“She came to this project with a certain kind of skepticism, which is to say that she wasn’t interested in being on television,” he says. On a show that ran the risk of reducing therapy to voyeuristic entertainment, Kriegman says Guralnik possessed the exact quality they were most seeking about their endeavor: doubt. She is so attuned to what people are saying and what they are not saying and picks up on things so quickly and with such erudition that it’s startling.” Adds Despres, “She’s an intimidating listener. “When I got on the phone with Orna, it took me only two minutes to know that she was the one,” Steinberg remembers.
Series co-creators Elyse Steinberg, Josh Kriegman and Eli Despres initially found Guralnik after embarking on what they call an “insane outreach” across New York City involving conversations with hundreds of potential candidates.
