Actor and writer Zoe Kazan (She Said, Ruby Sparks) was obsessed with East of Eden growing up, to the point of visiting Salinas – or as Kazan calls it, “the mothership” – after reading the classic novel. Strangely, she didn’t realize her grandfather, Elia Kazan, directed the 1955 Oscar-winning film adaptation until after she read John Steinbeck’s book. Years later, Kazan told her agents to pitch her as a writer if the rights ever came up.
Zoe Kazan’s adaptation leans heavily into Cathy’s side of the story, a bold choice given the character’s description by Steinbeck as possessing a malformed soul. Florence Pugh (We Live in Time, Midsommar) handles the heavy lifting as Cathy, and Christopher Abbott (Wolf Man) and Mike Faist (Challengers) star as Adam and Charles Trask.
Netflix offers this synopsis of the seven-part series, premiering on October 1, 2026: “This modern interpretation of Steinbeck’s masterpiece will explore the multigenerational saga of the Trask family, focusing new attention on its indelible antihero, Cathy Ames.”
The following are highlights from a recent press conference hosted by Netflix and featuring Mike Faist, Christopher Abbott, and co-showrunner, executive producer, and writer Zoe Kazan (free from spoilers).
Zoe Kazan described why East of Eden feels more urgent now than ever:
“God, there are so many reasons and unfortunately it feels more urgent now than when I started working on it in 2020. I’m always on the verge of tears when I talk about this piece; it feels so urgent to me. I think the idea that we are capable of change and that we can carry our past, neither as a stone too heavy to carry nor as something insignificant and meaningless, I think that is a very hopeful thought. And, you know, it’s what I hope for my children; it’s what I hope for myself.
I think there’s something really beautiful, and I think it moves contra to this impulse that we’re having in our culture right now to define what someone is, to nail it down and say they’re only that forever, to punish people for their actions rather than allowing for change. I think saying, ‘I was wrong,’ is like a very powerful thing. And God, I’m so grateful that I’ve had the chance to do that in my life.
I think that the book speaks to our moment; maybe it speaks to every moment. These are very old archetypes and very old stories that we’re drawing on here. But I don’t know, brother against brother – it’s very timely.”
Kazan explained why she envisioned East of Eden as a series rather than a film:
“I think there’s like a natural kinship between this novel and the television form. It moves over time. It’s serialized. I think each chapter of the book is like really different from the last. I think it adds up in this way to something greater than its parts. [It] allows you to do an intergenerational thing that seemed really important to me in, like, the 1955 film didn’t get to do.”
Christopher Abbott and Mike Faist broke down the complex relationship between the Trask brothers:
Christopher Abbott: “I think there is constantly a recognition in each other and a rejection that they have for each other. There is both love and hate and you can’t have hate without love, you know? Otherwise, there is just indifference.
Their actual upbringing is very unique. You know, they’re essentially half-brothers. Then, like, the whole nature vs. nurture really comes into play, and how they sort of were destined for certain paths. And then, in a lot of ways, sort of started taking opposite paths.
Charles, as a young man, was probably more suited to go off to war and sort of live this life. But it turns out Adam is the one that goes off to war and lives as a vagabond and travels, and Charles is the one that is forced to stay at home. So, this nature vs. nurture thing happens.
And so, you have all of these like really big epic themes that are presented and it all boils down to a real simplicity in how they act towards each other.”
Mike Faist: “I mean, I think the thing ultimately that really I responded to most in Charles was this idea of a person who had been nurtured into the belief that they are and have innate badness in them. And what does that belief ultimately produce? What does that make?
And it’s this interesting thing about jealousy, about trying to win the affection or love of a parent, and when that jealousy runs amuck, a violence that can exist, especially in a person who just doesn’t have the capability to really express themselves to do that – and they’re children, too. So, a child to then possess a sort of violence, I think it’s just … I don’t know … there’s something very sad and wanted to explore that.
Then on the flip side of that, after having and bestowed this violence, living and carrying this shame that goes along with that, and what does that ultimately manifest into the person? How does that person carry around this shame and how are they trying so desperately to fix themselves? And that’s the belief that they’re carrying, they need to be fixed.
I don’t know. There’s just something that felt very human about that.”
Abbott reflected on the challenge of bringing Adam Trask’s contradictions to the screen:
“I mean, he’s full of sort of complexities and contradictions. You know what I mean? […] As he gets older, he sort of becomes maybe more rigid or stoic, rigid maybe in his beliefs. But as a young man [he] sort of started off as a bit of vagabond sort of man living alone out in the world. And then Cathy, I think, is really just like the catalyst of what changes him and why he changes. He doesn’t realize it at the time.
It was chock-full of sort of complexities that it’s difficult to play but it really sort of opens up your bank of choices because with that, there’s no real wrong answer. You can play the game of opposites with almost every scene in this show. I love that because it just creates more sparks when you’re shooting.”
Faist described the intensity of working with Florence Pugh to portray the dark dynamic between Charles and Cathy:
“It’s a dream come true. I mean, the reality is we’re mentioning incredible actors throughout this series, Florence, yes, Ciarán Hinds, Hoon Lee, Chris… I keep saying this, I feel ridiculously lucky. It’s so stupid, at the end of the day, to be able to do this is a gift.
And then, look, whenever you get into any sort of project, you don’t actually know who you’re going to bed with. But I’ve been such a fan of Florence’s forever and ever, and I had this hope of what kind of actor she would be on the day. And, yeah, she lived up to that and then some.
You work as hard as you can, you prepare, you come up with as many ideas as you can possibly come up with so that on the day you can just throw it all away and just be present. And I never knew what was going to come out of me because I was always on edge with her. That’s also true for Chris and anything.
And that’s the exciting thing about being an actor, especially when you’re working with really great actors; you just never know what’s actually going to happen. They keep you on your toes.
I kept saying there was never a day on set where I felt as if we were acting; it always felt very alive. And to me, it’s always really important to try to be as honest as possible, and that’s a testament to the adaptation, what Zoe did, the writing within that, and then the actors that step on that stage with you, and you’re going to get into the arena and wrestle with.”
Kazan revealed how adapting the book shifted her view of Cathy and her portrayal:
“I mean, this book is not one thing. I think it can get reduced – in the way that any work of art can get reduced. You can be like Mona Lisa’s smile, you could be like just one part of the picture, but you need the whole picture, right? And I think that the way people will throw around the way that Cathy is introduced, like, ‘Oh, sometimes there are monsters born to human parents…’ But about a hundred pages later in the book, he says I have described Cathy as a monster, but now that I’ve gotten my glass out and examined her and read the footnotes, I’m thinking that maybe I was wrong to do so. It is easy to call her bad, but if we don’t examine why, it is without meaning.
I think that goes for all of these characters. The one thing I felt really passionate about is that I want to respect Steinbeck’s impulse, and I think to do that, I had to sort of get rid of some of the sort of mid-century white male trappings that the text might get stuck in.
I think it’s fascinating to me that there can be such a nuanced portrayal of a Chinese American right next to like a very racist description of his face. And I think it was easy to get rid of some of that stuff, and the stuff that I found misogynistic. Again, I don’t hold these things against Steinbeck; we can’t expect any artist to live outside of their time. But I did feel a deep desire to free up the better instincts of the book and get to what’s human about all of these characters.”
Abbott discussed how portraying Adam, a character defined by hope, contrasted with his previous roles:
“Well, [hope] in a sense, yeah. But again, because all of these characters do have a duality. There is still sort of like, even in Adam’s blind love of Cathy, there’s a darkness to that. […] There’s a long period where Adam sort of goes through this like deep sadness. You know what I mean? That thing of also feeling like, you know, whether he’s more lost when he’s older and more discovered when he’s older or maybe the opposite, as he gets older, he sort of is more lost than anything.
But there is hope and there is a goodness to him, but he is also very flawed. So, I think even characters that I’ve played that present as more on-edge or whatever, you try to find the opposite as a throughline. I think I sort of did the same with this.”
Kazan revealed how writing the adaptation deepened her empathy for the characters:
[Laughing] “Gosh, I just love a mystery, right? I love how complicated and mysterious these characters are. I remember early in my writing when I was writing the first episode, I had very thoroughly pulled things out of the book, but I thought, ‘Oh, I’m going to write my first draft without looking back at any of my source material and see what sticks and give myself a little bit more permission to go off book.’ And when I came back to the book, I realized that I had written the opposite of what is on the page; I had written that Adam believes his father is a crook and that Charles does not. I was like, ‘Well, that’s wrong.’
And how fascinating that this man who has so much anger and so much more complicated feelings about his father is the one who believes his father, and this other man who has loved him and wanted his love so much can see his frailty and humanity. And it was like really [more] complicated than even I thought at this point.
I don’t know. I found new things to fall in love with them and wrestle with them and not understand. I think it’s one of the most generous things that we can do as artists to put off that complication in our audiences’ hands and say, ‘Look for yourself and we’re not telling you what we think.’”