'Firefly Lane' Is Loosely Based On *This* Person's Life

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Firefly Lane, which details the lifelong friendship of Tully Hart (Katharine Hiegl) and Kate Mularkey from their teenaged years in the 1970s, to motherhood and beyond, is now streaming its final episodes on Netflix. Cue *all* the tears because this one is going to make you sob. The show, which first premiered on the streaming platform in February 2021, and quickly captured a very dedicated audience.

If you've been an avid Tully and Kate fan since the beginning, you'll know that Season 2 picks up in a particularly sad territory: The two best friends are not on speaking terms, and Kate is also dealing with a cancer diagnosis. I won't give away too many spoilers (you can see some here, if you are interested), but the season may end on an even sadder note.

And, if you've already finished the series, you may be ruminating over whether this tale of friendship and loss is true. Don't worry, Women's Health has all the deets.

What story is Firefly Lane based on?

ICYDK, the Firefly Lane series is actually based on a book of the same name by authors Kristin Hannah.

The Firefly Lane book was originally published in 2008. The series' showrunner, Maggie Friedman, was excited to take on the Netflix project when she heard about the premise of the novel, according to TIME magazine. Friedman explained that friendships like the one between Kate and Tully are "what shape our lives."

“Your soulmate isn’t necessarily the person you marry or fall in love with,” she told TIME. “Maybe you’ll watch it, and afterward you’ll call your best friend and tell her you love her.”

Are Kate and Tully real people?

While some of the moments in Firefly Lane were inspired by Hannah's real life, the series' main characters are not entirely based on any real people. However, both are kinda sorta inspired by the author herself. In an interview with Netflix, Hannah explained that she wrote both characters slightly based on her own life experiences.

When the streaming platform asked if Hannah based Tully's character on herself, the author gave a very definitive answer. "No, I wish I were Tully. That would be more fun," Hannah told Netflix. "I am also Kate."

Is it based on a true story?

As the saying goes, you write from experience—and Hannah did unfortunately have a loss like the one featured in Firefly Lane. In fact, the author told Netflix she was inspired to begin writing Firefly Lane after her mother died from inflammatory breast cancer when she was 26 years old. She wrote Firefly Lane partly to work through that grief.

"I finally reached 40 and thought, Okay, it’s time for me to go in search of my mother, to try to understand who she was," Hannah told Netflix. "Many people would do therapy for this, but as a writer, I go into my own head and create her."

Hannah confirmed that a lot of the character of Kate is based on her mother, and who she imagined she was like throughout her life.

The show changes some details from the book.

If you've already watched the show and read the book, you may have picked up on this: Hannah said she wasn't entirely involved in the making of the Firefly Lane series. While Season 1 reportedly stays pretty close to its source material, Hannah confirmed to Netflix that some creative liberties were taken in Season 2.

"It’s kind of a strange thing to watch," Hannah told Netflix of the differences in the series. "But what they have done that I think is so important is [that] it’s still about female friendship. It’s still about Kate and Tully."

Is the story set in a real place?

A lot of Firefly Lane takes place in the Pacific Northwest, which is where Hannah spent a majority of her life, per UW Magazine. She also told the magazine that of all the novels she's written (which also include The Four Winds, Fly Away, and Wild), it is her most autobiographical one.

Tully and Kate's friendship is aspirational.

Hannah definitely took a lot of inspiration from her own life to create Firefly Lane, however she does not have a lifelong bestie. The author told Netflix that the friendship between Tully and Kate is what gives the story its "magic sauce."

"Most people don’t have that. You become friends with someone, and over time, like in a marriage, you both change, you go in different directions," Hannah told Netflix. "It takes work, it takes magic, it takes luck to find the person that is there with you through thick and thin your whole life."

So, there you have it. Tully and Kate might not have been real people, but they certainly take after Kristin Hannah's life. You can stream all of Firefly Lane on Netflix now.

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