MTV’s new family drama “Finding Carter” isn’t your typical mother-daughter story.
The series — premiering Tuesday at 10 p.m. — centers on Carter (Kathryn Prescott), a teenage girl who discovers that Lori (Milena Govich), the woman she believes to be her mother, actually kidnapped her as a toddler.
She gets sent to live with her biological family — detective mom, author dad, twin sister and younger brother Grant — and has to navigate her new family and the normal teen problems of high school and boys while trying to find Lori before the police put her behind bars.
“I was so excited to get a mother-daughter idea that was two mothers,” says showrunner Terri Minsky (“Less Than Perfect”). “You could fully explore the great part of being a mother and the really hard part of being a mother, and it played into everything that I wanted to write about.”
The 12-episode first season will focus on Carter trying to move forward with her new life while dealing with an identity crisis and rebellious streak triggered by her life being shattered.
“I approached this season after the pilot with the idea that Carter is a teenager who recognized no authority figure,” Minsky says. “The choices and the decisions and the friends and everything that she makes from that point on are kind of reckless.
“It really is somebody literally finding themselves. I feel like that’s an eternal search, it’s something I have never really succeeded at.”
The emotional back-story of Carter’s abduction will also be explored, with Minsky hoping viewers will have to constantly re-adjust what they think of the characters.
“First of all there’s twins so you really have to ask the question why would you only take one and why did you take that one? Secondly I felt like Lori hopefully doesn’t in any way seem like the typical person who would kidnap a child,” she says.
“I really wanted to start people … having very polarized opinions of the kidnapper mom and the biological mom and over the course of the 12 episodes, to get you to flip them completely.”
In casting the lead role of Carter, producers went through weeks of auditions with no clear stand-outs before finding a tape from Prescott, best known for her role on UK series “Skins.” The 23-year-old took a flight to LA and landed 10 minutes before her audition.
“When you write a part like Carter you have a fantasy that person exists,” Minsky says. “She was clearly it.”