Margaret Qualley is one hell of a hard worker. Her mother, Andie MacDowell, says that she hardly ever saw her daughter off set while they were filming their first project together, Netflix’s Maid—out October 1—over the course of nine months in Victoria, British Columbia. “On Sundays, I would make bone broth from scratch with loads of vegetables. She would come over and have soup with me, and we would get massages,” says MacDowell, who plays Qualley’s mother on camera too. “That was the only time I saw her at all during the week.”
Qualley’s lack of mother-daughter time with MacDowell had nothing to do with regressive teen angst or a craving for independence. She was simply busy appearing in every single scene of the 10-part series, based on Stephanie Land’s memoir, Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive. The raw and gut-wrenching drama centers around Alex (Qualley), the resilient single mother to three-year-old Maddy (played by Rylea Nevaeh Whittet) who escapes an abusive relationship, experiences homelessness, and scrapes by as a house cleaner. Needless to say, Qualley’s work didn’t end once the cameras stopped rolling.
“The biggest hurdle to get over [was] to be a believable mom,” says Qualley, who is 26. “So my mission was focused on Rylea the whole time…to make sure that she felt cozy and safe in my arms.” That meant spending time with Rylea and her family off set and on weekends for the majority of the production. “We’d go through the scenes for the week together. If we were supposed to go to the grocery store, we’d go to the grocery store. I’d cook her pancakes—and vegan ones. They tasted bad because I’d never cooked vegan pancakes before,” she says. They’d go out for ice cream (which luckily can never taste bad), and Qualley had crayons and snacks on hand for Rylea at all times. She even installed a car seat in her own car for when they went on drives, during which the two would have sing-alongs.
“That bond that you see onscreen is real,” says Maid showrunner Molly Smith Metzler. “It was truly spectacular what Margaret created there.” Qualley’s biceps benefited too. “I was so strong by the end of [shooting] because I would just hold her in my arms forever and ever and ever…I mean, I love the girl.”
Metzler, who spent time at domestic violence and emergency shelters in preparation for Maid, is the first to admit she breathed a sigh of relief when she first met Qualley. “It was a huge role, and we knew it was going to be very, very hard. She did that thing that I was looking for…just this full rainbow of experience. She’s really unaffected as an actor, and there’s this lack of vanity. She’s so alive and raw and available, and she can be goofy.”
Metzler built the rest of the cast around Qualley, which included Nick Robinson as Alex’s abuser and Maddy’s father. For the role of Alex’s mentally ill mother, Paula, Qualley pitched her own mother to producer Margot Robbie; a few days later, MacDowell was cast. “I was really pleasantly surprised because [Margaret] is so independent. She’s forging her own road, and she’s made this career herself,” says MacDowell. “She gave me a gift…just a beautiful, beautiful gift. I’m so appreciative that she had the confidence in me and that she wanted me there. She felt that, Oh, my God, my mom’s going to kill this.”
MacDowell describes Paula as mean, difficult, hard, and broken, but she loved the character all the same. “I have had so many dark experiences in my life, so I understand complexity. I know what mental illness is on a really deep level,” says MacDowell. “It wasn’t like I had to go out and do research. My life is my research.”
Both Qualley and MacDowell say that they always hoped to work together one day, but never planned for it to be this soon. “I’m so thankful that it happened now,” says MacDowell. “Everything you do with your kids affects you and gives you more history, but [now] we have this long journey that we went through together.” Qualley says the onscreen mother-daughter dynamic sometimes felt like an actor’s version of cheating. “As far as working with my mom…there are certain responses that are just ingrained in you. There are eye rolls that are second nature,” she says. “On the other side of things, there’s a scene where Paula tells Alex that she’s proud of her, and I really felt like my mom was telling me that she was proud of me. It just meant the world.”
The theme of motherhood is what drew Metzler to the project in the first place. “When I read the book, I think it destroyed me and kept me up all night because I’m also a mom. I have an eight-year-old daughter, and the idea that a woman in our country can leave an abusive relationship and go off and try to support her child…and we fail her—it made me so mad. It was just excruciating to watch us fail this woman over and over again,” says the first-time showrunner. “It fired me up…. I couldn’t shake the story.”
Outside of her work with domestic violence and emergency shelters, where she actually experienced the intake process, Metzler consulted with Stephanie Land herself. But she ultimately fictionalized some of Land’s story, keeping her popcorn-eating audience in mind. “I think [Stephanie] didn’t want to see exactly her story onscreen. I think she wanted to see an emotionally true version of it. And that’s what she said when she watched it.”
When it comes to the Netflix algorithm, it’s hard to say where Maid falls. “What I keep hearing is that it’s very hard to compare Maid to anything,” says Metzler. The show’s scenes can feel like a sucker punch and a heart-melting hug, all wrapped into one. “It’s its own thing…and I’m very proud of that. At the end of the day, the show is meant to be written by Alex.” Regardless of whether Netflix suggests Maid for fans of Ozark or Sex Education, Metzler hopes the show inspires viewers to look more carefully at the people around them. “We all know an Alex,” she says. “Some of us are an Alex, and we’re not telling anyone that we’re an Alex and we need help.”
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