented family man with unrealized rock-star dreams, gives the exceptionally genial Rudd more notes to play as an actor. Rudd makes for a very likeable everyman out to convince the world he is capable of a beautiful song.
And that’s the abiding belief of Carney’s. No matter all the struggles, the artistic injustices, the corporate hegemony, he still believes that if you make something truly soulful, it will break through. It will claw its way to the surface, and move people. It’s undoubtedly gotten harder since “Once,” this movie seems to admit. The world is against you. But what one person can offer, a ballad or otherwise, still has power. Fairy tale or not, that’s worth believing in.
“Power Ballad,” a Lionsgate release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “language throughout and some drug use.” Running time: 108 minutes. Three stars out of four.
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