Hulu’s Good American Family is becoming an anthology series.
The Disney-owned streamer has ordered a second season of the show, with creator and writer Katie Robbins and executive producer Ellen Pompeo returning in those capacities (Pompeo also starred in the first season after scaling back her on-screen time on Grey’s Anatomy). Season two will dramatize the story of Lorena Bobbitt and the media circus that surrounded her after she severed her husband’s penis after years of alleged abuse.
Hulu’s description of the new season says it is “inspired by the ripped-from-the-headlines story of Lorena and John Bobbitt, a Virginia couple who incited a media circus that treated trauma as entertainment, launched a thousand dirty jokes, and ignited a gender war.” Bobbitt will have a consulting role on the coming season.
The first season of Good American Family was about the Natalia Grace case, in which a couple adopts a young Ukrainian girl with a form of dwarfism — and later comes to suspect she’s actually an adult. Pompeo and Mark Duplass played the adoptive parents, Kristine and Mark Barnett. Midway through the season, the story flips to Natalia’s (Imogen Faith Reid) perspective.
Following the season, Pompeo told The Hollywood Reporter that she and Robbins had discussed both continuing the story of Natalia and the Barnetts and finding a new subject: “Kristine Barnett’s story is over, or my version of Kristine Barnett’s story is over, and I think what we are trying to decipher is: Is there a good enough reason to continue on with this story, or do we pivot and do an anthology and do another story next season?” she said. “And I’m not going to tell you the story that we’re thinking about, but it’s awesome. That’s what I really want to do. I want to do an anthology because I think the story we have lined up is so good for specifically the way we do this show and switch perspectives.”
Robbins (The Affair, Apple TV’s Sunny) executive produces Good American Family with Pompeo and her producing partner Laura Holstein (under their Calamity Jane banner) and Andrew Stearn.
Deadline first reported the news.
