Love and Death: Elizabeth Olsen starts a deadly affair in teaser trailer for HBO Max series

Last Updated on February 23, 2023

HBO Max has released the first teaser trailer for Love and Death, a seven-episode limited series starring Elizabeth Olsen and Jesse Plemons. The series tells the true story of Candy and Pat Montgomery and Betty and Allan Gore — two churchgoing couples enjoying their small-town Texas life… until an extramarital affair leads somebody to pick up the axe.

Love and Death is inspired by the book Evidence of Love: A True Story of Passion and Death in the Suburbs and a collection of articles from Texas Monthly (“Love & Death in Silicon Prairie,” Part I & II). The series was written by David E. Kelley and directed by Lesli Linka Glatter. While speaking with Entertainment Weekly last year, Glatter said that Love and Death explores “the dark side of the American dream. Here is a young woman who gets married at 20 years old, and she’s done everything right: She has the kids, she has the family, but she has a hole in her psyche that’s a mile wide, and she makes a very bad choice on how to fill it.” Glatter continued, “[The series] looks at something that women, and I think men, went through as being products of their time. [They’re] not going to dialogue about what’s going on, but there’s a deep disconnect between the public and private person and the feeling of emptiness.”

Elizabeth Olsen said, “There’s this idea when you receive just a logline of a woman who kills another woman with an ax, who’s a friend, and doesn’t come clean about it… there’s a part of people that want to label them with a personality disorder or a mental illness. It’s actually more about the emotional conflict of this woman and the time she is living and less about playing something demonic.” In addition to Elizabeth Olsen and Jesse Plemons, Love and Death also stars Lily Rabe, Patrick Fugit, Krysten Ritter, Tom Pelphrey,  Keir Gilchrist and Elizabeth Marvel.

If the premise of the series sounds familiar to you, it’s because the true story has already received the limited-series treatment. Jessica Biel and Melanie Lynskey starred in Candy, which debuted on Hulu last year. You can check out a review of that series from our own Alex Maidy right here.

The first three episodes of Love and Death will debut on HBO Max on April 27th, followed by weekly episodes through to May 25th. What did you think of the Love and Death teaser trailer? Will you be watching the series?