A New Take on Psychological Drama
Actress Olivia Cooke has consistently demonstrated a talent for portraying characters who navigate the complex terrain of social status and ambition. In 2018, she took on the role of Becky Sharp in an adaptation of William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, using charm and wit to climb the social ladder. Now, in Amazon Prime’s 2025 miniseries The Girlfriend, Cooke plays Cherry Laine, a woman from a middle-class family in London with her own ambitions. Unlike Becky Sharp, whose path was constrained by the rigid norms of marriage, Cherry's pursuit of status through marriage is driven by choice rather than necessity.
A Dual Perspective
Directed by Robin Wright and Andrea Harkin, The Girlfriend is a psychological thriller that unfolds through two competing perspectives. From Cherry’s point of view, she is the persistent romantic who wins over Daniel Sanderson (Laurie Davidson), the well-meaning son of a wealthy business magnate. Their romance begins innocently when she shows him a property as his real estate agent. However, the second perspective—Daniel’s mother, Laura (played by Wright)—casts Cherry as a sinister intruder.
Laura is an art gallery curator with a deeply overbearing nature and, in the most generous terms, a borderline incestuous attachment to her son. In their first scene together, Laura and Daniel are sitting intimately in their sauna, discussing Daniel’s latest love, Cherry. “You remind me of her,” he tenderly tells his mother. From Laura’s affectionate gestures and tone toward her son, it becomes clear that there is both repulsion and intrigue.
The Struggle for Autonomy
Cherry works tirelessly to pry Daniel from his mother’s grip, at one point manipulating the near-30-year-old into choosing between seeing a musical with his mom and spending the day with his girlfriend. As the narrative unfolds and Laura’s trepidations grow, we get glimpses into Cherry’s past, filled with psychotic behavior toward ex-boyfriends. The central question posed by Robin Wright is: At what point does a mother let her son make his own mistakes, or does she go to war with his seductive and devious muse?
A Tale of Two Perspectives
The real strength of The Girlfriend lies in its retelling of key scenes through both women’s lenses. Actions that seem toxic through Laura’s eyes can look, from Cherry’s vantage, like desperate bids for autonomy. Neither narrator is trustworthy, and the truth likely lies in the blurred overlap.
Caught in the middle is Daniel, a grown man infantilized by two domineering women. His mother has plotted out his entire life, down to his medical specialty. “But we had always talked about you practicing family medicine,” Laura chides, when Daniel dares to pursue trauma surgery. Daniel becomes the series’ tragic prize: tugged between an overprotective, coddling mother and an obsessive, infatuated girlfriend.
A Unique Exploration of Female Psychopathy
The closest contender to such an intimate and extravagant exploration of female psychopathy is Rosamund Pike as Amy in David Fincher’s Gone Girl. However, even there, we were confined to her husband’s perspective. In The Girlfriend, Robin Wright offers a glimpse into how two such women perceive and feud with each other.
Along with its parallel narrative structure, what makes The Girlfriend compelling is its genre inversion. Men in film and television are pitted against each other all the time—even madmen. Michael Mann’s Heat, Ridley Scott’s Hannibal, or David Fincher’s Seven all stage duels that inevitably turn violent. Here, gratuitous violence is largely absent, limited to a scene where Cherry wounds herself to frame Laura in a jealous ploy.
The Psychology Behind the Conflict
It is often observed that when boys fight or bully each other in school, they pummel each other and it’s over; when girls fight, they will psychologically torture their rivals until they break. The Girlfriend makes that distinction glaringly evident.
Laura dresses her obsession up as “protection,” but it barely conceals the deeper truth: She is clinging to the last shard of power in her life. As much as Laura insists that she is shielding Daniel, she is also fighting to preserve her own identity. Her marriage is hollow, her curatorial career dismissed by her husband as a “hobby” (he secretly subsidizes her failed ventures). Losing her son means losing the last sphere of influence she commands. Strip away the exaggerated psychopathy, and what remains is a mother clinging to relevance.
Strong Performances Drive the Series
In tandem with its sharp screenplay, the performances drive the series. Cooke is magnetic as Cherry, a compulsive liar who pivots effortlessly from intoxicating warmth to horror-movie menace—especially when filtered through Laura’s perspective. But the true standout is Wright as Laura: vulnerable yet domineering, she folds grief, obsession, and social vanity into a figure at once pitiful and terrifying.
At six brisk episodes, the series never overstays its welcome. It grips with the same vice-like hold Cherry and Laura exert over Daniel, loosening only in the final moments. The Girlfriend is a glossy, ruthless exaggeration of reality, honed into psychological combat. Only one woman can win.
Post a Comment