The Better Sister is a new thriller series from showrunners Olivia Milch and Regina Corrado. Adapted from the 2019 novel of the same name by Alafair Burke, the series tells the story of two estranged sisters who come back together after the murder of one of their husbands. Those sisters, Nicky and Chloe, are played respectively by Elizabeth Banks and Jessica Biel, with Chloe’s husband Adam (Corey Stoll) the unfortunate victim of the crime.

ScreenRant’s The Better Sister review favorably compares the series to Gone Girl, praising its twists and turns as much as it highlights "magnificent performances” by its ensemble cast. That cast includes Gabriel Sloyer as Jake Rodríguez as Ethan, a colleague of Adam, Maxwell Donovan as Adam’s son Ethan, and Gloria Reuben as a lawyer named Michelle Sanders. Together, they bring the tense story of The Better Sister to life, fleshing out the world around Chloe and Nicky.

Across two separate interviews, ScreenRant’s Joe Deckelmeier spoke with The Better Sister showrunners Olivia Milch and Regina Corrado and actors Gloria Reuben, Gabriel Sloyer, and Maxwell Donovan. The showrunners discussed working with Elizabeth Banks and Jessica Biel for the series, and even weighed in on the possibility of a second season. Reuben, Cloyer, and Conovan revealed how they related to their characters, and what was exciting for them to play.

Olivia Milch & Regina Corrado Explain The Better Sister’s Themes Of Family

“Nobody Is All Good Or All Bad’

“Family is at the heart” of The Better Sister, according to showrunner Olivia Milch. This is true in front of the camera, of course, but also behind it, where Milch said she and her co-showrunner Regina Corrado “are like family.” “We were lucky enough to learn from the same place,” she continued, “and to have that shorthand, to have that same language, to have the same frame of reference in many instances–you can’t put into words what it does to you in of being creative partners.” Regina Corrado weighed in, too:

“We just want the work to be good. We’re not there to tell each other lies or to say pretty things to each other, and that’s hard to find.”

Their relationship sounds like the opposite of the one between Chloe and Nicky, although Milch pointed out that “[With] these sisters, nobody is all good or all bad. You’re trying to be better than your worst self, and that's true for everybody … [including] every single character in our ensemble, and the fullness and richness of the past that they were bringing to a given moment–I think that’s what we feel makes the universe of the show feel so rich and textured.”

About the sisters, Corrado said “they’re so different, and yet there’s that connection of that childhood past together. Then, you put them out in the world and you think, ‘Well, are there answers in their parents?’ That was so fun for us, to go back and try to figure it out, and who re what, and what’s real, and really, nothing’s real. They discover that as well.”

Meet The Better Sister’s Ensemble Cast

From Lawyers To Friends To Family

Maxwell Donovan, Gloria Reuben, and Gabriel Sloyer play hugely important roles in The Better Sister. As Chloe and Adam’s son Ethan Mcintosh, Maxwell Donovan had to guide his character through immense grief and shifting dynamics. “It was such a unique and fun thing to go through as an actor,” Donovan said, “I was given my starting point and my ending point, and Regina and Olivia … gave me the tools I needed and let me run with it.” Donovan said Ethan was “very underwater” and “he’s got all these traumas and this immense stuff boiling under the surface.”

As Ethan navigates his own feelings, said Maxwell, he finds himself becoming closer with his estranged aunt Nicky. “It was really interesting to get to explore that … when we meet Ethan as a character, he’s completely dependent and reliant on his mom, Chloe, and as you see the ripple effect of this tragedy in his life … he has no choice but to shift where his shoulder to cry on is.”

“If he refuses to budge or bend, it would break him.”

“It’s really a beautiful relationship to explore,” Donovan said, continuing, “how this newfound relationship with Nicky is sending [its] effects through not only his life, but his mom’s life and everyone around him.”

Another character important to the lives of Nicky and Chloe is the defense attorney Michelle Sanders, played by Gloria Reuben. “She’s a powerhouse,” Reuben said of her character. “Her job, for the most part, is to be a defense attorney for underprivileged teenagers, but she does this as a favor to her friend. Right out of the gate, she sees that this is not going to be a straight situation … right from the start, secrets and lies.” Reuben also teased how Michelle handles such a thing: “‘You want to win this? I’ve got to know everything.’”

“That’s a great thing about Michelle. These women are going to do what they’re going to do. She’s not going to put up with it.”

Gabriel Sloyer’s Jake is one of the characters with the strongest connection to Chloe’s murdered husband, Adam, who has ties both to Adam’s family and his professional world. To play that dynamic, Sloyer turned to his own experience. “My family is Latin,” he said, “we’re extremely emotional. It’s telenovelas all the time with your siblings–you’re living in one. But I’ve got a foot in either world. One world is a little drier and a little more like, ‘Okay, this is the law, this is what's happening’ … and the other one is, ‘My feelings have their own logic.’’

“I think that was a huge draw for me,” Sloyer shared, adding, “Let’s put this beautiful, delicious relationship right in the middle of [the] law, and right and wrong, and crime and punishment, and everything else that is in the American penal system.” As for Jake’s general way of being, Sloyer called him “the shoulder to cry on,” though he added, “it’s a complicated shoulder. I think when you’re grieving, there’s a lot of feelings that are coming up.”

“You’ve got needs and urges,” Sloyer continued, “sometimes unconscious even to yourself. And Jake is there, for better or for worse. Use him, abuse him, go with it, be sincere with it, do whatever you want to do with it. He’s there to mix in with the watercolors of the feelings that are going on.”

Jessica Biel & Elizabeth Banks’ Performances Explained

“They Look Exactly Like Sisters”

The Better Sister hinges on the performances of Jessica Biel and Elizabeth Banks as estranged sisters. Thankfully, “they’re both such incredible performers,” said Olivia Milch. “They’re also both producers,” she added, “so they brought such a level of professionalism, of competency, of awareness, of the totality of the project, and a self-sufficiency. They knew what they needed and they knew what they needed from us … We were jokingly saying it’s like we first saw them side by side and we thought, ‘We’re brilliant.’” They look exactly like sisters.”

“There are so many surprises in these performances for fans of theirs.”

Could The Better Sister Season 2 Happen?

The Better Sister was envisioned as a limited series, but positive reviews from critics are sure to stir up some discussion about the possibility of a follow-up. When asked if she’d like the story to continue, Olivia Milch said the following: “Absolutely. We cared really deeply about having a super satisfying ending for the series and wanting an audience to feel like they knew what happened … but we absolutely love these characters and we would feel incredibly lucky [to continue]. We think about them all the time.”

“This morning we were thinking about things that could have happened to them, so we would certainly be very happy to keep going.”

“We kept living with them through editing,” Regina Corrado added. “These guys all had a break, and a life, and we’re still in there.”

Check out our other The Better Sister interviews:

• Elizabeth Banks & Jessica Biel
• Corey Stoll, Kim Dickens, Lorraine Toussaint & Bobby Naderi

The Better Sister is out now on Prime Video.

Source: Screen Rant Plus