Elizabeth Olsen thought ‘Love and Death’ was a short fiction adaptation

Elizabeth Olsen is up and ready to scare and creep the hell out of us in her new miniseries, Love and Death. The series, which premieres today on HBO Max, is based on a true events that occurred in 1980. Elizabeth Olsen plays Candy Montgomery in the series, a Wylie, Texas resident accused of the brutal murder of her friend whose husband she was in an extramarital affair with.

At the time, the case received widespread coverage due to sheriff department’s direct involvement. However, Olsen wasn’t aware of the series or her character’s history when she took upon the script. Instead, she thought the entire account was adapted from a short fiction story. In a recent interview, Olsen revealed that nobody explained to her that the series Love and Death is a true story.

“No one clearly explained to me that it was a true story. So, I was thinking that it was based off of short fiction.”

Candy Montgomery was a Catholic homemaker who killed her friend Betty Gore in a confrontation that resulted from the latter’s discovery of the affair between her husband and Candy.

Interestingly, Olsen was shooting for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, another antagonistic role, when she received the script. She said that she received a casual offer, which she went through. It was only after talking to the series director and writer she learned the series was based on a real-life account. She told Variety,

“ I then talked to Leslie Linka Glatter [series director] and David E. Kelly [series creator, writer, and producer], who explained to me that it’s a true story.”

Olsen continued that she didn’t go off to Google to learn about other portrayals of her character. She just loved how her character was written for this particular series, which drove her to sign on to the project.

“I didn’t do any like, Googling, to see if there are other projects, you know, that have told this story before. I loved how David wrote the character. I loved the tone of the piece. It was something that was playful and interesting. I was looking for something that was a bit off-centered.”

Interestingly, there have been other portrayals and adaptations of the event in the past. The earliest dates back to the 1990 television film, A Killing in a Small Town, in which Barbara Hershey portrayed Candy Montgomery in the role. A more recent and quite critically well-received iteration of the character was played by Jessica Biel in the 2022 Hulu series Candy.

Though a true story, Love and Death is an adaptation of an examination into the case that shaped the book Evidence of Love: A True Story of Passion and Death in the Suburbs, penned by journalists John Bloom and Jim Atkinson.

Early reactions to Love and Death have been mixed, with outstanding praise for Olsen’s performance. Let’s see today how Elizabeth Olsen takes upon the role of a real-life culprit in this retelling of the grizzly murder.