All’s Fair (2025- )
Taken from the idiom, all’s fair in love and war, this drama follows high-powered lawyers Allura Grant (Kim Kardashian) and Liberty Ronson (Naomi Watts) as they have an epiphany. They decide to risk it all to leave their stable roles in an established, male-dominated law firm where they are surrounded by chauvinistic men who perpetually sideline them and go it alone. On the way out the door they encourage Emerald Greene (Niecy Nash), detective turned lawyer, to leave with them to found their very own woman-centred firm that specializes in supporting female clients through what is often the worst moment of their lives, divorce. All this is done under the watchful eyes of Dina Standish (Glenn Close), the women’s mentor and in-house role model.
From directors Jon Robin Baitz, Joe Baken, and Ryan Murphy, comes Hulu’s new legal drama, All’s Fair, about the professional and personal lives of Grant, Ronson, and Greene. The show’s aesthetic is fabulously luxe, sleek, and elegant as we watch the beautiful and chic trio move between their elegant homes and their opulent offices filled with curvilinear lines and womb-like spaces.
Each episode brings a new drama into their personal lives and a new high-profile female client battling through complex issues that arise when love fades, love dies, or love was never there to begin with. These clients are played by a who’s who of Hollywood stars including Judith Light, Jessica Simpson, Brooke Shields, and Jennifer Jason Leigh whose characters seek out the law firm to support them through the dissolution of their marriages.
What are these women up against? In Simpson’s case, her character Lee-Ann has transformed her face beyond recognition with plastic surgeries at the behest, no dictates, of her overpowering, abusive rock star husband Tommy Keith (Rick Springfield), who is both youth-obsessed and violent. Meanwhile, Shield’s Juliana Morse must battle her grown daughter to get a divorce from an ailing husband who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. The divorce is not because she doesn’t love him, but because she needs the psychological permission to live the rest of her life without the guilt of feeling that she has abandoned him.
Powerfully, Allura, Liberty, and Emerald are more than just business partners. They’re friends who support each other through crises at work and on the home front. One such crisis comes for Allura when her supposedly devoted and handsome pro-athlete husband, Chase Munroe (Matthew Noszka) files for a divorce out of nowhere. But his arguments about feeling unseen and overlooked are a cover for his wild womanizing (actually, he is an equal opportunity lech since he is also caught in a sexual relationship with a trans sex worker). As if that wasn’t enough for Allura to bear, she soon finds out that Chase has also been having an affair with her black female supposedly trusted employee Milan (Teyana Taylor) who ends up – wait for it – pregnant.
But every heroine needs a nemesis, right? Enter Sarah Paulson’s wickedly entertaining Carrington Lane who brings the crazy vengeful energy of the one who was left behind when Allura, Liberty, and Emerald exited the old boys club. Let’s just say that Carrington has never forgotten and never forgiven, and boy, this one can carry a grudge! So, it should not come as a surprise that Carrington ends up representing Chase in his divorce from Allura.
While Allura’s marriage is falling apart, Liberty hesitates before saying yes to her handsome, black boyfriend, Dr. Reggie Ramirez’s (O-T Fagbenle) marriage proposal, and Dina must say good-bye to her beloved husband Doug (Ed O’Neill) who is dying of cancer. As if all this wasn’t heavy enough, after her friends finally convince Emerald (happily single with three wonderful, black, grownish teenage sons at home) to venture out to a social mixer, she is drugged, sexually assaulted, and blackmailed with sadistic, pornographic images.
Significantly, All’s Fair brings us a cast of elegant, educated, intelligent, accomplished professional women characters in their thirties, forties, fifties, and seventies! Part of the soapy joy of All’s Fair (besides the elegant food, luxurious settings, steamy sex, and chic fashions), is much like Sex and the City (1998-2004) and And Just Like That… (2021-2025), the ride-or-die friendships of Allura, Liberty, Emerald, and Dina who see each other through all of life’s good and bad moments with love and compassion.