Three Womenfollows three women who are all on different paths, allowing the series to deliver several different perspectives on life, love, and relationships. Lina (Betty Gilpin,GLOW) is a decade into a passionless marriage when she embarks on an affair that quickly becomes all-consuming and transforms her life, while Sloane (DeWanda Wise,Jurassic World Dominion) enjoys her committed open marriage with Richard (Blair Underwood) until two sexy new strangers threaten their aspirational love story. Maggie (Gabrielle Creevy), meanwhile, weathers an intense storm after accusing her married English teacher (Jason Ralph) of an inappropriate relationship.
John Patrick Amedori plays Jack, the love interest of Gia (Shailene Woodley). The character of Gia is based on real-life author ofThree Women, Lisa Taddeo.Three Womenis currently available to stream on Starz.
Three Women Intimacy Coordinator Claire Warden Addresses The Value Of Sex Scenes & Biggest Industry Misconceptions
Screen Rant interviews Claire Warden about establishing trust with the Three Women actors and the importance of each character’s sexual journey.
Screen Rantinterviewed John Patrick Amedori about Starz’s Three Women. He talks about working with Shailene Woodley and how they would bond and have discussions in between takes. Amedori also compares his character Jack toWALL-Ein Disney’s animated film, WALL-E. He reveals how he relates to Jack and what he has learned from playing him.
“If Jack didn’t live it, Jack doesn’t need to know it.”
Screen Rant: What drew you to Three Women?
John Patrick Amedori: It really just fell into my lap. I literally got the audition, the scenes, to put myself on tape on a Tuesday at like one o’clock in the afternoon. I put myself on tape by like 5:30 in the evening. I just threw it out there, and it came back and, all of a sudden, I had the job that Friday. It was really just, I’m going to follow my instincts and see if they like that. And then the entire process became not to overthink anything.
Screen Rant: Did you read the book at all, seeing as Jack is not featured in it?
John Patrick Amedori: I read some of the book on the way to New York. Before I got there, I read maybe the first couple of chapters, and it’s not an easy read as far as context, but the format was so easy that I got lost in it. But in playing Jack, I wasn’t really looking to find much outside of his love for Gia to pull from. I didn’t really use the book as a reference. If Jack didn’t live it, Jack doesn’t need to know it.
Screen Rant: Did you feel less pressure playing a character that is not in the book?
John Patrick Amedori: I think there’s different fun that you may have, if you give yourself some hill to climb, and say that I have to achieve that. I think it’s better to not give yourself a hill to climb. But now in this particular instance, because Jackson is a real person in real life, and this is a fictionalized version of their story, they entrusted me to interpret what they had created for the fictional part of the story, and just fill that with as much as much life as I possibly could.
So it was basically more or less trust in my instincts of what I would, just living vicariously through his unboundless love for Gia and his silly optimism. This Yogi Bear quote I keep on using is when you meet a fork in the road, take it. And that’s how he is. So, there’s fun levels to trying to achieve, if you’re doing an impression of somebody, if you get a chance to play Jim Morrison or any of those kinds of roles, versus having the freedom to say I can actually do whatever I want. And that’s kind of what this was. I can let myself be free.
“She has this unbelievable toolbox of emotions that she can just pull out whenever she needs it.”
Screen Rant: What was it like working with Shailene Woodley?
John Patrick Amedori: It was wonderful, because of the freedom of expression to go into a scene and just live the scene for his experience versus looking for an end result. She and I both come from that school of acting. When I first met her over zoom for the test chemistry read, I lamented that I’ve been a fan of hers for a long time because she has this unbelievable toolbox of emotions that she can just pull out whenever she needs it.
She’s able to, from moment to moment, live there and something new comes and follows. So to be able to play with that and just watch her eyes, listen to her voice, and know that each time we have an argument it’s going to be a different argument about the same thing is pretty amazing. It’s a one of a kind of experience for most actors.
Screen Rant: Did the two of you improvise at all?
John Patrick Amedori: There’s a couple improv stuff in the van. That was a lot of us playing off of each other. She and I have a tendency to kind of ham it up at the end of scenes and elongate scenes. There’s a lot of john-isms I think I’ve thrown in there. I tend to say f*** a lot in real life so I think there’s some extra f***s in there that I’ve thrown in. But there was enough, the words on the page were so that I didn’t feel the need to improv, but also when you’re working with someone like Shailene, you kind of just lose yourself in the scene itself. It was very world building, the whole experience.
John Patrick Amedori Loved Playing Jack In Three Women
“He’s very whimsical, but he takes his whimsical love very seriously.”
Screen Rant: Was there a scene that you were more excited to film?
John Patrick Amedori: Everything really. I found Jack so gratifying to play. I just felt like I got to play all these different emotions within scene to scene. He’s very whimsical, but he takes his whimsical love very seriously. I used to think that those were two different, like a seesaw, like a balancing act or something, and it’s not. They’re one in the same. It’s both. Whimsical love can be taken seriously and serious love should be whimsical. And that’s something that I learned from doing that.
Something that made me excited to play be a part of the show was we shot out of order, and the first table read we did over zoom was episode seven. I remember seeing Betty Gilpin do her character for the first time and I’m nervous, and I’m very excited, and I can feel Jack’s blood building inside of me and I really wanted to do well. And Betty gets up there, and she starts crying and smiling through these tears, and I’m just in awe of watching her over zoom in this table read. I got so excited I was like yes, we’re acting. At the end of episode seven, Jack and Gia have a very tense conversation and I was like, Oh, it’s on. I get to cry in about 30 minutes. When we get to that scene, I get to cry over zoom, and I couldn’t have been more excited to do so.
Screen Rant: How do you get yourself to cry on queue?
John Patrick Amedori: I don’t use substitution or anything. I really enjoy human perspective. I think perspective is something as artists and as people moving through the world that affects how we move through the world. So, as I just try and make myself believe, or I don’t attempt to, I just believe in everything that I’m saying to the truest of my ability. So being in scenes like that when Gia says certain things, it hurts me. Or when I first walk in there and I see that it’s empty, and when I have the realization you were just not going to be here, that’s painful to say out loud. Then that makes it real when she says, yes I was.
There’s no tricks to the trade. I used to call it being comfortable in your house everywhere. There’s that sensitivity that you can have when you’re by yourself the way that you can sing freely and acting is a way of just trying to be comfortable in your own home everywhere.
“WALL-E literally goes to outer space for his love for Eve, and he travels all over the United States just to be with her.”
Screen Rant: Do you think you’re like Jack at all?
John Patrick Amedori: When I was younger I used to watch the movie WALL-E a lot. I still watch it a lot, and it might be my favorite movie of all time. But when it came out, which I wasn’t very young, I was in my early or mid 20s. But I loved it. It was probably the first and only movie I ever owned on Blu-ray. I loved it. Someone told me, I know why you love WALL-E so much because you’re WALL-E.
And when I was reading Jack and realizing his love for Gia, like, oh Jack’s WALL-E, because WALL-E literally goes to outer space for his love for Eve, and he travels all over the United States just to be with her. He’s WALL-E. That’s the train he hops on and he’s doing it. I think there’s a little level of that romantic that I have inside of me that is equal to Jack’s romanticism of love. That whimsical to serious love ratio. They don’t cancel each other out. That was something that I discovered about my own way of thinking about it. And that was from Jack.
Screen Rant: I was going to ask you if you learned anything from playing Jack.
John Patrick Amedori: There was a lot of communication while shooting. The topics that are going on within the story, people being very open about their experiences of love and loss. There was a lot of learning. I don’t think that learning is always just something like, oh, yes, I learned it on that day. There’s probably something that will reflect five years from now, I’ll go like, oh, that moment.
Shailene and I would go into really deep conversations and I discovered how much I ruminate on things, so now I’ve been ruminating on ruminating for a couple of years. The merry-go-round of life.
Screen Rant: With so many heavy and intense moments in this series, is there any way you would keep things light on set?
John Patrick Amedori: I think something happened during that time of my life and shooting this show that my emotions, I could tap into almost any emotion at any time. Shailene and I would just be sitting in our chairs in between scenes and look at each other and go, love life. Love life, because we were just having a great time. We get to be on set, on this frozen lake in single degree weather. And then tomorrow you’re going to discover that you might have lung cancer and then that’ll be that. Or tomorrow you’re going to have to hawk your mom’s jewelry, and then I’m going to sell my car. It’s like, hey, this is life.
David Lynch has this thing, it’s like, you don’t have to suffer to show suffering. I think that’s a really difficult lesson for some artists to learn, or expressionists that we think, oh, I have to experience that in order for it to be true. And it’s like, no, dude, I mean, you’re able to. I think for me, it’s just like Shailene, she has an empathetic, emotional button that she can tune into. And I like to believe that I have a similar button as well.
John Patrick Amedori Hopes Viewers Approach Three Women With Empathy
“They can maybe not feel so alone or realize they shouldn’t be so hard on themselves.”
Screen Rant: What do you hope that viewers take away fromThree Women?
John Patrick Amedori: I feel like it’s not for me to think about what I would like people to get out of something. Because it is their own experience. I would hope that people go into watching shows, like this specifically, with empathy to open their perspective. There’s a lot of judgment that we experience due to love and lack of love and the love that we think we deserve. I think it’s a very universal topic, and it’s very, very nuanced.
Particularly through a woman’s viewpoint instead of the masculine gaze that most shows have romanticizations of struggles. I think that the show has a very raw openness to it that I would hope that anybody who watches it can empathize. And they can maybe not feel so alone or realize they shouldn’t be so hard on themselves.
“Three Women” finds three women on a crash course to radically overturn their lives. Lina (Betty Gilpin), a homemaker in suburban Indiana, is a decade into a passionless marriage when she embarks on an affair that quickly becomes all-consuming and transforms her life. Sloane (DeWanda Wise), a glamorous entrepreneur in the Northeast, has a committed open marriage with Richard (Blair Underwood), until two sexy new strangers threaten their aspirational love story.
Maggie (Gabrielle Creevy), a student in North Dakota, weathers an intense storm after accusing her married English teacher (Jason Ralph) of an inappropriate relationship. Gia (Shailene Woodley), a writer grieving the loss of her family, persuades each of these three spectacular “ordinary” women to tell her their stories, and her relationships with them change the course of her life forever.
Three Women
Cast
“Three Women” follows the intertwined lives of Sloane, Lina, and Maggie, each facing unique challenges in their personal and romantic lives. Sloane, a successful businesswoman, explores the boundaries of her open marriage. Lina, stuck in a passionless marriage, finds herself in a transformative affair. Maggie, a young student, navigates the repercussions of a controversial relationship with her teacher.
