That element of the show was crafted before 2020 turned everything upside down, prompting the writers to re-examine their work in the midst of the greater health crisis raging outside. That their protagonist, Hazel, feels not just trapped in her marriage but literally trapped in her luxurious, AI-powered home seemed prescient, as the production filmed some of its episodes in the midst of the pandemic. Hazel’s father, played by Ray Romano, finds companionship in a sex doll. In developing the series, Lee and Nutting shaped a narrative around the ways that modern technology can seem like an answer to loneliness, albeit an imperfect one. “Hazel and Byron are two people who are really pretending to be someone that they aren’t, even when they’re alone with one another.”
“So much of the show is really peeling back the layers between public appearance and even persona within relationships,” Nutting says. While the eccentric, domineering Byron is mostly seen through flashback in the book, his character is brought to the forefront for the series, a decision meant to add complexity to his villainy. The novel was heavily centered on Hazel’s perspective, but the TV adaptation had to get out of her head - a little ironic, given that the implanted chip allows a direct view into her brain. Those were the kinds of things that we really wanted to dig into.” “I think the big difference there with what that means, ‘using a female lens,’ is that while the sci-fi aspect of it is the backdrop and is what’s exciting about it, ultimately what this show is about is relationships and a woman’s journey in finding her identity and exploring intimacy.
“We wanted to tell a sci-fi story through a female lens,” says Lee, who calls this series “one of the greatest creative experiences” she’s ever had. The technology visualized on-screen seems at once futuristic - the Gogol complex is a series of virtual reality cubical hubs, and Byron can see everything Hazel sees through the chip in her brain - and yet not quite so far off in an age of smart speakers and remote workplaces. The HBO Max series, from Paramount Television Studios, centers on Cristin Milioti as Hazel Green, a woman who discovers that her controlling tech billionaire husband, Byron Gogol (Billy Magnussen), has implanted a chip in her brain that tracks her whereabouts and her emotions. Nutting wanted to explore the themes of “technology, love, relationship, surveillance and divorce… on a really fun and entertaining and suspenseful visual scale.” In adapting her sci-fi novel “ Made for Love” for television, author Alissa Nutting worked with showrunner Christina Lee to bring to the screen some fantastical elements, like simulated beaches so convincing that they’re indistinguishable from the real thing.īut the crux of the story is an analog one: an examination of who you are when you’re in a relationship - and who you are when no one else is watching.
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