14 major changes 'Little Fires Everywhere' made from the book

• Warning: Spoilers ahead for "Little Fires Everywhere."
• "Little Fires Everywhere," which is based on Celeste Ng's novel of the same name, aired on Hulu in March and April.
• The show deviated from Ng's novel in a number of ways, including who started the story's climactic house fire.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Celeste Ng's best-selling novel, "Little Fires Everywhere," was turned into a Hulu series starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington.

The show is set in the 1990s and follows the growing tension between Elena Richardson (Witherspoon) and Mia Warren (Washington), two polar-opposite mothers whose families become intertwined after Elena rents a house to Mia and her daughter, Pearl (Lexi Underwood), in their Ohio suburb.

In the series' opening scene, the Richardsons' house is shown going up in flames. Over the course of eight episodes, the perpetrator of the fire's identity is eventually revealed. As "Little Fires Everywhere" unfolds, topics of motherhood, race, and class are explored.

Although the show is faithful to the book in many ways, it does stray from its source material. Here are the biggest changes the "Little Fires Everywhere" series made from the novel.

In the book, Mia and her daughter Pearl's races weren't specified.

Both the book and the TV show "Little Fires Everywhere" focus on themes of race and motherhood. But in the book, Mia and her daughter Pearl's (Lexi Underwood) races were unspecified.

The central conflict between Elena Richardson (Reese Witherspoon) and Mia Warren (Kerry Washington) in the show, however, is enriched and exacerbated by Mia's race. In the show, Mia is a working-class black single mother, while Elena is a wealthy suburban white mother with a traditional nuclear family.

"It sounds like a casting decision, but really it's a fundamental change to the story," showrunner Liz Tigelaar told Vulture. "That was a really exciting part of the adaptation because it gave us a real opportunity to tell the story of how Mia would feel about this white family, about the type of mother she is to her daughter, and how that might be different than how a white mother parents a white daughter."

Bebe doesn't show up at May Ling/Mirabelle's birthday party in the novel.

Another central conflict of "Little Fires Everywhere" revolves around the custody battle for May Ling Chow/Mirabelle McCullough, a local Chinese-American infant. She was left at a fire station at only a few months old by her birth mother, Mia's coworker Bebe Chow (Huang Lu), who was unable to care for her. The baby was then taken in and renamed by wealthy white friends of the Richardsons (the McCulloughs), who had struggled to conceive. Bebe has since recovered from her postpartum depression, but at the beginning of the story, she has no idea where her child is.

In the book, Mia works out that "Mirabelle" is actually Bebe's lost daughter after Elena's daughter Lexie (Jade Pettyjohn) tells her about the baby. Mia then informs Bebe, who arrives at the McCulloughs' front door unannounced one night, and is quietly turned away.

But on the show, Mia finds out about May Ling/Mirabelle's whereabouts from Elena, and volunteers to photograph the baby's first birthday party to confirm that she's Bebe's daughter. Mia then drives Bebe to the birthday party, and she bursts into the McCullough's house unannounced, screaming for her daughter.

In the book, Moody pines after Pearl. In the show, it appears they both may have feelings for one another.

Soon after Mia and Pearl move to Shaker Heights, Pearl and the Richardsons' younger son, Moody (Gavin Lewis), become fast friends and he soon develops a crush on her. Pearl later begins secretly dating Moody's older brother, Trip (Jordan Elsass), which heightens the growing tensions between the Richardsons and the Warrens.

While Moody's infatuation appears to be one-sided in the novel, the show gives viewers reason to believe that Pearl might initially feel the same way. On episode two, Moody and Pearl steal from Mia's weed stash, lay in bed together holding hands, and discuss sex.

Izzy Richardson's sexuality isn't mentioned at all in the book.

On the Hulu adaptation, Izzy Richardson (Megan Stott) is treated as an outcast at her new high school because she was discovered kissing her best friend, April (Isabel Gravitt), during a round of seven minutes in heaven at a party.

This is a change from the book in which Izzy's sexuality is never explicitly mentioned. It also adds another layer to the conflict between Izzy and her traditionally-minded mother, Elena. 

In the book, a famous artist's photo of a young Mia is in an art museum, not sold to The New York Times.

Mia's past is mysterious throughout much of "Little Fires Everywhere" — at first, readers and viewers are largely unaware of what led Mia to become the nomadic artist and single mom.

In both the book and the series, the first clue to her background comes in the form of a photograph of a young Mia, taken by the late, famous artist Pauline Hawthorne. However, the photo and where it's first discovered are different on the show.

The "Little Fires Everywhere" book includes a scene where the main teenagers visit a local art museum and spot Pauline's photograph of young Mia holding an infant Pearl.

On the show, Pauline's photograph is of a pregnant Mia and is still in present-day Mia's possession. She sells the photo to The New York Times to pay for Bebe's legal fees in her custody case against the McCulloughs.

Soon, Izzy notices the photo in the newspaper, making Elena suspicious about its origins.

On the show, Elena offers to pay Bebe to leave the McCulloughs alone. This never happens in the book.

On episode four, Elena offers to use her journalistic skills to negotiate with Bebe on the McCulloughs' behalf. She offers to give Bebe $10,000 and help her gain American citizenship, telling the other woman to accept her offer and give her daughter a "better life."

Bebe coldly responds by asking Elena, "How much would you sell [your children] for?"

Elena never makes such an offer in the book.

In the book, Pearl voluntarily writes Lexie's Yale admissions essay. On the show, Lexie steals Pearl's personal story.

In both the book and the series, Lexie using Pearl to write her Yale college admissions essay adds to the conflict between Elena and Mia. In Ng's novel, the essay prompt is to rewrite a classic story from a different character's perspective. Pearl, who idolizes Lexie, agrees to write the essay for her.

In the show, Pearl shares with Lexie that she wasn't allowed to transfer to a more advanced math class, and it's implied that the principal doesn't think she can handle it as a young black girl. Without telling Pearl, Lexie restructures the story in order to write her Yale essay — in this case, the prompt is to explain a time in which the applicant faced and overcame adversity.

This creates conflict between Lexie and her boyfriend Brian (Stevonte Hart), who is black and criticizes her using Pearl's experiences to further her own future.

In another departure from Ng's novel, Lexie gets an abortion under Pearl's name without her consent.

In both iterations of "Little Fires Everywhere," Lexie becomes unexpectedly pregnant and decides to have an abortion, then writes Pearl's name on the healthcare clinic's admission slip. However, in the book, Pearl begrudgingly agrees to the idea, since Lexie is afraid of her mother finding out. The Hulu adaptation changes the scene, as Lexie writes Pearl's name on the slip without ever asking for her permission to do so.

This leads to another confrontation between Mia and the Richardsons. In Ng's novel, Mia comforts Lexie after Pearl takes her to their home after the procedure, telling her, "It's just something that you have to carry."

But because Lexie used Pearl's name at the clinic without her permission on the adaptation, Mia turns on Lexie, saying, "Pearl may love to give and give to you, but I do not. I'm done."

On the show, Pearl and Trip's relationship gets off to a much rockier start.

On episode four, Pearl and Trip begin to have sex after studying together, but he struggles to maintain an erection. Embarrassed, he ends the encounter, blaming Pearl for "doing it wrong" and manipulating him into developing feelings for her.

While he later apologizes, their romance is never this rocky in the book. Instead, their love and sex life is open and healthy, showing a softer side to Trip that upends his fratty public persona.

Elena's ex-boyfriend who writes for The New York Times is hardly featured in the book. On the show, he's given a different, expanded role.

On the TV adaptation, young Elena (played by AnnaSophia Robb in flashbacks) has a college ex-boyfriend named Jamie (Luke Bracey), who asks her to stay in Paris with him after their semester abroad and leave Ohio in pursuit of her journalism dreams. She declines, but they reconnect and almost have sex one night several years later when Elena briefly leaves home during a difficult period shortly after Izzy's birth.

During the main "Little Fires Everywhere" timeline, Elena uses him (now a reporter at The New York Times) to find the source of Pauline's photo of Mia.

We never learn much about Elena's past in the novel. She does mention Jamie, but in the original version of the story, he was a hippie who was drafted in the Vietnam War and presumably died.

The show makes Pauline and young Mia more than friends.

The sixth episode of "Little Fires Everywhere" flashes back in time and follows Elena and Mia as young women (particularly focusing on the truth surrounding Pearl's parentage). Viewers learn that Mia attended a few years of college at a prestigious art school in New York City, where she became the prodigy of renowned artist Pauline Carlson.

In the book, Mia becomes very close with Pauline and her wife, Mal, but nothing more happens between them. However, the show makes Mia and Pauline lovers. Pauline dies of cancer in both iterations, although on the show it happens around the time of Pearl's birth (and in the book, it happens later).

On later episodes, Mia is also able to bond with Izzy as she grapples with her queerness.

Elena didn't want a fourth child on the show, and her difficult relationship with Izzy has different roots.

During the flashback episode, we learn that Elena didn't originally plan to have a fourth child, and didn't want to go through with the pregnancy. She's soon forced to take more time off from her journalism career, and the stress of caring for a colicky infant starts to make her question her decision to start a nuclear family in her hometown.

It's implied that Izzy's headstrong nature and unplanned arrival are directly linked to Elena's resentment of her youngest daughter.

That isn't the case in Ng's book, where Izzy was always wanted, and "everything that had infuriated [Elena] about Izzy, even before she'd taken her first breath, had been rooted in that one fear, that she might lose her." This version of Elena struggles to imagine that a different version of her life was even possible.

In the book, Mia (not Elena) tells Pearl the truth about her parentage.

We eventually learn that Mia originally conceived Pearl for a wealthy Manhattan couple who were desperate to have a child. With her art school scholarship taken away, agreeing to be their surrogate was seemingly the only way that she could afford to stay in the city.

But after Mia's beloved brother Warren was unexpectedly killed in a car accident, she was unable to part with the child she was carrying. Instead, she told the couple that she miscarried, and gave birth to Pearl in secret.

Towards the climax of the book, Mia tells Pearl the truth about her parentage, and they make plans to reconnect with Mia's family and Pearl's father. However, on the show, Elena is angry about Mia's involvement in the McCulloughs' custody case, so she tells Pearl the truth instead.

Different culprits are behind the story's climactic house fire.

Towards the end of the "Little Fires Everywhere" book, Izzy discovers that each of her siblings have used Pearl in a different way. Angry at her family's behavior, she impulsively starts small fires in everyone's beds, unaware that her mother is still in the house. As the story comes to a close, Izzy runs away from Shaker Heights, and Elena vows to spend her life searching for her daughter.

On the show, Elena tells Mia that she and Pearl must move out after an argument. Izzy finds out and the two fight, during which Elena tells Izzy she never wanted to have her in the first place. Izzy runs away and a devastated Elena breaks down and refuses to take responsibility for the harm she caused to the Warrens and her own family.

Fed up with their family's lies, it's Lexie, Trip, and Moody who start the house fire. They help their mother escape their burning home, and she claims responsibility for the fire.

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