Florence Pugh is Steinbeck’s Cathy Ames in Netflix’s East of Eden — critics have it at 89%
Netflix’s East of Eden, with Florence Pugh as Cathy Ames, has opened at 89% on Rotten Tomatoes — her third best-reviewed TV series after The Little Drummer Girl and Hawkeye.
Right, Florence Pugh has made her first proper comeback to TV in what feels like ages, landing straight into Netflix’s latest prestige adaptation, East of Eden. The whole thing’s already streaming everywhere, and if you haven’t noticed the fuss, it’s because critics absolutely love it — we’re talking very high numbers on all the ratings sites.
East of Eden landed on Netflix this week with an 89% score on Rotten Tomatoes, making it Pugh’s third most highly-rated TV project ever.
So, here’s what’s going on. East of Eden is a limited series adaptation (that’s PR for: it won’t outstay its welcome) of John Steinbeck’s 1952 American classic. Ask a literary type about it and you’ll get an hour-long lecture. But for everyone else, the headlines are: Florence Pugh plays Cathy Ames, undoubtedly one of Steinbeck’s most complicated villains. This isn’t just some standard telly baddie though — she’s messy, dangerous, quite possibly evil, but the new series digs into what makes her tick.
Pugh on portraying Cathy
At the show’s glitzy premiere, Pugh made it pretty plain this version of Cathy Ames isn’t one-dimensional. Her ideas on the character are actually more nuanced than most adaptations usually dare, which seems to be a credit to the show’s scripts – these come courtesy of director Zoe Kazan. According to Pugh, the writing helped push things well past pantomime villain territory.
As Pugh put it during the Q&A at the launch event:
I think truly through Zoe’s scripts and the understanding that we wanted to dig deeper, and we wanted to go back and understand the context of why she is the way that she is, and once you open one door to feeling sympathy for someone, the rest really open for themselves.
She’s clear Cathy is a bag of contradictions – both a victim and a perpetrator. In her words, 'she’s a woman that has a lot of awful things happen to her. Yes, of course, she does a lot of awful things to other people, but she can be both.'
The series and the rest of the cast
Netflix has managed to reel in a decent supporting line-up for this one. Besides Pugh, you’ve got Mike Faist and Joe Anders (both of whose TV ratings have never climbed this high before now), Christopher Abbott, Ciarán Hinds, Hoon Lee, Martha Plimpton, Joseph Zada and Tracy Letts all adding to the cast list. Proper high pedigree spread across the board, if you’re into character dramas.
- East of Eden on Netflix is Florence Pugh’s third-highest rated TV series on Rotten Tomatoes, behind only The Little Drummer Girl (95%) and Hawkeye (92%).
If you’re after a meaty drama with a bit more moral ambiguity than your standard Netflix binge, this one’s already sitting at the top end of Pugh’s CV – and, rightly, seems like it’ll hang around there for a while yet.
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