Harlan Coben Calls Netflix Series ‘Missing You’ a Love Story With the “Most Emotional Ending”: “I Actually Cried”

Take a Harlan Coben novel, move its setting from the U.S. to the U.K., make Nicola Shindler’s Quay Street Productions, part of ITV Studios, produce it, get a who’s who of British actors to star in it, including, of course, Richard Armitage, and launch it on Netflix on New Year’s Day.

That’s the success formula that worked for the streaming giant with last year’s hit Fool Me Once and is again the recipe behind the upcoming Missing You.

Debuting on Jan. 1, Missing You stars Rosalind Eleazar (Slow Horses) as Kat Donovan, a detective specializing in Missing Persons whose fiancé Josh (Ashley Walters) disappeared 11 years ago. Now, she comes across his face when swiping through profiles on a dating app, forcing her to reevaluate the murder of her father (Lenny Henry). Armitage plays Kat’s boss, while Jessica Plummer portrays one of her best friends. Steve Pemberton, Mary Malone, Lisa Faulkner, and James Nesbitt are among the other cast members. Writer Victoria Asare-Archer adapted the novel for the screen.

Some things are a bit different in this Coben adaptation though. For once, it is only five episodes long and it features more of a love story than fans of other Coben series may be used to.

“This is five episodes. Most of the (shows) we’ve done are eight. So it’s a little tighter story,” Coben said during a recent panel of the creatives behind the series in London. “And I can say, I think this is the most emotional ending that I’ve experienced. When I watched episode five, I actually cried.” Added the author: “I think I had a little bit of a tear my eye at the end of Fool Me Once. But I think this will be our most emotional series.”

The series features the classic Coben twists and turns, but “this is also a love story,” the author highlighted. “Really the story between Kat and Josh is at the center here. Also, it’s really about family.”

Asare-Archer said she tried to capture this love story and these relationships in her writing. She then lauded the acting ensemble as being full of big names. “Just look at this cast,” Asare-Archer said pointing around the panel she was sitting on. “It’s like a roll call of Black excellence.” Henry at that point pointed at Armitage and made a questioning face, drawing much laughter from the audience.

Then, the screenwriter continued. “This series is a chance to write incredible stories for some of the best Black actors and actresses working today, and that representation went all the way through,” she highlighted. “We’ve got two extraordinary directors of color. We had diversity in sound and makeup and costumes, across the whole thing.”

Asked about the tone she focused on in adapting the novel for Netflix, Asare-Archer said: “What I was really trying to on this one was capturing the love. I read a lot of romance. I love a love story, and making that love story feel as epic and big and emotional as possible, and then like chucking the dark stuff in as well underneath.”

Of course, changing the U.S. setting of his novels to the U.K. for a series means some changes. “It’s always the guns,” Coben shared his experience so far. “Americans always have too many guns. So we have knives and things like that. It’s the first thing we go through.” However, the relationships and family dynamics he writes about are “universal,” he argued.

So why does Coben like working in Britain? “One of the reasons I love it, and I’ve been lucky to do a lot of series in the U.K., is because I get to work with (executive producers) Nicola Shindler and Richard Fee and Victoria,” he said. “I’ve just found a really talented and wonderful home here. And then we’re able to always get the best. I mean, how do we get Lennie Henry to do this?! He was just so cooperative and so into it. I’m making a show right now in America. But we just have this wonderful community here. We all are so passionate about story. We are obsessed. And when we hired Victoria to work on Stay Close, we all knew this was a kindred spirit. And I loved her ideas for this story, taking it in the direction she wanted to take it.”

Eleazar and Asare-Archer both loved exploring the female and family relationships. “I love all the aunties,” shared Eleazar. “I got lots of aunties. I love those scenes.”

And she said she enjoyed playing off Armitage and his Stagger character, who is the boss of Eleazar’s character. “Stagger for Kat is almost a father figure,” the actress explained. “Rich and I have worked together before. We were lovers in the last thing that we did.” After laughs from the audience, Eleazar offered: “In this one, it’s a father figure. Maybe we can be half-brother and sister (next time).”

“That was really fun for me to explore the different natures of her relationships,” the star concluded before sharing that, “I love stunts.”

How did the lead develop a feeling for Kat’s relationship with Josh and Walters? “It was just literally us spending time together and just understanding where that relationship was,” he explained. “It meant a lot of times off-camera, on Zoom, or FaceTime, me and Roz – after work, before work – just talking about those things, so we were on the same page as to where they are.”

Eleazar said that her approach to acting allows her to feel differently than her characters. “Part of an actor’s job is not to judge your character’s decisions,” she said. “But with love, your feelings are so contradictory,” making this role particularly challenging and interesting.

Armitage discussed how Missing You is already his fourth Coben series. After his first, The Stranger, “I was begging the team to do a second season,” he recalled. “Is there a spin-off? But they don’t do spin-offs – yet.”

He drew laughs when he shared what happened next. “I was asked to do another one, which was Stay Close. I was like: ‘I’ll read the script and then make a decision.’ By number four, I’m just like, ‘Yeah!’ Because the thing about Harlan’s writing and the books is that he just never, ever lets you down. Every episode has a [cliffhanger] ending and a page-turning script. You can’t stop watching them, and the books are the same.”

About Missing You, Armitage added: “This is a great adaptation of the book. It stays very, very true to the book.” He also shared that the book hints at a possible sexual chemistry between Kat and Stagger, “but we left that aside.” Eleazar quipped, “From his side.”

Meanwhile, Plummer plays Kat’s best friend Stacey and had this to say about her character: “I think for Stacey, Kat is like that friend that you tell everyone is your cousin, but they are not your cousin, but you love them like a cousin. Stacey came into Kat’s life after Josh, so she’s relatively new, but she sees Kat as somebody who comes from such a strong, loving home and really admires and looks up to her.”

Henry, who plays the role of the father of Eleazar’s Kat, lauded the star of the show. “He loves his daughter so much and only wants the best of her,” Henry said. “So it was wonderful, having a daughter myself, to imbue those feelings with this relationship. Rosalind was so generous with her time. We did a Zoom, we talked on set – it was just like we’ve been like this forever. So she was incredibly welcoming to the set. It was fantastic. I loved it, every single minute of it.”

Henry did joke about his challenges when it comes to dancing though. “There is a legendary dancing scene,” he mentioned. “I can’t dance at all. They keep asking me to be on Strictly (Come Dancing, the BBC dancing show). I literally would let every Black person in Britain down.”

Cast members new to the Coben-verse agreed that the decision to join Missing You was easy and straightforward.

Walters admitted that “if everyone’s sending me messages saying, ‘you have to watch this,’ I don’t want to watch it. I get a bit stubborn like that.” But he did watch Fool Me Once. “I just watched it all the way through. I binged it, and I was amazed,” the actor recalled. “So when I got the offer shortly after, it was a no-brainer for me. I knew I was going to do it. The worlds are so rich, and the team was so great as well.”

He then lauded Eleazar as filling the role of lead who is also “leading the actors’ department as well, and being there for the other actors” perfectly. “She really gave her time to all of us,” he added.

Plummer echoed that and her experience with Fool Me Once. “I remember I was on a flight and I was blabbering in tears in front of everyone, and it was really embarrassing. And I feel like I manifested this situation. As Ashley said, it was a no-brainer. It feels really exciting to be part of that world.”