The producers of upcoming YouTube Red drama series Impulse revised and re-shot a sexual assault scene after a female showrunner joined the team.
The show, which is based off the third novel in Steven Gould’s Jumper series, tells the story of 16-year-old Henrietta (or Henry), who in the pilot discovers she has the ability to teleport while she’s in a truck with a boy from her high school who tries to rape her. At that moment, she has a seizure and teleports, inadvertently crushing him and leaving him paraplegic.
When executive producer Lauren LeFranc joined the team, she said she wanted to hone in on Henry’s experience to make it more “visceral and real,” the Midland Daily News reports. Director and fellow executive producer Doug Liman agreed, telling Deadline, “I wanted another shot at it.” He called Impulse “of all my films the one I was least happy with.”
The crew shot and revised the pilot before the onslaught of sexual assault allegations rocked Hollywood, starting in October with Harvey Weinstein. LeFranc said in a recent interview that the timing of Impulse alongside the Me Too movement is coincidental but welcome.
“We’re hoping that because of the conversations being had that people are going to give a show like this more credit and see there’s a voice here,” she said, “rather than falling on the sidelines like some previous shows and films that have spoken out about sexual assault have come and gone.”
Impulse stars Maddie Hasson as Henrietta and Gone Girl actress Missi Pyle as her mother. Watch the original Jumper trailer below.