Netflix Is Officially Adapting Bella Mackie’s How To Kill Your Family

Great news for bookworms: one of 2021’s hottest novels is officially coming to the small screen thanks to the team at Netflix. Here’s everything we know so far about the TV adaptation of Bella Mackie’s debut work, How To Kill Your Family.

Netflix’s How To Kill Your Family: Plot, Cast, Release Date & More

How To Kill Your Family is an upcoming eight-part Netflix series centring on Grace Bernard, the child of merciless social-climbing billionaire Simon Artemis who claims to not remember his affair with Grace’s mother.

When her mother dies, Grace is left to fend for herself, rejected by the people who are supposed to love her. With rage bubbling up inside her, Grace transforms her anger into something useful: killing off each and every member of her estranged family through morbidly creative means, clawing her way to revenge – and a hefty inheritance to boot.

Based on Bella Mackie’s 2021 debut novel of the same name (which has sold a whopping 1.2 million copies to date), Netflix is transforming the story into an eight-part drama, with Netflix darling Anya Taylor-Joy in the leading role. ‘It’s been thrilling to watch the characters I wrote take on new life under this magnificent creative team,’ Mackie says. ‘Pairing up with Sid Gentle has been joyful, and introducing me to Emma has made me supremely confident the book is in safe hands.’

Anya Taylor-Joy will lead Netflix’s adaptation of How To Kill Your Family as Grace. (Taylor-Joy as Illyana Rasputin in 20th Century Studios’ THE NEW MUTANTS; © Claire Folger/2020 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.)

British-American actress Taylor-Joy rose to fame in Split (2016) opposite James McAvoy, but is perhaps best known for her roles in Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit (2020) and Jane Austen adaptation Emma (2020). She has also starred in Last Night in Soho (2021), The Menu (2022) and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024). According to Mackie, Taylor-Joy ‘is the most perfect fit to play Grace,’ adding ‘I often think she understands her better than I do.’ No news just yet on who might join her in the limited series.

‘As soon as I turned the last page, I knew I had to be a part of bringing this story to life,’ Taylor-Joy told Netflix. ‘After some (light) stalking of the inimitable Bella Mackie, I could not be more thrilled to be collaborating with the team that is executive producers Sally Woodward Gentle, Lizzie Rusbridger, and Emma. I am looking forward to getting our hands even dirtier.’

If you have watched Sky’s Sweetpea, you will love Grace’s story. A ruthless Villanelle style character, series writer Emma Moran says she felt an ‘immediate kinship’ with Grace. Worrying? ‘She’s the kind of complicated, dark, but utterly hilarious antihero you dream of writing,’ Moran told Netflix. Irish screenwriter Moran has previously worked in the BBC’s Comedy Room development group, writing across the likes of Have I Got News For You and Newsjack. But she is best known for her full-length debut, Extraordinary, which she started writing during her master’s degree in 2020 and was later picked up by Star Original for Disney+. All of this is to say Moran has a talent for sharp wit – and we expect How To Kill You Family to be no different.

‘Striking that balance between camp fun and brutal violence that Bella hits so perfectly in the book is a challenge I’m so looking forward to,’ Moran says. ‘I’ve never had more fun on a project with such a high body count.’

And if the Killing Eve similarities are sticking out to you, here’s another tidbit: How To Kill Your Family is produced by Sid Gentle Films Ltd. – the team behind Killing Eve – in its first stint for the streaming giant.

Release Date

No news just yet on when we can expect to see How To Kill Your Family on the small screen. Watch this space for updates.