“The Girlfriend” was an editor’s dream.
Adapted from the novel by Michelle Frances, Prime Video’s six-episode limited series tells the story of an art dealer in London (Robin Wright) who’s suspicious of her son Daniel’s (Laurie Davidson) new significant other (Olivia Cooke). That’s a straightforward enough premise, but it unfolds from two perspectives: those of the mother, Laura, and the girlfriend, Cherry. The alternating points of view destabilize the narrative, pushing viewers’ sympathies back and forth as the two women scheme against each other in increasingly outrageous ways.
“It’s a lot of fun to cut something with perspectives like that,” said Mark Davis, who took over editing Episode 1 when Mags Arnold needed to pivot to Episode 3. “Even though the [changing POVs] don’t show all the same scenes — it’s just occasional bits that cross over — you can have some real fun getting the most out of revisiting that scene from the other character’s perspective.”
But as editors of the initial episode, Davis and Arnold first had to set up the series’ complex structure and dramatic stakes. They opted for a cold open that teases the finale, featuring audio snippets of a heated argument and ending with the image of a bloody knife in a pool. “Showing the end but not really showing it, you get a sense that s–t’s gonna go down here,” Davis said.
That tension juxtaposes with the calm of the next scene, where we see Laura having an unremarkable phone conversation with an employee. “She’s obviously wealthy and going about her day. There’s nothing too bad happening,” Davis continued. “But we’ve established now that something bad will happen. So that creates a dramatic irony to the mundane that we are passing through.”
Striking a balance between the two leads’ stories was tricky — especially the scenes with both of them, such as when Daniel introduces Cherry to his parents, which we see twice (pay attention and you’ll catch subtle differences, like the way Laura accepts a bouquet of roses from Cherry). “Maintaining character integrity and tonal consistency, giving them equal weight unless it was a deliberate decision not to — these were quite delicate and took time to calibrate correctly,” Arnold said.
Speaking of tone, that might have been the trickiest task of all. No one wanted “The Girlfriend” to collapse into melodrama. “It’s a thriller, but it also has to be fun,” Arnold added. “It’s dark, but the audience has to have permission to laugh and enjoy themselves. Music was key to this.”
Case in point: When the show first switches to Cherry’s version of events, we see her strutting confidently down the street while Blackpink’s pugnacious pop hit “Pretty Savage” plays. “By the end of the first part of Laura’s story, you’re on Laura’s side,” Davis said. “You then want to flip that and be completely on Cherry’s side now. And so we celebrate her. We put a bit of K-pop in there.”
He noted that the editing team (which also includes Alex Mackie and Marc Richardson) was free to be playful like this because of the talent of the cast — one of whom, Wright, also exec-produced the series and directed three episodes. “Robin’s instincts for performance are second to none,” he shared. “Because all the acting was so solid and real and believable, the show itself could just be less, you know, David Fincher about everything.”
