Fleishman Is In Trouble

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Taffy&nbsp;Brodesser-Akner is a staff writer at The&nbsp;New York Times Magazine&nbsp;and a contributor to the paper's Culture desk. Previously, she worked for GQ and ESPN The Magazine. She is the author of The New York Times bestseller&nbsp;Fleishman Is in Trouble&nbsp;(Random House, 2019), which was long-listed for the National Book Award and a finalist for the Women's Prize. Her second novel,&nbsp;Long Island Compromise, will be published by Random House next year. She lives in New York City.&nbsp;

Toby Fleishman, portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg, never had much luck with the ladies when he was younger, but all of that changed 15 years ago when he met Rachel. Him! Toby! With a beautiful, brilliant, blonde woman! A devoted liver specialist, Toby’s ambition is not to scale the medical field, but to get better and better at his job and heal more and more patients. The story begins as he and Rachel have just divorced and Toby is feeling out his first summer of app-assisted sexual freedom. He wakes up one morning, early that summer, to find that Rachel has dropped off their two kids without warning a day earlier than she was supposed to…and the fragile balance he’s begun to build for himself topples over.

Was Rachel, portrayed by Claire Danes, ever really the person Toby thought he’d married? Raised by a cold and withholding grandmother, Rachel Fleishman’s real first love was her career. She’s a successful theater agent who has built Fleishman &amp; Co into the largest small theater agency in New York, all in hopes of making sure she and her family have the wealth and choices that Rachel never had growing up. But all these things came at a cost, and the marriage paid the bill. On a summer day soon after the Fleishmans’ divorce, Rachel drops the kids off and heads to a yoga retreat, taking the family’s newfound, wobbly sense of equilibrium with her.

Lizzy Caplan portrays Libby Epstein. Libby and Toby were fast friends when they met on a semester abroad in Israel and stayed close when they returned to New York. But since Toby married Rachel, they’ve grown apart. Rachel didn’t much like Libby and Libby, a writer at a men’s magazine, felt that she couldn’t compete with Rachel’s animosity. All these years later, Toby gets back in touch with Libby as he makes his way through his wild new post-divorce world. Libby, now a stay-at-home-mother defined more by her boredom than anything else, becomes fascinated with Toby’s new life and begins to spend more and more time with him. How is it that just as she was feeling so old, someone her own age was feeling so young? Libby, desperate to discover what happened to Rachel, feels something changing in her — a drift she can only stop if she can finally figure out whether the life she’s set up for herself is the one she wants.

Portrayed by Adam Brody, Seth is Toby’s lifelong friend. Good-natured, confident, a little smoldering, with the deep pockets of a committed finance job and an enviable Williamsburg loft — Seth has never met a woman who doesn’t melt onto him. Re-summoned into Toby and Libby’s lives by the seismic event of Toby’s divorce, Seth’s confirmed bachelorhood is a comfort to Toby as Seth guides him through the dating world. &nbsp;

Meara Mahoney Gross portrays Hannah Fleishman. Toby and Rachel’s daughter, an electrical storm of a girl, is about to turn 12 and all she wants is a goddamn phone. In the wake of her parents’ divorce, Hannah's anger pushes her to navigate the too-mature expectations for a New York middle schooler. This summer, as she watches her father begin to date and she watches life happen on the phones of her friends, she is fast leaving girlhood behind.

Maxim Swinton portrays Solly Fleishman. Toby and Rachel’s son is a wide-eyed, agreeable and guileless physics prodigy in the making — a curious, kind family peacekeeper and a heartbreaker who worships his dad. He’s not ready for the changes that his family has undertaken, or of the understanding that’s being asked of him.

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She is the author of The New York Times bestseller Fleishman Is In Trouble, which was long-listed for the National Book Award and a finalist for the Women's Prize.

Taffy Brodesser-Akner | Executive Producer | Fleishman Is In Trouble on FX

Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Sarah Timberman

Carl Beverly

Susannah Grant