‘Three Women’ Exclusive: DeWanda Wise Discusses Portraying Polygamous Sloane With Depth Beyond Her Rich Swinger Lifestyle

STARZ debuts their new series Three Women today and we had the utmost pleasure of interviewing DeWanda Wise about her role as Sloane.

Three Women, which is based on the non-fiction book by Lisa Taddeo, finds three women on a crash course to radically overturn their lives.

Lina (Gilpin), a homemaker in suburban Indiana, is a decade into a passionless marriage when she embarks on an affair that quickly becomes all-consuming and transforms her life. Sloane (Wise), a glamorous entrepreneur in the Northeast, has a committed open marriage with Richard (Underwood), until two sexy new strangers threaten their aspirational love story.

Maggie (Gabrielle Creevy), a student in North Dakota, weathers an intense storm after accusing her married English teacher of an inappropriate relationship. Gia (Woodley), a writer grieving the loss of her family, persuades each of these three spectacular “ordinary” women to tell her their stories, and her relationships with them change the course of her life forever.

Clearly from the description, Wise’s Three Women character Sloane is living that consensual non-monogamous life, not unlike Wise’s character in the television adaptation of She’s Gotta Have It. We joked with Wise that Sloane is Nola Darling all grown up.

“It’s either that or like Nola’s auntie,” Wise joked to BOSSIP.

In the series, Sloane’s story becomes particularly titillating to Gia, who is writing a book about women and sexuality. Gia’s publisher is convinced the book won’t work without Sloane because her lifestyle and story seem much more interesting than the other women featured, who are facing somewhat darker circumstances.

“It was part of the major trap of the role right?” Wise told BOSSIP. “In the context of the show too, there was a version of it that could feel and be just very soap — it could be like the escapist storyline. So I absolutely was such a linebacker when it came to making sure that you knew that Sloane was a full human being. That she suffered with everything she’s going through, everything you see in the series, and whether or not that experience is more or less empathetic or sympathetic than the other storylines was not my concern. My concern was making sure that she and Richard were living, breathing, real human beings. That what hurt them, hurt them. That what got to them, got to them. That their egos are their egos and that even inside this world of wealth, you also know that no one is immune from life.”

BOSSIP also spoke with Three Women showrunner Laura Eason about how Sloane’s character shows up differently in the series as a Black woman. Both Eason and Wise credited writers Tori Sampson and Chisa Hutchinson for their contribution to making Sloane’s experience ring true to audiences.

“It was a new imagining of of Sloane and pulling from another woman that Lisa had interviewed and then we had Tori Sampson and Chisa Hutchinson, who are just incredible screenwriter/playwrights, who were in our writers room,” Eason told BOSSIP. “Tori wrote Episode 103 and the two of them wrote Episode 109, the Sloan siloed episodes and it was really important that they brought their lived experiences as Black women to the writing of those episodes and of course the collaboration with with DeWanda to was just exceptional in in building out that character.”

“They hired two brilliant Black women playwrights so my work was only so much you know,” Wise echoed. “We had Tori Sampson and Chisa Hutchinson. Tory was also a producer on the project. I remember reading 109 for the first time and being like, ‘Sign me up for for this show!’ I am super duper collaborative on most of my projects and do dialogue passes and all that but this one, when it came to it actually already being on the page, most of it was already on the page.”

Three Women is currently available to watch on STARZ