For several years, Sofia Coppola tried to convince AppleTV to finance one of her dream projects: a miniseries adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country. Considering how AppleTV blows through money on so many projects no one watches, it was always so bizarre to me that they wouldn’t finance that adaptation from an Oscar-winner. All of which to say, I’ve never read the book and I was actually looking forward to familiarizing myself with the story via Coppola’s adaptation. Well, Graydon Carter is familiar with the Edith Wharton novel, and he referenced it in his Interview Magazine Q&A. Obviously, they asked him about the Duchess of Sussex again as he shills his memoir, and this is what he said:
Interview: THE MURDOCHS
Carter: “Iris.”MEGHAN MARKLE
“The Undine Spragg of Montecito.”PAGE SIX
“Glorious to read; often terrifying to be in.”TIKTOK
“I have a 16-year-old, and I can see why it’s completely addictive.”
Undine Spragg is the heroine/antiheroine of The Custom of the Country. In Page Six’s coverage of Carter’s latest attack on Meghan, they claim that Carter “bulldozes Meghan in five words.” Of course, they also got the name of the book wrong and misspelled Edith Wharton’s name, but hey. Would you like to hear what Sofia Coppola thinks of Undine Spragg? From a piece Coppola wrote for LitHub when she was adapting the book for a now-canceled Apple series:
Until I read The Custom of the Country, I had never met a literary character quite like Undine Spragg, nor encountered such an in-depth portrait of a classic antiheroine. Yet, we’ve all met women like her. We all know women who have transformed and reinvented themselves. Undine follows the trends carefully, without having anything unique to add, and unabashedly markets herself at the center of the world of high society that she longs to belong to.
I’ve always loved Edith Wharton’s writing, but The Custom of the Country is my favorite, and I think her funniest and most sly. As I’ve worked on adapting it into a screenplay, I’ve found it interesting to hear some men say that Undine is so unlikable, while my women friends love her and are fascinated by her and what she’ll do next. We’ve all seen her before, the way she walks into the room, her focus on men, and her ease with their gaze. We admire and are annoyed by her. While I’ve often worked on stories with more sympathetic characters, it’s been so fun to dive into Undine’s world and pursuits.
Published in 1913, originally in serial form for Scribner’s Magazine, each book of The Custom of the Country ends with anticipation for what and who’s next on Undine’s social-climbing quest. Wharton paints the picture of the ultimate nouveau-riche climber. We watch her like a car crash while at the same time we root for her. She does things we would never dream of doing, and it’s such a delight to follow along. Mixed with empathy and disdain, Wharton manages to keep us captivated, and makes us look at ourselves along the way.
While Undine sounds like a delight, her story does not sound much like the Duchess of Sussex. It’s funny that Coppola writes that men encounter the character with disdain, and maybe Carter’s comments are a larger reflection of how men perceive women and characters who succeed by their wits, intelligence, charm, beauty and vivacity. There’s this consistent false narrative that Meghan somehow “ensnared” Harry or that she threw herself into his path or social-climbed in his direction. In reality, Harry saw her on a friend’s video and did everything he could to throw himself IN HER PATH. He was the one chasing her!
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.
