Lessons in Chemistry is not based on a true story, but the Apple TV+ series is inspired by author Bonnie Garmus’ career and her mother’s generation. Set in the 1960s, Brie Larson stars as Elizabeth Zott, an aspiring scientist who was fired from the lab that she worked for. She isn’t sure what is next for her career before she gets an offer to host a cooking show on television. She accepts the offer and decides to use this spot on television to help teach women a lot more than just how to make homemade recipes.
The miniseries explores the harsh truths of gender discrimination, especially in fields like the sciences, and sees Elizabeth find a way to work around these gender biases to open up a world of possibilities for housewives all over the country. Based on Bonnie Garmus’s best-selling novel of the same name, Lessons in Chemistry might be a work of fiction, both as a novel and a miniseries but it is rooted in the author’s personal life and the world in which her mother livedwhere women struggled to find equality.
What Was The Inspiration For Lessons In Chemistry?
Bonnie Garmus Based Elizabeth On Women From Her Mother’s Era In The 1960s
Lessons in Chemistry follows Elizabeth Zott and her life from a chemist to the role as a television host on a cooking show called Supper at Six. In the series, Elizabeth loses her job at the lab where she worked because she was pregnant. As a single mother, society also frowned upon her status. However, not to be deterred, she got the job on Supper at Six to support her family while also influencing her daughter and other mothers watching her show.
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While this was not based on real events, it was inspired by Garmus’ mother. She was a nurse in the 1960s and ended up as a housewife in the same era as the book and the miniseries. Garmus said she had her mother’s entire generation in mind when she wrote the book (via The Guardian):
“I created Elizabeth Zott in honour of her and all the other women whose dreams were sidelined by a society insisting they were incapable of becoming anything more than an ‘average housewife.’ My mother had been a nurse before having us four kids. She talked about it constantly and obviously missed it.”
Garmus ensured that she also used the historical obstacles women faced in the 1960s to show what Elizabeth had to deal with and overcome. Only a third of women worked outside the home in the 1960s, and almost all were single. Elizabeth had a fear of marriage and pregnancy because she thought it would interfere with her dreams, something many women had to deal with in this era.
Scriptwriter Elissa Karasik said Julia Child, Alma Kitchell, and Dione Lucas influenced this character.
Lessons in Chemistry also drew inspiration from the pre-Hollywood cooking shows. These programs aimed to show women how to be perfect, reliable wives and mothers. However, the miniseries and book turned this on its head when Elizabeth used the show to teach these things while also throwing in her lessons about being self-reliant and independent thinkers. Scriptwriter Elissa Karasik said Julia Child, Alma Kitchell, and Dione Lucas influenced this character type (via The New York Times).
What Parts Of Lessons In Chemistry Came From The Author’s Real Life?
Bonnie Garmus Has A Never Give Up Attitude
Bonnie Garmus also used some of her own life experiences to create Elizabeth’s character and her struggles. While Garmus was not a scientist like Elizabeth, as a novelist, her first book was rejected over 90 times before Lessons in Chemistry became a bestseller. Garmus said that she wanted to show her refusal to give up and accept rejection to reveal why Elizabeth became such a success story.
“There are all these roadblocks, especially a lot of societal and cultural roadblocks, to that. But don’t let someone’s rejection of your material or of you be the thing that guides you. Let you be the thing that guides you, that you decide your own future.”
What Was Changed From The Novel’s Story?
Calvin’s Death, Six-Thirty’s Breed, & Harriet Sloane’s Purpose
One big difference in the miniseries was the love story with a fellow scientist named Calvin (Lewis Pullman). In the Apple TV+ miniseries, Elizabeth falls in love with Calvinwho she worked with at the lab before being fired. The two realize that, while they love each other, getting married would not work for them. He buys her an engagement ring but never proposes, supporting her career aspirations. He then dies in an accident. The book has him hit by a bus, and the series has him run over by a police car.
Director Sarah Adina Smith said that when people read Lessons in Chemistrythey sometimes put it down and pick it up days after processing what they had read. She wanted to use the love story to fill that negative space (via L.A. Times). “I wanted this show to have that sense of negative space in the way that we shot it and let us just enjoy and get lost in the love story and really feel the eternity of those moments. So that once it’s over, we’re just as gutted as Elizabeth.“
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The other main differences focused mainly on Elizabeth’s life. The book starts with her as a depressed mother in 1961, and the series opens with her in the middle of her stardom before showing how she got there. Elizabeth’s dog, Six-Thirty, was a former bomb-sniffing dog in the book, but he was a Goldendoodle Elizabeth caught going through her trash in the miniseries. Harriet Sloane also had major changes in Lessons in Chemistrygoing from an older, unhappy woman to a younger, determined legal aide on Apple TV+.
- Release Date
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2023 – 2023-00-00
- Directors
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Sarah Adina Smith
