How Apples Never Fall Creator Kept The Audience (And The Cast) Guessing

This post contains minor spoilers for "Apples Never Fall."

Author Liane Moriarty writes twisty thrillers centered on complex female experiences within distinct socio-cultural settings, and her books have proven to be perfect for small-screen adaptations. Moriarty's "Nine Perfect Strangers," which was adapted by Hulu, explored themes of loss, alienation, and the search for meaning, while her "Big Little Lies" got the grand HBO adaptation treatment with two brilliant seasons (and the possibility of season 3 being still up in the air). Her latest work, "Apples Never Fall," has now been adapted into a brand new Peacock series of the same name developed by Melanie Marnich, who saw immense potential in translating Moriarty's challenging material for television.

Marnich experienced some issues during the adaptation process, as she considers Moriarty's book "an embarrassment of riches" where it was "really, really hard to figure out what served the momentum of the show and what served the mystery" (via TIME). Several changes were made to strike a balance between these impulses, including the setting, the backstory of the characters, and the climactic twist toward the end, which is slightly altered to better serve the dramatic tension of the series. Apart from making these alterations, Marnich made it a point to keep everyone, including the cast and those acquainted with Moriarty's book, guessing the motivations of every character who emerges as a potential suspect in this gritty mystery series.

The catalyst of "Apples Never Fall" is the sudden disappearance of matriarch Joy Delaney (Annette Bening), which immediately shifts suspicion on her husband Stan (Sam Neill) and children. Every character seems to have reasons to be involved in this potential crime, allowing Marnich to thwart audience expectations and introduce subtleties into the story that are a departure from the book.

While Moriarty's book is filled to the brim with twists and red herrings, Marnich told IndieWire the show's writing team had to come up with added impetus for characters to be potential suspects, as it helped underline the complicated familial dynamic of the Delaneys and evoke "a sense of progress":

"You didn't want to just go, 'Oh, it's Stan,' or 'Oh, it's Savannah' [...] We needed to always offer alternate theories, alternate suspects, alternate reasons, in the writing of the show. There was a really fun narrative sleight of hand that had to keep working at all times to keep that lens of suspicion moving to have a sense of progress."

The intention here is to ensure that the mystery never feels stale; just when audiences think they have it figured out, "there is a surprise" that challenges their assumptions and deepens the web of mysteries. "The pacing of those kinds of moments was to make the show have the same page-turner energy of the book," Marnich added, and this complex ambiguity regarding character motivations was also shared by cast members. Sam Neill spoke with IndieWire about Stan's contrarian impulses:

"The thing about Stan is he means well. He's not all together volatile and he can be really stupid. But he can also be quite funny, actually. The problem with people like Stan, the sort of alpha males, is that anything can happen. All of his children are damaged in one way or another by Stan, but Stan would say that he's done the best he can, which is sort of true."

This "anything can happen" sentiment elevates "Apples Never Fall" into a tense whodunnit with profound emotional layers. You can stream it on Peacock, where the series premiered on March 14, 2024.