'Mrs Fletcher' star Kathryn Hahn says Eve and son Brendan are going through 'inverse journeys' as she explores sexuality in 40s
‘Mrs. Fletcher’ actor Kathryn Hahn recently opened up about exploring womanhood through the eponymous Eve Fletcher. At the red carpet premiere of the HBO limited series, Hahn told MEA WorldWide (MEAWW) about the process of building character relationships and the inverse growth between Eve and her son Brendan (Jackson White), among other things.
In the series, Eve Fletcher, a middle-aged woman finds herself experiencing empty-nest syndrome when her son is leaving home for college. As a divorcée and with the newfound time and freedom in her hand, she decides to take on life in her own stride.
She finds herself on a quest to find that elusive happiness and sexual fulfillment. The plotline is juxtaposed between a middle-aged woman learning to cope with life and a teenage boy learning the same lessons in a different setting.
This odd coming-of-age story based on a novel by the same name allowed Hahn to explore the character’s “profound sense of loneliness and bravery”. She said, “It was very moving to me -- a part I hadn’t seen before. And it just flipped a lot of tropes on its head: the cougar, the MILF; like all these ideas of what it is to be sexual after forty.”
She added how in the show, Eve and her son Brendan were going through a parallel albeit inverted experience. “A Pandora’s box of internet porn kind of does the opposite things for each other. He realizes in college that what worked for him in high school, doesn't anymore. For me, it became just an allowance to start exploring things that I didn’t think I was literally allowed to do. So, it was kind of an inverse journey."
Talking about her character in the show, she said, “I think she had always been subordinate. She figured herself as straight; a mother. You know, she was always the good girl. She was always submissive. She tried to fit within a prescribed set of lines. It’s funny -- there were so many things she didn’t think she was allowed to do."
Touching on the topic of the possibility of a second season -- this being a limited miniseries -- Hahn said, “I am very satisfied with what it is as a whole. But there always is [a possibility],” adding, “I would be thrilled with, however.”
'Mrs. Fletcher' premiered October 27 on HBO and will air every Sunday at 10:30 p.m.