The Baby: Nicole Kassell to direct dark horror comedy series for HBO

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Fresh off of winning an Emmy for her work on the HBO series Watchmen, Nicole Kassell has decided to continue her collaboration with HBO by signing up to be the lead director on the dark horror comedy series The Baby.

The eight-part series is coming to us from HBO and Sky, and is housed at Chernobyl production company Sister. Kassell will be executive producing the show alongside Jane Featherstone, Carolyn Strauss, Naomi de Pear, Katie Carpenter, and Sian Robins-Grace. 

Robins-Grace created The Baby with Lucy Gaymer, who will also be producing the series through her company Proverbial Pictures. The show will be 

a raw examination of motherhood as an institution: a set of unspoken rules that affect women differently depending on how they’re viewed by society. When 38-year-old Natasha is unexpectedly landed with a baby, her life of doing what she wants, when she wants, dramatically implodes. Controlling, manipulative, and with violent powers, the baby twists Natasha’s life into a horror show.

Robins-Grace will be working with an all-female writers room to craft the scripts for the episodes. The other writers in the room are Sophie Goodhart, Kara Smith, Anchuli Felicia King, and Susan Stanton, with Bisha K. Ali on board as consultant.

Kassell had this to say about the project: 

I read Sian's brilliant script early in lockdown, and it cut straight through the noise and anxiety of our times, to take me on a wild, zany ride with wonderfully complex women grappling with the toughest of decisions any of us are lucky enough to make – to have or not have a child."

I look forward to seeing how the controlling, manipulative, violent baby is going to be presented on this show.

Kassell's other credits include episodes of The Killing, Better Call Saul, The Following, The Leftovers, Westworld, Castle Rock, and the films The Woodsman and A Little Bit of Heaven.