The 10-episode limited series “A Teacher” will premiere this November on FX on Hulu and beginning with its first episode, the show centered on a student-teacher affair will air a content warning about grooming, due to the nature of the subject matter.
“Because the show is about consent and abuse and victimhood and manipulation, it was really important for me that we partner with RAINN, which is the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network,” series creator Hannah Fidell told reporters Wednesday during a virtual panel promoting the Kate Mara and Nick Robinson-led show.
“We’re going to be adding cards to each episode before they air, which will include a viewer discretion warning about grooming,” she added. “And also at the end, point viewers toward resources available to them, with the partnership that we’ve created with RAINN. As a victim of sexual assault myself — although my experience didn’t involve a teacher — I wanted to make sure we got this story right. And we really took great pains when we were writing the show to make sure we did that.”
Fidell says the “A Teacher” team worked closely with therapists specializing in childhood sexual assault, and the specific ways in which male victims “internalize” the trauma, and that helped Mara and Robinson feel more comfortable diving into the topic.
“To me, it made me feel very confident in telling this story from the very beginning,” Mara said. “Before the writers’ room ever began, Hannah was always very clear with me about all of the research and precautions they were going to take. Like she said, she told me they were going to be talking with survivors and lawyers who repped both the victims and the abusers. So to me, playing the abuser, I always felt like I knew it was going to be handled in a really delicate way. And what I was interested in was, are the abusers worthy of forgiveness? That was an interesting thing in exploring this character.”
Robinson says that he thinks the way the first episodes of “A Teacher,” which follows Eric (Robinson) and his teacher Claire (Mara) as they develop a sexual relationship outside of the classroom, draw you into the romance.
“It makes the audience semi-complicit in this narrative,” the “Love, Simon” star said. “In the later episodes, the rug gets pulled out from under you and you start to question what this relationship actually is.”
Here’s the full description for “A Teacher,” courtesy of FX:
Beautiful and quietly enigmatic, Claire is the newest teacher at Westerbrook High School. Dissatisfied in her marriage to her college sweetheart Matt Mitchell (Ashley Zukerman), distant from her brother Nate Wilson (Adam David Thompson) and desperate for connection, she quickly befriends fellow teacher, Kathryn Sanders (Marielle Scott). Claire’s life changes when Eric, a charming all-American senior in her English class, takes an unexpected interest in her. Popular and outgoing, Eric is the captain of the soccer team and nearly inseparable from his best friends, Logan Davis (Shane Harper) and Josh Smith (Dylan Schmid). Everything seems perfect on the surface, but Eric is forced to juggle the pressures of school, applying for college and a part-time job, all while helping take care of his two younger brothers so his mother Sandy (Rya Ingrid Kihlstedt) can support the family. Claire and Eric discover an undeniable connection that allows them to escape their individual realities, but their relationship accelerates faster than either could anticipate. The permanent damage left in the wake of Claire and Eric’s illicit affair becomes impossible for them, and their friends and family, to ignore.
“A Teacher” premieres its first three episodes Nov. 10 on FX on Hulu. You can watch the trailer here.
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