“After the book hit the bestseller lists, the TV and film world was like, ‘Oh, OK, that’s a built-in audience.’ A lot of outlets were interested and it would’ve felt weird to say no because it felt like there was such a desire for it. My husband always says that when my daughter’s uncomfortable, I just give in to the discomfort because I can’t stand to see people being uncomfortable, probably to the detriment of my parenting. So it was like, ‘Well, if people really want to see it, we should do it.’ But I had a lot of reservations.”

Those concerns related to her protective feelings for her subjects and especially for Maggie, whom she still talks to every day. Introduced as a 23-year-old, Maggie is also seen as a teenager who becomes involved in a sexual relationship with her English teacher. Struggling in the aftermath of the affair years later, she reports it to the police.

“My reservations were specifically around Maggie’s story because Maggie was the only woman whose real name was used because she was already a public figure,” Taddeo explains. “My fear came with the idea of people doing the same things that they had done during the trial, negating her experience, or saying something to hurt her.”

Taddeo was also aware that she might be too cautious: “I felt that I might try to protect the story too much and not do it justice.”

However, she found a range of sensitive collaborators, including set-up director Louise N.D. Friedberg (Borgen) and Australian Cate Shortland (Somersault, Lore, Black Widow), who directed the two episodes focused on Maggie.

Loading

“We were so lucky to have all the directors we had,” Taddeo says of the all-female team. “But I don’t know anybody with a greater well of empathy and understanding of the human condition than Cate. She is absolutely magnificent as a human and as an artist, and the two don’t usually meet quite as much as one would hope.”

Taddeo was on set every day of the shoot and says, “Watching the actors take on these roles, watching the directors, seeing that sort of magic at work was amazing. I was in awe of the people who worked on it: so many people are on hand to make something happen and many of those people go unsung when they’re doing super-difficult work. The fact that there were over 200 people working on this thing that had started with me writing a book alone in a room was humbling and massively rewarding.”

There’s a moment in the first episode when Gia says of her cross-country trips, “In driving, I found what I didn’t know I was looking for.” And the series, like Taddeo’s book, encourages viewers to participate in a process of discovery, creating the impression of really seeing the women up close. The camera lingers on eyes and hands, on hair blowing in wind and water on skin, Taddeo explaining that “tactile” was a word that came up frequently when Friedberg outlined her vision for the drama. Isobel Waller-Bridge’s varied, evocative score artfully amplifies the intensity.

Compassionate and determinedly non-judgemental, the series, like Gia, celebrates women who have “the audacity to believe that they deserve something more” from their lives. Gia also explains that they were “not people who wanted to be watched: they were women who needed to be seen”.

In the same vein, Taddeo says that she believes that she understands why her book resonates with readers: “It’s real stories of real women and the unfettered access that they gave me to their minds helps people who’ve had similar thoughts, feelings and experiences feel less alone.”

Loading

She’s hoping that the series will have a comparable impact. Meanwhile, as she works on an adaptation of her fiction novel, Animal, a book about grief and a gothic horror novel, it seems that while Three Women might’ve been Taddeo’s first time on a set, it’s unlikely to be her last.