NEW YORK (AP) 鈥 If Ellen Pompeo was going to find a new role after 20 years as a series regular on ABC鈥檚 鈥淕rey鈥檚 Anatomy,鈥 it had to be good. She thinks she found it as a supermom whose world collapses in Hulu's 鈥淕ood American Family.鈥
鈥淚 was looking for a real creative challenge. I think this was an opportunity for me to completely disappear into a role,鈥 she says. 鈥滳haracters like this don鈥檛 come along all that often."
鈥淕ood American Family鈥 fictionalizes the true story of Natalia Grace, a Ukrainian-born orphan with dwarfism, adopted as a child by an American family who soon accuse her of being a troubled adult masquerading as a child.
Pompeo plays the adoptive mother, whose character has become a sought-after speaker and author after raising a son with autism but now finds herself at her breaking point with Natalia, her marriage strained, in legal jeopardy and her reputation in tatters.
鈥淲e were taking all of this research that we had and amplifying certain moments or adjusting certain moments for kind of dramatic license," says creator and co-showrunner Katie Robbins, who also created 鈥淪unny鈥 and wrote for 鈥淭he Affair.鈥
"The thing that was important was to tell a propulsive, compulsively watchable thing. But, at the end of the day, the most important thing was to tell it in an emotionally authentic way to the people involved.鈥
Over the years, the case has been the focus of several TV shows, podcasts and documentaries, including Investigation Discovery鈥檚 documentary series 鈥淭he Curious Case of Natalia Grace.鈥
If viewers hope to get clarity on who the heroes are, they'll not get it with 鈥淕ood American Family.鈥 It tells the story from multiple points of view, flashing forward and back, to create a complex family drama that also has elements of a thriller.
鈥淵ou really have to pay attention to who鈥檚 doing the telling,鈥 says Robbins. 鈥淯sing perspective felt like an opportunity both to tell the story in kind of a fresh way, but also to allow us as storytellers to take the viewers on an experience that would help them confront their own biases in unexpected ways.鈥
The series starts from the perspective of the adoptive parents 鈥 plays the husband 鈥 who eventually turn on their new family member, but then shifts to Natalia (played by Imogen Faith Reid), slowly cracking any snap judgements the viewer may have had going into it.
鈥淓verybody comes into the experience of this story with sort of a different way of looking at it,鈥 says co-showrunner and executive producer Sarah Sutherland. 鈥淚t鈥檚 sort of like a Rorschach test. I just thought it was super-fascinating to sit with the kind of uncomfortableness of that.鈥
The eight episodes that begin debuting Wednesday seamlessly blend darkness and light, showing moments of family levity but also scenes of terror, as when Natalia approaches her parents' bed with a knife.
鈥淚n terms of the tone, I am a firm believer that life is a real genre blend,鈥 says Robbins. 鈥淭he happiest moments in my life have been undercut often with tragedy, and the saddest moments I鈥檝e often found myself finding something absurdly hilarious. So everything that I write, I try to let all live in that sort of tension because that鈥檚 what it is to be a person.鈥
At its core, 鈥淕ood American Family鈥 is about how we are raised and how that can echo through generations. We learn how Pompeo's character was treated by her mother and how Natalia wasn't always raised with familial love, priming them for a face-off.
鈥淲e鈥檙e examining the ways in which one is parented trickles down and affects the way that one is a parent,鈥 says Robbins. 鈥淚t changes the way that you perceive the world. And I think that it鈥檚 a fascinating thing that runs through the arc of this series.鈥
Pompeo sees an even larger point 鈥 how everyone these days has their own definitive version of events and sees things though their own lens.
鈥淓ven if you know you鈥檙e wrong, it takes an extraordinary amount of humility to admit you鈥檙e wrong. It鈥檚 so much easier to just go with it, stick to the ego and say, 鈥業 wasn鈥檛 wrong,鈥欌 she says.
鈥淲e see that with what鈥檚 happening in our country right now. People will fight to the death before they admit they were wrong. It doesn鈥檛 matter what we see, right?" she adds.
"We鈥檙e seeing things before our eyes, and people are saying something else, and we鈥檙e choosing to believe what was said instead of what we鈥檙e seeing. And that is the human condition."
