Editor’s note: Deadline’s It Starts on the Page (Limited) features 10 standout limited or anthology series scripts in 2025 Emmy contention.
Lisa Taddeo‘s Starz limited series Three Women, based on her bestselling non-fiction book, delves into the complex world of female desire and sexuality through the true story of three American women who are on a crash course to radically overturn their lives.
In the series, Lina, played by Betty Gilpin, a homemaker in suburban Indiana, is a decade into a passionless marriage when she embarks on an affair that quickly becomes all-consuming and transforms her life. Sloane (DeWanda Wise), a glamorous entrepreneur in the Northeast, has a committed open marriage with Richard (Blair Underwood) until two sexy new strangers threaten their aspirational love story. Maggie (Gabrielle Creevy), a student in North Dakota, weathers an intense storm after accusing her married English teacher (Jason Ralph) of an inappropriate relationship. Gia (Shailene Woodley), a writer grieving the loss of her family, persuades each of these “ordinary” women to tell her their stories, and her relationships with them change the course of her life forever.
Titled “Lina,” Episode 2, written by Taddeo and directed by Louise N.D. Friedberg, revolves around Gilpin’s Lina as she searches unsuccessfully for more fulfillment in her marriage. A panic attack, which she mistakes for a heart attack, is completely dismissed by her husband Ed who also tries to dissuade Lina from attending an out-of-town bachelorette party. She goes anyway and after the party, she reunites with her teenage love Aidan (Austin Stowell), who is now married as well. The two spend the night together and later meet again at the lake.
In the intro to her script, Taddeo calls the real woman Lina was based on “Desire, personified.” She points out the Princess Bride reference in Lina and Aidan’s teen love story and talks about the duo’s present-day encounter. Shown entirely though Lina’s gaze, Taddeo describes it as “one of the most intimate and gorgeous love scenes ever portrayed.”
Lisa Taddeo
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When Lina, a married mother of two in rural Indiana, told me that her husband no longer wanted to kiss her on the mouth and I registered the wild pain in her blue eyes, I realized the book I was writing about desire needed to begin with this. Precisely this woman, and precisely because this woman was Desire, personified. Not a low and passing lust, but the deep belly need of racing love, of being seen and heard and felt.
Lina is played by the ghoulishly-great Betty Gilpin, who does in her craft what real-life Lina does in her soul—glitter in the raw. After suffering a planetary panic attack in the second episode, Lina is dismissed by her husband, Ed (the marvelous Sean Meehan) and the rest of her family, and begins to act on that which she’s been feeling for a while that she deserves: Joy and love.
For the whole book, for the whole series, for the sake of my core beliefs, I was determined to tell these love stories as the women experienced them, without judgment or conjecture, to strip away the commentary or even defense and just show a human soul. And the second episode, under the fiercely poignant and sensational direction of Louise Friedberg, evokes Lina’s story with the cosmic level of romance that she herself felt in her bones.
When Young Lina and Young Aidan (played by two of the finest young actors working today, Augie Murphy and Reilly Walters) embrace beneath a theater marquee, we spin in the heady glory of what we all know will be one of the best moments of her life, indeed of all of our lives—our first kiss. The Princess Bride arcade fantasy of it.
Back in the present, when Lina and Aidan—now a good-looking, strong man, (Austin Stowell) —finally have sex for the first time, it was vital to me that we capture not even the female gaze, but the Lina gaze. The feelings of this one woman—in this transcendent moment—and not anyone else’s thought or glance. And because we gave her story and her voice the unimpeded runway, I believe it is one of the most intimate and gorgeous love scenes ever portrayed. We stay with Lina the whole time, in her head and body, through the awkwardness and fear and elation of getting the thing she wants more than anything in the world. We stay when she removes the tampon and when she runs down the outdoor hallway of the motel at night in blood-stained sheets after the greatest intimate encounter of anyone’s lifetime, we stay when she giggles and falls off the bed. We stay when she remembers about her children. We stay with the woman.
I believe we need to do that more, I’m grateful and honored to be a part of making it happen, and I hope this moves you in a positive way. Thank you deeply for reading and watching our show.
Read the script below.
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