Both Clare (Kathryn Hahn) and Danny (Quentin Plair) are haunted by their past, and it’s affecting their present in Hulu’s new Tiny Beautiful Things (all eight episodes dropped April 7).
In the limited series, based on Cheryl Strayed’s best-selling book, Claire is a floundering writer who becomes a revered advice columnist while her own life is falling apart. Her marriage to Danny is limping along (barely), while her teenage daughter Rae (Tanzyn Crawford) is pushing her away. She takes that new job because her once-promising writing career is non-existent. Taking on the mantle of Sugar leads to her life unfurling in a complex fabric of memory, exploring her most pivotal moments from childhood through the present day.
Clare’s mother, “her beloved, light of her life, foundation, her rock, her everything, every single thing, passed away from cancer when she was 21,” Hahn explained to TV Insider in the video interview, which you can watch above. “It kind of propelled her into another life’s path that she had never anticipated.”
Her grief has affected her ever since, and her ways of coping with it “have become more and more untenable, and it’s now a boiling point,” she continued. As a result, it’s affecting her marriage.
And for Danny, the fact that they both gave up a lot when they got married — they were high school sweethearts, and she got pregnant — is “absolutely” still haunting him, according to Plair. “I think that’s one of the core things that haunts him as far as the relationship goes, that and the fact that he wasn’t a success in what he got to go after. … To have the person you love the most give up something she truly loves, for you to go after what you love and not make it, you don’t want to let people down. And when you let them down and they made sacrifices for you, it feels that much worse.”
Watch the full video interview above for more from Hahn and Plair about their characters and what each brought of themselves to the series.
Tiny Beautiful Things, Streaming Now, Hulu