SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains major spoilers from “East of Eden,” now streaming on Netflix.
\n\nZoe Kazan has spent much of her life thinking about family legacy on and off screen. More than 62 years after her grandfather Elia Kazan famously directed James Dean in an adaptation of the fourth and final part of John Steinbeck’s novel “East of Eden,” the younger Kazan has taken on the Herculean task of tackling the full literary epic in a sweeping new Netflix miniseries, which premiered on Oct. 1.
\n\nBut rather than focusing strictly on the men of the Trask and Hamilton families, this adaptation shifts the spotlight to Cathy Ames (played by Florence Pugh, also an executive producer). Instead of being depicted merely as the amoral villain who shoots her husband Adam Trask (Christopher Abbott) and abandons her newborn twins to return to a life of prostitution, Cathy is reframed as a complex antihero whose choices ripple through generations of the Trask family.
\n\nThis shift also required trimming other major characters in this adaptation. Mike Faist, who plays Adam’s brother Charles, and Ciarán Hinds, who plays patriarch Samuel Hamilton, take on reduced roles compared to the novel. By tightening those subplots, the…
Original source: https://variety.com/v/tv/