Sarah Hoover’s bestselling memoir “The Motherlode: Episodes from the Brink of Motherhood” is being developed as a drama series at 20th Television, sources tell Variety.
Stuart Zickerman will serve as showrunner, and Hoover will co-write the pilot with Sass Goldberg (Only Murders in the Building, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel).
The “Motherlode” series follows Jennifer, a millennial art dealer who finds motherhood not what she expected. According to the logline, “Instead of joy, it turns out to be months of anger, brain fog, self-medication, and a scorched-earth policy toward her husband.” “The result was a complete abandonment of gender, career, and identity, and Jennifer realized that she would never find fulfillment in raising a child without taking the harshest look at herself, her relationship with her mother, her relationship with men, and the condition of women who despise their mother’s trash talk.”
Hoover’s original work is a parenting memoir that explores the horrors of motherhood. The book, the publisher says, turns the euphoric narrative of childbirth on its head and “dares to ask what happens when ‘what you expect when you’re expecting’ turns out to be months of anger, anguish, brain fog, and a complete abandonment of gender, career, and identity.”
Hoover is a writer and cultural critic who moved to New York from Indiana to study art history. According to the synopsis, she worked in a gallery and married artist Tom Sachs, “but when Hoover became pregnant, everything in her life began to unravel.” “She felt like her body was an impostor. She was estranged from her friends and husband. Anxiety, fear, guilt, and shame threatened to consume her.” Her memoir is an unflinchingly honest look at postpartum depression, rejecting the idea that mothers are pure and perfect.
Zickerman also serves as an executive producer on “Motherlode” along with Gotham Group’s Ellen Goldsmith-Vane, Jeremy Bell and Sass Goldberg. Gotham Group and Goldberg both have first-look deals with 20th.
Mr. Hoover is repped by WME, Linden Entertainment, Align PR and Jackoway Austin. Zicherman is represented by UTA and Mosaic. Mr. Goldberg is repped by WME, Rise Management and Ziffren Brittenham. Gotham Group is repped by WME.
