The Housemaid, by Freida McFadden, was released on August 23, 2022. It’s a psychological thriller about a girl who gets hired as a housemaid for a rich family only to discovers troubling secrets along the way. The book was recently adapted into a movie, which was released on December 19, 2025, with Sydney Sweeney playing Millie Calloway and Amanda Seyfried playing Nina Winchester. The book was loved by fans because it was fast-paced, addictive, and had high-stakes. The movie received the same amount of love for the same reasons.
However, like most adaptations, there are definitely some similarities and differences notable from the movie. Let’s take a look at them.
Warning: if you have not read the book or watched the movie and would like to not be exposed to spoilers, do not read this article. It will contain spoilers from the book and the movie.
For starters, the similarities. They both follow the storyline of Millie being a desperate ex-convict who got hired to serve as a housemaid in the Winchester household. Both the book and the film cast Nina as the insane wife and husband Andrew drawing Millie into a romantic trap. The plot twist is also the same, showing Andrew being an abusive husband and Nina hiring Millie while planning her escape. Millie, in both the book and the movie, lives in a secluded attic with the lock being only on the outside, which is done on purpose so Nina couldn’t get locked in there. The conclusions in both are also similar where Nina moves to California to start a new life while Millie is being interviewed by another woman for another potential job.
Although the movie kept the core ideas from the book, it took a more violent, scarier approach to some of the scenes.
One difference is that Nina does not gain weight to appear less appealing to her husband. In the book, it states that in order to repel her husband, Nina purposefully tries to gain weight so that she would look less attractive because she felt tired giving in to him. But in the movie, she doesn’t try to repel him in this way.
Another difference is that Nina confides in Enzo about Andrew’s actions instead of her friend at first. It’s a small detail but still notable. In the book, Nina first talks to a friend about Andrew’s actions and that friend tells Andrew what Nina told her, so she ended up in a psych clinic where she was tested for insanity. Then, she isolates herself and decides not to talk to anyone but confides in Enzo later. However, in the movie, she goes straight to Enzo to discuss her situation, and he doesn’t question her at all. They try to stage a plan to escape.
The reason Millie gets locked up is different too. In the book, Millie leaves out some books lying on the table, so Andrew makes her lay down and place three heavy textbooks on her stomach for three hours. Maybe the producers thought that this idea wasn’t enough to show Andrew’s wrath because in the movie, Millie accidentally broke a plate that was valuable to Andrew because it was his mother’s. For her punishment, she was locked in the attic and was told to cut her stomach using the broken pieces of the plate. That is definitely more violent than the book version, which adds to the scenes of the movie.
Then, the most violent difference is Andrew’s death. First of all, in both, Millie manages to lock Andrew in the attic as revenge for making her suffer when she was locked in. To ruin his manipulative, perfect smile, Millie slides pliers under the attic door and tells him to extract his teeth and slide them under the door. In the book, he loses four teeth while in the movie, he pulls out one. However, in the book, he stays locked in the attic for days without food and water, eventually leading to his death due to dehydration and starvation. In the movie, however, Nina returns back to the Winchester house and goes to the attic. She thought that Millie was locked in the attic, so she unlocked the door, only to find Andrew looking bloody and bruised. He pushes Nina down the stairs and Millie takes a vase and attacks him from behind, then runs down the stairs to escape, as Andrew follows her and tries to attack her. Millie disappears and Andrew goes upstairs back to Nina.
As he reaches the top floor, he finds Nina leaning against a railing, staring at the openness in front of her. Andrew tries to apologize for his abusive behavior and pleads for forgiveness, trying to convince her that she knows that he can admit when he’s wrong and asks if they could pretend this never happened and start fresh. He also tries to manipulate her into forgiving him by saying that she has nowhere to go considering she’s too old to get remarried and has a child she needs to care for. However, despite his manipulation, Nina doesn’t accept it, saying “I’d rather be dead than spend another day with you.” Andrew takes that as a challenge and tries to attack her, but Millie pushes him over the railing. He falls down several floors and dies.
The story took a really dark turn in making the movie. It was more violent than the book to keep that psychological effect. The differences weren’t huge, but still enough to have that effect on the viewers.
