Feel for Your Characters: A Conversation with ‘Margo’s Got Money Troubles’ Writers David E. Kelley and Eva Anderson

Margo’s Got Money Troubles is a bold, heartwarming and comedic family drama following recent college dropout and aspiring writer, Margo (Elle Fanning), the daughter of an ex-Hooters waitress (Michelle Pfeiffer) and ex-pro wrestler (Nick Offerman), as she’s forced to make her way with a new baby, a mounting pile of bills and a dwindling amount of ways to pay them.

A dilemma for the characters. A dilemma for the audience. Rich conflicts and a rich storyline are all grounded in an absurd version of reality, but reality, nonetheless.  And how do you try to break generational cycles? Or is it inevitable? This for me, was Margo’s Got Money Troubles in a nutshell – the latest show to grace our screens from David E. Kelley and creative partner Eva Anderson.

While the show is adapted from the book of the same name, published in 2024 – the realities of these dilemmas (as noted in this intro) are real and very present in our everyday lives – not for all, but for many. The ‘what ifs’ and ‘what would you do’ questions are never ending as you are put in Margo’s shoes, metaphorically. These are hard questions to navigate, but Kelley and Anderson have found a way to bring the audience along with their witty and heartfelt adaptation – and why it’s no surprise that we’re getting a Season 2 in the near future (especially with that season finale closing shot).

David E. Kelley and Eva Anderson spoke with Script about their collaborative process, their devotion to the source material, the emotional truth of the characters to guide them, and the emotional balance required to map character arcs.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: With the source material, what was it about the world and characters that drew you in to adapt?

David E. Kelley: Yeah, the world did draw me. It was a very fast read for me, which is always a good sign on an entertainment level. I had no reservations that this was going to be very watchable and adaptable, but that was step one. But what resonated for me at the conclusion of reading the book was the depth of the characters. I just fell in love with them, really. Margo, Shyanne, Jinx, their hearts, their humor. It's no easy trick for an author to make you feel and feel for your characters. That's what we all go for. Rufi [Thorpe] did it in the book, and it just struck me as a tremendous opportunity to try and to mine these characters.

And they were very original characters, so these weren't people that I had tumbled upon in other books or mediums, that they just felt like people I had not seen before, and yet people I could relate to at the same time. So, it just felt very fertile on so many levels.

And for me at this point, if I'm going to do a project and sort of dive into the trough, I would love for at least the opportunity, as storytellers, to move the audience. And the book moved me. And I thought that's the challenge. If we can move our viewers like the book moved this reader, then that was worth signing up for.

Sadie: Building out your writers room, and most importantly, bringing Eva on board - what was it about her voice and her unique point of view that you knew would add to this?

David: I started with Eva, and I loved her writing. She's funny and emotional... which the series needed to be. And her sensibilities, she was willing to write all the lurid, nasty stuff that I didn't want to go near. [laughs] So, we got on quite swimmingly from the get-go.

And it was my favorite part of the process. I would write something, throw it to her. She would rewrite it, throw it to me. I might tweak it, throw it back to her. We both had the same goal, just what's the best version. There was nothing proprietary. Who wrote what, or who came up with which idea, and Rufi came up with the bulk of them. But our initial bond was our devotion to the source material, and we stuck to that as we sailed the ship.

Eva Anderson: When I came on, David had written the first three episodes already. And so, with the other two writers, Boo Killebrew and Keiko Green, we were just about to step in till the OnlyFans of it and that was really exciting, because Episode Four is where Jinx wrestles, where you meet Lace, where you meet Rose and KC. And so, we got to step in just in time for the world to expand in these very strange ways.

And Keiko and Boo are both incredible writers. They're both also playwrights. Keiko is producing plays all over the country right now. Boo has also just written on amazing shows, and they brought their own really unique, cool perspectives. And Boo is a mother - she has a small child as well, so that was really valuable for the room. They were instrumental in crafting the tone and the rest of the season.

Sadie: You initially come from a comedy background, and there’s much needed levity added to this world and this emotional ride we're on, especially in Episode Seven, where there's that very emotional, literal punch that I think we all needed as viewers with Shyanne. How do you balance that?

Eva: Honestly, it was baked into the first three episodes. David's a really funny writer, and his comedy is amazing. I started off in comedy and then became an hour-long drama writer later on. But you know, when you're reading something, that really can straddle the two tones… and because David has done all these shows over decades, to do that in such interesting ways, that I loved, that you could see it on the page. It's in the book, and it's on the page.

In Episode Seven, we knew we had to get to that scene with Jinx, that awful thing that happens in the book, and it's so upsetting. But also, life goes on for these characters, and they have to deal with it realistically. It doesn't destroy them. Even Jinx makes it out the other side and gets to still have a weird little scene with Shyanne when he moves into her apartment, because life goes on. You wake up the next day, and you have to live your life. And I feel like that was an important tone that was planted very early off with the book and with David that we were able to just keep going, keep continuing with.

Sadie: You have all these players in the mix, and there's this feeling that the other shoe is going to drop. By who? Who knows. And then there’s that twist with Kenny. How did you and the other writers approach mapping out those character arcs without giving away too much and letting it build out and do what it needs to do to have that longevity over these episodes?

David: It's a good question and I wish I were fully capable of answering it. Much like Margo herself, we knew where we wanted to get to, but in terms of how we were going to get there, we wanted to be open to letting the process inform us as we go along, because the episodes are not linear.

What I love most about the series is how much it changes from one episode to the next. I mean Episode Seven, which you just spoke of, that is a far cry from where we start in Episode One or Two, and yet it feels organic by the time we get there. So, I think the process for us is we knew where were going to end up but we were going to let the emotional truth of the characters guide us as we went along. And if we felt we were pushing it too much, that we were compromising the emotional truth, or the reality of the arc, then we would just pull back.

What I love most about the book is it was grounded in a reality, but also had this absurdism present at the same time. So, it's a balancing act, and it's the execution of that kind of an act is often a taste test, 'Oh, did we go too far? Should we pull back?" And some of it with Jinx was, is Jinx beating himself up so much that he's being self-pitying. And if he's indulging his pity, are we going to feel for him? And it can look one way on the page, and then you see it in how Nick [Offerman] delivers it. And fortunately for us as writers, he was so spot on, on all those scenes, and he modulated those scenes, really almost perfectly. You felt the depth of his emotion, but you didn't feel he was indulging his self-pity. And that's it's tough… but I told you at the beginning I wouldn't be able to fully answer the question, and now I proved it. [laughs] But it's a process, and it's a weighing, and it's a taste testing as you move forward.

Eva: I do think one thing that we talked about a lot with that final Kenny move, though, is that hopefully when you get to the realization you understand why he did it. And we saw the whole thing from Margo's perspective that night with the CPS people, and it's like a horror film for her. But on the other side of it, if you're Kenny, and you know what's been going on in that house, and then he doesn't think anyone's handling it, then maybe Kenny wasn't entirely wrong to make that choice.

David: Yeah, if you go back and you play in Episode Seven through Kenny's prism, when he walks into that hospital room and he sees what he sees, how could he not take a pause and go wait a second?  Are we sure that this child is protected?

Sadie: Yeah, I actually did go back and rewatch Episode Seven exactly from that point of view… and there’s that one shot where he's standing in the hospital watching everything play out – and then Lace shows up and here’s his confession, ‘You invited me into this family, I’m just doing my part.’ You’re immediately torn…  but we all have to think about Bhodi at the end of the day.

Eva: We did film one scene that we couldn't keep in Seven, but it was very great performance from Greg [Kinnear]. It's a moment when Shyanne and Jinx are at the methadone clinic. Kenny is gardening alone, and you just watch all this play out on his face, and he is so scared and almost tortured by his fear and his kind of worry and what he feels like he owes. And so, you see it there too, but we didn't put it in because it was maybe too much of a hint.

Sadie: You have a wonderful team of collaborators on this project. And the way they were able to capture Fullerton. What kind of vision were you looking for when it came to brining on your directors?

Eva: It obviously starts on the page. David had written this really amazing pilot. And the book, had so much to it. Once you start actually working with a director, and in our case, also the production designer, Richard Bloom, the different department heads, Carl Herse, who was our DP for those first two episodes... it's a process of really discovering things.

When we went to Fullerton for the first time, which is south of Knott's Berry Farm in this weird part of Orange County. It's very conservative, but it's also very cute, and it's got a lot of hippie stuff to it. It has the Fender guitar museum there. They have a restaurant that's made by the people who did Pirates of the Caribbean. So, it is almost like a town that's performing in a way that all the characters are performing. It's performing as this very cute place, but it's a real place where people have real lives.

And so that really inspired a lot of the design. And throughout it was just things that popped up once we were actually working with the actors and the locations and it informed the tone and all these in different ways that, Dearbhla [Walsh] with the first two episodes, really spotted and drilled in with Carl. And then Kate Herron and Tari Segal, our other team, the director and DP, really, then we're able to take to the next level in Episodes Three and Four. It was a real collaboration top to bottom.

Season One of Margo's Got Money Troubles is now streaming on Apple TV+.