Lady baltimore

Premiere of ‘Lady in the Lake’ on Apple TV+ puts city in the spotlight

Natalie Portman, left, and Moses Ingram star in “Lady in the Lake,” the limited Apple TV+ series that premiered Friday. Apple TV+

Above: During filming for “Lady in the Lake,” storefronts in the 200 block of Park Avenue have been transformed by set designers into a 1960s version of Pennsylvania Avenue, including a version of the Royal Theatre, now called The Penn, and jazz and comedy clubs. Below: The 200 block of E. Redwood Street was lined with vintage cars and festooned with Christmas decor, as the crew prepared to film inside Werner’s restaurant, behind the old police car at center. Staff file photos

When Moses Ingram picked up a microphone at the Parkway Theatre on July 13, in front of a roomful of the people who had watched her fight for a performing career and helped her along the way, it was suddenly too much for the 30-year-old Baltimore-born actor.

“I didn’t think I was going to be so emotional,” Ingram said, speaking through her tears before a private screening of the first two episodes of the seven-part Apple TV+ series “Lady in the Lake” for the show’s Baltimore cast members and crew.

As she paused for more than a minute while attempting to regain her composure, some of the 145 audience members shouted out words of encouragement.

“We love you, Moses!” called one woman. “Proud of you,” said a second. “Welcome home, Baby,” said a man, while someone else chimed in, “Represent.”

The Baltimore School for the Arts graduate began her day by throwing out the first pitch in the Orioles’ game against the New York Yankees. At the evening reception, she thanked her family and the friends “who watched me struggle in high school as I was growing up. I fought so long. I had to leave Baltimore to do something else and to be someone else so I could come right back and be here with you tonight in Baltimore.”

It’s been a long wait — for the audience as well as for Ingram.

“Lady in the Lake” debuted Friday, more than two years after the show began filming in Maryland. The remaining five episodes will be streamed weekly on Fridays through Aug. 23.

The miniseries is based on a novel that its author, the former Sun reporter Laura Lippman, has said was inspired by two real-life Baltimore murders: the June 2, 1969, discovery of Shirley Lee Wigeon Parker, whose body was found floating in a fountain in Druid Lake, and the slaying three months later of 11-year-old Esther Lebowitz, who was killed in the basement of a local aquarium store. (In the show, she’s named Tessie Durst.)

Oscar-winner Natalie Portman plays Maddie Schwartz, a housewife turned journalist who begins investigating the murders, and Ingram portrays Cleo Johnson, the character based loosely on Parker. A mother who works three jobs to support her children, Cleo sees her life spin out of control when she is drawn into the criminal underworld despite her best efforts.

Series director Alma Har’el said she’s proud that “Lady in the Lake” generated more than $100 million for Maryland’s economy and created 1,132 jobs between November 2021, when location scouting began, and October 2022, when filming wrapped up.Har’el said she “insisted” that a film set in Baltimore be filmed entirely inside state lines.

“Everybody said, ‘We’ll shoot in New York,'” she recalled at the screening. “I said, ‘No, I want to shoot it in Baltimore.’

“Then they said, ‘Well, we’ll shoot it in Canada.’

“And yet,” she concluded to loud cheers, “here we are.”

But Har’el’s commitment to authenticity didn’t mean she aimed to replicate the novel. Instead, she used Lippman’s story as a springboard for exploring her own ideas — even if that meant reinventing one main character.

In Lippman’s book, Maddie holds center stage, though her point of view is challenged and at times contradicted by the ghost of the deceased barmaid, Cleo.

“Our goal was to turn this into a two-hander, and that meant exploring and expanding on the character of Cleo,” Har’el said.

“There was a lot of material available to the public about Shirley Parker. She worked as a mannequin at a store. She was very politically active in several organizations, which was not in the book. She worked as a barmaid, but she didn’t work at a stripper kind of place, but at one of the best jazz clubs in Baltimore. I was inspired by the richness of her life.”

She was also inspired by the richness of Charm City. Viewers will find familiar references in every episode:

Maddie buys a dress in the former Hecht’s Department Store, and shops for lamb brisket at Attman’s Delicatessen. An arabber sells fruits and vegetables from his cart, a music lover discusses a performance by Cab Calloway, and the opening credits juxtapose images of two newspaper mastheads: the Baltimore Afro-American and The Baltimore Sun, though in the series, the latter is renamed The Baltimore Star.

The production also was cast with performers in addition to Ingram who can claim legitimate Bawlmer roots.

Portman’s maternal great-grandmother lived in Baltimore, and her grandmother was born here. The actor herself resided in Rockville from ages 4 to 7; her father, Dr. Avner Hershlag, was a resident at The George Washington University Hospital.

“I was so excited to explore a world that my family was related to,” Portman said. “My grandmother was around the age of Maddie in the ’60s, which is such an interesting time in American — and women’s — history.”

Other familiar faces with local connections include the actors Wood Harris, who portrayed drug czar Avon Barksdale in HBO’s cable drama “The Wire,” and David Corenswet, who was cast as narcotics investigator David McDougall in the HBO miniseries “We Own This City.”

Harris depicts another criminal kingpin in “Lady in the Lake,” the smooth and deadly Shell Gordon, while Corenswet plays Maddie’s former boyfriend, the father of the missing 11-year-old girl.

These characters inhabit a 1960s-era Baltimore that Har’el and production designer JC Molina were determined to re-create accurately to the tiniest detail — no small feat for the Israeli-born director and her Colombian-born colleague.

The director said she spent 11 months living in Federal Hill, poring over “hundreds of screen grabs” from The Afro and The Sun, watching old newsreels shot in Baltimore, and researching topics ranging from Black comedians in the 1960s to Baltimore’s music scene to segregation in Maryland.

She and Molina created a 1,200-page document of their findings that they referred to as “The Bible.” The massive document included an interactive map of every neighborhood in the city; actors and crew members could click on individual neighborhoods to find archival photographs of that location circa 1966.

Molina relied in particular on the more than 100,000 photographs taken by I. Henry Phillips Sr., a photographer for The Afro who was active in the city in the mid-20th century. Phillips’ grandson, Webster Phillips, maintains an archive of his grandfather’s work. When Molina wanted to know, for instance, what a particular street looked like during the period it was honored as The Afro’s “Clean Block of the Month,” he would contact Webster Phillips, who would send over the relevant photo.

The filmmakers’ attention to verisimilitude extended to even the most incidental items. Consider the scene set at Baltimore’s annual Christmas parade, when the 11-year-old goes missing.

“Baltimore was trying to compete with Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade,” Molina said.

“But Baltimore parades didn’t use helium at the time, so the balloons didn’t float in the air. They were attached to a string and held by characters in the parade. So in that episode of ‘Lady in the Lake,’ clowns carry the balloons.”