Lady in the Lake: Top 10 Differences Between the Book & TV Show

Set in 1960s Baltimore, Maryland, “Lady in the Lake” centers on two women — Moses Ingram’s “Cleo” Johnson and Natalie Portman’s “Maddie” Schwartz. After Cleo’s lifeless body is found in the water, aspiring investigative journalist Maddie becomes obsessed with the case. In Laura Lippman’s novel, Cleo speaks to Maddie from beyond the grave. Her ghostly narration intercuts with chapters told from the perspective of other people, such as police officers, bartenders, and even a suspect. Series creator Alma Har’el chose to mainly focus on Cleo and Maddie, drawing parallels to their lives as women in their respective Black and Jewish communities.

As with many page-to-screen adaptations, new characters were created for the “Lady in the Lake” TV series. Angela Robinson plays Myrtle Summer, a local politician campaigning for a more progressive Baltimore, whom Cleo supports. Another addition is Cleo’s husband, a struggling comedian named Slappy Johnson, played by Byron Bowers. Myrtle and Slappy take the place of the book’s Ezekiel Taylor, an entrepreneur running for senate and the married man Cleo’s involved with. Josiah Cross’ Reggie Robinson replaces bartender, Thomas Ludlow, aka Spike, as mobster Shell Gordon’s right hand man. Reggie is also connected to both murders in the story and has a relationship with Cleo’s longtime friend, Dora Carter, who takes the place of her roommate, Latetia Tompkins.

In the opening of Lippman’s novel, Cleo details a time when she was sitting in a park and saw Maddie and Milton on the steps of a nearby temple. Cleo recalls her unpleasant interactions with Milton in his teen years. As a kid, she would see him at his father’s grocery store and he often made teasing remarks, sometimes racial slurs. In the series, there’s no known connection between Milton and Cleo, and she doesn’t see Maddie at the temple. Instead, their brief interaction happens when Cleo is working as a department store model, and Maddie buys the yellow dress she’s wearing.

Baltimore’s illegal lottery, called the Numbers Game, plays such a significant role in the series as a whole. Surprisingly, it wasn’t originally in the novel. It’s a major part of Cleo’s life — past, present, and future. Flashbacks to her younger years show how her father’s gambling habit negatively impacted their family, which is why she scolds her son Teddy for running numbers with an older group. Rigging the numbers game is how Shell Gordon built his illegal empire and is a hot topic when it comes to the city’s politics. And it turns out to be part of Cleo’s risky escape plan that wins her money and exposes Gordon.

“Lady in the Lake” visually explores the surreal dreams and nightmares of Cleo Johnson and Maddie Schwartz. Since Cleo grew up around the Numbers Game and dream books, she tries to interpret the symbolism in her dreams. But she also has harrowing nightmares about her son’s sickle cell anemia. We spend most of Episode 6 inside Maddie’s dreams, where traumatic moments from her past bleed into her present obsession with solving Cleo’s murder (xref). From beautiful dance choreography to the unsettling pursuit of a possible killer, the imagery in the sequences is trippy and terrifying. But it helps us as viewers get inside the characters’ subconscious, literally.

One of the most intense scenes in the series happens in episode 5 when Maddie goes to see the mother of Stephen Zawadzkie, the man accused of killing Tessie Durst. Knowing that she’s just looking for a story, this surprise visit has Kasia on edge. And it doesn’t help that Maddie gloats about her special “connection” with Stephen. Kasia snaps, stabs Maddie in the abdomen, and seemingly confesses to Tessie’s murder before taking her own life. The violent struggle plays out similarly in the novel, except that Kasia Zawadzkie, named Angela Corwin, is apprehended and goes to prison.

“Lady in the Lake” follows Maddie as she investigates the murder of a young girl, Tessie Durst, the daughter of her former high school boyfriend, Allan. Through flashbacks, we see that Allan’s father Hal Durst groomed Maddie at a young age, resulting in a pregnancy he forced her to terminate. In the book, Tessie’s father is named Bobby Fine, who Maddie “had a date or two with” in high school. The man who took advantage of her was Allan Durst Sr. and she briefly dated his son, Allan Jr. By combining the characters of Bobby and Allan Jr., the series ties Maddie’s traumatic past to Tessie, explaining why she feels such an emotional connection with the case.

Another layer to Maddie’s deepened history with Allan Durst is that he’s the biological father of her son, Seth. During an argument, Maddie reveals the truth to her son. However, it turns out that he already knew, which explains his clear resentment towards her. A later episode shows us a flashback to a party where a recently married Mrs. Schwartz hooks up with her high school flame, Allan. In the novel, Maddie recalls being intimate with Allan Durst Sr. one night and Milton the next, both nine months before Seth was born. But unlike in the series, she “never doubted he was Milton’s.”

At the end of episode 6, a groggy Maddie wakes up in the hospital to an unexpected visitor disguised as a cleaning lady. It’s Cleo — still alive and in hiding from Shell Gordon, who ordered Reggie to kill her due to her unwitting involvement in the attempted murder of Senator Myrtle Summer. She explains that the body found in the lake was her friend, Dora Carter, who overdosed. Laura Lippman’s novel has the same twist ending, except Shell’s reasoning for wanting Cleo dead was that he saw her as a threat to Ezekiel Taylor’s chances for being senator. The series also shows Reggie and Cleo working together to bring Shell down, which isn’t in the book.

Alma Har’el’s decision to expand Cleo Johnson’s character in “Lady in the Lake” is the biggest departure from the novel. Instead of an omnipresent narrator, Moses Ingram brings Cleo to life as a fleshed-out, nuanced character. We see her being a caring mother of two boys, working multiple jobs while her husband is unemployed. The book paints her in a different light. She’s judged for being a single mom working as a bartender and dancer in Shell Gordon’s gentlemen’s club, the Flamingo. The series changed it to a jazz club called the Pharaoh, where Cleo is a bartender and Shell’s bookkeeper, on top of modeling at a department store and volunteering for Myrtle Summer. Cleo Johnson is much more than just “the lady in the lake.”

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