Elizabeth Olsen and Lesli Linka Glatter preview the 'American tragedy' at the center of Love & Death
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An affair between two Texans in 1980s suburbia turns deadly in Love & Death, the upcoming HBO Max miniseries based on the real-life murder of Betty Gore.
The story goes like this: Candy Montgomery, a dissatisfied housewife, began an affair with Allan Gore, husband of her friend and fellow congregant Betty. On a Friday the 13th in June of 1980, Montgomery — who ended the trysts months before that summer morning — swung by the Gore house in Wylie, a manicured suburb in Dallas, to pick up a swimsuit for Gore's daughter, who was set to spend the day with her children after swim practice. While there, Betty confronted her about the affair. Later that evening, Betty's body was discovered in her blood-soaked utility room with 41 ax wounds.
The bone-chilling murder and trial that followed serves as the basis of Love & Death, the latest TV adaption from David E. Kelley (Big Little Lies, The Undoing) that stars Elizabeth Olsen as the ax-wielding housewife. Premiering spring 2023, the series also stars Lily Rabe and Jesse Plemons as Betty and Allan Gore. It's a true-crime series, yes, but series director and executive producer Lesli Linka Glatter (Homeland, Mad Men) doesn't necessarily categorize it as such, instead calling it an "American tragedy."
Jake Giles Netter/HBO Max Jesse Plemons and Elizabeth Olsen in 'Love & Death'
"It's the dark side of the American dream," Glatter — who has always wanted to tell a story about her native Texas — tells EW. "Here is a young woman who gets married at 20 years old, and she's done everything right: She has the kids, she has the family, but she has a hole in her psyche that's a mile wide, and she makes a very bad choice on how to fill it." The series, she says, "looks at something that women, and I think men, went through as being products of their time; [they're] not going to dialogue about what's going on, but there's a deep disconnect between the public and private person and the feeling of emptiness."
Olsen agrees. "It's really about these women with the resources they have during this time, trying to make the best of the situation," she says. "There's this idea when you receive just a logline of a woman who kills another woman with an ax, who's a friend, and doesn't come clean about it . . . there's a part of people that want to label them with a personality disorder or a mental illness. It's actually more about the emotional conflict of this woman and the time she is living and less about playing something demonic."
Olsen loved that the story "wasn't leaning into this true-crime element, but [was] more about a profile of a woman with a set of really high-stakes circumstances," she says.
Let's be clear, though: Glatter and co. are not glossing over what transpired. "She did a horrible thing," the director and EP says of Montgomery. "But trying to understand everyone's emotional place of where they are was important to me. Betty is a complicated, layered character. She actually had a career, but she also was going through a lot of things of her own. I didn't in any way want to make her a villain in this. It's horrible what happened."
For research, production turned to Jim Atkinson and Joe Bob Briggs' book Evidence of Love: A True Story of Passion and Death in the Suburbs, which featured exclusive interviews with the Montgomery and Gore families, as well as the Texas Monthly two-part article "Love and Death in Silicon Prairie." Robert Udashen, one of Montgomery's trial attorneys, also served as an advisor — though the real Montgomery, now in her 70's and reportedly residing in Georgia, did not want to engage with the project.
The story similarly inspired another series released earlier this year, Robin Veith and Nick Antosca's Candy starring Jessica Biel and Melanie Lynskey. Olsen believes the continued fixation rests on the complexities of the human condition. "When we don't have answers to things and when things don't add up, we have a continual intrigue because it's about human behavior," she says. "It doesn't really matter if this happened 200 years ago, 40 years ago — when there's something that puzzles us about human behavior that we can't quite understand [and] don't have all the answers to, we find it interesting."
Glatter calls the upcoming iteration an emotional rollercoaster. "Nothing is as it appears to be," she teases. "Hopefully you will feel pulled in many directions in terms of your emotional ride here." She points to the political drama All the President's Men, centered on the Watergate scandal. "Not to compare this to that because the stories couldn't be more different," she says, but "we all know the end to that story. It's not a surprise, but every time I watch that film, I'm on the edge of my seat. So hopefully whether you know the end of the story or you don't, you will be with us for the ride."
Love & Death debuts on HBO Max in spring 2023.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story included confirmation that Candy Montgomery gave David E. Kelley and the production her blessing but representatives from HBO Max have clarified that Montgomery was not in contact with anyone associated with the series.
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