Warning: This article contains some major spoilers
In the midst of filming “Loki” in 2020, Gugu Mbatha-Raw received scripts for a project that was almost the complete opposite of the Disney+ series.
And that’s exactly what excited her about it.
“The Girl Before,” an adaptation of J.P. Delaney’s best-selling novel of the same name, follows two women who live in the same unique, minimalist, automated house, designed by an architect-owner-landlord who has peculiar house rules in place for tenants. The two women, who look strikingly alike, live in the house three years apart.
The first tenant, a young woman named Emma (played by Jessica Plummer), is seeking a fresh start in a new home after she was sexually assaulted in the previous one when her boyfriend Simon (Ben Hardy) wasn’t home. She later dies at the minimalist house they move into under suspicious circumstances. The second tenant, Jane, (the role which Mbatha-Raw ended up taking) applies to live in the house, also seeking a fresh start, after losing her baby in a stillbirth. But after learning of Emma’s past, she finds herself wondering if she may suffer the same fate.
“It was really refreshing to me to read something of a completely different genre that was so psychological with such complex characters,” Mbatha-Raw told NBC News in a recent interview over Zoom. “And I love the fact that it had two female leads.”
Mbatha-Raw was so passionate about the series — which debuted on HBO Max last week after making its UK debut on BBC One in December — that she also ended up helping produce.
“It was an opportunity for me to not only learn about producing process, but also to shape, to some degree, the show, and the casting of the show,” she said.
That’s how David Oyelowo got into the mix. The “Selma” star said when Mbatha-Raw sent him the script, he was immediately intrigued by the role of the architect, Edward.
“I was elated when Gugu sent me the script,” he told NBC News. “She called me about it. I could feel her passion over the phone.”
Plus, he said, “As an actor … you’re looking to be challenged, looking to do the thing you haven’t done before.”
This thriller was just the kind of project that would give Oyelowo a new challenge. Edward is a self-confident and enigmatic architect who, viewers later learn, has also suffered from trauma of his own: He lost his wife and daughter. Both of the tenants end up in romantic relationships with him.
Oyelowo said the “women are drawn to Edward, there’s something attractive about him and there’s something unsettling about him as well” — just like the house itself that Edward designed.
“Because the house is such a manifestation of Edward’s psychology,” he said.
Thrillers can be ‘relatable’
For Plummer, the appeal of a thriller is that it “keeps you wanting to know what happens next.”
“With a thriller, it’s always an ending you’re guessing the whole way through,” she said, noting that she was hooked to the script when she received a copy. “But I personally couldn’t guess this ending.”
In fact, she didn’t know which ending the series would go with.
“I know there quite a few different version of ending not only in script and drafts but shot as well,” she said. “The ending was really important to everybody. I didn’t know what it would be. I saw it for first time when it had been edited and pieced together. I cried, and loved it.”
There are a lot of thrillers that turn pages. But often there is something in these thrillers that make them relatable.
-Ben Hardy, who plays simon
The thriller genre has only gotten more popular over the years, with many gravitating toward the Hitchcock-style of storytelling.
And there’s a reason for that, the “Girl Before” cast members said.
“There are a lot of thrillers that turn pages,” Hardy told NBC News. “But often there is something in these thrillers that make them relatable.”
Oyelowo said that he hopes viewers will “at different points identify with different characters.”
“Even if they haven’t been through the specifics of what these people have been through, they’re such human things,” he said. “If you live long enough you will experience loss, you will experience some kind of abuse. You will experience these things that become forks in the road where you either become more of the person you hope you’re going to be or less.”
At the end of the show, he noted, there is tragedy. But you also see someone who is at a fork in road who can go either way.
“You see hope,” he said. “That’s the reality of what we all have when we deal with these traumas that we will inevitably face in life.”
“I think it’s important to have hope,” added Mbatha-Raw. “That’s always part of what I’m attracted to in all the stories that I tell.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
