Sofia Coppola is opening up about why Apple canceled The Custom of the Country series.
The director was announced to be adapting the Edith Wharton classic novel for Apple TV+, but executives at the streamer seemed not to understand the female protagonist, calling her “unlikeable.”
“Apple just pulled out. They pulled our funding,” Coppola said in an interview with The New Yorker.
The series would’ve starred Florence Pugh as Undine Spragg, a Midwesterner desperately looking to infiltrate New York City’s high society during the Gilded Age.
Coppola said that she went back with forth with Apple executives, which were “mostly dudes,” during development of the series adding, “They didn’t get the character of Undine. She’s so ‘unlikable.’ But so is Tony Soprano!”
She continued, “It was like a relationship that you know you probably should’ve gotten out of a while ago.”
The filmmaker said that the limited series would’ve consisted of five episodes with a budget the size of “five Marie Antoinette’s,” citing her own film budget of $40 million.
“I thought they had endless resources,” Coppola added.
The Custom of the Country was first announced in 2020, with the director saying at the time, “Undine Spragg is my favorite literary anti-heroine and I’m excited to bring her to the screen for the first time.”
Coppola would move on to direct Priscilla, a biopic based on the 1985 memoir Elvis and Me by Priscilla Presley. Cailee Spaeny plays the titled character while Jacob Elordi gave life to Elvis Presley.
