Unraveling a Secret Life

CBS originally planned to show its TV movie “The Pilot’s Wife” on Sept. 30 last year. But after the tragedy of Sept. 11, the network pulled the drama based on Anita Shreve’s bestseller because it deals with a woman whose husband dies in a plane crash. Seven months after the terrorist attacks, “The Pilot’s Wife” is finally ready to take flight.

Executive producer Stephanie Germain never worried that the film would be grounded permanently. “It didn’t appear appropriate at the time,” she says, “but the movie stands on its own, and [I knew] it would have its time.”

Christine Lahti plays the title character in “The Pilot’s Wife”--Kathryn Lyons, a happily married woman with a precocious teenage daughter (Alison Pill). Her world is turned on its head after her husband, Jack (John Heard), is killed in a mysterious plane crash off the coast of Ireland and she learns that he was leading a double life. She then travels to London and Ireland to find the truth behind the crash.

A selection of Oprah Winfrey’s book club, “The Pilot’s Wife” was a critical and commercial success three years ago. Germain believes the story holds appeal for “every adult out there in any kind of relationship, married or not, because it has to do with: Do you ever really know the other person? It is so incredibly relatable. I think that’s what drew such a huge readership.”

Neither director Robert Markowitz nor his wife, screenwriter Christine Berardo, had read the novel before joining the project. Navigating the story to the small screen was difficult.

“The novel is structured so that every other chapter is a flashback to reveal the marriage,” says Berardo. “To get all of that back story in and not to do just lengthy flashbacks or have her talk was the challenge. It was great for me that we both started working at the same time. Robert could make directorial suggestions, and I was able to take some of his ideas and just run with it.” (Shreve wrote an early draft of the script, which wasn’t used. She still shares writing credit with Berardo.)

Markowitz and Berardo decided to use flashbacks to slowly reveal the truth behind Kathryn’s relationship with Jack--”to tell the story from both outside Kathryn and to see what was happening in her head, switching back and forth,” Berardo says. “Sometimes you are in fantasy time with her. It was great material to work with because the book is so rich.... Anita’s dialogue in the book is just sensational, and I used as much of that as I could.”

Because the film deals so extensively with memory, Markowitz acknowledges that “The Pilot’s Wife” is unusual network fare. “We went to CBS early to let them know it was going to be done in an unconventional way,” he says. “It’s no secret CBS is trying to increase their audience, so they wanted the film to have an edge to it. They really embraced this technique. It’s not just bookended flashbacks. When we were working on it, we felt these pieces of memory were like shards of memory, and the memory becomes discovery for her.”

Lahti was also involved in shaping the script and her character. Because of the actress’ input, Kathryn is less passive than in the novel.

“It was ... [my] and the writers’ and Robert’s intention not to make her a victim,” says Lahti. “I feel like in very rare cases there are no victims, just volunteers.”

Because Kathryn’s parents died when she was young, says Lahti, she never wanted to rock the boat with her husband. “She is so in denial,” says Lahti. “I think one of the things her daughter taught her was to stop pretending, just look at what’s really going on. That’s one of the blessings of this tragedy in Kathryn’s life. She sort of came of age in the middle of her life and got to be a grown-up and really started looking at things as they really were.”

“The Pilot’s Wife” can be seen Sunday at 9 p.m. on CBS. The network has rated it TV-14-D-L-S (may be inappropriate for children under 14, with advisories for suggestive dialogue, coarse language and sex).