Lessons in Chemistry Team Breaks Down Harriet’s Major Diversion From the Book: ‘It Felt Like an Opportunity’

Claire Franken
·2 min read
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In Lessons in Chemistry’s two-episode premiere, a surprising star emerged: Aja Naomi King’s Harriet Sloane.

The Apple TV+ series, based on the eponymous 2022 novel by Bonnie Garmus, follows Elizabeth Zott (played by Brie Larson) as she works to become a scientist in Southern California during the patriarchal 1950s. Those familiar with the book know that Harriet’s role in the novel is a supporting one — she’s a neighbor who babysits Elizabeth’s daughter while Elizabeth pursues a career in chemistry. Harriet is described as older and though Garmus doesn’t explicitly say it, it’s implied that she is white. But the TV adaptation has reimagined Harriet as a young Black lawyer trying to protect her community from destruction, giving fans of the book a new story to uncover as new episodes release each Friday.

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Since the series is told “through the eyes of a white woman trying to have people see her worth in a white male dominated world,” expanding Harriet’s story “felt like an opportunity,” showrunner and co-executive-producer Lee Eisenberg tells TVLine.

By diving deeper into Harriet, Eisenberg says that the series can shed light on a story that the book missed — that “of a Black woman who has all the same constraints placed on her that Elizabeth does, but then compounded by the fact that she’s living in a completely racist society.”

How did the series go about inventing a character who wasn’t in the novel? They turned to history.

The real-life controversy surrounding the construction of the Santa Monica Freeway — the westernmost stretch of Interstate 10 — became Harriet’s central conflict. In the premiere, we watch Harriet formally oppose the freeway at a city council meeting as a community representative from the Adams Washington Committee.

“We learned the story of this association that, fictionally is led by Harriet, but in real life pushed back against this racist bureaucracy that was building the 10 freeway — and expanding it — and was going to destroy this Black community,” Eisenberg says.

Once the Lessons in Chemistry team discovered the story of the Los Angeles neighborhood, they couldn’t ignore it.

“We were horrified that we are from L.A., or we live here, and we did not know the history of Sugar Hill,” co-executive producer Sarah Adina Smith says. “We felt very compelled to try and bring that to screen through Harriet’s story.”

What do you think of Lessons in Chemistry’s reimagining of Harriet?

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