Amazon Prime has found great success with its book-to-screen adaptations over the years. Some of the best shows on Prime Video are based on novels or comic books, like Daisy Jones and The Six, Good Omens and The Boys. Now, they’re adding another adaptation into their library with The Power, which is based on Naomi Alderman’s book of the same name. While any show based on a book is hard to develop, The Power’s showrunner explained just how challenging it was to piece together the streamer’s latest series, and how they managed to piece together this complex and empowering story.
Raelle Tucker, The Power’s showrunner and executive producer, explained the complexities of this show about women around the world who find out they have electrical powers to CinemaBlend, noting just how hard the series was to piece together. She explained that there are six interweaving characters and storylines that she had to keep track of throughout production, and she had to work to make sure everything came together. The series’ boss said:
Well, my brain still hurts from the effort, I’ll put it to you this way: I’ll never recover. It was the biggest puzzle piece of my entire career. You have the six interweaving characters but also within each of those characters they have families or they have relationships right. So it’s, it’s this epic, epic group of characters, and yet, you need to introduce them in a way that the audience can follow and not only follow, but get really excited about and recognize parts of themself in.
She’s right, the show, and the book The Power (opens in new tab), follow multiple characters placed all over the world who are trying to understand their skeins (the organ where the power comes from) and why it has given so many women life-changing power. To break all the storylines down, the central plot points follow:
- A family of five living in Seattle who are dealing directly with the power as Margot (Toni Collette) works as the mayor to understand the power, and her daughter Jos (Auli’i Cravalho) learns to use her power.
- A Nigerian journalist named Tunde (Toheeb Jimoh – who you might recognize from the Ted Lasso cast) is traveling the world reporting about these women.
- A British girl named Roxy (Ria Zmitrowicz) gets the power, and is dealing with her aggressive family members and the toxic masculinity that surrounds her.
- Allie (Halle Bush) hears a mysterious voice in her head when she gets the power that leads her to a safe haven for women with the power.
- Tatiana Moskalev (Zrinka Cvitešić) is the wife of the president of Moldova, and a prisoner in a golden cage at the beginning of the series who learns she has the power.
Clearly, there is a lot to keep track of with this show, and as Tucker explained, finding ways to introduce these characters in a way that was easy to follow was a great challenge. However, she noted that she thinks it has paid off, pointing out the “structural challenge,” but also saying:
So, yes, it was a massive structural challenge. I think what I hope the audience feels is that while initially in the first few episodes, the characters are all obviously connected to each other, they are being drawn slowly toward each other. There’s this gravitational pull. These are going to be some of the most important people in this world. That’s who they are becoming, right? And so we want to get on board for a journey where eventually they’re going to connect with each other, sometimes explosive, dramatic ways, sometimes in quite lovely and endearing ways. But that’s part of the excitement of a show like this is watching how they connect over time.
While it was a massive challenge to weave all these seemingly disconnected stories together for the Prime Video series (opens in new tab), Tucker is right, seeing everything start to connect and make sense with all these various characters and their “gravitational pull” to each other is fascinating. It also clearly illustrates how every women uses their power differently based on their life experiences, worldviews and upbringing.
To see how Tucker and her team connected all these stories and adapted Naomi Alderman’s book, you can check out The Power with an Amazon Prime subscription, and make sure you stay tuned to the 2023 TV schedule as new episodes of the series drop every Friday.