It’s wild to think that some people–the scariest and most notorious people–long for connection. Netflix’s The Beast in Me poses that all of us crave a kind of kinship even if others are wary of our behaviors and our actions, and the chemistry between Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys pulls you in even as you try to resist it. Should we embrace the complexities of bad people? Do we all have the capacity to do the darkest deeds imaginable? Beast‘s creator, Gabe Rotter, and producer, Daniel Pearle, are curious about how the light and the dark live so close to one another.
When I hopped on the line with Rotter and Pearle, who also wrote some episodes together, we suddenly launch into an appreciation of Brittany Snow, who plays Nina Jarvis, the wife of Rhys’ Nile. Unfortunately, Snow was not nominated for her incredible work on this season, but ever since I binged the limited series, she kept a hold on me. Nina and Nile began an affair while he was still married to his missing wife, Madison, and Nina serves as a conduit for us for a dance with the devil. How does she trust someone that so many people have such a strongly negative opinion about? How far can we tell ourselves that someone we love is simply…misunderstood?
‘Sick Puppy,’ the pilot episode nominated for Writing for a Limited Series lays the groundwork for the series in an unsuspecting way. We meet Danes’ Aggie and Nile as neighbors first even though she knows his name and his reputation immediately. A person as to be particularly famous or notorious for you to hear the name of someone you haven’t met before and you know so much about them without checking your phone. Interactions between Aggie and Nile begin tense as she feels like his presence is impeding on the life she would prefer to keep private as she works on a follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize winning book. She is still reeling from the sudden death of her son, Cooper, but Nile openly disrespects boundaries and smashes decorum like dropping a dinner plate on a kitchen floor.
“Sometimes bad things just happen,” a character says in ‘Sick Puppy,’ before they realize what some people are capable of. Aggie becomes increasingly wary of her connection to Nile, and their proximity to one another seems more precarious because they are mostly left to their own devices. Can we dip our toe into the dangerous territory but yank out foot back whenever we see sharks circling? What struck me most about Beast, especially by its end, is the notion that we have a choice. We can choose to align ourselves with difficult people as long as we know where our boundaries are.
Do you have a line?
The Beast in Me is streaming now on Netflix.
