Why Netflix's East Of Eden Made Florence Pugh's Cathy The Central Character
Michael Boyle
Wed, October 7, 2026 at 9:41 AM UTC
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Kirsty Griffin/Netflix
The most striking change in Netflix's adaptation of "East of Eden" is the way it frames Cathy Ames (Florence Pugh). While this version of Cathy still commits most of the crimes her literary counterpart does, she's afforded a bit more humanity by the show's writers. In the series, Cathy's father is portrayed as explicitly abusive and misogynistic, making Cathy's decision to kill him go down a bit smoother.
One of Cathy's earliest moments of evil in the book — when she seduces two neighborhood boys as part of a sadistic scheme to frame them for sexual assault — is also written instead as a genuine sexual assault that traumatized her at an early age. The Netflix series' showrunner, Zoe Kazan, explained to Variety that she saw the books' portrayal of that event as more open to interpretation than John Steinbeck may have intended.
"It says that she couldn't speak afterwards — that when she did speak, no one believed her," Kazan explained. "It is impossible for me, as a person who grew up in a body that was sexualized and targeted from my earliest memories, not to read that as maybe not what Steinbeck intended. Very late in the book, she describes her memories of being a child and being frightened and alone... What I saw was a portrait of disassociation, and I profoundly understood that."