“What I wanted was Joy to take definitive action as a reaction to what she had been through, and that definitive action after having been forsaken by her family, who she sacrificed for for decades, was to walk out the door,” Marnich says. “She’s been ignored, she’s unseen, she’s unappreciated, and she’s had it. I wanted it to be an active decision on Joy’s part. Her leaving has to be part of her anger, her resentment, her wounds, and then her family feeling the guilt of all that. It was just a way of bringing a certain muscularity to her choice.”
Savannah and Brooke’s Hookup
In the book, Brooke is married to a man; in the series, she’s in a relationship with a woman and they’re planning their wedding. That is, until Brooke questions Gina’s faithfulness and sleeps with Savannah.
“That was fun,” Moriarty says with a laugh. “I loved that change in storyline in the series.” Moriarty says she actually loves seeing scenes that she sort of recognizes, but are new to her as well. “I’m watching as a viewer, and if I just watch one episode, I’m thinking, ‘Oh, what’s that great show I’m watching?’ Now, I think, ‘Oh, it’s actually my show,’ but because of the parts that I don’t know, I really love watching them.”
Marnich says in the book, Brooke and her husband are a terrible match because she’s compromised her soul to be with him. (“It’s a very different story.”) Meanwhile, Savannah is the agent of chaos and has this ability to look at a family situation and diagnose the weak spots, which made a Brooke/Savannah hookup in the series too hard to pass up. “She diagnosed Brooke’s [weak spots] and made herself available to that,” Marnich says. “From Brooke’s perspective, from all the kids’ perspective, they grew up in this incredibly competitive environment where love was something you competed for. No one quite knows how to love or be loved, and they have damage. Brooke is with this incredible woman—her fiancée—but Brooke isn’t in a place where she can accept someone or something incredible, so she blows it up.” As a result, you had one of the most jaw-dropping moments of the series.
The Arrest
In the book, Stan never gets arrested in the apparent death of Joy Delaney. In the series, some of the kids turn in evidence against him and he is arrested for Joy’s murder.
