‘Sirens’ Editor Delicately Balanced Tone For Emmy-Nom’d Pilot

One of the most welcome surprises on Emmy nomination day was the unexpected recognition of Netflix’s Sirens. Premiering later in the Emmy eligibility window, the limited series received well deserved nominations for star Meghann Fahy, Caroline Duncan’s inventive costume design, Nicole Kassell’s accomplished direction, and Catherine Haight’s, ACE, delicate balance in the editing room. Of these nominations, Haight’s subtle work as Sirens editor may be the most dead-on nomination the series received.

Sirens stars Fahy as Devon, the estranged sister of Milly Alcock’s Simone. Devon travels to an unnamed island to retrieve her sister, the personal assistant of the mysterious Michaela (Julianne Moore). The series whips between emotional drama and biting satire but never feels out of control.

Credit that to the collaboration between Haight and Kassell.

“Obviously the tone was a huge part of our conversations every day. We were constantly working on it and constantly honing it and trying to find the right tone because the show has a very unusual and specific tone. It’s hard to pin it down. It’s hard to describe it entirely too because it’s very dramatic at times. It’s very funny at times.” Haight shared.

Haight shared edited scenes with Kassell throughout the filming, which was unusual for Kassell. Yet, both artists realized the specific tonal requirements of the material and wanted the opportunity to make adjustments to newly filmed scenes. That process resulted, for example, in a restructuring of the series’s opening sequence. The script begins with Devon’s introduction in Buffalo, but Kassell wanted Haight to begin the episode with Michaela’s release of her peregrine falcon, Barnaby.

The choice worked perfectly as it established Michaela as this beautiful, mysterious, near mythical entity. That’s something the series plays with extensively.

“We were definitely trying to build that aura and that sense of mystery and intrigue. It’s just all very mystical and unusual but alluring. She’s so beautiful, and she’s wearing this amazing gown to release a bird on a cliff,” Haight laughed. “We were really trying to establish this sense of intrigue and mystery. We wanted to grab the audience right away and pull them in and make them wonder who is this woman and what’s this all about.”

Who Michaela is and what is her pull on Alcock’s Simone becomes one of the most important Sirens mysteries. Haight introduces Simone via an elaborately assembled sequence of her running up an elongated series of stairs leading up from the beach to Michaela’s massive estate. After a series of scenes highlighting Simone’s high-pressured orchestration of Michaela’s staff, we’re eventually keyed-in into the relationship between Simone and Michaela.

As Simone helps prepare Michaela for the day, she seems to anticipate every move, every need. The two actresses dance around each other in a seemingly tightly choreographed ballet. Haight’s edit here follows Kassell’s careful construction of the sequence.

“It’s one of my favorite scenes too in the episode. It’s also so funny, too, when they sext Peter together. It’s part of the job. That was an incredibly well shot scene too,” Haight recalled. “It was choreographed so well where it felt almost like this dance that they do every day. That one came together pretty easily. It was shot very specifically with how the camera moves. It’s such a great scene.”

That delicate choreography becomes quickly interrupted with the arrival of Fahy’s Devon. The rhythms of a 2-hander sequence need to evolve into an awkward 3-hander. Haight’s assembly of the sequence formed around the triangle of their relationship. As such, it took a longer to assemble than the average scene.

While editing exchanges between the three actresses, Haight constantly had the power balance between the women in the forefront of her mind. Initially, the sequence is more even-handed between Devon and Simone. When Michaela arrives, however, it throws off the exchange, and the relationship dynamic tips toward Simone and Michaela, leaving Devon on the outs.

“There’s a little bit of an ebb and flow within the scene itself, too, because every scene you want it to have its own shape, as well as the whole episode to have a shape. There was a good amount of time spent on that, and it’s one of the scenes that we did go back to a lot to really hone performance and make sure that especially Devon wasn’t coming off as too harsh that we felt some vulnerability from her,” Haight explained. “We really wanted to feel her vulnerability in that moment. Meghann was so incredible. Her footage was amazing because she gave me all the choices I needed to be able to really sculpt that performance to perfection. I was thrilled when she received that nomination because she’s such an incredible actor.”

The finale of Haight’s Emmy-nominated episode dove-tails… or falcon-tails… back to its beginning. As Michaela released Barnaby into the wild, he eventually returns to her. Only, he crashes repeatedly into her oversized bedroom window, eventually crashing through the glass and dying at her feet.

It’s a wild, potentially traumatic, moment that fully dances the delicate balance between insanely campy and insanely shocking. The moment also foreshadows the shattering of Michaela’s perfect island life that eventually plays out through the rest of the series.

This was another carefully choreographed moment between Kassell and Haight.

“That was another scene that Nikki really planned out. When they were actually shooting it, they executed it really well. Ultimately, putting it together, when you have an actor like Julianne Moore, she was so perfect. It was really fun to build the tension,” Haight said. “You know something’s coming because there’s this banging sound, and we reveal that it’s Barnaby coming home in such a destructive and awful way. We hold in the tension of the silence and the banging before pulling in Michael Abels’s bananas amazing score. I’m so pleased with where it all ended up.”

Sirens streams exclusively on Netflix.