Netflix's East of Eden with Florence Pugh has cut a whole family out of Steinbeck's novel
Florence Pugh’s East of Eden for Netflix won’t be a straight lift from the book, as a producer says a major section has been dropped.
Looks like Netflix has taken a fairly big swing with its upcoming adaptation of East of Eden, and, frankly, they've cut out a major bit of Steinbeck in the process. If you were hoping to see all the tangled family drama from the original book faithfully on-screen, well, brace yourself for a change or two.
Florence Pugh leads this new version, which starts streaming on Thursday, 1 October, and she’s front and centre as the memorably nasty Cathy Ames. Mike Faist and Christopher Abbott co-star, but it’s Pugh’s character who’s now right in the spotlight — a shift that’s definitely not how Steinbeck originally drew it up.
East of Eden hits Netflix with seven episodes on 1 October 2026.
The Hamilton Family Goes Missing
So, here’s the headline change: the entire Hamilton family, who were a massive presence in the novel, have been all but erased from this screen version. Jeb Stuart, one of the show’s executive producers and co-showrunners, explained this choice in an interview with PEOPLE. For those who actually read Steinbeck, you might remember the Hamiltons — a big Irish-American clan who settled in California and really drove a lot of the book’s emotional weight, especially that maternal perspective Steinbeck liked to write from. Well, not so much here.
Stuart admitted the book is frankly enormous, and that paring down was necessary — but he also knows it’s a bit dicey to jettison that element. Here’s how he put it, talking about the risk of leaving the Hamiltons out:
‘One of the things that is in the novel that’s not in the series is the entire Hamilton family. We get little pieces of the Hamilton family, but if you’ve read the novel, one of the things that I loved about it was Steinbeck’s maternal part of his story is in [the Hamiltons’ storyline], so that’s not there. So it’s risky, the choice to do that, but the storyline carries itself better.’
In short, the Hamiltons aren’t totally invisible. They’ll pop up in background flashes but, if you’re after the full storylines (including Dessie’s adventures), you won’t find that here. Or as Stuart put it, they "just don’t have a chance to take Dessie up in the plane in doing all those wonderful things from the novel." So, fans of the book may have reason to grumble, but apparently the creators think the story on screen flows better for it.
The Cathy Ames Show
If you’re wondering why the shift, it’s because this adaptation is basically pivoting around Cathy Ames. Netflix’s own blurb calls the show a "multigenerational saga of the Trask family," but highlights Cathy as its new focus — she’s described as an "indelible antihero." Stuart and co-showrunner Zoe Kazan wanted Cathy to act as the magnetic force of the series, the one who, as Stuart said, makes all the other characters stand out or "pop out" just by reacting to her own drama.
- Florence Pugh takes the lead as Cathy Ames
- Mike Faist and Christopher Abbott co-star
- Seven episodes, all launching at once
- The Hamilton family’s saga mostly missing