Anne of Green Gables Coming to Netflix

Netflix is where I turn more and more for the best new original series like the upcoming 8 episode drama based on the Lucy Maud Montgomery’s classic Anne of Green Gables. The eponymous Anne will be played by fourteen-year-old Irish Canadian actress Amybeth McNulty, cast after an extensive global search. 

Executive producer/showrunner Moira Walley-Beckett notes they saw almost 2000 girls and calls Amybeth “Anne for a new generation.”

“Amybeth is a wonderful and sensitive actress who embodies all of Anne’s qualities. She’s soulful and inquisitive, mercurial and passionate. Her ability to convey pain and joy is breathtaking.” 

According to the producers

Anne is a coming-of-age story about an outsider who, against all odds and numerous challenges, fights for love and acceptance and her place in the world. The series centers on a young orphaned girl in the late 1890s who, after an abusive childhood spent in orphanages and the homes of strangers, is mistakenly sent to live with an aging sister and brother, Marilla and Matthew Cuthber, played by Geraldine James and R.H. Thomson. Over time, 13-year-old Anne will transform their lives and eventually the entire small town in which they live with her unique spirit, fierce intellect and brilliant imagination. 

About the book

As soon as Anne Shirley arrives at the snug white farmhouse called Green Gables, she is sure she wants to stay forever...but will the Cuthberts send her back to the orphanage? Anne knows she's not what they expected-a skinny girl with fiery red hair and a temper to match. If only she can convince them to let her stay, she'll try very hard not to keep rushing headlong into scrapes and blurting out the first thing that comes to her mind. Anne is not like anybody else, the Cuthberts agree; she is special-a girl with an enormous imagination. This orphan girl dreams of the day when she can call herself Anne of Green Gables.

The Netflix/CBC production currently shooting in Ontario, Canada, which happens to be where I spent my formative years. I haven’t been to Prince Edward Island where the production did some shooting earlier this year but if Donald Trump wins the election maybe I’ll get the chance. P.E. I. is the Canadian island who jokingly invited Americans to come on over should the election not go their way.

Thanks Teresa Campbell for the reminder!