There are many series that have an impressive ability to leave us in pain while leaving us in tears. “had made”Netflix’s new mini-series, which debuted on October 1, aims to create this mix of emotions among all the viewers, not to leave them indifferent.
The story was inspired by a book written by Stephanie Land: “Made: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive”. In the Netflix miniseries, Alex (Margaret Qualley), a 25-year-old mother coming out of a physically and mentally abusive relationship with Sean (Nick Robinson), ex-boyfriend and father of daughter. maddy, (Raelia Neva Whitet) They are only two years old and, for the first time (but not the last) in their lives, they will both be homeless.
to the problem is the fact that Alex’s mother (Andie McDowellDealing with an as yet undiagnosed bipolar disorder became a heavy burden on Alex and her granddaughter, not only because of her mental illness, but also because she is quite a narcissist.
Over the course of seven episodes of about an hour, we see them jumping from shelter to shelter, from abusive house to abusive house, and at one point they return to the caravan from which they fled. “I was going to a place that showed I was addicted, dirty, or so bad that I needed a forced collection and urine test. Being poor was like living in poverty, living on parole – living crime here There is a lack of means of living”, the author wrote in an excerpt from the book.
Family.
The miniseries also tries to do something that not many people dare: make us root for abusive ex-boyfriends. That’s because, as we’ve come to know, Sean deals with his own problems too. The father tries his best to get rid of his addiction, as well as take care of the family in his own way. His aggressive attitude stems from his upbringing in his childhood, also quite abusive. Fearing losing both his girlfriend and daughter, the character allows himself to be controlled by emotions, sometimes becoming physical. When he punched the wall, Alex decided to go with his daughter while her father was sleeping.
To support his daughter, Alex takes a job as a domestic help, while seeking any help from the government – help that is often not enough to survive.
“After paying the bills, I usually only had $20 for the rest of the month. No matter how hard he worked, it never seemed to be enough. I can’t seem to get enough. It was my existence, while I cleaned up to make others look perfect,” Stephanie Land, real-life Alex, on her website.
Difference between miniseries and real life
“In January 2008, I ran away from an abusive relationship. Then I moved to a shelter with my nine-month-old daughter”, the author said on her website. So with this short rendition it’s possible to see a big difference between the story that inspired “Sport” and the Netflix mini-series While the streaming giant is two years old in Maddie’s production, the baby was just nine months old in real life. His name also changes, and Stephanie Land’s daughter is called Emilia or Mia.
The troubled relationships we’ve seen in Netflix’s new mini-series are also in some ways different from reality. In “Criada”, Alex and Sean cross paths for the first time after an open mic night, meeting in real life Stephanie and Jamie (who is her father’s name) when the writer returns home after a shift from the night at the bar. went where he worked. “Our relationship had a definite purpose, each of us helping each other reach the goal of giving up our land,” the author writes in his autobiography.
Four months after meeting Jamie, she revealed that she was pregnant, and that’s when the conflict began. “The sympathy he showed me when he encouraged me to terminate the pregnancy completely changed when I told him I didn’t plan on doing that. I’ve only known Jamie for four months, and The anger and hatred he showed towards me was appalling,” he revealed.
Stephanie and Mia.
Alex’s family life also differs from reality, which has been replaced with more engaging and more content for entertainment production. In “Criada” Alex ran away from home to live with his mother. In real life, this would be impossible as Stephanie’s mother lives across the ocean in the UK. He then went to live with his father, but left again when that too turned violent. However, this change was highlighted by the international media when the cast of the series was announced, because the mother-daughter relationship we see on Netflix also happens in real life. That’s because Margaret Qualley (Alex) is the daughter of Andie McDowell (the character’s mother).
In a conversation with “TV Insider,” McDowell said that in addition to being Qualey’s mother, she drew other inspirations for the character she played: “My mom was diagnosed with schizophrenia after birth. So it was complicated, My education. And I had other personal relationships, including mental illnesses that Margaret knew about.”
While some writers may be offended by these minor changes, given that this is such a personal story, Stephanie doesn’t mind. On the contrary, the author also thinks that “Criada” lived up to the story of his life. “Throughout this whole process of leaving my story in the hands of strangers, I forced myself to rely on them to judge. And so he did. That’s because they were really interested in learning, and used their own experiences to really understand what it’s like to be unsure about food, work, and housing,” Stephanie Land shared on Instagram did.
Where is Stephanie these days?
Unlike many others, Stephanie’s story had a happy ending. After constantly moving homes (where the mother and daughter became infected with mold), Stephanie managed to enroll in a creative writing course at the University of Montana. He graduated in 2014 and began his career as a freelance writer.
Before releasing the bestseller that brought him fame in 2019, Land wrote texts for various media such as “Vox”. In fact, it was thanks to a publication on this site that Stephanie gained the attention of a literary agent, thus enabling the publication of the book. In addition, the author also received an award at the Center for Community Change.
Nowadays, the writer already has a fairly stable life with her husband Tim Faust. Now they have four children and two dogs.
On Instagram, she shares many pictures with her family and also takes the opportunity to talk about all those who, unlike her, continue to live in inhumane conditions.
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