‘The Five-Star Weekend’ Boss on Changes From Book, Doing More Seasons

During this weekend in Nantucket, Brooke decides to leave her husband, Charlie, amid his workplace misconduct allegations. At the same time, she experiences a sexual awakening, realizing she may have been attracted to women all along. How did you approach the exploration of her sexuality? Do you feel your approach differed from the source material?

I’m a straight lady. I ended up having a mostly queer writers’ room, which is great, so I had a lot of help there. We had a lot of really interesting conversations, because queer people aren’t a monolith. It’s not like, “Oh, every time a woman comes out late in life, it’s going to be the same.” But we talked a lot about how women go around envying each other and admiring each other.

So when women come out later in life, there’s this feeling of, “Every time I loved or was obsessed with that woman, is it because I was attracted to her?” I think it’s kind of different for men. So we talked a lot about that, how she spent her whole life feeling less than and trying to be other people, trying on other personalities. We see that externalized through her clothes. And it’s not as simple as, “Do I want to kiss girls?” It’s like, “Wait, a core piece of my identity, this latching onto other women and wanting to be them — is that a part of this searching and longing that I’ve never had a name for?”

With Charlie, I’ve been in relationships like this earlier in my life that I thankfully got out of, but there’s this co-dependency that keeps you from seeing and confronting the truth, kind of like with Hollis and Matthew. It’s so scary and so life-rocking that you choose not to see. You wake up every day, and you make the choice. So I think, for her, we just wanted to try — and I hope to God we succeeded — and slow it down a little bit so it’s not by the end of the weekend like, “I’m gay!” It’s just like, “Oh my gosh, I’m giving myself permission to step out of this box that I’ve created for myself. What does that mean?” I hope we get to do more seasons of it, and the way that we set it up is not like, “In Season 2, Brooke’s a lesbian!” She’s just thinking in a new way.