LADY IN THE LAKE is an upcoming American limited series that debuts on Apple TV+ and is directed by Alma Har’el. In the 1960s, the story takes place in Baltimore, where Maddie Schwartz (Natalie Portman), an investigative reporter, looks into an unsolved murder while getting into a fight with a woman who is trying to get the Black community’s goals met. The main character leaves her loving husband and their fancy Pikesville home to become a newspaper reporter. She gets really interested in solving the murders of two different people: eleven-year-old Tessie Fine and a bartender named Cleo Sherwood.
Inspired by two real murders that happened to Laura Lippman when she was young, the show is based on her book of the same name. The first was the kidnapping and death of white Jewish girl Esther Lebowitz, who was 11 years old. Her death got a lot of attention from the media. The second was the death of 33-year-old Black woman Shirley Parker, whose body was found in the fountain of the Druid Hill Park Reservoir. This case mostly got attention from African-American newspapers like the Baltimore Afro-American.
Is Natalie Portman’s character, Maddie Schwartz, based on a real person?
Not at all. For the story, a character named Maddie Schwartz was made up. In the show, Maddie is a spoiled housewife and mom who realizes that her life is empty after being married for almost twenty years. She ends her marriage to follow her dream. She helps the Baltimore police find the body of a young Jewish girl, which gets her a job at the Star, the city’s afternoon newspaper. She fights sexism at work and then finds the story that she thinks will make her famous: the case of Cleo Sherwood, a Black woman who went missing and whose body was found in a park fountain. This part of the story is based on the true story of Shirley Parker’s death.
Maddie’s search for answers about Cleo’s death turns into an obsession, similar to how Keira Knightley’s character in last year’s Hulu miniseries BOSTON STRANGLER put work ahead of family. In real life, though, none of this happened like it did in BOSTON STRANGLER. Maddie is a character from fiction that was made to fit the historical context of themes of inequality and ambition.
For NPR, author Laura Lippman said, “I set out simply to write a novel about a woman who wanted to matter — who had these sort of restless, shapeless ambitions and needed to find a place to put them. … The world in the mid-1960s was filled with women who were thinking, ‘I’m not done. This can’t be it. I think I would like to do something more with my life.'”
Even though Esther Lebowitz and Shirley Parker went missing in real life in 1969, Lippman set her story in 1966. “One of the forgotten years of the 1960s” was why she picked 1966.
The show ties the two deaths together from Maddie Schwartz’s point of view, showing how the media covered the deaths of a white Jewish girl and a black woman in very different ways. In reality, there was no link between the two murders.
Moses Ingram, who plays Cleo Sherwood, says it’s important to show the good things about Baltimore. Ingram was born and raised in Baltimore and thinks that the Apple TV+ series shows how far the city has come and how much it can still do. “There are a lot of great things and great people who work really hard to make this city as beautiful as it is,” she added.
Portman and Ingram said that filming in Baltimore was community-centered and brought people from different backgrounds together. Over a thousand jobs were created in Maryland because of the production, which also showed off local talent and got people excited.
Because Portman’s family has a history in Baltimore, she thought the project was especially important. Finding out about her family’s history in the city gave her role a more personal touch. Both actresses brought out the unique and lively side of Baltimore, from its old jazz bars to its close-knit neighborhoods.
Even though LADY IN THE LAKE is a work of fiction, it uses real historical events to tell a compelling story. The show’s attention to detail, especially in how it recreates Baltimore’s jazz scene, makes the stories more interesting.
You can watch LADY IN THE LAKE on Apple TV+ to see the amazing acting and interesting history. You can find more news, previews, and recaps of the show at tvacute.com.
Lady in the Lake (Apple TV+): Is it Based on a True Story?
