'Fatal Attraction' star Joshua Jackson says that we're in the middle of a 'massive white man freakout moment' over privilege

In the 1987 version of Fatal Attraction, Glenn Close's emotionally troubled Alex Forrest paid the ultimate price for her ill-advised affair with Michael Douglas's straying family man, Dan Gallagher. Both the original ending — and the revised theatrical ending — for Adrian Lyne's era-defining hit concluded with Alex's death while Dan got to live out the rest of his life relatively free of consequences.

That familiar script is flipped early on in the eight-episode streaming version of Fatal Attraction coming to Paramount+ on April 30. While Alex, now played by Lizzy Caplan, still dies in the aftermath of their affair, the series premiere — and all of the pre-release trailers — immediately establishes that Dan (Joshua Jackson) was found guilty of her murder and spent 15 years in prison.

The rest of the series shifts back and forth in time, chronicling the messy way their tryst begins and ends and Dan's later attempts to clear his name and reconnect with his wife, Beth (Amanda Peet) and now-grown daughter, Ellen (Alyssa Jirrels). In both time periods, he's held accountable for his actions as well as the privileges he enjoys as a wealthy white man in America — privileges that largely weren't remarked upon in the '80s version.

Watch our interview with Fatal Attraction stars Joshua Jackson and Lizzy Caplan on YouTube:

It's no accident that Fatal Attraction deals directly with white male privilege in regards to who bears the consequences for inappropriate sexual relationships in the workplace. It's a topic that's been much-discussed since the rise of the #MeToo movement toppled prominent men in positions of power, from former Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein, to ousted NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell. But that new accountability has also led to pushback, with some even using the term "witch hunt" to describe efforts to combat the racial and economic privileges that have previously benefitted accused male aggressors.

"I don't think you have to stretch that far to see that we're in a massive white man freakout moment right now," Jackson tells Yahoo Entertainment about how the new Fatal Attraction confronts the question of privilege. "This is a version [of Fatal Attraction] examining what happens when a white male who has grown up inside of a culture that has told them that they're the center of the world is suddenly not exactly in the place that they feel like they should be, they're not giving all of the things that they think that they deserve and how do they react in that moment. And if you haven't ever examined your privilege, the moment when the world tells you, 'You're not gonna get what you want,' it can be a little shocking."

While Dan is held accountable for his role in the series of events that led to Alex's death, Fatal Attraction also asks if he's perhaps paid too high a price for a crime he may not have committed. "Some of the consequences are outsized," the former Dawson's Creek star notes. "They are not commensurate to the damage that he's done, but that's partially because he can't stop the chain of bad decisions that he's making because he can never admit to the central thing, which is, 'I did a bad thing and I'm not the good guy that I see myself as.'

"Half of my interest in telling this story was having the space to delve in to give Alex the breathing room to understand why and who she is," Jackson continues. "Having that same opportunity [to ask] of Dan: 'You think you're a good dad and a good husband and a solid member of the community but you made this choice.'" (Jackson is married to actress Jodie Turner-Smith and they have a young daughter.)

For her part, Caplan's interest in signing onto a new version of Fatal Attraction was the opportunity to locate the humanity in Alex — a character that served as the prototype for the female "stalker from hell" villain that popped up in subsequent thrillers like Single White Female, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle and Fatale. That's a fate that Close never wanted for her alter ego.

Speaking with Yahoo Entertainment in 2020, Lyne said that the actress wasn't pleased by the revised ending where Alex invades Dan and Beth's home in a desperate act of revenge. "I remember talking to Glenn about the end, because she was very upset," he remembered, adding that his sympathies also lay more with Alex than with Dan.

Rewatching the movie now, Caplan says she was struck by the way Close delivers Fatal Attraction's most iconic line: "I'm not going to be ignored, Dan," a piece of dialogue that she gets to deliver in the series. "I remembered it purely as a threat," the actress admits. "But in rewatching it and knowing how much work Glenn Close put into her portrayal of Alex... I see it as something sadder than that. It's coming from a place of desperation and utter confusion ... I see it as a really human moment."

"That line is an homage to Glenn's performance," echoes Fatal Attraction showrunner Alexandra Cunningham. "But it's also an opportunity to give it a different context for Lizzy, because Lizzy is on a different journey. Giving her the opportunity to deliver it in her own way was definitely a thing that we knew we were going to do from the beginning."

One major difference between the original Fatal Attraction and the new version is that the Paramount+ series employed intimacy coordinator Nicole Randall to oversee the torrid sex scenes between Alex and Dan — an on-set role that didn't exist when Close and Douglas starred in the film. "I've worked with Nicole on five series now," says director Silver Tree. "She approaches these things in a technical, logistical way, while still telling the same story. We were also pretty far into production when we shot the intimate scenes, so that gave Josh and Lizzy time to establish a rapport and get comfortable with each other. By the time we got there, we all felt pretty good about it."

Fatal Attraction premieres Sunday, April 30 on Paramount+.