Kate Winslet reunites with Todd Haynes for her next limited series

Kate Winslet is firmly in her HBO limited series era. Following her critically acclaimed turn as a police detective in Mare Of Easttown, she led The Regime as a satirical dictator of a European autocracy. In 2022, it was announced she’d executive produce and star in Trust, an adaptation of Hernan Diaz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Now that show is moving full steam ahead, landing an A-list writer-director for the project: Todd Haynes, with whom Winslet previously collaborated on Mildred Pierce in 2011.

Haynes actually teased his involvement in Trust back in 2023, telling IndieWire, “I’m going back to work with Kate Winslet with something she brought me for HBO.” Per Variety, he’s now been confirmed to direct the new series and co-write alongside Jon Raymond. Both are producing alongside Winslet, Diaz, and Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler of Killer Films. The longline for the show reads, “In a story told from multiple, competing perspectives, a 1920s Wall Street tycoon amasses a sudden fortune but loses a beloved wife. Decades later, his attempts to control the narrative of his life are undone by a biographer who uncovers the ultimate secrets of the legendary marriage.”

Diaz’s book is told in competing narratives: a fictionalized novel about a famous, wealthy financier Andrew Bevel and the tragic death of his wife Mildred; an autobiography by Bevel, attempting to set the record straight; a memoir written 70 years later by his ghostwriter, recounting her time as an employee of Bevel; and a diary purportedly written by Mildred in the days before her death. Each narrator has their own agenda, and none is inherently trustworthy. A previous synopsis for the adaptation, which may or may not still be accurate at this stage, reads: “When a wealthy financier reads a novel based on his own life and is dissatisfied by his and his wife’s portrayal, he asks a secretary to ghostwrite his memoir and set the record straight. She, however, grows uncomfortably aware that he is rewriting history—and his wife’s place in it.”

Haynes and Winslet’s work on Mildred Pierce earned seven Emmy nominations, including wins for Winslet (Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie) and Guy Pearce (Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Movie). Haynes is coming off of the critically acclaimed film May December, and is also working on a “gay love story set in the 1930s,” a story he developed with Raymond and Joaquin Phoenix. Phoenix is set to star, with the film reportedly supposed to shoot this summer.