‘The Perfect Couple’ almost had a very different murder victim

The Perfect Couple has arrived on Netflix, offering viewers a drama-filled murder mystery. However, the book and series were almost very different regarding the murder victim.

Based on the book of the same name by Elin Hilderbrand, The Perfect Couple follows the story of Amelia Sacks (Eve Hewson). The young woman is preparing to marry the man of her dreams, Benji Winbury (Billy Howle), but she struggles to feel accepted by Benji’s wealthy, upper-class family.

Since the Windburys are hosting the wedding at their mansion, Amelia and her maid of honor, Merritt Monaco (Meghann Fahy), have no choice but to go to their estate in Nantucket for wedding rehearsals. Things take a dark turn when the rehearsal dinner is interrupted by the discovery of a dead body that has washed up on the mansion’s beach.

Who is the murder victim in The Perfect Couple?

The identity of the murder victim is revealed early on in the series and will already be known by readers. At the end of The Perfect Couple episode 1, the body discovered on the beach is revealed to be Merritt, Amelia’s best friend and maid of honor. The discovery of Merritt’s body throws the wedding party into chaos as everyone becomes a suspect. As unfortunate as her death is, Merritt makes quite a good homicide victim because she is outside the Windbury and Sacks families.

At first, it will be difficult for viewers to understand why anyone would want her dead. The first episode paints her as quite a kind-hearted, free-spirited woman whose friendship with Amelia is very sincere. Amelia has no reason to murder her best friend, and the Windburys have no reason to murder someone who’s not even a part of the family … or do they? Although there are a few hints of who Merritt really is, her death is confounding early on, making the solution to the mystery quite unpredictable.

However, Merritt wasn’t initially going to be the murder victim in The Perfect Couple. In an interview with The Knot, Hilderbrand revealed that Merritt didn’t die in her first draft of the story. Instead, it was the bride whose body was discovered before the wedding. She credits her editor, Reagan Arthur, with finding her true murder victim.

She told Hildebrand, “I love so many things about this book, but the wrong person dies.” When Hildebrand questioned who she thought should die, Arthur suggested Merritt and the whole story clicked into place for the author. She explained, “I thought, ‘Oh, my God, she’s right.’ So I rewrote the entire novel in six weeks with someone else dying, and it was so much better.”

It’s interesting to imagine what The Perfect Couple might have looked like if Amelia was the murder victim instead of Merritt. It certainly would’ve been more shocking and, given the motive that’s ultimately found for the murder, even more scandalous. However, Merritt proved to be a compelling and mysterious victim and avoided relying too much on the shock factor.