Lady in the Lake: Natalie Portman Stumbles Into a Twisty Mystery in Apple TV+ Drama — Read Premiere Recap

Right at the top of Lady in the Lake , we hear from the titular dead woman, Cleo Johnson (played by Obi-Wan Kenobi ’s Moses Ingram). She addresses a woman named Maddie Morgenstern ( Black Swan ’s Natalie Portman), and she doesn’t seem to love how Maddie has become a part of her narrative.

House of the Dragon Recap: My Brother's Reaper

“You came at the end of my story,” Cleo says as we watch a man rowing a boat with what looks like a dead woman in it, then throwing that woman into a body of water, “and turned it into your beginning.”

Read on for the highlights of the series premiere, which started streaming Friday.

The series is set in 1966 Baltimore, and a title card informs us that we’ve gone back to a month before the apparent corpse-dumping. A girl named Tessie slips away from her family at the Thanksgiving Day parade and goes into a pet store that specializes in fish; she’s obsessed with seahorses. There are two men in the store: the shopkeeper, who seems nervous, and a guy with a swollen black eye, who chats with her.

The next we hear about Tessie, two saleswomen are discussing her disappearance as Maddie swings into a department store. She’s got blood on her yellow coat from an improperly wrapped butcher purchase, and she wants to buy the yellow dress she saw a model in the front window wearing. The saleswomen, who are white, are not kind to the model, who is Black and we later learn is Cleo; when she reminds them that she was approved to leave early that day, they remind her that her pay will be docked accordingly.

As the afternoon goes on, we watch Cleo speak fervently at a political meeting; catch her son running numbers for a local gambling ring (she does not approve); and get mad that her husband, Slappy (Byron Bowers, The Chi ), seems more interested in having a good time with his friends than he does in getting a job and/or parenting their two sons. She’s so angry about this last bit that she packs up her and the kids and relocates to her mother’s house.

The Boys' Colby Minifie Talks Ashley's Super Finale Twist, Explains Her Decision Not to Leave With A-Train

Cleo has a night job keeping books for a local crime boss named Shell Gordon (Wood Harris, Winning Time ), who also has a popular nightclub. Shell doesn’t like that she spoke up at the political meeting earlier that day; the woman running for office, Myrtle Summer, threatens to get in the way of a lot of his shady dealings. At the club, we also meet: Dora (Jennifer Mogbock, Evil ), a highly talented, heroin-addicted singer who provides the evening’s entertainment despite the fact that she can hardly stand up; Ferdie Platt (Y’lan Noel, Insecure ), a police officer who later arrives when Maddie calls the cops; and Reggie (Josiah Cross, Masters of the Air ), Shell’s right-hand man… who also happens to be the guy with the black eye from the pet store.

Meanwhile, we see Maddie prepare dinner for her husband, Milton (Brett Gelman, Fleabag ), their sulky teenage son Seth (Noah Jupe, The Undoing ) and a friend, Wallace (Charlie Hofheimer, Mad Men ). Maddie and her family are Jewish; when she accidentally puts the lamb on a platter set aside for only dairy use, thus making the food not kosher, Milton wants to throw out the meat. Maddie says that’s silly. They get into a tug-o-war in front of Seth and Wallace, and when Milton eventually tosses the lamb, Maddie breaks a plate in anger and cuts her hand.

She retreats to the bathroom, crying, and has several flashbacks while she scrubs at her blood-soaked goldenrod coat from earlier. In one, she’s younger and naked, watching while a guy tries to remove blood from a bedspread that’s the same color as her coat. In another, she’s wearing a yellow prom dress. When Milton finally gains access to the bathroom, they argue about how he expects her to serve him and how she wants to be more than a housewife. (Earlier, we learned that she was very active at her high school paper.) Pretty soon, she’s packed and driving away, crying as the prom version of Maddie rides shotgun.

Thanks to an acquaintance who runs a jewelry shop, Maddie rents an apartment in “The Bottom,” a primarily Black section of town. She also becomes obsessed with Tessie’s disappearance; when, because she’s a woman, she’s not allowed to join a search organized by her synagogue, she and the jewelry store owner’s daughter Judith (Mikey Madison, Better Things ) set out on their own… and find the girl’s dead body. A shocked Maddie sends Judith to get help — “I have to wait here with her. You’d understand if you were a mother” — and Cleo’s voiceover tells Maddie that while Tessie’s death showed her the door, “it took mine to open it.”

Now it’s your turn. Press PLAY on the video at the top of this post to hear Portman and Ingram talk about what their characters might think of each other, then grade the premiere via the poll below and fill the comments with your thoughts!

Cobra Kai Finale: Peyton List on How the Loss of [Spoiler] Leads to That Shocking Cliffhanger