‘The Perfect Couple’: Dakota Fanning Reveals the ‘Wild’ Reason People Kept ‘Staring’ at Her on Set
Actor Dakota Fanning is no stranger to having eyes on her as someone who grew up in front of cameras. However, while filming the new Netflix miniseries, The Perfect Couple, the 30-year-old received attention for one part of her character’s physical appearance. Ahead, the “amazing” part of Fanning’s costumes people on set couldn’t get over.
[Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers from The Perfect Couple.]
Dakota Fanning plays Abby Winbury on ‘The Perfect Couple’
Fanning plays Abby Winbury, daughter-in-law to the show’s eponymous “perfect couple,” successful author Greer Garrison Winbury (Nicole Kidman) and her adoring husband, Tag Winburgy (Liev Schreiber).
Abby is married to one of Greer and Tag’s three sons, Tom, as played by Jack Reynor. Together, the couple occasionally torments Benji (Billy Howle), the almost groom. Ahem, the wedding cake scene. Meanwhile, Benji’s fiancée, Amelia (Eve Hewson) is left reeling by the sudden death of her friend and maid of honor, Merritt (Meghann Fahy).
Finally, after many secrets are revealed and the seemingly perfect couple is revealed to be nothing of the sort, Abby is discovered as the killer. Her motive? To ensure her husband, despite his shortcomings, gets his trust fund.
‘Nobody could believe’ Fanning’s prosthetic pregnancy belly in the Netflix limited series
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Fanning opened up about how realistic the prosthetic pregnancy belly she wore as Abby, who’s pregnant with her and Tom’s daughter in The Perfect Couple, looked on screen. So much so that it drew attention when she wore it while filming by the pool and had her interviewer googling to see if she’d had a baby. (Fanning has no children.)
“I didn’t wear that one all the time—there was a different one that I wore under clothes—but there was no way she was going to wear a one-piece at the pool,” Fanning said. “It [had] to be a bikini and you had to see the belly.”
“But we really had to get it right,” she continued. “It was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. And it wasn’t a glued-on situation, I put it on like a corset so it wrapped around my whole body and tied in the back.”
“I was laying [sic] there so you never saw my back; it was just so seamless from every side,” she explained. “It’s wild. People on set that day were staring at me a ton and then apologizing for staring. Nobody could believe that thing. I loved it.”
The actor thought ‘The Perfect Couple’ reveal scene was ‘hilarious’
The big reveal scene in the family’s picturesque living room when the truth comes out about Greer’s past as an escort can be summed in one word—“hilarious”—according to Fanning.
“I just thought it was hilarious—the way that that scene plays out and thinking about it from Abby’s perspective,” she said. “The first mic-drop moment for her is that the Monet is fake. That’s catastrophic to her.”
“Then they say they met in a bar, and she’s like, “Well, Tom and I met in a bar.” She thought she could still save this,” Fanning continued. “When she realizes the extent of it, she loses it. It’s all a facade. It’s not what she thought it was.”
“She tried to save this thing, but what was she even try[ing] to save?” the actor asked. “In the fake Monet moment, you can just see it crumble for her. That’s me thinking of it as a character, though. As a viewer? It’s so funny. Liev says, “I never paid!” And Nicole’s, like, “You paid! Three times!” What is happening!?”
The Perfect Couple is streaming on Netflix.
