Where to Watch Rose Byrne’s ‘The Good Daughter’ on Peacock
Rose Byrne and Meghann Fahy star as estranged sisters in The Good Daughter, a six-part limited series streaming on Peacock. Byrne says her on-screen limp left her unable to walk for nearly a week, and Fahy describes a heat-struck finale shoot in Atlanta.
Where to watch Rose Byrne’s new show: "The Good Daughter," a six-part limited series starring Byrne and Meghann Fahy, is streaming now on Peacock. It adapts Karin Slaughter’s crime novel of the same name.
Byrne and Fahy play estranged sisters Samantha and Charlotte. As girls, they witnessed the brutal killing of their mother, Harriet, known as "Gamma" and played by Olivia Williams. The attack left Samantha with physical disabilities and both sisters deeply scarred.
The story
Samantha (Byrne) is a New York patent lawyer. She returns to her hometown of Pikeville to help her father, the infamous defense attorney Rusty, played by Brendan Gleeson, after a teenager is charged with murder.
Charlotte (Fahy), also a criminal defense lawyer, was one of the first people at the crime scene.
The sisters "just miss each other a lot in their lives," Fahy said. Both carry childhood trauma that "manifested in them quite differently," she explained.
"Sam went very, very, very far away, and Charlie stayed exactly where she was," Fahy said.
A limp that lingered
Byrne, 47, said the role took a physical toll long after filming ended. She and a trainer built Samantha’s limp together.
"I have this limp in the show, and I still have a bad back from doing this limp," Byrne said. After the show wrapped, she added, "I couldn’t walk for nearly a week because my back went out. And I still have a twitch."
She called it "truly unexpected" and said she had not thought it would live on. "I threw my back out, and it still sometimes seizes up."
Heat on set
Fahy, 36, faced a different problem. The series filmed in Atlanta during the summer, and the finale shoot was brutal.
In a scene where she and Byrne stand outside together, it was "so unbelievably hot that it was actually hard to speak," Fahy said. The scene had a lot of dialogue, and the actors struggled to remember their lines.
Slaughter and the cast
Slaughter is the creator, writer and executive producer of the Peacock series. She has written more than 25 novels, including the Will Trent books that inspired the ABC crime drama. That show returns January 5 at 8 p.m. ET/PT. Her novel "Pieces of Her" is streaming on Netflix.
She called Fahy and Byrne the right actors for her characters. "It’s the ultimate flattery as a writer to have these brilliant actresses deliver my words so perfectly," Slaughter said.
On the family at the center of the story, she said: "This is a family who talks all the time, but they never say the things they need to say."
Fahy and Byrne had not met before the project. Both live in Brooklyn, so they got together before Fahy left for Atlanta. "It was the easiest connection ever," Fahy said.
"We both use humor as a way of connection," Byrne said of her costar.
