Amy Adams may have five Oscar nominations, but it's still startling to watch the former Chanhassen Dinner Theatre actress and bubbly princess from "Enchanted" commit so deeply to her dark side in HBO's "Sharp Objects."
Adams plays Camille Preaker, a newspaper reporter forced to revisit her traumatic childhood when she returns to her hometown to investigate a string of killings.
Premiering Sunday, the miniseries is based on a novel by Gillian Flynn, who knows a few things about defying expectations. Her book "Gone Girl" became a movie sensation in 2014, galvanizing women hungry for a conniving antihero to call their own, while sending a shiver up the spines of callous men in the same way "Fatal Attraction" did three decades ago.
Flynn, 47, a Kansas City native and former TV critic for Entertainment Weekly, chatted last month by phone about finally seeing her debut novel come to the screen, with a former Minnesotan bringing her character to life.
Q: All three of your novels take place in the Midwest, as does your screenplay for the upcoming movie "Widows" with Viola Davis. Is that because it's a region you know or is the setting integral to the stories?
A: Probably more of the latter. It's an underused region for storytelling and it's kind of entertaining to play against type. People think of Midwesterners as kind of cute, ignoring the undercurrent of violence that has taken place there.
Q: Your Midwesterners are also deeply disturbed. Where does that come from? Is everything all right?
A: I'm OK. Thanks for asking. It comes from my imagination. Every person has demons. Women spend a lot of time bottling up rage, especially women of my generation.
