With a premiere set for this weekend’s Sundance Film Festival, Starz has rolled out the latest trailer for The Girlfriend Experience, showcasing Magic Mike star Riley Keough indulging in the titular, promiscuous lifestyle.
Pitched as an anthology series spun out from Steven Soderbergh’s 2009 drama of the same name, Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz wrote and directed all 13 episodes of the upcoming drama, which will hope to follow in the successful footsteps of fellow Soderberg’s fellow miniseries, The Knick.
For The Girlfriend Experience, though, today’s new slice of footage is yet more evidence that Kerrigan and Seimetz are serving up a much more complex and nuanced portrayal of its central character. Forget Sasha Grey’s call girl, Starz’s new drama orbits around Christine Reade (Keough), a character who prides herself on her ability to balance a law internship at a prestigious school and indulging in brief and fleeting sexual relationships.
Soderberg will produce the new interpretation of The Girlfriend Experience in its journey to the small screen, a role leveraged between the director and Philip Fleishman, Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz.
Attendees at the Sundance Film Festival will be able to get a taste of Starz’s The Girlfriend Experience tomorrow, January 23, ahead of its anticipated debut on the network come April 10.
For an overview of the plot, here’s the show’s official logline:
Christine Reade (Riley Keough) is a second year student at Chicago-Burnham Law School and a new intern at the prestigious firm of Kirkland & Allen. Working hard to establish herself at the firm, her focus quickly shifts when a classmate introduces her to the world of transactional relationships. Known as GFEs, they are women who provide “The Girlfriend Experience”—emotional and sexual relationships at a very high price. Juggling two very different lives, Christine quickly finds herself drawn into the GFE world, attracted to the rush of control and intimacy.
