(Spoiler alert: Please do not read ahead unless you’ve watched “Sharp Objects” through Sunday’s finale, “Milk.”)
Well, there you have it: Adora dunit, but Amma also dunit.
The finale of HBO’s adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s “Sharp Objects” ended with the reveal that — even though Adora (Patricia Clarkson) had killed her daughter Marian and was finally sent to jail for her crimes — she wasn’t the one who murdered Natalie and Ann.
Instead, in the final moments of the episode “Milk” we learn Camille’s (Amy Adams) living little sister, Amma (Eliza Scanlen) — who she has taken away to raise in safety — is actually the one responsible for the grisly murders of the two young girls from their small hometown of Wind Gap, Missouri.
And the very last line Amma uttered when she walked in on her big sister discovering her victims’ teeth hidden inside her dollhouse was, “Don’t tell mama.” Then the screen cuts to black and Led Zepplin’s “In the Evening” kicks into high gear as the final credits roll. (Insert chills here.)
While that ending is probably enough to disturb you for years to come, Flynn’s debut novel closed a little differently. Well, not differently, just with more to it. So TheWrap talked with showrunner Marti Noxon about why she, Flynn and director Jean-Marc Vallee chose to cut the book’s coda, which included Camille visiting Amma in prison and discussing her crimes.
Marti Noxon: My recollection is that — and I don’t have the book in front of me — but those few pages, they are very short, that little coda of that part. And we were trying to convey the emotional experience of reading the book, and to me the book ended there. And there was so much more that I wanted to know about the other part. And it felt emotionally like, this story is about the legacy of violence among these women and that it really started with Adora. That everything in this story, that’s what we get to know about. So to end it sort of calling back to Adora felt like the original ending for this mystery.
Did you leave clues for fans to find if they go back for a second viewing, now that they know Amma is the killer?
Totally! I mean, part of the fun of taking this from the book to the screen is that that Amma character portrayed by Eliza is so complicated. Her relationship with Camille is so complicated. And it is in the book too. But I think because Eliza and Amy brought something to it that Gillian and myself we felt really strongly about — which is there is this side of Amma that is really loving and is looking for a protector and a champion and a sister — so that we could rest a little bit. But you know, in the end it is a whodunit, she dun it. So it’s fun to know those little bits and pieces are there.
Why did you choose “Don’t tell mama” as the final line?
To me, the story, you know, is really about this legacy of violence in their family. And Adora, a lot of what Amma does is in reaction to Adora. Probably almost all of it at that age. So she’s still walking that crazy line between trying to emulate Adora, literally by murdering, but also by not having the emotional capacity to do it with any subtlety or even deal with the consequences.
How did you decide how much time to devote to the part of the finale where Camille is being “nursed’ by Adora and the part after that, where Amma and Camille seem to be safe?
The scene in the bathtub, that’s where the real meat of the crime is taking place and it tells you everything about how it happened in the past and what really happened to the girls. So that’s sort of the meat of the finale. That’s the real answer to the whodunit. And then the surprise of — oh, and there is someone still doing it or still out there a victim in this — did feel like it’s own coda, in a way.
I think we were really committed to really doing the book justice, and it is a whodunit. And some people try to live in a world that it maybe doesn’t have a second story. You know, this story feels very complete. But there is also just the reality that this is a tough team to assemble and I think it would be pretty impossible to do it again (laughs).
'Sharp Objects': 13 Differences Between Gillian Flynn's Novel and Amy Adams' HBO Series (Photos)
"Sharp Objects" wrapped its eight-episode run on HBO Sunday, giving you the twisted ending to Marti Noxon's take on Gillian Flynn's debut novel. And while Noxon and Flynn worked closely together on the TV adaptation starring Amy Adams, there are a few key differences that were made to take the story from the page to the small screen. Here, Noxon broke down a few of them for TheWrap. Spoilers abound, obviously.
When Camille's cutting is revealed on screen vs. to the reader
Viewers of the TV adaptation find out Camille (Amy Adams) is a cutter, who has marks covering nearly her whole body at the end of the premiere episode -- but it takes readers about 60 pages to get to that revelation.
“I was mindful that many of the people watching the show would not know the story," Marti Noxon told TheWrap after the premiere. She added that was the moment the reader “really get[s] the story of what these ‘sharp objects’ have done to her,” and so she knew she wanted to replicate it on screen.
“But I also felt like we didn’t want to leave it too deep in the season,” she said. “At one point there was debate about, you know, do we match the book and hold it until like Episode 3? And I was like, ‘no way.’ I think the viewers will feel betrayed if they’ve been kept out of her secret for that long.” Read more about it over here.
In the novel, Amma is only 13 years old, though the actress who plays her, Eliza Scanlen, is 19 in real life.
Showrunner Marti Noxon said that the decision to age Amma up was in part to make sure viewers wouldn't be distracted by her youth.
"It would be hard to see her doing some of the stuff she does," Noxon told TheWrap. She continued to say that their goal was to age her "only about a year older, 14 maybe nearing 15? But we just wanted to age her up a tiny bit because of some of the parts in the book that are you know -- visually it's different to see it than to read it, we might even age her up in your head a little bit."
She added that part of why Amma's age is never explicitly mentioned in the show is "because those teen years where girls are somewhere between womanhood and childhood are so different for every girl. And depending on her emotional and physical maturity, you can imagine something for a girl who looks a certain age and not with others. You know, it would take the focus and put it on a whole different thing."
It's easy to look at Camille's stepfather, Alan, (played by Henry Czerny on the show) and see a "beaten spouse," as Noxon described him in a recent interview with TheWrap. But in the book, Adora's (Patricia Clarkson) husband feels far more distant and much less sympathetic.
"I think he's almost more a victim of whatever mind control [Adora has him under]," Noxon added. "He feels like a very classically female character in that way."
While Camille mentions in the book that she became sexually active at a young age following Marian's death, the actual flashback to the gang rape she experienced at 13 was added for the TV adaptation and portrayed in a different way.
In the book, Adams' character tells Richard (Chris Messina) about an eighth grader who got drunk at a high school party and was passed around by the football team -- not letting on she's telling her own story.
Whereas on the HBO drama, we actually see a dark glimpse of our heroine's abusive past, in a scene that shows a preteen Camille in her cheerleading uniform, being hunted down in the woods by boys who go on to gang rape her in broad daylight.
One thing we learn about Camille's backstory is her history with alcoholism and self harm and that she at one point checked herself into rehab. She's bunkmates with a young girl named Alice, who Camille empathizes with -- and who introduces her to several rock classics. Sadly, Alice dies by suicide, and her memory joins Marian in haunting Camille throughout the series.
In Flynn's novel, Camille does attend rehab and has a 16-year-old girl as a roommate, who kills herself by swallowing a bottle of Windex -- but her good friend Alice is strictly a character from the show.
One of the show's delights is the way music is used to enhance the story. But while Camille is obsessed with her rock playlist -- and carries that cracked iPod with her everywhere -- there's no mention of her musical preferences in the book. Of course, Camille's connection to music is largely due to her relationship with Alice, who also isn't mentioned in the book.
Noxon said that the show's soundtrack is all thanks to director Jean-Marc Vallé.
"I think if you look at his work in everything, he’s very, very, music-driven," she told TheWrap (you might think of the "Big Little Lies" soundtrack). Noxon added that she was impressed with his ability to secure the rights to some songs.
"Frankly there were things that he was like, we’ll have Led Zeppelin here, and I was like, 'Good luck with that!' And he’d be like, 'Oh, we got Led Zeppelin.' I’d be like 'OK, you did!'" she said, adding that he has a reputation for "exquisite" musical tastes.
As for Camille's visions of Marian, Alice, Natalie and Ann, those were a visually creative decision added to the show by Vallee as well.
"That was a choice that Jean-Marc made, and I think that it was just this idea of being haunted by these broken women that, again, there is this sort of legacy all around [Camille] of people who haven't survived trauma, in a way," Noxon told TheWrap. "And in some ways, I feel like she's doing it for them as much as she's doing it for herself. She will tell the truth about one of these stories."
HBO
Richard discovers the truth about Marian -- not Camille
On the small screen, the detective is the one who hunts down the nurse who spills the beans about how Marian died due to Munchausen by proxy inflicted on her by Adora, in the book Camille goes looking for the truth herself -- and finds it.
Calhoun Day is a huge event in the show for Wind Gap, but the holiday doesn't exist in the book. Noxon told TheWrap in a previous interview that the whole idea started out as a joke in the writer's room.
“There’s a lot of talk about myth and fantasy and how that can influence towns, and your story versus your truth,” Noxon said. That idea bleeds into Camille’s own mythos: “The [Preaker] family has myths, the family has things that aren’t necessarily true on the surface.”
“The more we talked about the fake news of the town, the things that they told each other that just weren’t true, the more we kept focusing on the founder’s story, and the joke was that we were going to do Calhoun Day the musical,” she said with a laugh. Read more about the Calhoun Day episode over here.
HBO
Ending
The HBO limited series cuts off dramatically as Camille is realizing that Amma is the one who killed Ann Nash and Natalie Keene, when she discovers the mosaic of of jagged, broken teeth in her dollhouse. But the book continues for a bit and Amma even ends up in prison for what she's done and Camille goes to live with Curry and Eileen to recover from a relapse into cutting.
Noxon told TheWrap that the decision to end the show's story there was because she and the writers wanted to "convey the emotional experience of reading the book and, to me, the book ended there."
"And it felt emotionally like, this story is about the legacy of violence among these women and that it really started with Adora," she continued, adding that Amma's words -- don't tell mama -- bring it all back to Adora.
"So to end it sort of calling back to Adora felt like the original ending for this mystery," she said. To read more about that shocking ending, head over here.
Unless we're counting those violent flashes in the finale's post-credits scenes, viewers don't find out how Amma took those young girls' lives.
But in the final few pages of the novel, it's revealed Amma had some help from her friends in kidnapping Natalie and Ann, while she was the one to ultimately strangle them to death and pry out their little teeth.
HBO
Amma doesn't kill her friend in the city -- on screen
Yeah, in the book, Lily Burke -- a friend Amma makes when she moves to the city with Camille -- falls victim to the young sociopath's murderous streak as well before all is said and done. Amma kills her new bestie when she thinks Camille likes her better than her little sister, and Camille finds some of Lily's hair in the dollhouse, alongside those teeth.
On the show Amma's new friend's name is Mae and the story gets cut off before that murder takes place. Though the post-credits scene alludes to a still-not-so-happy ending for Mae.
While a smaller detail, in the book, Camille lives in Chicago, not St. Louis. But in both the show and the book, she works as a reporter for an editor named Curry and brings Amma home for a time after Adora is arrested.
HBO
OK, now that you are thoroughly creeped out by the HBO adaptation, might we suggest you go fully immerse yourself in the twisted pages of the novel? And don't say we didn't warn you about those darker differences. Well, some of them.
Showrunner Marti Noxon helps breaks down the biggest discrepancies for TheWrap
"Sharp Objects" wrapped its eight-episode run on HBO Sunday, giving you the twisted ending to Marti Noxon's take on Gillian Flynn's debut novel. And while Noxon and Flynn worked closely together on the TV adaptation starring Amy Adams, there are a few key differences that were made to take the story from the page to the small screen. Here, Noxon broke down a few of them for TheWrap. Spoilers abound, obviously.
HBO
HBO
