‘Lessons in Chemistry’ Trailer: Brie Larson Is a Cooking Show Host With a Feminist Message

Fans are finally getting a first look at Brie Larson in Lessons in Chemistry and there’s no doubt about it, she’s a force to be reckoned with.

Apple TV+ on Tuesday dropped the first trailer to the limited series in which Larson’s character, Elizabeth Zott, not only navigates but also pushes back forcefully against sexist stereotypes very much prevalent in the 1950s.

In the trailer we get a look at Elizabeth, who is an excellent cook but also has a dream of becoming a scientist. But her superiors — made up of mostly middle-aged men who view her as nothing more than a “pretty lab tech” — fire her, which turns out to be a blessing in disguise. Elizabeth is then afforded the opportunity of a lifetime when she’s approached about becoming the host of her own cooking show, Supper at Six.

Elizabeth inevitably finds herself in a profession dominated yet again by men, but this time she uses her platform to push back against the status quo, which only infuriates the patriarchal society. And that much is evident when Larson delivers one of Elizabeth’s wittiest lines.

“I stand proudly with the overlooked workhorse of the kitchen — women and baked potatoes,” she exclaims.

The sentiment appears to rankle TV executives, but she won’t back down. Not even when confronted by yet another middle-aged exec who tries (keyword, tries) to get Elizabeth to reexamine her point of view.

“Politics don’t belong in the kitchen,” the executive says. “A man wants his wife to make him a drink after a long day at work.”

Elizabeth then, brilliantly, fires back, “Why do you assume that his day was longer than hers? Why don’t you make the drink?”

The show’s synopsis goes, “Set in the early 1950s, Lessons in Chemistry follows Elizabeth, whose dream of being a scientist is put on hold in a patriarchal society. When Elizabeth finds herself fired from her lab, she accepts a job as a host on a TV cooking show, and sets out to teach a nation of overlooked housewives — and the men who are suddenly listening — a lot more than recipes.”

Larson stars and executive produces the series. She stars alongside Lewis Pullman (Top Gun: Maverick, Outer Range), NAACP Image Award-winner Aja Naomi King (How to Get Away with Murder, The Birth of a Nation), Stephanie Koenig (The Flight Attendant, The Offer), Kevin Sussman (The Big Bang Theory, The Dropout), Patrick Walker (Gaslit, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey), and Thomas Mann (Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl).

AppleTV+ will premiere the first two episodes on Oct. 13, followed by new episodes every Friday until Nov. 24.

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