Lady in the Lake premiered on Apple TV+ in July, and now fans of the series are wondering if they could see a second season of the limited series. Alma Har’el spoke about the series and the possibility of more in an interview with THR.
Natalie Portman, Moses Ingram, Y’lan Noel, Brett Gelman, Byron Bowers, Noah Jupe, Josiah Cross, Mikey Madison, and Pruitt Taylor star in the series, which centered on the disappearance of a young girl in 1966 Baltimore and looks at how it impacts the lives of two very different women.
Har’el said the following about why the end of the story differed from the novel:
“I had four incredible Black women in my writers room, and it was really important to me to write this show with them. We had Byron Bowers, my partner, who plays Slappy and was a consulting producer and also one of the people that was in the writers room. For all of them, the feeling was that the book had done wrong with Cleo and that the book has not given them any satisfaction in terms of what had happened. There were a lot of conversations about that, they wanted to know what what happened to her. And I know that Laura was extremely excited about, kind of, like, taking the book as a starting point, you know, and then going ahead with it and going to other places with it. So this show, more than anything that I’ve ever done, was a result of working with other people. I’ve never worked with so many people. I’ve never worked in a writers room. I’ve never had so many people on set, 300, 500 people sometimes on set. It was the work of many. Television is a very different medium, and even though I obviously come from a more like single, sort of, auteur kind of thinking, or whatever you want to call that, I actually didn’t think that this was the place to do that. I felt that this was an exciting place to open it up and actually find a way to take this story and others a step forward. The story itself, the book, is inspired by the real death of Shirley Parker. And Shirley Parker’s death remains a mystery forever, and we allowed ourselves to dream, again, about a very kind of different ending for her.”
As for the possibility of taking that ending and continuing Lady in the Lake for a second season, Har’el said the following:
“No. This is a story that feels very complete to me. I feel like I’m honored that I got to, you know, the freedom that I got to do what we did with the book. I’m thankful to both Laura Lippman and Apple, that they allowed us to take such liberties, and I think we explored everything that there was to explore.”
What do you think? Did you watch Lady in the Lake? Would you want the story to continue for a second season?