There’s just one thing you need to know about Little Fires Everywhere, according to one of its stars Joshua Jackson: Kerry Washington. Reese Witherspoon. That’s it.
“I mean, I’m good, don’t get me wrong, but if you really wanna see two powerhouse women go head to head, that’s why you should tune in,” he told E!’s Will Marfuggi.
As of late last night, the first three episodes of Little Fires Everywhere are now streaming on Hulu, meaning you now get to experience the glory that is Witherspoon and Washington working together. Joshua Jackson got to witness it firsthand—both the acting, and the producing.
“They’re pretty amazing at both [starring and producing]. The teams of people that they’ve both chosen to surround themselves with are very impressive, and it was the first time I’d ever worked on any production—I don’t think just TV show—that had an exclusively female executive structure. And I found that actually to be a really calm space to work in. It was a very sort of quiet, professional set.”
Jackson isn’t sure he’d say the “clear difference” on the set was because of gender, but he definitely credits Witherspoon and Washington (which already sounds like a law firm we’d trust completely).
“They are both very calm, strong presences,” he says. “So I think that bleeds out into their organization.”
Jackson plays Bill, husband to Witherspoon’s character Elena and father of Lexie, Izzy, Moody, and Trip, and Jackson found that reading the character felt different from most of the other scripts he’s read.
“Generally speaking when I’ve read scripts over the course of 30 years, it’s almost 100% of the time from the man’s perspective,” he said. “Even if there are strong female characters, they’re still inside of the viewpoint of a man or several men. So to read a script that so was not, that was actually from the female perspective, was confronting in the good way and kind of a breath of fresh air.”
That also meant there was something he could bring to the character.
“Inside of that, I saw this Bill character and I was like, I can recognize a man who has found himself in this place. I can see how that married couple gets there. But I actually don’t think that that character on the page right now is as full as it could be, and so that was my first conversation with [showrunner Liz Tigelaar], just saying I think that there’s some human pieces and man pieces that I think are missing in there, and she was wide open to that conversation, as was Kerry and Reese.”
Apparently, Witherspoon, Washington, and Tigelaar had spent so much time trying to get the female characters right that there was now room for Jackson to add to his own character.
Hit play above to hear more from Jackson about working with Kerry and Reese!
Little Fires Everywhere is now streaming on Hulu.