Kerry Washington, Elisabeth Moss and Kate Mara are on their final day of promoting their twisty-turny whodunnit Apple TV series Imperfect Women when they arrive at Glamour HQ. When I ask how they’re doing with the madness of entourages, makeup and studio lights, they respond that the experience is “better with friends”.
The friends that the trio depict onscreen in Imperfect Women, however, are about as f**ked up as you can get. Codependency, secrets, lies, jealousy – you name it. The series – adapted from a popular novel of the same name – feels like a natural graduation from Desperate Housewives and Big Little Lies, following the story of three friends told through flashbacks and present day scenes, exploring who murdered one of them.
We see Kerry's “career woman” Eleanor – who is single-shamed, even by her friends – and Elisabeth's frustrated-but-brilliant stay at home mum Mary delve into the affairs and curated perfection of their friend Nancy (Kate Mara), desperately trying to discover who killed her. But more than a murder culprit comes to the surface when they start searching. Depicting both the beauty and toxicity that can be present in bonds between women, the series is glossy, witty and full of surprises.
On top of its whodunnit undertone, the series touches on so many important issues: the microaggressions Black women face – even from their own friends – the insidious nature of coercive control, friend envy and the stigma attached to the “super mum” stereotype.
There's a lot to unpack. Elisabeth, Kerry and Kate sat down with Glamour to talk all things imperfect.
Glamour: What do you hope this show says about the complexities of female friendship – and how did you cultivate that on screen?
Elisabeth: I think the thing I related to the most about the friendship part of it – from the beautiful book written by Araminta Hall – was this idea that different friends fulfil different needs. So you will tell a friend one thing that you won't tell another because you feel either that they have more experience or they'll be more helpful, sometimes though because you feel like you'll be less judged. And you might have that friend who, if you told that to, they might be a little bit not as approving or whatever.
Kerry: One thing that our showrunner, Annie Weisman said, which I really loved, was that one of the things that drew her to the project was this idea that your women friends, you're so close to and it's so beautiful because it's so vulnerable, but also because you're so vulnerable, you can get more hurt. And so that idea that the people you love the most are also the people you're most open to being hurt by is, I think, part of what the show is about.
Glamour: The series also really captures the ways in which female friendships can get toxic, often due to societal pressures and expectations of women…
Kerry: The three of us have all played these iconic women who take on these big systems, like advertising and journalism and the White House and the army. And in this show, the pressures are much more internal. There's this quiet strength that we're exploring and trying to find. And I think that's exciting for all of us too to get to do that kind of work.
Kate: I like that we're playing people that are... I mean, everybody's flawed, so that's not unique at all. But it's fun to be able to play characters where you really are showing their flaws very intensely, all of us… I really was attracted to playing somebody who's so desperate to appear to be one thing on the outside, but really internally, she is so many other things and she's just too scared to show that side of herself.
Glamour: Considering the name of the TV show, do you guys believe that there is a pressure on women to be or appear perfect?
Kerry: I was thinking about today that I've never thought about before is that we all kind of take on a different avatar of female perfection. There's the perfect mother, the perfect wife, the perfect professional working woman. I think in society we get pressured to do all the things and they too are struggling. In the place where they're excelling, they're struggling with the other parts of themselves. And so it is a lot about the pressure to kind of be everything, do everything.
Even though the title of the show is Imperfect Women, it's really about imperfect relationships. And so you're seeing imperfect marriages, imperfect friendships, imperfect sibling relationships, imperfect families, and that's where the drama is. And so it's really a good exploration of how, because we're all human, we're all doing the best we can and that's the best we can do.
Glamour: We see a hell of a lot of female anger on screen from all three of your characters. Did you have to dig deep to find this?
Elisabeth: It's the easiest thing ever.
Kate: I know. It's wonderful.
Kerry: It's right there. Scratch me and it's…
Kate: Very deep.
Elisabeth: Some days you really don't have to go too deep at all… Acting is such an outlet. I've had scenes where I have behaved in ways and that I would never, ever want to in real life.
Glamour: All three of you are mothers – how important was it to you all to see the portrayals of postpartum life that we see through Mary in particular?
Elisabeth: I fell in love with this everyday heroine. I had been playing this super mum who was trying to save the world and all the children in it… I am so inspired by those people every day. Being a mum is the hardest job in the world. So to me, that was something that I really was moved by and it felt important to me to have a representation of.
Glamour: We're moving into an era where there are more female producers, female-led stories, what does that mean to you guys for these stories to be told?
Kate: Well, it means that we're going to get more work!
Kerry: We're less bored! We have jobs. We feel more seen.
Elisabeth: I mean, we've all been doing this for so long that we already had careers when that was not happening as much as it is now. It still needs to continue to happen and someday it won't be even something that we talk about hopefully. But it is important to talk about now. I mean, [to Kerry] when we did that radio show this morning, you reminded me about Scandal…
Kerry: There hadn't been a Black woman as the lead of a network show for almost 40 years. And I was like 38 at the time. So in my lifetime, I had never seen it.
Elisabeth: So it is incredibly important to us, not just of women, but inclusivity of so many kinds. That was important to us on this show as well. It means that we get to tell the stories that we want to tell, that we identify with, we relate to, we've experienced. It means we get to put people behind the camera that we feel like are going to do the best job and maybe not receive as much pushback as we used to.
I mean, I've been told that a show is ‘too female’. I've gone and pitched and been told that, I'm sure we all have. Not that long ago too. So it's good to, I think, continue to push that agenda.
Glamour: Kerry, you changed the status quo when it came to Black female TV leads – what would you like to see change for more or better representation?
Kerry: I think having more and more different kinds of people be at the leadership positions of entertainment companies – because the people who call the shots and green light projects and decide what gets made and doesn't get made or what gets promoted even after it's made – to be able to have more diversity and inclusivity at the highest level. I think it's really important that everybody, number one, has a chance to see themselves represented on screen, but then also number two, it's a window into worlds that aren't their own.
I think there's so much power in being able to watch programming that is not about you and about your world and see that behind all of that, there is this beautiful common humanity where we all want to be loved, we all want to succeed, we all want to live a life of justice and freedom. We all just want to exist. And so I think it's really special. Representation is important and also being able to dive into other worlds and still see yourself behind the masks of identity is really important.
Imperfect Women is available to watch now on Apple TV, with new episodes released weekly.
