When it comes to creating upcoming book-to-screen adaptations, ensuring you pick the right actors to portray the characters is always challenging. For Amazon Prime Video's The Better Sister, the two leads are Jessica Biel and Elizabeth Banks. While everyone has been saying they look like actual siblings for years, the two all-stars opened up about actually playing them for the first time – and the showrunner talks about how it was like "lightning struck."
When I had the chance to speak to the actors about playing sisters and the experience behind it after years of comparisons, their answers were everything. Banks said it was so easy to sink into that sister role because it was fun between the two of them:
I've heard it over the years, which is a huge compliment to me…we had such a great time doing it. It was very fun. It was easy to create this sisterly-frenemy friendship.
Biel admitted that she never could have imagined anyone else taking on the role of Nicky, and that when she found out, she was ecstatic:
Immediately, I was like, 'Oh, that's the perfect…it had to be you.' For me, I was like, 'This is the obvious choice.' But then it was just exciting. The second I heard, I was like, 'Okay. Yep. Perfect.'
What a series for these two to star in. The Better Sister is an excellent Amazon Prime series based on the novel of the same name, and premieres as part of the 2025 TV schedule. It tells the tale of two wildly different sisters entangled in a court case that turns their lives upside down.
It's a significant leading role for Banks, showcasing her dramatic prowess alongside Biel, and the two actresses play the part of sisters perfectly. Co-showrunner Olivia Milch jokingly said that she and her fellow showrunner, Regina Corrado, felt "brilliant" when they put their pictures together, and that they were just so lucky to pair these two:
We jokingly say it's like we remember the first time we put their images together and we thought, 'Are we brilliant?' This is amazing. They look so much alike, they sound alike – I mean, it's crazy. The process is always a bit of alchemy when you're putting a project together, and you just hope that you kind of get lightning to strike the way that it did for this. Where you have these two actors who are such incredible performers and such amazing producers, to have people who have the holistic project in mind and people who audiences love and feel this familiarity with.
The showrunner continued by saying that to Biel and Banks, playing sisters just "made sense" because it felt so "natural":
To have them play sisters, it makes so much sense. 'cause I think immediately audiences are like, 'Oh yeah, I'm in it with you. I'm in this family with you, and I wanna know what it's like.' To see the two of them together, it just made so much sense. It just felt so natural. You just always count your lucky stars when it comes together this way.
It feels like this has been years in the making. While it's always fun to imagine seeing these two actresses in other roles – like Jessica Biel and her crazy Notebook audition or Elizabeth Banks begging to be in The White Lotus – there's something so gratifying about seeing them together now in The Better Sister. It's intense and funny at times, and perfectly suited for them.
You can check out all eight episodes of The Better Sister with an Amazon Prime subscription. And trust me, you're going to want your popcorn for this one – you won’t be able to stop watching.
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