THE AFFAIR Moves Beyond Clichés to Tackle Marital Cheating From All Perspectives

Writer Sarah Treem discusses the Showtime drama The Affair, which takes a very different view on the subject of spousal cheating from the very different perspectives of all people involved.

Sarah said The Affair came about from her desire to team up again with her collaborator on the HBO hit In Treatment, Israeli film and TV director Hagai Levi.

“We just walked and talked for a week, and talked about the differences between how men see things and how women see things in relationships. She adds that the initial idea was to do a gender study show, and they felt this story could be told through The Affair.

The drama focuses on a waitress in the Hamptons, Alison (Ruth Wilson), who attempts to recover from a personal tragedy while her husband Cole (Joshua Jackson) struggles to keep the family ranch and their marriage together. The consequences of Allison’s affair with Noah (Dominic West), a New York City teacher married to his childhood sweetheart (Maura Tierney), are explored from each partner’s perspective.

Speaking about the setup of the storyline, Sarah said they wanted to focus on couples in good marriages who decided to cheat on their spouses for other reasons.

“We really wanted it to be two good marriages. Because we just didn’t want it to be easy, we didn’t want this to be a morality tale where some guy in a bad marriage meets a woman and uses her to get out of the relationship – we wanted it to be complicated.”

She said the series operates on the premise that there comes a time in every long-term marriage where someone else comes along and either partner takes the person seriously, and must confront the decision of whether to act on the attraction or not.

“When we first sat down to talk about the characters, we thought really actively about how they would see each other and what they would be projecting on each other,” she said.

“And I think that’s where the idea of a cliché came in – we didn’t think about it necessarily as, let’s try to make clichés, we just thought, what do they – when he sees her what does he want to see in her, what is he looking for? Why is he attracted to her.

“The whole dual nature of the show allows us to systematically undermine what he’s seeing on his side, with what we see on her side, and visa versa. So it’s just sort of the fabric of the format that allows us to do that.”

She also addresses the fact that the series also includes a detective storyline, but this is never allowed to overtake the focus of the affair.

“We are constantly trying to balance it, we wanted to give the audience enough of the detective story line that they were following the investigation and that felt satisfying, but no so much that it became a crime series.”

Sarah specifically talks about the character of Noah, whom many people have pointed out seems so hopelessly flawed, and could perhaps be more noble, masculine, etc.

“We were trying to write real, flawed characters. But I think what’s interesting is when you put him in relief against how she sees him, he seems worse somehow. I feel like you’re not used to seeing men – we’re used to seeing anti-heroes, and we’re used to seeing heroes – but we’re not necessarily used to seeing male characters who are flawed, just very normal and human.”

Watch the full interview for more details on The Affair, and to also hear about her experiences working as a writer on the Netflix political series House of Cards.