TAGGED AS: Drama, Hulu, streaming, television, TV
At first, Clare clearly is not the perfect candidate for an unpaid job answering letters to “Dear Sugar.” For starters, she’s sleeping in the empty bed of an occupied room in the retirement home she works at after being kicked out of her house by husband Danny (Quentin Plair). Her teenage daughter Frankie Rae (Tanzyn Crawford) can’t stand her. She’s also let her dream of being a writer lapse. But, as Tiny Beautiful Things plays out and Clare examines her past (Sarah Pidgeon plays younger Clare), she realizes her imperfect life and the mistakes she’s made along the way make her a perfectly sweet fit. So, the letters keep coming.
“Clare had been a fan of that column before she was asked to do it,” Hahn told Rotten Tomatoes. “And I think that she was also mostly moved by the letters. And then this response that was so radically honest really moved her as well — the fact that this advice column could be more of a concert, a symphony, a conversation between the author, the writer and the columnist; that it’s not like an advice column. It’s more of a sharing.
“It became circular for her,” Hahn continued. “I don’t think she in any way feels like it says in the pilot [that] she was a person that was ready to give advice. But she certainly was able to make someone feel heard and seen because she was going through it as well.”
(Photo by Hulu)
Based on Cheryl Strayed’s book of her collected “Dear Sugar” columns for The Rumpus, Tiny Beautiful Things uses Clare answering the advice column letters as a narrative tool. As Hahn’s older Clare reflects through Pidgeon’s younger Clare on being raised by a single mother, the death of that beloved mother (Merritt Wever), and the messy life she lived (drugs, alcohol, random hookups) to cope afterward, the newly-minted columnist finds herself touching the lives of others.
Pidgeon and Hahn did discuss playing the same character, but with the story told at different points in Clare’s life — at ages 20 and 49 — the actresses had the artistic freedom to do their own work, the younger actress said.
“I don’t think there was so much calculation in like, ‘How are we going to do this thing?’ but a lot of it was working on figuring out how this person’s heart beat, and trusting that that existed because I think if we tried to force it in any way, it wouldn’t be authentic,” Pidgeon explained. “It’s normal people experiencing tragedy. … These are profound, incredibly multi-layered events that these people are going through, and yet they are so universal. … The death of your mother can bring about like a chain reaction. And I was so grateful to have Kathryn and Liz [Tigelaar, executive producer and creator], and every director behind us sort of encouraging us to bring your broken, messy heart.”
(Photo by 20th Century Fox)
Reese Witherspoon (pictured above) played author Strayed in the Certified Fresh 2014 film Wild. The Oscar-nominated movie followed Witherspoon’s Cheryl on a 1,100-mile solo hike as she worked to reset her life after spiraling following the death of her mother (Laura Dern). So while there are clearly similarities between the two projects (it’s worth noting Witherspoon and Dern are both EPs on the TV show), Hahn said Tiny Beautiful Things is meant to be its own story.
“Cheryl was very clear from the beginning that this not be an exact [reenactment]. That already happened in Wild,” Hahn said. “But Cheryl was there in the writers room — and I think Liz has even spoken to this — that [Cheryl] never prescribed anything. She was there as like just incredibly generous, open-hearted, deep support for the birthing of this series. So she didn’t ever insert; she was just there to support. And so there are certain aspects that were of Cheryl’s when asked for, or invited. But most of it is fictionalized. But there are certain things about her past — especially the young Clare — that are maybe closer to Cheryl.”
(Photo by Jessica Brooks/Hulu)
Tiny Beautiful Things is partially a show about a woman offering advice to others as she looks back on her life, but despite the episodes being around 30 minutes each, it covers a lot of ground in the present. And present Clare is trying to repair a rift she caused in her marriage after giving the money she and Danny saved for their daughter’s college fund to her brother to bail him out of a foreclosure.
For Plair, Danny isn’t solely upset about the fact that Clare didn’t speak with him before doling out the financial relief. It’s an act complicated by hierarchy in decision making.
“I think even on a deeper level, it’s like, not only did she put her brother before [Danny], she put her brother before our child, and I think that deeply affected me/him as well,” Plair said.
Clare’s decision unearths some deep-rooted personal insecurities for Danny — over his career as a music tutor — too.
“Already having some of those feelings of ‘less than’ because she is the breadwinner out of the two, and then [for her] to make a decision like that, it kind of compounds on how you already feel about it,” Plair added. “All of that on top of the fact that I got to pursue my dream, and it didn’t happen, so the person that I saw myself as being I’m not him; the person that you probably saw me as being, I’m not him in your eyes either. And now, all that on top of like, I feel disrespected and not appreciated and just kind of dismissed.”
(Photo by Erin Simkin/Hulu)
Those feelings power Danny’s approach to the couple’s marital counseling, which is often the comedic relief of the show, as the couple often try and one up each other in front of the therapist.
“In a sense, I feel like when I, as Danny, went into those therapy scenes, it was a sense of almost trying to prove the value that I brought to the relationship,” he explained. “And so, if I am the one that the therapist says is doing a good job or whatever, I now bring value or have some kind of value that I’m just not finding in myself.”
85%
Tiny Beautiful Things: Limited Series
(2023)
is now streaming on Hulu.
