Susanne Bier keeps the audience guessing in The Undoing
MANILA, Philippines — The HBO Original series The Undoing directed by Susanne Bier and written by David E. Kelly is now on its third episode, and it continues to keep audiences guessing with every intriguing twist and turn befitting a satisfying whodunit.
Top-billed by Oscar-winning Australian actress Nicole Kidman and British star Hugh Grant, The Undoing airs Mondays, 10 a.m. on HBO and HBO Go with a same-day encore at 10 p.m.
Adapted from Jean Hanff Korelitz’s novel You Should Have Known, the only six-episode thriller/family drama follows the wealthy couple Grace and Jonathan Fraser, a psychologist and oncologist living the high-society life in New York with their son, until a violent death and a chain of horrible events puncture the “bubble” they’re in.
Minor spoiler alert: In the first episode, Grace (Nicole) is particularly drawn to a young mother at her son’s school. Later on, news of this woman’s tragic death rocks the school community around the same time Grace’s husband (Hugh) goes missing. By Episode 2, Grace seeks refuge at the sprawling pre-war apartment of her patrician father (Donald Sutherland) as she finds herself on the receiving end of the detectives’ relentless questioning. In the most recent episode, Grace hears Jonathan’s (Hugh) version of events, complicating the story even further.
“I wanted the whodunnit or the thriller or, you could say, the sense of the world falling apart because nobody can trust anyone to be the red line or the strongest trait. And then I wanted the family story — the forgiveness or the not forgiveness, and them trying to talk through it — to be a result of the existential confusion that it brings when you realize that no one is exactly who they seem to be,” Susanne, the award-winning Danish director behind The Night Manager and Bird Box, among others, said of The Undoing in a Variety interview.
The STAR also joined a virtual roundtable with the lady director to talk more about the series where she gets to give “access” to a world few can enter. She also answered questions on how Nicole is as producer and not just female lead of the show, the “levity” of Hugh, as well as the themes of the series like criminal justice and the privileges of the privileged.
Here are the excerpts from the Zoom interview:
On Nicole as one of the producers:
“Nicole came to Hollywood as a very young actress, and she knows the system and she knows the workings of the system. So she understands what kind of challenges the artistic part of the production is going through, and she utilizes that knowledge to the advantage of the artistic side of it. I mean, she’s the producer who’s there when you need her and she will do whatever it takes. And she’s very, very smart and very wise about how to do things and she has a very strong intuition for right artistic decisions, but she’s not imposing. She will use it when it comes to the advantage of the project in a very strong and definite way.”
On working with showrunner David E. Kelly (Big Little Lies, Ally McBeal, Boston Legal, etc.):
“When I got involved in the show, he’d written the first draft of the first episode. And he’d written it for Nicole Kidman (who also starred in his Big Little Lies). And so that cocktail was very, very tempting and kind of irresistible. And he’s an amazing writer. And he’s also an amazing writer for women because he just kind of gets it. He’s also incredibly collaborative and not like, you know, he’ll write stuff and he’ll discuss it. He’s never ever about being right. He’s always about the best possible solution. So even if I was to ransack my brain, I can’t really find anything bad to say about (David E. Kelly). I mean, I could go on with accolades. It’s a real honor and pleasure to work with him.”
On reining in Hugh Grant’s levity for the series:
“You are asking whether I would stop Hugh Grant from being funny? Never ever, ever. I mean, I would embrace any kind, anything being funny. But the truth of the matter is that Hugh Grant is a great actor. He reads a script and he understands the scene and he understands what it takes. And so he would never hit a wrong note in terms of making something funny, which shouldn’t be funny. He’s a very multi-layered, deep actor who can access all the dark sides he has and he does that in the series. Is it an added advantage that he has a great sense of humor? Absolutely!”
On the main attraction and the fresh challenges of the project:
“The main attraction, I think, had to do with the theme of what do you actually know about somebody close to you, somebody who you think you know. And when you kind of realize that this person who you thought you knew is completely different, what does it do to your perception of life, what does it do to your perception of your world, of yourself, and the unraveling of your state of mind because of that, I just think is hugely, hugely interesting.
“I also want to say that I was also very drawn by depicting New York City, and by using the place and describing that world that I find really fascinating and very complex, and also quite frankly, sort of, the upper echelons of New York society. Like, you know, you walk into Central Park and you look at those apartments and you wonder, what is it like to live that life and to be able to describe that and use that and possibly treat that with a certain element of irony, it was just very tempting. And also tricky. So that was probably the biggest challenge — to get that right. You know, how do you describe the world of wealth without being sort of cliché, which I think it often is.”
On themes such as downfall of socialites, criminal justice, entitlement of the privileged, and their relevance today:
“The show is really about the psychology of what do you believe in, who can you trust, who you cannot trust, can you even trust yourself if you can’t trust anybody around you. That’s sort of the core, the essence, the engine of the show.
“Having said that, it was very important that in that world of white privilege which is being depicted that we recognize that it is a world of privilege. And that we recognize the oblivion of privilege. Because I think one of the amazing things that happens with privilege is that privileged people don’t realize that they’re privileged. I think privileged people, you know, don’t realize that no, most people don’t travel by private jet.
“I think that sort of oblivion is very, very interesting and possibly part of the whole issue, like an important part of the issue. And I think it’s also fun to portray. So, that was really, very much the angle of the portrayal. It’s like, of course, if you are privileged, you get out on bail, but you don’t if you’re not privileged and that whole thing which is so unjust and which has such huge repercussions in terms of the justice system, we do point to it.
“But because it’s not sort of the center of the show, we do it, we address it, but we can’t pretend that it is what the show is about because it’s there. And it’s part of the storytelling. But the actual core of the show is that whole thing of not knowing and not understanding, and the chaos that it generates.”
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