Brie Larson has known the character Elizabeth Zott almost as long as Bonnie Garmus, author of Lessons in Chemistry , the novel from which the Emmy-nominated Apple TV+ series was adapted. One of the first to read the book about a chemist-turned-cooking-show-host who grapples with unimaginable loss under the weight of sexism in a 1950s society, Larson immediately knew she wanted to bring Elizabeth’s story to the screen. And she didn’t stop pitching the show until she got a yes.
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“It’s so rare to find something that is this vessel to be able to talk about so many different things so effortlessly,” Larson said of her persistence getting Lessons in Chemistry made during a special THR Emmy panel alongside Aja Naomi King , director Millicent Shelton and costume designer Mirren Gordon-Crozier .
“To me, this is a huge story about how when our heart breaks, we still can find a way to persevere and carry on and love again,” adds Larson, who’s nominated for outstanding lead actress. “And there’s also all these nooks and crannies of Elizabeth and her life, her struggles with work, with being a parent. It’s so rare to be able to tell a story that’s this big in eight episodes and with so much care and buoyancy. It was so easy to love it and it was so easy to fight for it. That’s what love is.”
In the series, King portrays Harriet, a neighbor and friend of Elizabeth’s from the original book who, in the series, is reimagined as a middle-class Black wife and mother who helps lead efforts to stop the city of Los Angeles from putting a highway through her predominately Black neighborhood. Speaking on how Larson and showrunner Lee Eisenberg created a space for her and this story in the series brought King, also nominated for outstanding supporting actress, to tears.
“I could have never imagined this show, this gift of an experience, this character, this beautiful character that we got to create together,” King started. “When they talked about wanting to expand this world and have Harriet tell the story of the Sugar Hill community, I thought it was phenomenal, but I was also kind of afraid that it was lip service. It could have ended up just being one scene, and instead it ended up being this rich tapestry of what this woman’s life was and what her family and friends meant to her, what community meant to her. And being that [she and Elizabeth] were able to share motherhood and really rely on one another, and getting to see the depth of love in female friendship specifically and what that can mean, it was phenomenal. My mind is still blown.”
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A pinnacle moment in Harriet and Elizabeth’s friendship occurs in episode six, “Poirot,” for which Shelton is nominated for an Emmy for outstanding directing. Elizabeth, at Harriet’s urging, attends the protest she and other members of the Black community have been organizing to halt the city’s highway efforts and finally grasps the racial realities Harriet has been trying to open her eyes to. Translating the pain of the true-life protest for the screen took particular care, Shelton said.
“The biggest undertaking is that we wanted to make sure that we showed this and made it feel real, and we didn’t just try to recreate a protest to exploit it,” said Shelton. “It was highly triggering on the day [of the shoot]. It was triggering for the crew; everybody brought their A-game. And these two women, I have to be so thankful for because they were the heart. And I think that people are reacting to it because we approached it from the inside out. It wasn’t just being outside, watching Black pain and trauma, it was from the inside. It was because we knew your character, and we knew the love and the friendship that you two had. And in the end when Elizabeth is crying, it’s because she understands. And in the most beautiful way, we were able to build a gap between when you are discriminated against because you are a female and when you’re discriminated against because of the color of your skin, and how much alike that hurt is and that pain.”
Watch the full panel conversation in the video above.
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