Karin Slaughter takes reins on Peacock series of her book ‘The Good Daughter’
When ABC picked up the rights to Atlanta author Karin Slaughter’s catalog of bestselling “Will Trent” books, she chose to keep a financial stake but ceded creative control.
The result has been a big win: the police procedural drama, set and shot in metro Atlanta, is a staple on the ABC lineup as it enters Season 5.
But Slaughter took the opposite approach with Peacock’s limited series “The Good Daughter,” based on her 2017 novel. She wrote all six episodes and handled casting, locations and any creative shifts from the book.
The limited series debuts Thursday, anchored by Rose Byrne (“Bridesmaids,” “Platonic”) and Meghann Fahy (“The White Lotus,” “The Bold Type”) as two estranged sisters who suffered a traumatic home invasion as teenagers that killed their mom (Olivia Williams). A murder case reunites them 28 years later.
Slaughter said it was a new experience overseeing 200 to 250 people any given day during production last year. “I think I lost my mind,” Slaughter jokingly said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
But being the showrunner also gave her the power to shoot the series in metro Atlanta.
“They made us do the obligatory scouting in Toronto,” Slaughter said. “I just was such a little jerk. It’s just too different. The trees are different. The greenery is different. They don’t let people get poor and fat the way we do. I did a lot of complaining and horse-trading to do it in Georgia.”
Set in the small fictional town of Pikeville, “The Good Daughter” shot scenes in Lithonia, Stone Mountain, Locust Grove, Marietta and Griffin, to name a few.
“We were all over the place,” she said. “And we did a lot of B-roll in North Georgia. McCaysville is featured in the opening of Episode 2. You see that beautiful steel bridge. The town is really suffering now after the floods. It’s just really awful. I wrote the book up there. I used to have a cabin up in Epworth. I now have a place in Blue Ridge.”
She enjoyed the hunt for shooting locations. Her favorite was a home five minutes from Marietta Square that became the residence of Charlie, a smart but emotionally damaged attorney played by Fahy.
And owners of a home off Lawrenceville Highway happily let them pretend to burn their house down, courtesy of CGI flames.
“I still find it crazy that people are willing to rent their homes to studios and move out,” Slaughter said.
The interior of the show’s Pikeville courthouse is in Griffin, while the exterior is a church in Marietta.
“Movie and TV magic takes these locations and makes them seem like something they’re not,” she said. “But it’s firmly rooted in Georgia. You can see the kudzu in almost every shot.”
Slaughter, a prolific author, has written more than 25 novels and has sold more than 40 million books over a quarter century, according to HarperCollins.
Her entry into the TV world is a more recent development. In 2022, Netflix adapted her book “Pieces of Her” into a film starring Toni Collette set in Georgia, but to her chagrin, most of it was shot in Australia. She was happy that ABC’s “Will Trent” began filming in metro Atlanta in 2022 and has never left.
“I love the state so much,” said Slaughter, who grew up in Jonesboro and graduated from Morrow High School. “I could live anywhere I want but I love being here. I’m a Southern writer and I need to feel my roots when I write.”
Slaughter chose Fahy to play the likable but complex Charlie, who stayed in Pikeville while her older sister Samantha (Byrne) escaped, moving to New York to become a patent attorney.
“Meghann was like a Swiss Army Knife,” Slaughter said. “She could do anything. We did block shooting so we might do a scene from Episode 2 in the morning and Episode 6 in the afternoon and she made those turns beautifully.”
Byrne, who previously shot films like “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising” and “Instant Family” in metro Atlanta, was on Slaughter’s early wish list for the series. Fortunately, Byrne signed on, she said, not only as Samantha Quinn but as an executive producer.
“She’s so amazing,” Slaughter said. “She’s so thoughtful, she had really interesting ideas. She was really hands-on. It was nice having her as a partner.”
And together, Slaughter said, Fahy and Byrne “elevated my writing to a different level. Anyone who watches this will buy into them as sisters. They have really good chemistry.”
Emmy-winning Irish actor Brendan Gleeson (“Into the Storm”) played their quirky, larger-than-life defense attorney father Rusty, who would pop on a red clown nose in front of his daughters to lighten the mood.
“Brendan was indefatigable,” Slaughter said. “We’d wrap at 5 a.m. and he’d say, ‘Who wants tacos?’ He doesn’t have a stop button.”
Slaughter said adapting her book as a screenplay was a process.
“Structurally, I had to do a lot of moving around,” she said. “In the book, I can stay in the past a lot longer. It takes 100 pages before Sam comes in, but if you have Rose Byrne, you don’t want her coming in during the third episode.”
She also had to show, rather than describe. “You have to learn how to convey everything through dialogue,” she said. “Then you give it to someone like Olivia Williams or Brendan Gleeson and you realize they don’t have to say these lines. They can do it with a look.”