‘Fleishman Is In Trouble’ Examines A Troubled Marriage Using A Unique Shifting Perspective

Drawn to a story about a universal fear, Claire Danes says that the series Fleishman is in Trouble explores topics that that include, ‘how well do you truly know your most intimate partner? And how well do you know yourself?’

“I just love exploring this marriage and other relationships that surround it and kind of mirror it,” says Danes of the story and her character’s journey. “And I think that anxiety about that potential alienation within very close proximity is spooky and tragic. They’re all wrestling with the big stuff and have to go through a lot of discomfort, but, maybe at the end, they’re a little closer to their truth with themselves and each other, therefore, a little closer to each other.”

At its core, the series is about Toby Fleishman, a 41-year-old doctor who’s presently involved in a bitter divorce with his wife Rachel, a successful talent agent in New York. One day, Rachel drops their children, 11-year-old Hannah and 9-year-old Solly, at Toby’s house while he’s sleeping and takes off. Suspicions peak when Rachel doesn’t respond to texts or calls in the following weeks. The story, narrated by Toby’s college friend Libby, follows their lives over this period and examines the events that led to the breakdown of their 14-year-marriage, as well as reflections of Libby’s own life.

From the novel by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Fleishman is in Trouble deals with the themes of gender roles, marriage, divorce, online dating, midlife crises, and class anxiety.

Danes stars as Rachel with Jesse Eisenberg at Toby, and Lizzy Caplan as Libby. Sarah Timberman and Susanna Grant serve as executive producers with Brodesser-Akner as writer/showrunner on the series.

To prep for playing a sparring married couple, Eisenberg and Danes say that they spent some time together prior to filming. “We all had a couple of dinners, which [were] very helpful. Just getting a sense of each other and breaking bread literally and developing a teeny, tiny bit of trust,” explains Danes.

She adds, “We had a couple of rehearsals. They were very brief, but they were effective.” In addition to this, she says that the duo did some writing exercises assigned to them by two directors of the series. “They gave us these pretty provocative prompts.”

And then there was a game of dodgeball between the two, admits Danes.

“They wanted to physicalize that sense of combativeness,” she explains. “I know it was contentious, but it was actually kind of joyful.”

Eisenberg evaluates the onscreen relationship, saying, “The characters have dozens and dozens of arguments, but it’s really the same argument. Probably like any other fraught relationship, you’re having the same argument in different ways with different words and under different circumstances.”

The unique way the story is told factors heavily into the narrative, says Eisenberg. “I think the interesting thing for me and Claire was that our characters are viewed from each other’s perspectives. So, when [Rachel] is viewed from [Toby’s] perspective, she appears ambitious to a fault, vindictive, negligent, and then when the show flips perspectives and you see me from her point of view, you have similar feelings towards me.”

He points out that it was challenging for the actors because, “Sometimes we would do scenes simultaneously from different perspectives.”

One concept explored in the series is the idea that the only way to get someone to listen to a woman is to tell her story through a man.

About this Danes offers, “What’s particularly fascinating about the story is you have two people who are putting the children under great stress, and I think we’ve been conditioned to condemn the woman and forgive the man, right? And that is so subtly demonstrated here, and then it’s not until the very end that we realize how skewed our understanding of the story is — because we’ve only heard a particular side of it.”

She goes on to say, “Women often are indulged in stories up until a certain point, and I think how you end a story is very revealing about how courageous you’re going to be in terms of talking about what it is to be female.”

What happens at the conclusion of Fleishman in in Trouble, Dane says, is, “pretty radical and wonderful and rare.”

Caplan adds, “This whole show is just like gray area and nuance. Nobody is all the way good and nobody is all the way evil. There are no heroes. There are no villains.”

Timberman agrees, offering that the series is, “bursting with humanity and insight and a voracious appetite for life and [has] uniquely honest portrayals of friendship and marriage, and it defies cliché or categorization.”

‘Fleishman is in Trouble’ airs on Hulu with the first two episodes premiering on Thursday, November 17th, releasing weekly after that.