‘East of Eden’ hits Netflix: Florence Pugh plays the darkest Cathy Ames yet

English actress Florence Pugh attends the premiere of Netflix’s “East of Eden” at The Plaza Hotel in New York, United States on September 30, 2026. — AFP pic

First Published: Thursday, 01 Oct 2026 9:20 AM MYT

NEW YORK, Oct 1 — Led by star Florence Pugh, “East of Eden” is an ambitious adaptation that streams on Netflix starting Thursday, based on the masterpiece of the same name by American novelist John Steinbeck.

The seven-part series focuses on the Trasks, one of the two families at the heart of the novel published in 1952, who struggle to escape generational trauma at the turn of the 20th century.

Pugh plays the darkest and most captivating figure: the manipulative, murderous Cathy Ames, whom she develops beyond Steinbeck’s “monster.”

The 30-year-old British actor has said she wants audiences to “sympathize and maybe fall in love with (Ames) a little bit.”

“I really wanted to try and get underneath all of the decisions that she makes, and not just do the easy, cheap version of making her a villain,” she said during an event in New York in September.

“She’s a human that’s had awful things happen to her, and so she does some awful things too,” Pugh added.

The script is written by Zoe Kazan, whose family history is intimately tied to “East of Eden”: she is the granddaughter of Elia Kazan, who directed the 1955 film adaptation starring James Dean.

“I really want to honour the book’s pursuit of this question of: Do we all have some good and some evil inside us?” Kazan said.

“What do we do about that? Can we change? Can we break generational patterns?” — AFP