Editor’s note: Deadline’s It Starts on the Page (Limited) features 10 standout limited or anthology series scripts in 2025 Emmy contention.
In Prime Video’s limited series The Better Sister, Jessica Biel and Elizabeth Banks star as Chloe and Nicky — sisters estranged by both Nicky’s addiction issues and the fact that Chloe has since married Nicky’s ex-husband Adam (Corey Stoll) and raised her son Ethan (Maxwell Acee Donovan) as her own. When a shocking death interrupts Chloe’s polished and picture-perfect life, the chaotic Nicky reappears, threatening to reveal the ugly truth of their shared past. From co-showrunners Regina Corrado and Olivia Milch, with Biel and Banks serving as executive producers, the series explores the family ties that bind us, the enduring impact of childhood trauma and the strange ways in which truth inevitably rises to the surface.
In the second episode, “Lotta Sky”, written by Corrado and directed by Leslie Hope, Nicky (Banks) has moved into Chloe’s (Biel) penthouse apartment and embraced the chance to finally resume mothering Ethan. Chloe attempts to maintain her successful, professional exterior amid Nicky’s brash messiness, but the fraught atmosphere peaks when Detective Nancy Guidry (Kim Dickens) and her partner Matt Bowen (Bobby Naderi) zero in on the teenage Ethan as a murder suspect. Cornered, the sisters must unexpectedly join forces to protect the boy, while Chloe begins to suspect that neither Adam nor Ethan have told her the whole truth.
Here is the “Lotta Sky” script with an intro by Corrado, in which she talks about some of the episode’s key scenes, Biel and Banks ad-libbing lines, and retired NYPD and FBI agents serving as both technical advisers and actors.
Regina Corrado
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
We always knew the second episode would be a tonal shift for the show. The drama of the pilot — the murder, the arrival of Chloe’s estranged sister – was important to lay track for a more fully rendered examination of these characters, one that would bring some measure of humor to balance the darkness.
Beginning the second episode with a piece of the past then moving into present-day Chloe in the bathroom mirror trying to contain her anxiety was always the way into this episode, a clear message to the audience that our world was going to tilt a little bit. We were shifting openings in editing for a spell, but what we finally landed on seemed to fit so well with where Chloe was in that present-day moment. Adding Emotional Freedom Technique, the “tapping” Chloe does in the mirror, came in a later draft of the script. Right off the bat, we’re telling viewers it’s okay to laugh while we figure out who’s responsible for this brutal murder.
The wraparound terrace at Chloe’s Manhattan apartment is such an important location for this episode. It’s where Nicky (the outcast, the estranged, the left behind one) is confronted with a view of Central Park and the skyline that is so overwhelming, so diminishing in all its vastness. It’s one thing to know your sister has money, another to see and feel it. Nicky is dying to drink, gripping the railing, praying for relief from this craving. This is also where we meet her father’s ghost, a looming presence, and he pisses in a potted plant. Pissing on all the luxury. Elizabeth Banks, who plays Nicky, helped re-work some of these mumbled pleas to God, to her mother. Praying for the strength to survive whatever is coming next. It’s an important window into Nicky’s uncertainty and fear.
This episode introduces the attorney hired to represent the boy accused of murdering his father. There’s a scene where the lawyer is counseling the young man and his Moms are on the terrace just beyond. This staging was in the script — we always intended for the sisters to be able to watch “their” son (after they were tossed out of the room by the defense attorney) through the window. The curtain operates like a scrim, just gauzy enough to see the sisters arguing, it was beautifully executed with production design and directing. Some of the dialogue on the terrace was lifted from the ad-libs the actresses were throwing in — in solidarity, united finally against the lawyer they hired, against the army of cops searching the penthouse, against the detectives who see right through them. Common enemy. Might I suggest you don’t mess with my sis.In some ways, the boy’s arrest is the inciting incident in the series. Not the murder, not the arrival of the addicted sister, but the removal of the boy that has been at the core of so much sorrow and betrayal between the sisters. We always felt the arrest scene was strong on the page — but would it work on set? There was a theatrical element to it — so many players moving about the same space, this could go horribly wrong on screen! We rehearsed it in pieces and devoted a lot of time to the choreography of the players. We relied on the contributions from our technical advisers — retired NYPD and FBI agents who also played the arresting officers. Some of our dialogue and sequence of the search was changed to reflect the real-world experience of the cops we got to know and truly value. And then adding the score enhancing the emotion in the script and in the performances, feeding the crescendo then moving into the final flashback of the episode all to the emotion of Tracy Chapman’s raspy voice.
Regina Corrado
Read the script below.
