‘Dear Edward’s Taylor Schilling Reveals Her Own Near-Death Experiences—Her ‘Entire 20s’ Were 1 After Another

Here’s a tip: Maybe don’t watch Dear Edward if you’re traveling by plane any time soon. Based on the bestselling book by Ann Napolitano and adapted for the screen by Jason Katims, the AppleTV+ series is an emotional coming-of-age story in which a 12-year-old boy, Edward, is the sole survivor of a plane crash. Sure, there’s plenty of existing media on fabricated catastrophes, but Dear Edward is loosely based on a real-life disaster—that of Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771, which went down on May 12, 2010, with 104 people on board. Nine-year-old Ruben van Assouw was the only one to make it out alive. So… Trigger warning for people with aerophobia?

Taylor Schilling, best known as Piper from Orange is the New Black, plays Edward’s aunt, Lacey. Already grappling with the trauma of three miscarriages, her character is thrust into parenthood after her estranged sister—Edward’s mom—perishes in the wreckage of Trinity Air Flight 2977. It’s a near-death experience that, understandably, changes Edward’s life. He must contend with a sort of macabre celebrity status thanks to the deluge of strangers that write to him (hence, Dear Edward) while navigating tweenhood with his aunt and uncle as his guides.

Colin O’Brien, Taylor Schilling. Courtesy of AppleTV+

Schilling has had her own fair share of near-death experiences, she tells StyleCaster during the press junket for Dear Edward. “Oh my, I’ve had so many. I feel like my entire 20s were just one rolling experience of ‘Holy shit, how did I survive that?’” That’s what your 20s are for, right, we ask? “I hope so. That’s what mine were for,” she adds, laughing. (Unfortunately, our time was up and we couldn’t press her for details. Such is the life of a junket reporter.)

Beyond the novel, the series offers insight into the families of the doomed flight’s passengers. In what might be her best role yet, Connie Britton plays Dee Dee; a wife who after the crash unearths her husband’s double life on the other side of the country. She’s left not only grieving his death but questioning the authenticity of her entire marriage. “When we first meet her, she thinks that her strength is in her partnership—with her husband and this perfect family she’s created and all of her beautiful clothes… That’s her sense of identity,” Britton tells StyleCaster. “And when that gets blown up, and she loses everything… ‘I must not exist, because everything I thought was true is not true.’ But in fact, she still does exist, she’s still there. And so that’s when she starts to realize her own strength and her own power.”

For Schilling’s part, Lacey gets to explore the joy that comes with living a bit more in the moment and embracing a form of stoicism—that is, accepting both what she can and can’t control.

I love this series, but you had to go to some pretty dark places as your character. How do you prepare for those shoot days and how do you come down from them?

What’s wild about me is that I kind of like preparing for it. Jason’s writing lays the track and that is really where I begin. It’s not that difficult for me to go home and enjoy life afterward. It’s exhilarating. The deeper and darker places feel, there’s a sort of pleasure in it. Not that I’ve ever really played sports, but it feels like being in the middle of a really good game where there’s adrenaline and you’re into it. And then I move on to the next thing.

Your character, Lacey, is really mourning four people. The three babies she’s lost via miscarriage and her sister from whom she’s somewhat estranged, so I guess there’s a mourning for a relationship left unrepaired, too. Where does Lacey find her strength?

I think she finds it in real-time. We watch her find it because I think she just hits a bottom by trying to force her life to be a certain way and she’s able to meet life on life’s terms. Who knows if she would have kept trying to have a baby and how long that would have gone? But the addition of the plane crash sped up her process and she has to surrender. I think her strength comes from surrender.

Carter Hudson, Taylor Schilling. Courtesy of AppleTV+

There’s a scene I love—I won’t spoil it but tease by saying it involves corndogs—and it’s a gorgeous metaphor for her relinquishing some of that control.

Yeah, totally.

Did you do any special research for this role?

I hadn’t read the book before shooting the show. I just fully face-planted into the world that Jason created. And I guess I learned how to paddle board. That was some special research. You’ll see.

Are there any elements of Lacey that you relate to?

Oh, my gosh, there’s so much of her that I don’t. I’m never the leader of organized stuff. She’s the taskmaster in her household because her husband is not able to show up for himself. So, she’s in charge of keeping everything moving. But I think that there’s something so universal about coming to points in life where you have to let go of old ideas or old dreams or old ways of doing things. And I think Lacey does that with a lot of bravery. And I really admire that about her. I also think it’s very human.

Dear Edward is on AppleTV+ with new episodes airing every Friday. Here’s how to watch it for free.

Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

Dear Edward. Amazon

Watch the show and follow along in Ann Napolitano’s NY Times bestseller, Dear Edward and find out why fellow bestselling author, Jodi Picoult, called it “that rare book that breaks your heart and stitches it back together during a reading experience that leaves you profoundly altered for the better.”

Buy: Buy 'Dear Edward' by Ann Napolitano $15.99+

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