Apple TV+ ‘s new murder mystery series Lady in the Lake follows two harrowing crimes in 1960s Baltimore. First, a little Jewish girl named Tessie Durst (Bianca Belle) disappears only to be discovered dead in a local lake. Her death causes massive reverberations in the community, dominating headlines and exposing fissures in the tight knit Jewish community. Then, a Black woman named Cleo Johnson ( Moses Ingram ) also is murdered and left in the same lake, prompting far less outrage. It’s a one-two punch of horror based on two real life crimes in 1960s Baltimore and Natalie Portman ‘s Maddie Morgenstern finds herself enmeshed in both cases as she attempts to restart her life.
Lady in the Lake is based on the novel by Baltimore-based journalist Laura Lippman of the same name. Lippman was inspired to write the book when she was working at The Baltimore Sun and learned about two similar cases of missing women that were covered very differently by the paper. In 1969, the eleven-year-old Esther Lebowitz disappeared and her body was discovered a few days later. In an interview with NPR , Lippman recalled hearing about the high-profile case as a child and was stunned decades later to learn that a Black woman named Shirley Parker disappeared at the same time. The Sun only wrote a scant few articles on Parker’s case and Parker’s body was only discovered in a zoo fountain because a reader wrote “the helpline column asking why the lights were off in the fountain at the zoo.”
Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Lady In The Lake’ On Apple TV+, Where Natalie Portman Is A Former Housewife Who Investigates Two Deaths In 1960s Baltimore
Lippman created the character of Maddie Morgenstern to weave these tales together in her novel. The Maddie we meet in Apple TV+’s Lady in the Lake is a disaffected housewife, stifled for years in a marriage to a wealthy boor named Milton (Brett Gelman). When no one else is as upset about Tessie Durst’s disappearance as she is, something snaps in Maddie. She leaves Milton, moves into a small apartment in a Black neighborhood, and embarks on the journalism career she put on ice to marry Milton.
Through her journey, Maddie becomes not only the person responsible for finding Tessie’s body, but also is unknowingly linked to the events leading to Cleo’s murder. It’s a role that challenges the Oscar-winning Portman like never before: she has to master a Baltimore accent.
‘Lady in the Lake’ Episode Guide: How Many Episodes in Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram’s Apple TV+ Series?
“Well, it was daunting, because we were actually in Baltimore,” Portman said. “We had a lot of people in the film, working on the film who were local, but that was also a great asset because I was hearing the accent all the time.”
It’s an accent you don’t hear very often on screen, but for people who grew up in the mid-Atlantic states, comes with some hyper-precise pronunciations.
CLICK HERE TO GET EMAILS FROM DECIDER
In Lady in the Lake Episode 2, “It has to do with the search for the marvelous,” Portman asks a guest if they’d like some “wooder,” i.e. the DelMarVa phrasing of water. It’s a line that officially gives Portman her Mare of Easttown moment. That is, like Kate Winslet in the Philly-set HBO series, Portman nailed an often overlooked, hyper-specific accent. Right down to how the locals even say “Baltimore.”
“People were helping me,” she said. “Like I remember someone giving me a class on ‘Baltimore’. It’s like ‘Voldemort.’ Like that’s how you pronounce it: Baltimore .”
“And it’s also very subtle because it’s not super different from my own accent. It’s just like certain words are very different. So it was fun. It’s always fun to have a different voice for a character.”
And the Long Island-bred Portman certainly does in Apple TV+’s Lady in the Lake .
For more entertainment news and streaming recommendations, visit decider.com
Most Popular
Comments / 0