Is Just One Look Based on a True Story? Is Greta Rembiewska Based on a Real Person?

Netflix’s ‘Just One Look’ (originally titled ‘Tylko jedno spojrzenie’) is a mystery thriller miniseries that follows the story of a woman named Greta, whose life is turned upside down by a mysterious photo. She develops a stack of pictures from the family vacation. With them, she finds a picture she has never seen before, and that has nothing to do with her family. It does, however, have something to do with her husband, Jacek. When she shows it to him, he leaves the house and doesn’t come back.

Jacek’s disappearance leads Greta to look at the photo, which has three other people in it, along with her husband. At the same time, she is also forced to relive the memories of a traumatic incident that happened fifteen years ago. As the story unfolds, with Harlan Coben at the helm, we get a series of highly unexpected twists and turns, and at the end, a very realistic and humanizing portrait of the characters comes to the fore.

Just One Look Brings to Life One of Harlan Coben’s Most Successful Novels

‘Just One Look’ is a fictional story that adapts the 2004 novel of the same name by Harlan Coben, who also developed the Netflix series. The author is known for prolifically writing mystery thrillers that bring together a bunch of seemingly unrelated characters and deliver shocking tales of crime and betrayal. While he mostly leans towards continuing the books in the series featuring already established characters, he also dabbles into standalone novels from time to time, and ‘Just One Look’ happens to be one of them.

While Coben didn’t specify any particular person or event as the source of his inspiration for the story, he did reveal that it was born from his desire to write a compelling female protagonist. At the time, he had only written men as the protagonists of his stories, and he felt a need for change in his next book. Moreover, he was also highly dissatisfied with the way female characters were presented in crime thrillers, and he wanted to change that. For this, he wrote up the character of Grace Lawson, whose life is upended by the sudden disappearance of her husband.

Another thing that Coben wanted to do with the story was to present a character that was entirely bad. In his previous stories, he tried to write complex characters who walked a line that was morally grey. He wanted to present the characters with whom the audience would feel connected despite their flaws. With Grace’s story, however, he aimed to give the readers a particularly hatable character who is pure evil. This villain was necessary to create a contrast with Grace, who is a purely good character, while raising the stakes for her and her loved ones. At the end of the day, Coben wanted to underline the fact that there are always parts of us that we keep hidden from our loved ones. He wanted to explore a scenario where these worst parts of a person come to light and change everything for them and their family.

The TV Adaptation Makes Major Changes from the Book

Harlan Coben has written around 40 books, and a bunch of them have already received adaptations, with some of them set in completely different environments than shown in the book. The same thing happens with ‘Just One Look,’ whose setting is shifted from the US to Poland, which also leads to the change in the names of the characters. For example, Grace Lawson becomes Greta Rembiewska, John becomes Jacek, and so on. The Warsaw setting of the story also gives an edge to the show by bringing a fresh touch to the story. Interestingly, this isn’t the first time that ‘Just One Look’ has been adapted for TV. The novel was previously adapted into an eponymous 2017 French series, which is why, when the idea to adapt it in Polish was brought to Coben, he had to think twice about it.

He didn’t want to redo the same thing all over again, so he was curious about what changes would be made to the narrative. In the end, he was happy with the new cultural dynamics embedded in the story that would prevent it from being the copy of another copy. For actress Maria Dębska, who plays Greta, this was a chance to portray a highly complex and nuanced character. This was her first foray into crime thriller, and she was excited to play the role of a mother who had to face all sorts of challenges to protect her family. The most difficult thing about the role was the emotional weight attached to it. Over the course of six episodes, Dębska was pushed to her limits to present the deteriorating mental and emotional state of her character, and she did a splendid job of highlighting all the things that make her character feel real and relatable to the audience.