Elyse Steinberg: Last News

FX has set a March 29 premiere date for Spermworld, a documentary feature on the unregulated online marketplace for sperm, produced by The New York Times and Edgeline Films.

Todd Gilchrist editor On Showtime’s documentary series “Couples Therapy,” clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Dr. Orna Guralnik has served in many roles for her clients: sounding board, support system, referee, reality check and sometimes, an uncomfortable mirror. And she shares her insights in each capacity with plainspoken simplicity and with empathy. It’s what has made the show such a revelatory watch for her patients as well as viewers — it exemplifies the virtues of the therapeutic experience.  “As a psychoanalyst, you want to really have the same distance from all the inner voices in the patient,” says Guralnik. “Otherwise, I try to really keep going back to a place of what we call neutrality. Now, that’s not always possible, but that’s the North Star. That’s where I try to go to.” 

Todd Gilchrist editor Over three seasons (and a pandemic special) on Showtime, “Couples Therapy” has quietly become a destination for healing for television watchers who are interested in the difficult work of digging into interpersonal relationships — or watching other people do that work, anyway. Through the empathetic, incisive probing of Dr. Orna Guralnik, executive producers Elyse Steinberg, Josh Kriegman and Eli Despres have not only explored the complexity of couples’ shared and individual lives, but the essential, often painful and yet invariably revelatory therapeutic process that helps people understand themselves, their partners and the world around them. Following the April 28 premiere of Part 2 of the show’s third season, Variety spoke to Steinberg, Kriegman and Despres about “Couples Therapy” as a mirror for the challenges that many relationship face. In addition to talking about the themes that emerged from the conversations shared with their selected couples this season, the filmmaking trio broke down the process, both logistical and philosophical, that guided them, and examined some of the deeper notions exposed by the series’ format — and by therapy itself.