Are chemistry lessons based on a true story?

Chemistry Classes isn’t based on a true story, but the Apple TV+ series is inspired by the career of author Bonnie Garmus and her mother’s generation. Set in the 1960s, Brie Larson stars as Elizabeth Zott, an aspiring scientist who is fired from the laboratory where she works. She’s not sure what’s next for her career before she gets an offer to host a television cooking show. She accepts the offer and decides to use this space on television to help teach women much more than just making homemade recipes.

The miniseries explores the harsh truths of gender discrimination, especially in fields like science, and sees Elizabeth find a way around these gender biases to open up a world of possibilities for housewives across the country. Based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Bonnie Garmus Chemistry Classes may be a work of fiction, both as a novel and as a miniseries, but is rooted in the author’s personal life and the world in which her mother livedwhere women fought to find equality.

What was the inspiration for the chemistry classes?

Bonnie Garmus based Elizabeth on women from her mother’s era in the 1960s

Chemistry Classes follows Elizabeth Zott and her life, from chemistry to her role as a television host on a cooking show called Supper at six. In the series, Elizabeth loses her job at the laboratory where she worked because she was pregnant. As a single mother, society also frowned upon her status. However, not to be intimidated, she got the job Supper at six to support your family and at the same time influencing her daughter and other mothers watching her show.

Although it was not based on real events, it was inspired by Garmus’ mother. She was a nurse in the 1960s and ended up a housewife around the same time as the book and miniseries. Garmus said he had his mother’s entire generation in mind when he wrote the book (via The Guardian):

“I created Elizabeth Zott in honor of her and all the other women whose dreams were cast aside by a society that insisted they were incapable of becoming anything more than an ‘ordinary housewife.’ My mother was a nurse before we had four children. She talked about it constantly and obviously missed it.

Garmus assured that he also used the historical obstacles that women faced in the 1960s to show what Elizabeth had to face and overcome. Only a third of women worked outside the home in the 1960s and almost all were single. Elizabeth was afraid of marriage and pregnancy because she thought it would interfere with her dreams, something many women had to deal with at this time.

Chemistry Classes also took inspiration from pre-Hollywood cooking shows. These programs aimed to show women how to be perfect, reliable wives and mothers. However, the miniseries and book turned this on its head when Elizabeth used the show to teach these things while also teaching about being self-reliant and an independent thinker. Screenwriter Elissa Karasik said that Julia Child, Alma Kitchell and Dione Lucas influenced this type of character (via The New York Times).

What parts of the chemistry classes came from the author’s real life?

Bonnie Garmus has a never-give-up attitude

Bonnie Garmus also used some of her own life experiences to create the character of Elizabeth and her struggles. Although Garmus was not a scientist like Elizabeth, as a novelist, her first book was rejected more than 90 times before Chemistry Classes became a bestseller. Garmus said he wanted to show his refusal to give up and accept rejection to reveal why Elizabeth became such a success story.

“There are all these obstacles, especially a lot of social and cultural obstacles, to this. But don’t let someone’s rejection of your material or you be the thing that guides you. decide your own future.”

What changed in the history of the novel?

Calvin’s Death, the Six-Thirty Race, and Harriet Sloane’s Purpose

A big difference in the miniseries was the love story with a fellow scientist named Calvin (Lewis Pullman). In the Apple TV+ miniseries, Elizabeth falls in love with Calvinwho she worked with in the lab before being fired. The two realize that, although they love each other, getting married wouldn’t work for them. He buys her an engagement ring but never proposes, supporting her professional aspirations. He then dies in an accident. The book has him run over by a bus, and the series runs him over by a police car.

Director Sarah Adina Smith said that when people read Chemistry Classessometimes they put it down and pick it up days after processing what they read. She wanted to use the love story to fill that negative space (via LA Times). “I wanted this show to have that negative space feel in the way we filmed it and let us just enjoy and get lost in the love story and really feel the eternity of those moments. So that when it’s all over, we’ll be as devastated as Elizabeth.“

The other main differences centered mainly on Elizabeth’s life. The book begins with her as a depressed mother in 1961, and the series begins with her in the midst of her stardom before showing how she got there. Elizabeth’s dog, Six-Thirty, was a former bomb-sniffing dog in the book, but he was a Goldendoodle that Elizabeth caught going through her trash in the miniseries. Harriet Sloane also had major changes in Chemistry Classesgoing from an unhappy older woman to a younger, determined legal advisor at Apple TV+.