Kate Winslet Follows up ‘Mare of Easttown’ Success With New HBO Series

Following the success of her most recent HBO show, Mare of Easttown, actress Kate Winslet is set to star in a new series on the cable network. Deadline reports that Winslet will star in an adaptation of Hernan Diaz’s 2022 novel Trust. She will also serve as a producer on the project.

Trust is described as being “about a wealthy financier who is dissatisfied by a novel based on his life and his wife’s portrayal, so he asks a secretary to ghostwrite his memoir and set the record straight. The secretary, however, grows uncomfortably aware that he is rewriting history and his wife’s place in it. Told in four different voices and genres, Trust is a narrative puzzle that subverts the notion of truth and who gets to define it.” HBO reportedly acquired the rights to adapt the novel after multiple companies were competitively interested.

Mare of Easttown is a crime drama starring Winslet as Mare Sheehan, a small-town detective who was once a high school basketball star. The first episode of the series debuted on April 18, 2021, and was a prelude to the murder case that Mare would find herself investigating over the course of the season. The show also followed Mare and her family as they grappled with a personal tragedy amidst the shocking death of a young woman connected to Mare’s best friend. The show was always planned to be a limited series with one season. It aired its finale on May 30, 2021. That final episode was watched by roughly 4 million viewers across both HBO and HBO Max.

Winslet won her second Emmy for the show, as it was an undeniable massive hit for HBO, and very quickly became one of the most talked-about TV shows of the year. Many viewers expressed the desire for a second season, prompting the HBO boss to respond. Deadline previously reported that Casey Bloys — chief content officer at HBO and HBO Max — was speaking to the press when he was asked about Mare of Easttown coming back, and his response essentially boiled down to: it’s unlikely but not impossible.

“People tend to think that those decisions are like ABC in the 70s – ‘We need more Mare, we need more Mare!’” the CCO stated. He went on to explain that the “decision” to continue the show lies with creator Brad Ingelsby and Winslet, who also served as a producer on that show as well. “I would rely on them coming to us, saying, ‘We think there’s more, here is what it is,’” Bloys said. He added that “it’s not a foregone conclusion that just because something does well” it gets another season. “It starts with the creative team,” he asserted. “I am never the one driving it.”