Laura Eason has built a formidable career blending her talents as a playwright and screenwriter into captivating television narratives. Known for her Emmy-nominated work on House of Cards and her acclaimed play Sex with Strangers, Eason consistently demonstrates a keen ability to explore the intricacies of human relationships and power dynamics. Her latest endeavor as the showrunner for Three Women, a series now streaming on Starz, represents a significant new chapter in her career, allowing her to dive deep into the raw, emotionally charged terrain of female desire and resilience.
Eason joined Three Women with a deep admiration for Lisa Taddeo’s bestselling book and an unwavering commitment to creating an authentic and resonant adaptation. With a creative team predominantly led by women, including executive producers Kathy Ciric, Emmy Rossum, and Taddeo herself, Eason ensured the series remained rooted in its feminist core while making the story work within the visual and narrative demands of television. “Telling this story about real women’s lives and creating a culture that empowers women in leadership roles was incredible,” Eason said, noting that the series featured all female-identifying directors, department heads, and DPs save for one co-head. “It was a really exciting opportunity to create not just a show that I’m so proud of…but also to provide an opportunity for a female-forward cast and crew, along with our four female leads.”
Adapting the non-linear, character-driven novel for the screen required significant creativity, as the show balances the unique arcs of its three leads—Lina (Betty Gilpin), Sloane (DeWanda Wise), and Maggie (Gabrielle Creevy). Eason emphasized the importance of maintaining the “emotional truth” of the source material while embracing the freedom of television to expand on character journeys and thematic nuances. Acclaimed directors such as Louise Friedberg and Cate Shortland helmed individual episodes, each bringing a distinct visual style that amplifies the emotional core of the characters’ stories.
The cast, led by the powerhouse performances of Gilpin, Wise, and Shaileene Woodley (who plays Gia, has drawn praise for their ability to inhabit their characters’ vulnerabilities with honesty and depth. The series has sparked critical acclaim for its layered storytelling, with audiences lauding its bold portrayal of complex female experiences. Its release on Starz further underscores the platform’s commitment to delivering premium, inclusive narratives.
Laura Eason spoke to Awards Focus about the challenges of adapting Taddeo’s intricate narrative, how her theater background prepared her for the demands of showrunning, and her hopes for how audiences will connect with the series.
Awards Focus: You’re an accomplished playwright and have worked on some acclaimed shows. As a first-time showrunner, how has the experience compared to your previous work?
Laura Eason: Well, it’s been really life-changing to have the opportunity to showrun, and I feel very fortunate. You’re given the opportunity to not just make a show, but to create a culture around a show… In terms of showrunning for the first time, I came up through the theater and have done a lot of different things. In the theater, I was a writer, a director, an actor, and also the artistic director of my theater company, Lookingglass, in Chicago, for six years. So I had to run a staff, be in charge of developing other people’s work, know how to look at a budget, and deal with executives in the form of my board of directors. I worked with designers in lights, costume, and sound—many of the things you touch as a showrunner, producing the whole thing. I had done a version of that in the theater, in terms of the collaborative aspects.
So, unlike a lot of writers who come up through the writing track (which takes a while to get to a point where you’re having a relationship with the costume designer or composer), I, very fortunately, had done a version of that before becoming a showrunner. And having been in charge of a budget, staff, and crew in an ensemble company in Chicago, which involved a lot of collaboration, I felt surprisingly prepared for what I encountered—which was great.
AF: How has promoting this show differed from your previous work, especially compared to your theater background?
Eason: Well, as artistic director of my company, I was the face of the company. We’re an ensemble company, but I had to do a lot of press and advocating for the company in the way that I’m a face of the show, along with the actors and Lisa Taddeo, the creator and writer of the book. So it’s not something I’ve never done before, but as a writer, I prefer to be making something rather than talking about it.
I think, for a lot of us, the press can be challenging. For me, I’m definitely more comfortable working with actors, on set, or in my room writing a script than I am with all the public-facing stuff. But I love this show so much. Being able to talk about something that you love and care about is not that hard—luckily—when you really care about something. But it definitely is not my favorite or the easiest part for me.
AF: How involved were you in casting the show? What were you looking for when casting the four leads and what stood out about the actors who were ultimately chosen?
Eason: All of it. Every decision that was made about the show was a true partnership between Lisa Taddeo and me. Pretty much everything that happened, I was involved in. I oversaw the writing of the pilot, the running of the writers’ room, our casting, and the hiring of directors, all the way through. I was on set every day during production and then involved in all of post. My hands touched all of it.
I think, when it comes to casting, there often is just something—a little bit magical, not to get too woo-woo about it—when the fit is right. When we met with our four actresses who ended up becoming our four lead women—Betty Gilpin, Dewanda Wise, Gabrielle Creevy, and Shailene Woodley—there was just an instant connection. They connected so deeply to the material, and there was just something elementally, cellularly correct about all of them. When we met with them and talked about the show, we just walked away from those meetings feeling like, well, there she is. There’s Lena, there’s Maggie, there’s Gia, there’s Sloane. I can’t really describe it beyond that.
We were looking for people who really got the material, but it’s very challenging. What we were asking of the actors—it’s a show about women and desire—there’s a lot of intimacy in the show. So we were asking for a huge amount of vulnerability from these actors. It was a very tall ask, and all of them were really brave in wanting to engage with the material, being open to being vulnerable in the ways the show demanded, and excited about those challenges. So it was being right for the part and also being up for the challenge of the show.
AF: Do you relate to, or see yourself in any of the characters?
Eason: There are aspects of all of them that I saw myself in. I will say, Sloane in the book versus Sloane in the show—we really reimagined that character in a very significant way, so she was sort of evolving. But even reading the book, Maggie was the character I most identified with. I’ve said publicly in other places that I moved after my freshman year of high school to a new state, and I was alone and didn’t have any friends. I was approached by two teachers inappropriately, which I now recognize as early steps of grooming.
As the vulnerable, lonely teenager that I was, trying to find my place in a new setting, I could have so easily been taken advantage of by those men. I had deep empathy for Maggie, for what she went through, and how vulnerable she was. I was also so inspired by her bravery and how she decided to seek justice and speak out in a time and place—North Dakota in 2016—where the chances of being believed were very small.
It was the combination of relating to what she went through and seeing what could have very easily been my story, and also just feeling like she was one of the bravest people I’ve ever met. I’m so inspired by her story and how she’s come out of speaking out and being that brave on the other side. She’s doing so well now, and the end of the show reflects that. She has come out of that really harrowing experience in such an incredible way. That is something else I was just so moved by and drawn into, and I was really honored to be a part of telling her story on screen.
AF: Now one creative choice I was interested in that differs from the book was your decision to add Shaileene Woodley’s character Gia. Can you tell us what element you were looking to add to the series with this addition? Is it safe to assume that Gia is based on Lisa Taddeo?
Eason: Well, when I met with Lisa early on, when we were talking about the pilot, I heard about how Lisa wrote the book over eight years and how connected she was to the subjects. She moved to the towns to get to know them and really forged this intimate relationship with them, which yielded this incredible depth that Lisa was able to achieve in the book in terms of telling their stories.
Not only was it helpful to have Gia serving as connective tissue between the three women, but she also had her own really powerful arc and story of where her life goes over the course of the season. So very early on, we had the notion of Gia being important and that we could build the show around her—not just as connective tissue but because she has her own story to tell that’s of equal importance to our other three women.
AF: Sex plays a major role in the storytelling, with numerous intimate scenes that include explicit content and nudity. Why was this important to you and how did you approach integrating those elements while maintaining focus on the deeper themes of the series?
Eason: We were very thorough and careful in our approach and execution of all the intimacy in the show. In addition to having an intimacy coordinator to make sure our set was very safe, we also had Claire Warden, our wonderful intimacy coordinator, as a real partner in the production. We talked a lot with all of the directors and all of our cast about the emotional content of the scenes. So it wasn’t just the physical aspects of the sexuality, it was also the emotional content of the scenes.
That’s why the scenes are so long and specific, because we’re not just getting a quick flash. The story point you’re walking away with isn’t just, they had sex; it’s, they’re having an intimate encounter—what is the woman experiencing? We spent a lot of time and showed a huge range of what was happening for the women in those intimate encounters. The specificity of that was really important. We spent so much time being so specific so that it would protect what you’re saying—that what we were trying to convey would come through clearly.
For instance, you know, this is a really powerful transformation, this one is really transgressive, or this one, we understand in retrospect, will be traumatizing. The variety of what’s happening in those encounters was captured in all of its specificity.
AF: The stories for Lena, Maggie and Sloane are so unique on the surface. What do you think connects the stories of Lena, Maggie, and Sloane despite their differences?
Eason: As we say in the show, they all have the audacity to believe they deserve more. And they make the very bold choice to put their desire at the center of their lives and their choices. That looks very different for all four of them (including GIa), actually, but I think they’re all doing the same thing. They’re all taking that unified action of moving themselves to the center of the story and pursuing what they want and what they believe they deserve, which is more than what they currently have.
AF: Besides the material from the book, did any of the real life women that the main characters participate in any way in the retelling of their stories?
Eason: Well, Maggie is the only person from the book whose real name was used—she’s not a pseudonym. And she was the only one of the three real women who had a relationship to the show. Maggie consulted with us. She came in, talked through things with us, and was super generous with sharing her experience and adding more detail to things we were dramatizing.
I know that Maggie is really pleased with the adaptation, which I’m so grateful for because she has been through so much in her life. It was of paramount importance to Lisa and me that she felt we had done justice to her story, and she really felt that way, which was the most gratifying thing.
AF: How have audiences reacted to the show, particularly given its themes of female empowerment in today’s politically charged environment?
Eason: Yes, there hasn’t been a lot of time since the election to really process. But I will say, over the course of the show, there absolutely has been a real outpouring of women feeling their experiences reflected in ways they have never seen before. To see women’s desire and women’s wants, not just romantic or sexual, but also in a larger sense of what women want their lives to look like, shown in such complexity, and so clearly from the woman’s point of view, I think has been really powerful for people.