Lifetime Goes Deep Into the World of V.C. Andrews with the Limited Series "Flowers in the Attic: The Origins"

"We started about four years ago when the project was brought to me," explained executive producer Paul Sciarrotta while recently promoting the series. "I'd read Flowers in the Attic a long time ago and wasn't, at the time, even aware there was this prequel book. When I found out it existed, and that Andrew wrote it, I was very excited. It’s the first book he [penned] in the V.C. catalog of I think over 100 that he's now written. It's been a valuable resource to have him on speed dial. I would call him always and still do for any questions or if I'm unsure about a story point or something totally incorrect. I could just check with him as he has his finger on the pulse of all things V.C. So, I was fortunate he was a part of the project."

The major catalyst in Olivia’s backstory is her husband Malcolm Foxworth, an eligible bachelor, who after wooing and marrying her, provides a less-than-desirable life. Her marriage is fraught with infidelity and abuse and exacerbated by her inability to produce the daughter Malcolm longed for. For his role, Irons had to dig deep. "I had to get past the fact that he was horrible quite quickly," he said of the role. "I had to look and find why he was the way he was, how he had learned to cope with the world as the world presented itself to him. The formative things in his life were his mother and father, and the fact is, his mother was center of his universe.

"She taught him about emotions and love … everything," he continued. "They coexisted almost entirely for the first few years of his life, and then all of a sudden she left. His father wasn't around to help him process or make any sense of that. There was no modern psychology to come to his aid. [Eventually] he was sent to a boy's school, and he had to make sense of that. He hardened himself to the world and discovered duty and a rigid work ethic. Where Malcolm had shame, he sought to elevate the Foxworth name and business and triumph. It was about looking at his younger self and saying, 'I'm going from there.'"

Despite the series dark tone and subject matter, star Jemima Rooper insists that behind-the-scenes things were the complete opposite. "We shot in the height of the pandemic," she recalled. "We all relocated to Romania for four months and became a lovely family -- not the twisted family of the show. I adored working with every person. In [later] episodes, the whole thing opens up, Olivia’s children grow up and the premise expands the saga. Despite how dark some of it gets, it was always a very happy set. When you're doing darker, more serious things, you kind of find the fun a bit more on set so it's more enjoyable. We had a beautiful time, and we all just felt really happy to be working, as it definitely felt like a luxury."

Like the male protagonist in the story, the Olivia character finds herself hardening to survive. While she provides an interesting exploration of a person's self-preservation, Rooper insists she didn't adopt any of Olivia's more questionable survival skills once the cameras stopped rolling. "I don't think, and sort of hope, I haven't put anything Olivia into my day-to-day life," she laughed. " Except maybe living my life with voice-overs going on in my head like in the series (laughs). I was thinking earlier [about] playing a character I feel is very far removed from who I am as a person, but thanks to the writing she was so vivid on the page I sort of never had any questions as to how to play her.

"There's something about playing Olivia that was incredibly empowering," she added in closing. "I remember just putting one foot in front of the other and knowing my lines, as Olivia has a tremendous amount of dialogue in the beginning. To show up on set was [all] I could manage at the time. Such a big undertaking [can] in so many ways actually be more freeing and liberating than sometimes not having so far to go with a character."

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