"White Noise" is based on the 1985 novel by DeLillo of the same name. Netflix's plot description reads, "At once hilarious and horrifying, lyrical and absurd, ordinary and apocalyptic, White Noise dramatises a contemporary American family's attempts to deal with the mundane conflicts of everyday life while grappling with the universal mysteries of love, death, and the possibility of happiness in an uncertain world." Driver's character, Jack Gladney, is a professor at the fictional College-on-the-Hill. Gerwig plays his wife, Babette.