At this point in the history of television, there is no network that has mastered the word of mouth limited series like HBO. In the past eight months alone, they have released two of the most buzzworthy programs in that timeframe: “The Undoing” and “Mare of Easttown.” And while both featured Oscar-winning actresses (Nicole Kidman and Kate Winslet, respectively), they also had one rare attribute for a program over the past decade; their ratings increased week after week. Granted, “The Undoing” would be admittedly difficult to reconfigure for a second season, but “Mare of Easttown,” which released its shocking finale tonight, has seemingly crafted a rich world full of characters ready for another mystery. And while HBO execs might salivate at that prospect, Brad Ingelsby, the show’s creator, isn’t so sure it’s in the cards.
“It was always conceived as one season. If I had a great idea, I guess, I would consider it,” Ingelsby says. “If I was convinced I could do justice to the characters and the world and also the fans who have embraced the show. So, it’s never say never.”
To be frank, Ingelsby’s response sounded less enthusiastic in person than the rest of this reply may read in the context of this story.
“I don’t have that idea right now. But if I had an idea that I was convinced could be great and would allow us to spend time with these people, and also be a great mystery and thriller, then I would definitely consider it,” Ingelsby says. “I don’t have that idea at the moment, but I would definitely consider it because I love Mare and I love Helen, and the idea that they get to spend time in my living room again would be hilarious to me.”
Perhaps Ingelsby’s cautious reply is because the COVID delayed project just came to an end. During our postmortem interview of the series, which features stellar work from actors Winslet, Jean Smart, Julianne Nicholson, and Guy Pearce, among others, he revealed VFX were just locked two weeks ago. If you’re hoping for a return to the Philly suburb, pray that inspiration is right around the corner.
In the meantime, Ingelsby was thrilled to talk about a finale episode with multiple twists (from a series that already plotted out some fantastic turns), the immeasurable contributions of Nicholson, being part of the Jean Smart renaissance, the now obvious crumbs of the real killer’s identity, and much more.
Note: There are major spoilers ahead regarding who killed who from the finale episode of “Mare of Easttown.” You’ve been warned.
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The Playlist: When you were plotting the series out, how difficult was it to figure out where to put the specific twists in terms of who could potentially be the killer, who killed who, and who did what? What was the toughest nut for you to crack in that respect?
Brad Ingelsby: Goodness. I think the toughest one was how do you get to the ending of the show, have it be a surprise, but not such a surprise that an audience goes, “Oh, wait. You just tricked us.” Even in the edit, it was the toughest thing. I don’t know if we pulled it off yet, but audiences will tell us soon enough. I think the toughest nut was how do you establish Ryan (Cameron Mann) enough as a character, and so when you get to the ending, it’s a surprise, but if you went back and watched the episode that you’d be able to say, “Oh, O.K. I see the pieces.” It was that tightrope walk of introducing a character, have them be suspicious enough so that when you get to the reveal, it’s surprising, but it doesn’t feel ridiculous, and it has to be emotional. So I think that was how do you hide Ryan enough where he’s not totally hidden, but when you get to the ending, it can be a surprise. We had to do in the scripts and also in the edit.
To be honest, I hadn’t even considered that Ryan’s dad, John Ross (Joe Tippet), could possibly have done it. So that was a great twist in that respect.
Oh, good.
If viewers went back and watched the entire season, will they find clues that Ryan is the killer?
Yeah. I think if you look back, there’s a couple of things that I would say. In the opening episode, Mare comes into the house, and he’s doing his homework, and she’s like, “It’s a weekend. What are you doing your homework for?” He’s like, “I just want to get ahead.” So our idea there was this is a kid [that] doesn’t want to be a troublemaker at all. His family life has caused these issues, and he wants to be a kid that’s always on top of things, so he’s not the one that’s giving his parents any trouble. The fourth episode is when you see him come into Lori’s bedroom, he’s watching the newscast, he’s like, “What’s going on now?” We linger on his face a moment longer than we have. Then, of course, the cafeteria scene where he’s pounding on some kid, and you see some rage in him that you haven’t seen before.
Oh, right.
And you’re sort of like, “Hey. That’s strange. He’s been a quiet kid all this time. Now he’s pounding on this kid. Is something churning inside him? Does this rage have a specific origin?” I think the key was that we wanted an audience to think, “Oh, this rage is coming from his dad’s affair.” So it’s almost like, “Oh, you have him in there, but then you’ll check him off the list because the secret he was hiding was the affair.” Only in the seventh is when you bring it back around and go, “Oh, no. It wasn’t that. It was that he had murdered this girl, and he was living with this terrible secret inside. He was unable to hold it any longer.”
Have you been paying attention to the reaction online and people’s theories about who did what?
Yeah. I read a bunch of them. I’ve tried to avoid them the last couple of weeks just out of anxiety to see if people are way ahead of us or behind us. But I have read a bunch, and I hope people are surprised in the end. But I think, more importantly, I hope it resonates emotionally. That was always the key in my mind, “Is it emotional? Is it organic? Is it honest?” That was always the key, and, I guess, time will tell at this point. We’ll see what they think.
Well, I have never had one person say to me that they thought it was Ryan.
O.K., good.
Have you been at least surprised or happy that the prevailing wisdom hasn’t centered on him as the killer?
Totally. 100%. 100%. Yeah, no. But that’s the thing. I think the truth is that a good surprise or is it, “Oh, you tricked us the whole time”? So that’s going to be the question I’ll have, is, are people pleasantly surprised or angrily surprised?
Did the actors get all the scripts beforehand? Did they know what was happening at the end?
It’s a good question. We slowly rolled it out. There were enough people involved in the ending twist. It’s obviously Lori, John, and Billy. So we had to tell those actors, “Hey, this is what you have to play because this is where it goes.” You have to have enough of the suspicion early in the episodes where an audience can reasonably say, “Oh, O.K. All the seeds were planted. I didn’t know what they were at the time. But if I were to go back and watch the episodes, I could see the seeds planted.” But we didn’t give it to all the actors. All the actors who weren’t intimately involved in those ending scenes didn’t get [episode] 7 until, I think, a couple of weeks into the shoot. Every call sheet actively avoided any spoilers. All the episode lines were like, “Mare goes and gets a clue.” It didn’t specify anything because we were always scared of letting the secret out. So we did a really good job of maintaining the secret as much as we could. Ultimately, you had to give the actors who will be in the last episode the ending episode. But we held on as long as we possibly could and then ultimately had to give it to them just because they had to memorize their lines and know where their character arcs were going to end emotionally. But outside of the actors, even the crew, we were really secretive about what was happening. So credit to everyone on the crew for keeping the secret as long as they did.
I’m guessing Julianne Nicholson, who plays Ryan’s mom, knew early on.
Julianne was the second person we cast in the whole show because we knew how emotional that ending scene would be. We knew what that character would have to go through in the last episode, so Julianne was the second person we cast in the whole show.
Ingelsby continues: You know what’s funny is that she read the initial six episodes and was sort of like, “Yeah….” I think she was a little bit on the fence. She’d just done a TV show [“The Outsider”]. I don’t think she was so ready to jump back into it. She’s a mom. She has two kids of her own. So we’re like, “O.K., read seven and then tell us if you want to do it.” She read that, and she jumped in. Thank God we have her because she’s so incredible; she’s so effortless. I loved her since I saw her in “Tully.” I think she’s such a wonderful actress. I love Julianne. I think she crushes it in the ending episode. She’s so good.
She is. She’s so great. How did you convince Guy Pearce to do this role where he’s sort of the red herring in a way?
I think it was Kate. She had a relationship with Guy. So it helps to have Kate to be able to pick up the phone and be like, “Hey, come and do this with me.” Also, I think Kate knew that he was always going to be that character. He was always written as a guy that comes into her life at a certain time, a challenging time in her life, and really helps her get through it. I always talked about it. I was like, “He’s a moment of light in her life, a moment of tenderness that gets her through a really challenging time.” Honestly, I was interested in that as a relationship because we don’t always have to ride off into the sunset. We all have these relationships in our life where someone arrives in your life at a certain time, and they help you get through it. So that was interesting to me, as a relationship, was a guy that comes into our life at a very specific time. Obviously, because he’s an outsider, he’s a red herring, so everyone’s going, “He’s not from the town. It’s Guy Pearce.” But he really was always just a moment of tenderness that helped her get through this. Also, just in terms of the story, we just needed Mare to have moments where she could smile, engage with a love interest because otherwise, it just becomes so heavy at times.
I don’t know if you’re aware of this; we’re officially in the middle of the Jean Smart Renaissance. You are now part of this.
I am glad to be part of that. I love Jean.
Can you talk about casting her and what you had hoped she would bring to the series?
Jean was our top choice. We went to Jean, and she said, “Yes.” It was incredible. She saw Kate’s name and was like, “Oh my God.” She has to work with Kate. “This is going to be incredible.” But, Jean, what she brought to the role, which I think people respond to, is just the amount of humor that she’s able to bring. I think that her banter with Mare, it’s so needed in the show. I think what Jean does really well is she can be really caustic at times and then also really light at times. She’s able to balance these two tones effortlessly. She can be harsh and, yet, when there’s an emotional moment, like in the scene where she’s in the bathroom with Carrie and is like, “I’m just helping you because I want to keep my grandson. I don’t really care about you.” There is a tenderness to her. She’s iconic, and she’s done this for how many years now. I’m just so glad she’s getting the recognition she deserves, you know?
100%. This was a specific storyline crafted for this project, but you’ve built this world with all these rich characters. Is there a chance for a second season? Is there a chance to return to Mare and some other investigation in the wilds of Pennsylvania, or Philadelphia, or somewhere nearby?
It was always conceived as one season. If I had a great idea, I guess I would consider it. If I was convinced, I could do justice to the characters and the world, and the fans who embraced the show. So, it’s never say never. I don’t have that idea right now. But if I had an idea that I was convinced could be great and would allow us to spend time with these people, and also be a great mystery and thriller, then I would definitely consider it. I don’t have that idea now, but I would definitely consider it because I love Mare and I love Helen, and the idea that they get to spend time in my living room again would be hilarious to me.
What was your initial inspiration for the show? The world is so rich I was actually convinced that this was based on a book. I kept thinking, “Oh, people are going to look up the book, and they’re going to see who killed her.” I didn’t realize how completely original it was.
I think it was probably two things. One is that I just wanted to write about home. I wanted to tell a story about where I grew up and how I grew up, and the rhythms of life in a particular part of this country, and also speak to the people I grew up with. I don’t know Mare, but I grew up with priests in the church, and some of these characters are based on people I grew up with. That was really interesting to me, but I knew just a story about my childhood wouldn’t be entertaining or interesting in any way.
Ingelsby continues: So it’s like, “O.K. How do you be entertaining? How do you get an audience to watch the show?” I had this character of Mare in mind, and it was like, “O.K, that’s interesting, a woman who is always torn between a sense of duty and then the personal life that she shares with these people, and the shared experiences they have because they’ve all grown up here, went to school together, are living together.” The conflict of a woman struggling every day with the demands of the job and the demands of the personal relationships she has in the community. That is just interesting to me. I guess the soil was interesting, like, “That’s ripe soil to play in. Now, what’s the story?” But it was really a desire to write about home, and I had this character in my head. My experience is when you have a character in your head that just continues to talk to you and annoy you, the only way to get rid of them is to write them. So I just had to write Mare.
Was there someone in your life that inspired her?
No. It really wasn’t. I grew up around athletes. My dad was an athlete, and my brother was an athlete. I didn’t get the gene myself. I’m not very good at any sports. I’ve always been intrigued by this idea of glory and faded glory and these athletes who dedicate themselves to a singular goal. Then there’s a shelf life to being an athlete, right?
For sure.
Your body isn’t going to be able to uphold the demands of the sport. So it’s like, “So what is the second life of an athlete? How do they go on with their life and continue some level of passion in another pursuit?” Obviously, Mare was never going to be a professional player or anything. But it was interesting, to me, this woman who had this moment of greatness in her life as a kid, which I’ve seen in my life through my brother and my father, but now her life is declining. How does she live up to that moment? How does she try to maintain that moment, and how do you make a life outside of that hero moment? So pulling out of my own life a little bit and then using that to inform the character of this woman who’s in a small town where she grew up. That was kind of the genesis there.
I know your production had a major COVID break that shut down filming for months. I’m assuming you were able to start at least editing the first couple of episodes because of that?
Yes.
What sort of help was what before you returned to finish the shoot? Did it give you all more confidence?
Strangely, as awful as the pandemic was, in this case, it did allow us a moment to look at the footage and go, “What’s working and what’s not working?” Also, there was a lot of stuff we had to rewrite completely. For example, Siobhan’s band [was supposed to play at] a sorority house, and at this huge party, she met Anne [Note: Siobhan is Mare’s teenage daughter portrayed by Angourie Rice]. But, obviously, we can’t do that stuff. So all the crowd scenes had to be cut. We had to rewrite a lot of stuff because you couldn’t have extras. You had to have the absolute minimum number of people to have a scene. So we had to scale back a lot of the scenes. But also, I think what it did is it allowed us to look at the footage and go, “You know what? The series is strongest…” and we probably knew this anyway, but it allowed us to really see it in the edit. It’s like, “O.K., the series is working when it’s about the investigation. Evan and Kate are wonderful together. How do we maximize these scenes?” It was a lesson. When we get too away from the Kate character, the show started to lag a little bit. So it’s like, “How do we maximize Kate? Are there scenes with these other characters that we can get rid of and invest them with Mare and Zabel?” It was good to see the strengths of the show. Then when we went back, we could invest in the strengths and maybe chop away at the weaknesses a little bit. It was strangely beneficial, and so when we went back, we had a real game plan in place as to how to maximize our strengths and cut the weaknesses.
You were all deep into shooting last fall. I can imagine you only finished the entire series a couple of months ago, if even that. That being said, do you know what you’re doing next?
It’s a good question. I don’t know. I’ve been so in the edit of this thing. It’s crazy. I think I was still editing the last episode looking at visual effects just two weeks ago. So we’ve literally just come out of this. It’s funny. I always say I’m going to do something different next. I think I was reading an article by Anne Tyler, the novelist, and she was saying, “Every time I get done one novel, I sit down, I’m going to write something totally different, and invariably I come back to Baltimore and these people I know in the place I live.” Something tells me I end up in the same place.
“Mare of Easttown” is now available on HBO and HBO Max.