‘East of Eden’ Netflix Release Date, Cast and Florence Pugh’s Cathy

• Netflix’s East of Eden, a seven-episode limited series, drops all at once on Thursday, Oct. 1.
• Florence Pugh plays Cathy Ames, with Christopher Abbott and Mike Faist as the Trask brothers she comes between.
• Creator Zoe Kazan is the granddaughter of Elia Kazan, who directed the 1955 movie with James Dean, and she says that film covers only the end of the book.

John Steinbeck’s East of Eden is back on screen, this time in full. Netflix releases all seven episodes of the limited series on Thursday, Oct. 1, with Florence Pugh, 30, as Cathy Ames, one of the most debated villains in American literature.

The cast and creator Zoe Kazan made the rounds on the eve of the premiere, including a stop at The View on Wednesday, Sept. 30. Here’s when to watch, who plays whom and how the series differs from the 1955 movie.

When does ‘East of Eden’ come out on Netflix?

On Thursday, Oct. 1, worldwide. All seven episodes arrive at once, so there’s no weekly wait.

Kazan wrote all seven and runs the show with Jeb Stuart, a co-writer of The Fugitive. Garth Davis, who directed Lion, made Episodes 1 to 4, and Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre directed Episodes 5 to 7, according to Netflix.

Who is in the ‘East of Eden’ cast?

The full cast, as Netflix lists it:

• Florence Pugh as Cathy Ames
• Christopher Abbott as Adam Trask
• Mike Faist as Charles Trask
• Hoon Lee as Lee
• Tracy Letts as Cyrus Trask
• Martha Plimpton as Faye
• Ciarán Hinds as Samuel Hamilton
• Joseph Zada as Cal Trask
• Joe Anders as Aron Trask

Pugh is also an executive producer. Kazan told Netflix she had no backup in mind for Cathy: “She is the exact right person to play Cathy.”

What is ‘East of Eden’ about, and is it a true story?

It follows the Trask family across three generations, from the end of the Civil War to World War I. Adam and his half-brother Charles grow up under a hard father, Cyrus, on a Connecticut farm, and their rivalry runs through everything that follows.

Cathy marries Adam, the two move west to California’s Salinas Valley, and she leaves him after giving birth to twin sons, Cal and Aron. The boys grow up repeating the brothers’ rivalry, which is why readers call it a Cain and Abel story. Steinbeck borrowed the title from Genesis.

On The View, Pugh said the series keeps everything Cathy does in the book, “all of the awful things,” but adds why she is that way: how she was raised and the trauma done to her.

“The moment we started to breathe love into her, it made it just so much more interesting,” she said.

Part of it is true. Samuel Hamilton, the Irish farmer Hinds plays, was Steinbeck’s real maternal grandfather, and the Hamiltons are his mother’s family. Steinbeck even narrates parts of the 1952 novel as himself. The Trasks and Cathy are fiction.

How is the series different from the James Dean movie?

It tells the whole book. Elia Kazan’s 1955 film, starring James Dean as Cal, adapts only the final stretch, when the twins are grown. On The View, his granddaughter said the movie is “really just like the last 150 pages of the book.”

Zoe Kazan read the novel at 15, before she had seen her grandfather’s version. “And no disrespect to it, but it is not a faithful adaptation of this book,” she says in a Netflix featurette.

“Cathy and Lee and Charles, these characters that I had found so dynamic on the page, weren’t in the movie at all, really,” she adds.

She also sees the 1955 film as personal: “In a lot of ways, my grandfather’s film is a self-portrait of his own relationship with his father,” she says. It took her 20 years, she told The View, to get up the courage to make the version she had in her head.

In the movie, Jo Van Fleet played Cathy, by then called Kate, and won the Oscar for best supporting actress. The book was also a 1981 ABC miniseries, with Jane Seymour as Cathy.

More from Movies & TV: every new Netflix original movie coming in October, the real story behind ‘The Social Reckoning’ and what critics say about Anne Hathaway’s ‘Verity’.

— Bruno Monteiro

Sources: Netflix Tudum (Kristin Iversen and John DiLillo), Sept. 2, 2026, for the release date, cast, directors and Zoe Kazan’s comments; Netflix featurette “How Zoe Kazan Reimagined a Steinbeck Classic,” Sept. 30, 2026; Florence Pugh, Zoe Kazan, Christopher Abbott and Mike Faist on The View (ABC), Sept. 30, 2026; John Steinbeck, East of Eden (1952); Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 1956 Oscars. Photos and video: Netflix (series stills by Geoffrey Short and Kirsty Griffin, trailer and featurette); The View (ABC).