Three Women Star Shailene Woodley on Why She Changed Her Mindset About People Not Liking Her

Author Lisa Taddeo spent 8 years covering the lives of three women, whose stories quickly became the best-selling book, “Three Women,” in 2019. Fast-forward to 2024, and those three women, portrayed by Betty Gilpin, DeWanda Wise and Gabrielle Creevy, are now the leading ladies of a new show on Starz. And there is actually a fourth woman. Shailene Woodley stars as journalist Gia, based on author Lisa Taddeo’s own experiences, when she was writing the book. SheKnows chatted exclusively with Woodley and Taddeo, who also serves as an executive producer on the project. Woodley opens up about what she realized after doing this show, and how it’s changed how she thinks about herself.

Each of the women have their own challenges and trauma to get through. Woodley’s Gia goes through a traumatic miscarriage while writing the book. Gilpin’s Lina starts an affair with her former high school sweetheart, who is also married, and battles being in a marriage with a man who engages in little physical intimacy with her. Wise plays Sloane, who is in a committed open marriage with Richard, played by Blair Underwood. Let’s just say, Richard is very good at handing over contraception, even unwrapping them, for his wife’s other sexual partners. Correct, he watches. Creevy plays Maggie, based on the story of a high school student, whose accuses her high school teacher of having an inappropriate relationship with her. The show chronicles the aftermath of that going public and the media storm that reigns down on Maggie and her family afterwards.

We asked Taddeo to share what was different between her book and the show. She has only two words: “Shailene Woodley.” She went on to say, “Shailene’s work in it, I don’t know, it just splits my heart open!”

When we asked Woodley what she had learned about herself after doing this show, she notes that it gave her a crash-course in accepting herself, regardless of what other people think. “I grew up in America, and I think it’s a very American thing to be conditioned to want to people-please or apologize for being who we are. Or when we introduce ourselves to the world, we live by a certain internal compass, or integrity and somebody doesn’t like it…. For me the immediate reaction was, ‘What’s wrong with me? What did I do wrong?’ Instead of going, ‘Alright cool. You don’t like me? You ain’t my people, that’s fine.” Woodley confesses.

She reveals, “There’s a lot that I took away from this show… like owning who we are is the most audacious and brave thing we can possibly do, and yet there’s not a lot of examples of it because we’re kind of taught to do the opposite.”

We also chatted with showrunner Laura Eason and Creevy about Maggie’s story. Watch the exclusive video below.

Three Women premieres on Starz Friday, September 13.

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