“Scarpetta” star Jamie Lee Curtis talks how she helped get the popular crime novel series adapted for TV
“Scarpetta” star Jamie Lee Curtis talks how she helped get the popular crime novel series adapted for TV
Matt CabralMon, March 9, 2026 at 1:00 PM UTC
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Jamie Lee Curtis, Nicole KidmanCredit: Connie Chornuk/PrimeKey Points -
Jamie Lee Curtis shares how she partnered with Jason Blum to finally get Patricia Cornwell's popular, 36-year-old crime novel series adapted for television.
Curtis also discusses what sets Scarpetta apart from all the other crime dramas currently dominating the streaming landscape.
Scarpetta also packs plenty of family drama, much of which is fueled by Curtis' volatile character Dorothy Scarpetta.
Long before CSI: Crime Scene Investigation's DNA-deciphering crew performed its first autopsy, Dr. Kay Scarpetta had already cracked numerous murder cases from behind her razor-sharp scalpel. In fact, the fictional Virginia Chief Medical Examiner – first introduced in best-selling author Patricia Cornwell's 1990 novel Postmortem – is credited with not only influencing the long-running CBS crime procedural, but popularizing the forensics-focused subgenre that's spawned dozens of series over the last three decades.
But while the often-imitated character has starred in 29 of the prolific writer's works – the most recent being 2025's Sharp Force – it's taken 36 years for the crime-solving doctor to appear on screen. After several false starts – including doomed adaptations that would've featured Demi Moore and Angelina Jolie as the forensic pathologist – Nicole Kidman is finally donning the white lab coat in Amazon Prime's Scarpetta.
The Academy Award-winning actress is joined by a stacked ensemble cast that includes Bobby Cannavale, his son Jake Cannavale, Simon Baker, Ariana DeBose, and Jamie Lee Curtis, who also played a significant role in finally getting the eight-episode adaptation off the ground and onto the screen.
Nicole Kidman, Jamie Lee CurtisCredit: Connie Chornuk / Prime
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Curtis, who also serves as one of Scarpetta's executive producers, recently spoke to Entertainment Weekly about how she helped get the series greenlit, what it's doing to stick out from the stiff-as-a-corpse competition, and where the show might go narratively beyond season 1.
Following a successful collaboration with Jason Blum producing the acclaimed The Lost Bus, Curtis connected the Blumhouse Productions' founder to Cornwell's literary agent, Esther Newberg, with an email that got right to the point. "I'm introducing Esther here, let's f—ing go!"
That same determined attitude – minus the enthusiastic expletive – also led to Curtis securing the rights to Cornwell's Scarpetta novels. "I called Patricia and said, 'Who has the rights to Scarpetta right now?,' and she said, 'No one,'" Curtis tells EW. "I was so surprised that this incredible book series, with this fantastic lead character, had not been brought to the screen yet. I called Jason Blum and said 'I'd like to buy these books, and I would like to develop them for television.'"
Jamie Lee CurtisCredit: Connie Chornuk / Prime
While bringing the iconic character to the small screen proved easier than solving a cold case for Curtis and her collaborators, the series now faces a competitive, crime show-saturated television landscape that's enjoyed a three-decade headstart.
But Curtis believes Scarpetta is bringing something new to the crowded genre. "What's interesting about our show is that it's a little bit of a hybrid, which is, it's also an intense family drama in the midst of a forensic, procedural, crime-solving story," she says.
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Much of that family drama, especially the "intense" part, actually comes courtesy of Curtis' character Dorothy Scarpetta, Kay's sister. "She's a maneater," begins Curtis. "But what's fascinating is Dorothy and Kay both lost their father to murder, and Kay spends the rest of her life studying murder and trying to reverse it, trying to understand it, trying to figure out what she can learn from it so it never happens again.
"Dorothy has just taken the opposite path, basically saying, 'I've known death very early, so bring it f—ing on.' She is going to devour the world, because she already knows that death is coming for her, because it came for her father."
No spoilers here, but the explosive dynamic between Kidman and Curtis' divergent sisters is a tension-ratcheting highlight of the series. Suffice it to say, the biggest crimes committed in the drama might not be the murders, but all the scenes Curtis' colorful character steals.
Family drama fueled by Dorothy's world-devouring, man-eating antics aside, Scarpetta is also aiming to separate itself from the competition by leveraging a unique narrative structure that essentially adapts two of Cornwell's books in a single season.
Nicole KidmanCredit: Connie Chornuk / Prime
"It's split over two timelines, allowing us to take advantage of all the books in Patricia's oeuvre. We're able to take some of the older books, which have crimes based back then, when forensic pathology was different, and we have new books where we can take advantage of all the technology that exists today," Curtis says. "We're marrying two of the books, episode by episode, connecting the crimes in both books, and then seeing how the characters have developed over these 30 years."
The Amazon Prime series, developed by showrunner Liz Sarnoff (Lost, Deadwood,) currently has a two-season order, with the first tackling Cornwell's award-winning debut Kay Scarpetta novel Postmortem and her 2021 book Autopsy. But according to Curtis, they're just getting warmed up.
"Season by season, we're going to be doing two books at a time, and Patricia is continuing to write current Scarpetta books. And we've already mapped out the pairings…it's like wine pairings…these are pairings of crime books that are going to tell a similar story that we can tell over two different time periods."
Curtis concludes, "So you have mirror crime stories and mirror family stories, all intertwining effortlessly, and I think that's also what sets it apart from other shows."
Scarpetta premiers March 11 on Prime Video.
on Entertainment Weekly
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
