RESOLVING THE LEDGER
This is one outlet's own report from Mashable — the article as it was filed. Other outlets are covering the same event; open the full story to compare every source side by side.
See the full story · 4 sources
Furious has hit Hulu with three jaw-dropping episodes. The new series from creator Elizabeth Meriwether (New Girl, Dying for Sex ) centers on FBI agent Alice Black (Emmy Rossum, who also produces) as she hunts a female serial killer (Lola Petticrew) who's slaying a curious series of men.
In this trio of premiere episodes, Furious unfurls that this mysterious murderess seems to be targeting a child trafficking ring. However, while this crime drama deals in child exploitation and sexual assault, Meriwether and her team of directors won't use imagery of either horror to tell their story. Instead, she entrusts Rossum, Petticrew, and the rest of the top-notch ensemble to sell the stakes without turning rape into a problematic spectacle.
Over three in-person interviews, Entertainment Editor Kristy Puchko sat down with Meriwether, Rossum, and Petticrew to dig into Furious 's curious origins, its shrewd exploration of tough topics and complicated characters, as well as the "superpower" of its central killer.
Look for more all season long, as Mashable has got plenty more from all three Furious collaborators.
Furious began as an adaptation of Black Widow.
Chloe Troast and Lola Petticrew in "Furious."
Credit: Disney / Sarah Shatz
Nope, not the MCU one. In 1987, director Bob Rafelson debuted a bizarre neo-noir, in which Debra Winger stars as a U.S. Justice Department analyst who's on the tail of a suspected black widow — meaning a hot female serial killer who's offing her husbands, seemingly to collect their fortunes. But despite their cat-and-mouse dynamic, the two women find they have something in common.
Out of the gate, Furious changes up the details, including the killer's M.O. Meriwether said of her point of inspiration, "A friend of mine told me to watch Black Widow . I did. It's such an interesting movie. You know, it feels like it's really in that world of 1970s and 1980s movies, where there isn't that push to kind of explain everything that the character is doing — in a great way. In fact, there's a Debra Winger scene where she almost makes fun of giving a monologue explaining who she is. And then there's this incredibly weird section of the movie where, after watching this cat-and-mouse female serial killer and female FBI agent dance around each other the whole movie, they just start hanging out at the beach together.
"It's really strange," she mused, "but also, I found it really moving. Because I see these two women as just so desperate for connection with each other. And in some ways, they are the only ones that can really see the real person underneath [their façades]. And I wanted to take that and put it into this show."
She continued, "I think if you're adapting a movie into a TV show, there needs to be a why. Why do that? Like, you have to bring something to the project. So, I knew I needed to dive into the psychological parts and try to figure out why these two women became the women that they are. That led me, sort of inevitably, to an idea of being a victim of violence. I did a lot of research on female serial killers, which was, like, really terrifying and interesting. A common theme — not surprisingly — is that they are victims of violence, and then they become perpetrators of violence.
"I got excited about the possibility of just complicating all of that and showing how the experience of violence can get in your bones and come out in very strange, self-sabotaging ways," she explained. "And it can also come out in violent ways to other people."
Why does Furious not have flashbacks?
Emmy Rossum in "Furious."
Credit: Disney / Sarah Shatz
In dialogue, audiences learn that both Alice and the mysterious killer have been victims of violence. The former was battered by her ex-boyfriend, a Brooklyn detective (Jake Lacy); the latter was trafficked as a teenager.
Meriwether said of the show's lack of flashbacks, "I think that it was important to me to keep the focus on these two women now, in the present moment, and not go back and show everything, you know, that happened to them."
Rossum expanded on this, saying, "Liz was emphatic from the drop that she wasn't interested in flashbacks. She was much more interested in the effects of the violence on both of our female characters and how it influences how they behave now."
Emmy Rossum speaks on Alice's trauma in Furious.
Scoot McNairy and Emmy Rossum in "Furious."
Credit: Disney / Sarah Shatz
"For Alice," Rossum continued, "she's become very disconnected from herself. She doesn't believe she can get justice for herself. And so she's really obsessed with getting justice for others — even at the expense of taking care of herself."
The actor went on to address an outward element of Alice's trauma, saying, "[She's] unable to shower. We know that she smells, which I think is so brave for anybody to put in anything, because people smelling bad in our culture is really [representative of] a sense of shame. And it's something that we see exists for Alice."
As to how her trauma impacts Alice's work and sex life, Rossum said, "She has become such a machine in this job that she invites these strangers into her house to fight. Which is something that, when you read it the first time, knowing that we like victims of violence to fit in a certain box? I was scared of doing that scene.
"I didn't understand it," she continued. "I really had to work with a psychologist to understand the parts of myself that were resistant to it, the parts of myself that overlapped with the character... how to understand the separation between myself and the character, the ways in which we were different, to remember those, and also to understand that for this character, love and sexuality, violence and control have existed within the same relationship [for her]. And so I think we were really interested in an unflinching look a...
AIPROPX is an independent multi-source news index — we track, compare, and connect coverage from across the web into one place you won't find anywhere else.