Shailene Woodley on Why 'Three Women' Is a Story That Needs To Be Told

Three Women brings to life the true stories of three women featured in an eponymous book on sexuality in contemporary America, written by Lisa Taddeo , who also wrote the STARZ series.

Each of the three women—Lina ( Betty Gilpin ), a homemaker in suburban Indiana; Sloane ( DeWanda Wise ), a glamorous entrepreneur in the Northeast; and Maggie ( Gabrielle Creevy ), a waitress in North Dakota—are in flux as they seek to change their lives, and while at these crossroads, they are convinced to tell their stories to Gia ( Shailene Woodley ), a character based on Taddeo who in real-life drove around the U.S. searching out compelling women's stories.

Gia is a fictionalized version of Taddeo, but the one thing they share in common was getting these women to share their raw and honest stories. As the women relate to Gia, who is in flux herself after the loss of her family, all four of their lives are changed.

Parade spoke with Woodley about her desire to be a part of this project, why she choose Gia instead of any of the other roles, what she hopes others take away from Three Women , and how playing the role affected her personally.

Tell me a little bit about reading the book first and how that appealed to you and made you then want to be a part of the series.

Well, the book is just this lightning rod of honesty and an invitation, for me, to feel seen and heard and understood. And so, when I heard they were making a series, selfishly, I just wanted to meet Lisa because I was like, ‘Who is this human being in the world who can articulate all the things that I feel inside and have never been able to figure or find the words for?’

And the minute that we met, I felt like we were finishing each other’s sentences and there was a sense in me that I was like, "Man, you just get it," I felt like we saw the world in very similar ways. And so, the idea of bringing this show to life with her, beside her, and bringing truth and authenticity to some storylines with the intention of providing a landscape for other women around the world to feel less alone, felt like a true honor and a gift. And I still am like, "How did I get the opportunity to do this? It’s such a blessing."

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You’re playing Gia, who’s a character that tells the stories as opposed to enacting one of the stories. Was there a reason why you wanted to be the storyteller as opposed to one of the people that you reported on?

Gia was the role that came to me from them. She is the narrator, but you’re also taking on the journey and the arc of her character and all the experiences that she goes through. She was the character that I could relate to the most, in all honesty, from my own personal experiences. I felt like I innately understood who Gia was and what Gia wanted in the world and why Gia was hitting certain roadblocks even though she couldn’t comprehend the reason behind them.

Throughout the story she starts to understand self-worth and self-love. And I think that that’s a journey that so many of us go on, if we’re lucky, and I was grateful to be able to go on it with Gia.

Lisa not only wrote the book, but she worked on the series, so she was there for you to talk to about the character. How much did you turn to her for advice? Or did she just say, “Go with your feelings.”

We spoke about definitely wanting Gia to be somebody who had a life of her own and who had a separate reality from Lisa in terms of her internal landscape.

Circumstantially, her life and Lisa’s life are very similar, but the human behind those circumstances, we wanted to be authentic to who Gia was. And so we kind of worked together to decide specific kind of important poles within Gia. And then I used myself and my spirit to fill the rest of those gaps.

I love the fact that this is a story of women’s sexuality and desire, especially in the #MeToo generation, it’s nice to have women tell their own stories. What do you hope we learn from watching it?

There’s so many things to take away. I don’t know if it’s about learning. I think the world would be a much softer place if we all felt less victimized by it and less alone in it. I think this show does a really beautiful job at saying life is not easy. It’s challenging and it’s chaotic and messy, and yet even within all of those things, there is beauty and there is friendship and there is safety and there is room to get what we want and live fulfilled lives and feel pleasure and feel elation and feel anything. What I hope people take away is a pursuit of feeling, because so much of this world tries to numb us of it and feeling is an innately human thing that is a really nice thing to give ourselves permission to do.

Each of the women – Lina, Sloan and Maggie – their stories are completely different, but is there something about them that is universal that we should be able to relate to?

I can only speak to myself, I can relate to all of them, even though I’ve never personally had a relationship with a teacher of mine and I’ve never been in a marriage in the Midwest of the United States. I relate to all of them because that feeling of wanting, that feeling of desire is so real. And that feeling of feeling unseen and unheard and misunderstood. For myself, the worst feeling I’ve ever experienced in my life is the feeling of being misunderstood, and that’s something that all of these women showcased throughout the show. It’s very relatable.

What do you see as the men’s role in this? This is obviously the women’s stories, but for each of them, their story is also partly told through the men in their lives.

I think every actor on the show, male or female, is so incredible. And it’s not that this show is only about women; it’s about the dynamics of how women relate to themselves and to other people. I think that the men do such a brilliant job at giving these women, specifically because of the way it’s written, the license to and the agency to really explore who they are in reflection to the relationship dynamics that they find themselves surrounded in.

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Did it help your real life playing Gia? Did you connect to her in some way that maybe helped you?

Oh, man. I connected to her in so many ways. Playing her has deeply impacted me. I think playing her, but really getting to know Lisa, who Gia is based on,

There’s a freedom in Gia to express herself that I always felt a little bit limited by in my own life when it came to my intimate relationships, and I really respect how Gia, Lisa, react when they’re in a circumstance of discomfort or joy. It’s very just emotionally free, and that was something that I took away and have been able to play with more in my life, giving myself permission to feel the way that I feel and not feel wrong for it.

One thing that I absolutely loved in this was your hair. How much did the look come into capturing the character for you?

I have a lot of hair my mother, my genetics, gave me. I’ve always wanted to play a character where that could be a part of her. And when I read this, there’s something about having lioness hair and this big bush around you that that makes your energy bigger on the outside than it is sometimes on the inside. And I thought that was an interesting dynamic and push-pull with Gia, because in so many ways she feels big in herself and she’s brave and she travels across the country and she speaks her mind and yet, like, that’s the external representation. But then internally, there’s this very scared little girl that just wants to be told it’s all going to be okay. So, actually, the choice of having big hair was a very specific one. The minute I read about Gia, I was like, “It’s Gia with the hair.”

This book was eight years in the making; women really related to it. Do you think that the series stays true enough to it that the book readers in the audience, are going to be happy with it? Or was there a lot of dramatic license taken?

I think that the book readers are going to feel so happy with it. There are some differences, but I think the differences were necessary to create the show. And I think that it actually will give the lovers of the book a relatable experience to reading the book, but then also a new experience at the same time, so there will be some novelty there. I don’t believe anybody will be anything other than overjoyed with how the adaptation turned out.

Three Women debuts today on STARZ at midnight on the STARZ app and at 10 p.m. ET/PT in the U.S.

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