Screen queen
Australian film producer Bruna Papandrea is behind some of the biggest book-to-screen adaptations of the past decade. She tells Siobhan Duck how her latest series, Pieces of Her, came to be.
People are forever asking Bruna Papandrea which book she’s reading in bed. And the answer often surprises, because the acclaimed producer, famous for bringing novels such as Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers, Gone Girl and The Dry to the screen, doesn’t spend her downtime poring over the latest best-seller.
“I tend to read non-fiction or a book about parenting because I don’t have time really [to read anything else] and obviously I get sent so much material,” Papandrea says, with a laugh.
“I’m lucky to be getting great books [for work to consider for adaptation], that I would have read anyway. So that’s good news. But when I am reading them, I’m always thinking as I’m reading it, can I see it [on screen]?”
Reading Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter was a particularly visceral experience for Papandrea. And she knew within a few pages that the thrilling story of a mother and a daughter whose lives are upended by a mass shooting at a diner would make brilliant television.
“Karin writes so cinematically,” she explains.
“The second I read that diner scene I knew this was a series.
I could see it. I want to watch a series where you think this is one thing going in, and then it totally turns itself on its head.
“The good thing about TV is that novelists are really open to expanding on their book, because it’s a lot of story to fill out eight hours of TV. And Karin has been brilliant. We have been very faithful to her book, but we do have to expand.
“It’s different to something like The Dry, which was also a critically acclaimed book that works perfectly as a movie. There, you don’t really have to add anything.”
When casting the central role of Laura in Pieces of Her, there was just one name that instantly came to mind as she was reading the novel: Toni Collette.
The character of Laura – a woman on the run from her past with some pretty bad-ass survival skills – is unlike anything the Muriel’s Wedding star has done before. But Papandrea says Collette’s ability to seamlessly shift gears between emotional family drama and espionage-style thrills made her the perfect fit for the part.
“So, I could see her in the role, but I understand how busy talented actresses are,” Papandrea says.
“And you never want to get too invested [in who you see in the role] because then when they’re not available it just leads to heartbreak.
“But as we were talking about it, her name just kept coming up.
So, it was thrilling for me when she said yes to doing it. Not just because she’s so right for the role but because I’ve always wanted to work with her.”
After casting Collette, Papandrea needed to find someone who would be equally believable as her daughter, Andy. She found that person in Melbourne-born actor Bella Heathcote (Fifty Shades Darker, Boom).
The Netflix drama also sees Papandrea reunited with her old friend David Wenham. The SeaChange actor starred in Better Than Sex, the very first film she produced back in 2000.
“I keep joking to David all the time that ‘Oh my God, it took you 25 years to work with me again!’,” she says.
“And now that I have, I just want to work with him again and again because he was a great actor back then and he’s even better now.”
Although the lead cast is overwhelmingly comprised of Aussies, Pieces of Her was originally meant to shoot in Canada. When the pandemic tightened its grip overseas, production shifted to NSW, where Papandrea had just finished filming the Nicole Kidman-helmed series Nine Perfect Strangers.
As such, there are some familiar faces who pop up in the series including three former Water Rats stars: Catherine McClements, Colin Friels and Aaron Jeffery.
Like so many of Papandrea’s projects, Pieces of Her challenges outdated ideas about what a female-centric drama looks like. Yes, it’s a story about the strained relationship between a mother and daughter but this is more like
The Bourne Identity than Steel Magnolias.
Papandrea’s commitment to spotlighting women’s work on screen and behind the scenes is the reason she founded her television and film company Made Up Stories.
Through Made Up Stories Papandrea has already brought The Undoing, Tell Me Your Secrets and Nine Perfect Strangers to TV. Now, in addition to Pieces of Her, Papandrea has The Luckiest Girl Alive starring Mila Kunis and Anatomy of a Scandal with Sienna Miller set to drop on Netflix later this year. And the anthology series Roar, featuring frequent collaborator Kidman, alongside Merritt Wever and Cynthia Erivo, will premiere on Apple TV+ in April.
The next glass ceiling she’s set to smash is in the depths of space. That’s right, Papandrea is trying her hand at sci-fi, optioning the Christopher Paolini book To Sleep in a Sea of Stars.
“It’s not just about making stuff with women in it but about making stuff that we haven’t traditionally seen enough women in,” she says.
“If you had two men at the centre [of Pieces of Her] – and there has been many father-and-son stories like this – they wouldn’t put it in a box.
“My hope is that people don’t just see it as a show for women.
The genre transcends that because every man that I’ve shown it to has loved it. So, we shouldn’t just limit this to women. I want everyone to watch it.”
■ Pieces of Her, streaming from Friday, Netflix