Isabela Merced & Patrick Schwarzenegger To Play Lorena And John Bobbitt In Hulu’s ‘Good American Family’ Anthology

EXCLUSIVE: Hulu has cast the leads for the second installment of its true-crime anthology Good American Family. Isabela Merced (The Last of Us) will play Lorena Bobbitt, with Patrick Schwarzenegger (The White Lotus) as her one-time husband, John Bobbitt. Not yet titled, the limited series is inspired by the ripped-from-the-headlines story of the infamous Virginia couple, who incited a media circus that treated trauma as entertainment, launched a thousand dirty jokes and ignited a gender war. The story revolves around an infamous 1993 incident in which Lorena cut off her husband’s penis with a kitchen knife after an argument at home. She later chalked up the act to abuse during their marriage. The Bobbitt-focused season comes from the same studio, 20th Television, and the same creative team as the first. Katie Robbins is creator, writer and exec produces alongside Ellen Pompeo, who starred in the first season revolving around the stranger-than-fiction adoption story of Ukrainian orphan Natalia Grace Barnett. Watch on Deadline Good American Family debuted in March 2025 and has amassed more than 140 million hours streamed globally on Hulu and Disney+. Its finale was the biggest of 2025 across those platforms. Pompeo and Laura Holstein executive produce the series under their Calamity Jane banner, alongside Robbins, Andrew Stearn and Sarah Sutherland. We announced the anthology expansion in August. The Bobbitt series marked one of two recent Hulu greenlights for Robbins and Pompeo; they’ve also partnered on Chicks, a dramedy pilot starring Pompeo, marking another outing with 20th TV, which was ordered in June. The new show will be one in a line of projects to tell Bobbitt’s story; previous example include 2020’s I Was Lorena Bobbitt, part of Lifetime’s Ripped from the Headlines TV movie franchise, which was narrated and EP’d by Lorena, and the 2019 Amazon docuseries Lorena, produced by Jordan Peele. Merced is perhaps best known for playing Dina in HBO’s The Last of Us and for her role as Hawkgirl in James Gunn’s Superman. Additional credits include the John Green adaptation Turtles All the Way Down and Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus. Upcoming, she’ll be seen in The Last of Us Season 3 and the Superman follow-up Man of Tomorrow, as well as films Ibelin, Psyche and The House of the Dead. She is repped by CAA and Peikoff Mahan. Schwarzenegger broke out with his role as Saxon in the third season of HBO’s The White Lotus and has most recently been seen staring opposite Margaret Qualley in Prime Video romantic drama Love of Your Life. Currently, he’s filming a role in Mike Birbiglia’s comedy Old Friends New Friends for Focus Features. Other upcoming projects include the Florian Zeller thriller Bunker, coming off its Venice premiere; dual roles in S. Craig Zahler’s crime drama, The Bookie & The Bruiser; and 20th’s Beach Read opposite Phoebe Dynevor. He is repped by UTA, Entertainment 360 and Patrick Knapp at Goodman, Genow, Schenkman.