A key creative choice made in adapting Apple TV’s new series Imperfect Women led to work for local crews in Los Angeles — all thanks to Kerry Washington.
Washington, Elisabeth Moss and Kate Mara teamed on Tuesday to debut a first-look at Imperfect Women during Apple TV’s press day at Santa Monica’s Barker Hangar. The trio joined showrunner, creator and executive producer Annie Weisman, who moderated their panel in front of 300 journalists, influencers and content creators, in what marked the first lengthy chat about the eight-episode series. It debuts with the first two on March 18, followed by new episodes every Wednesday through April 29.
Moss kicked things off by confirming that she read the book a few years back and was inspired to develop it into a series due to its rich characters and thriller-like plot. “I fell in love with the idea of an accurate, truthful, raw and vulnerable representation of real female friendship,” said Moss, who optioned the book with Lindsey McManus via their production company Love & Squalor Pictures. They both executive produced the series. “What really drew me to it was the idea of being able to talk about female friendship in a way that maybe isn’t often done. And to talk about the harder parts of it, the beauty of it, the wonderful things about it, the things that are irreplaceable, but also the things that are also a little darker and the secrets that develop, especially over a friendship that lasts 20-something years.”
The series is based on Araminta Hall’s novel of the same name, published in hardcover on Aug. 4, 2020. The novel, which is set in England, focuses on the bond of three best friends, Nancy, Eleanor and Mary, who have been close for more than 20 years after meeting at Oxford. Their lives are turned upside down when Nancy is murdered. The investigation faces some setbacks as Eleanor and Mary wrestle with their grief as dark secrets surface, revealing how little they actually knew Nancy, and one another.
In the adaptation, Moss plays Mary, Washington is Eleanor and Mara stars as Nancy. Moss said that Hall was incredible to work with during the adaptation process as she was “super supportive and embracing” of everything from casting to creative choices. One of those key decisions came when they decided to switch the location from England to Southern California.
“It’s such an exciting place to tell a story like this because when we think about Los Angeles, we think bright sunshine, bright lights, glamour, and beauty,” Washington explained. “And then there is this other kind of dark underbelly and long history, where things are not, like, new and fabricated, they’re grounded and older, and there’s a richness to the culture and the history here.”
But the switch had bigger implications beyond enhancing the story. “To be able to shoot here after the fires last year was so meaningful to the city and meaningful to us and our crew,” Washington continued. Moss then interjected to give all the credit to Washington, who also executive produced the series through her Simpson Street banner alongside Pilar Savone.
“Kerry deserves the credit for that choice. She brought up L.A., and it was obviously creatively very exciting, but I think meant a lot to us to bring some work here, and not only use all the beautiful places, but to use these incredible crews. It’s really thanks to Kerry that we ended up coming here.”
Los Angeles came up more than once during Apple TV’s press day, which featured film and television previews of the streamer’s 2026 releases. Of a total of 17 panels, nine of those projects were filmed in California including Jonah Hill’s film Outcome starring Keanu Reeves, Cameron Diaz and Matt Bomer, the series Lucky starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Timothy Olyphant, Sugar starring Colin Farrell, The Dink starring Mary Steenburgen and Jake Johnson, the new season of Shrinking, McG’s Way of the Warrior Kid starring Chris Pratt, the series Margo’s Got Money Troubles starring Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer and Nicole Kidman, and the Jennifer Garner-starrer The Last Thing He Told Me.
The roster of shows is a bright spot amid a downturn in local production. Last month, Luminate released its annual report that showed, in its words, a “staggering” 24 percent drop year-over-year in major scripted film and TV projects shooting in Los Angeles. Its six-year look at the data illustrates a long, mostly downward line for production in L.A. as other major locales take market share. The blows are often connected to the COVID-19 pandemic and the dual labor strikes that hit Hollywood. Then came the fires in January 2025.
“We were making [Lucky] in the aftermath of the L.A. fires, and I think we were one of the first shows that really got going after that,” Taylor-Joy said during her panel. “And just the sensation of pride and love that our cast and our crew had every single day going into work and how grateful we were that we all had something that we could focus on and try and get back to the community in that way. That was really magical.”
L.A. got the most play during a preview of the second season of Sugar. That panel featured star and executive producer Farrell in a chat moderated by his best friend and new Sugar co-star Shea Whigham. The show centers on Los Angeles’s iconic private detective and film connoisseur John Sugar, Farrell, and finds him returning for a new case to track the troubled older brother of an up-and-coming local boxer. As the investigation expands into a city-wide conspiracy with sinister intentions, Sugar is forced reckon with himself to find how far he’ll go to do what’s right.
“I just love playing this character,” Farrell admitted. “I love Los Angeles. It took me a while to fall in love with the city, but over the last 23 years of living here, I have grown to love it more and more and more. It never makes sense to me as a city; it’s so multifaceted, it’s so cross cultural. If you want to be a surfer, you can be a surfer, an economist, a rocker, an artist, a graffiti artist.”
Farrell continued by saying that Los Angeles has “such personality” but is “not really exposed too much” these days in television and film. “Most shows and most films, some that are even set here, take place elsewhere. So, to shoot on the streets of LA and have it as a character in [the show] was something that drew me back and got me just as excited about the second year as I was about the first [season].”
Sugar’s season two debuts on Apple TV on June 19.
