Even after all these years and multiple major hits — including War of the Worlds, Man on Fire and the Twilight franchise — Dakota Fanning still got excited by the response to her Peacock limited series All Her Fault.
“I feel like basically everyone I’ve ever met in my life has watched it,” Fanning tells me of the show. According to data released by Peacock parent NBCUniversal, All Her Fault was the most-watched debut for a Peacock original in history, with 46 million hours viewed.
Based on the book by Andrea Mara, All Her Fault stars Sarah Snook as a woman whose son has been kidnapped, with Fanning playing Jenny, her staunch friend and ally. Jenny initially seems like a suspect in the kidnapping, with Snook’s character, Marissa, arriving at what she thinks is Jenny’s house to pick up her son from a playdate, only to learn that the playdate never happened and it’s not Jenny’s house at all. Marissa has every reason to suspect her, but instead the first episode ends with the two women embracing. Even so, a friend of Fanning’s still wasn’t convinced of her character’s innocence. “They were like, ‘I know it’s you, you’re not fooling me,’” Fanning remembers. “‘I know it’s gonna turn.’”
That’s a reasonable assumption for a crime thriller like All Her Fault, in which everyone gets a turn as a suspect and a whole lot of secrets are revealed before the eight episodes conclude. But — spoiler alert to Fanning’s friend! — the bond between Jenny and Marissa only deepens as the series continues, particularly once each of their husbands proves incapable of meeting the moment.
“That was one of the first questions I asked — where is this relationship going to go between the two of them? Are they going to turn on each other?” Fanning says, noting that it’s a common trope for two women to descend into jealousy and competition. She was quickly told no. “It’s really just going to be a relationship that’s pure and real,” Fanning adds. “That’s so refreshing to see.”
In our conversation on today’s special bonus edition of the Prestige Junkie podcast, Fanning — who is also the star of our recent digital cover — talks about how All Her Fault was so compelling that she decided against taking a long Christmas break, and how her work on previous limited series The Alienist and Ripley (for which she received an Emmy nomination) prepared her for this one. We also dig into her work as an executive producer on the Apple TV series Margo’s Got Money Troubles, starring her sister, Elle Fanning, who is also her partner at Lewellen Pictures. The Fannings have spent nearly their entire lives on sets, but Dakota, 32, says they’re both still learning as they take on these new roles behind the scenes.
“My sister and I have opposite strengths and weaknesses when it comes to our company, so we balance each other out really well,” Fanning tells me. “I can’t speak for exactly what people want, but I can speak for myself what I want — I want to be surprised. I want to see something different that I haven’t seen before.”
And it could be something as small as a tiny plot point — like in All Her Fault, the final twist was something “nine out of 10 people I talked to did not see coming,” she says. “I think people really want to be surprised, and see unique material come to life.”
