【Writer's Bullpen (2009)】

Big Little Liesand Nine Perfect Strangersauthor Liane Moriarty is Writer's Bullpen (2009)getting the TV treatment once again, this time with an adaptation of her bestselling novel Apples Never Fall.

Coming to Peacock March 14, Apples Never Fall introduces us to the Delaneys, a family that seemspicture perfect but is actually teeming with dark secrets. With a cast including Annette Bening, Sam Neill, Alison Brie, and Jake Lacy, get ready for a tense family mystery — and lots of drama.

What's Apples Never Fall about? 

Tennis lovers and former coaches Stan and Joy Delaney (Sam Neill and Annette Bening) are all set for retirement. They've sold their tennis academy and have all the time in the world to spend with their four adult children (Jake Lacy, Alison Brie, Conor Merrigan-Turner, and Essie Randles). Whether all their children want to spend time with them is a different question entirely.

The entire Delaney family gets a shock when a wounded young woman named Savannah (Georgia Flood) shows up at Stan and Joy's door and becomes a part of their lives. She offers the retirees a welcome jolt to the system, but to the Delaney children, she seems like a much more sinister figure.

Apples Never Fall weaves between the past, including Savannah's arrival, and the present, after Joy mysteriously disappears. Will the Delaneys be able to find out what happened to her? And what family troubles might they unearth along the way?

The cast did serious physical training for the show.

Annette Bening (Nyad, 20th Century Women) and Sam Neill (Jurassic Park, Hunt for the Wilderpeople) are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Apples Never Fall's cast. Rounding out the Delaney family are Jake Lacy (The White Lotus, A Friend of the Family), Alison Brie (Community, GLOW), Conor Merrigan-Turner (Thai Cave Rescue), and Essie Randles (Speedway). In order for the actors to be able to believably portray lifelong tennis players, the cast underwent a month of training to prepare for the shoot. Coaches included former tennis player Sam Stosur, who won the 2011 US Open women's singles title and holds four Grand Slam titles in women's doubles.

"They were all so incredibly talented and so patient with those of us who do not play regularly," Lacy said at the Television Critics Association (TCA) winter press tour. "Connor and I continued playing on the weekends. It was a blast."

Brie had a bit of a different experience with the training, telling the TCA, "I'm not very good. They said, 'You know what, you don't play very much in the show. We'll put a ball in digitally, why don't you just learn choreography?' And I said, 'Yes!'" 

Bening also got the opportunity to play tennis for the show, expanding on her prior tennis experience in junior high. "I was in doubles with Joan Osborne," she recounted. "We entered the tournament, we got one bye, the next people didn't show up. Then we were in the finals and we lost, so we got a trophy."

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Tennis, which showrunner Melanie Marnich described as a "dynamic, sexy, wonderful sport," is key to understanding the Delaneys' family dynamic — and how it may have fueled resentment between them. "When you're in a family of deeply competitive people, raised by deeply competitive people, it's in the blood, it's in the DNA," Marnich told the TCA. At what point are the Delaneys competing for the love of the game, and at what point are they competing for the love of their parents?

Marnich (The Affair, A Murder at the End of the World) serves as Apples Never Fall's showrunner, as well as an executive producer alongside David Heyman, Gregory Jacobs, Moriarty, Bening, Joe Hortua, Albert Page, and Jillian Share.

Apples Never Fall hits Peacock March 14.