Catherine Zeta-Jones has opened up about creative changes in her latest AMC+ TV adaptation. The show, titled Kill Jackie, premiered on October 2.
Kill Jackie adapts Nick Harkaway’s 2018 novel The Price You Pay, published under his pseudonym Aidan Truhen. In the show, Zeta-Jones plays Jackie Price, a wealthy art dealer whose criminal past puts her in the sights of a group of notorious assassins called The Seven Demons. The TV adaptation changes the book’s male protagonist, Jack Price, into Jackie Price.
While Jack Price has no children, the series gives Jackie a daughter, a character who doesn’t exist in the source material. The revelation arrives in the fifth episode, which premiered on October 30. In the episode, three delinquents hold Jackie and her father hostage. During their conversation, one of the delinquents, Gwen (Darci Shaw), calls Jackie’s father grandpa. That prompts Jackie to realize that Gwen is her long-lost daughter.
Why Catherine Zeta-Jones’ Kill Jackie introduce a daughter who doesn’t exist in the book?
Speaking to People, Catherine Zeta-Jones explained the change was deliberate. She wanted the show to go beyond its action and fast-paced storyline. She said, “I was adamant that we needed to find out who [Jackie] really was and where she came from.”
The Welsh actress added she wanted to explore what drove Jackie and what trauma she tried to suppress forever. Gwen answers that question.
Zeta-Jones explained that Jackie does not go to Wales looking for anyone. Instead, she finds something she thought she’d left behind. The 57-year-old said Gwen gives viewers a deep understanding of Jackie. “It grounds her. It makes her real,” she explained. “It makes everything else okay because you see real emotion. As an actor, I needed that juxtaposition of pushing the reality in one hand and deep, deep-rooted reality in the other.”
In addition to starring, Catherine Zeta-Jones also serves as an executive producer alongside others. New episodes arrive weekly on Friday on AMC+.
Originally reported on ComingSoon.
