![‘Furious’: Emmy Rossum & Liz Meriwether On Imperfect Victims, Weaponized Trauma, & A Possible ‘New Girl’ Reunion [Bingeworthy Podcast]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/30115212/%E2%80%98Furious-Emmy-Rossum-Liz-Meriwether-On-Imperfect-Victims-Weaponized-Trauma-A-Possible-%E2%80%98New-Girl-Reunion-Bingeworthy-Podcast.jpg "‘Furious’: Emmy Rossum & Liz Meriwether On Imperfect Victims, Weaponized Trauma, & A Possible ‘New Girl’ Reunion [Bingeworthy Podcast]")
On paper, “Furious” sounds like something we’ve all seen before. An FBI agent. A serial killer. A cat-and-mouse chase stretched across eight episodes. That’s technically what the show is, but it’s also not really what the show is. The cat is carrying around a mountain of old trauma. The mouse has a disturbingly decent argument. Neither one is behaving in a way that makes it easy to decide who deserves your sympathy.
That is where Liz Meriwether’s (“New Girl,” “Dying for Sex”) new Hulu series gets its hooks in. Loosely inspired by the 1987 thriller “Black Widow,” “Furious” follows FBI agent Alice Black (Emmy Rossum) as she hunts Catherine (Lola Petticrew), a serial killer targeting powerful men. Very quickly, though, the pursuit starts to feel less like a standard case and more like two damaged people slowly realizing they may understand each other better than anyone else does. That is not necessarily a good thing for either of them. The series also stars Scoot McNairy, Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Jake Lacy, Rob Delaney, Rob Yang, and Steve Way.
“Furious” is dark. Very dark, actually. It is also addictive, surprisingly funny at times, and much less interested in handing out moral gold stars than most shows working in this territory.
Alice is brilliant at her job, but she is also obsessive, combative, self-destructive, and so disconnected from herself that she occasionally seems to be watching her own life from across the room. Catherine is a killer. The series never pretends otherwise. Still, once it starts digging into what happened to her and the men she targets, the moral math gets a lot uglier than “killer bad, FBI good.”
The show does not sand any of that down to make the audience comfortable. It trusts that we can keep two opposing thoughts in our heads at the same time. Catherine can be dangerous and have a point. Alice can be a victim and still be frustrating, reckless, and occasionally impossible to root for. That mess is the point.
“We know who the killer is in the first few minutes,” Meriwether told The Playlist’s Mike DeAngelo during today’s episode of The Playlist’s Bingeworthy podcast. “So all of the tension in the story has to be because you are fascinated by these two women. Because you want to know what got them to this point.”
Meriwether’s way into the story came through the odd relationship between the women at the center of the original film. Two people who are deeply alone, deeply guarded, and probably the last people who should be finding comfort in each other. Yet, somehow, they do.
“In some ways, it’s a story about the love between these two women,” she explained. “I don’t know if love is the right word, but it’s a story about two women who are very isolated and disconnected in their lives finding each other and actually seeing each other in a way that they haven’t been seen before.”
“Love” may not be quite the right word. Obsession does not fully cover it either. Whatever is happening between them lives in the uncomfortable space between recognition, envy, fascination and the creeping realization that this other person may know exactly where all the bodies are buried. Emotionally and, in Catherine’s case, sometimes literally.
Rossum points to Meriwether’s refusal to write “perfect victims” as one of the biggest reasons Alice feels so alive. Alice escaped a violent relationship and rebuilt her life as an FBI agent, but “rebuilt” may be overselling it. She has mostly found more productive places to hide.
Early in the series, she uses dating apps to bring strange men back to her apartment. It looks like a hookup until she starts provoking them into hitting her. It is a rough, ugly piece of character work, and the show does not rush in to explain it away or make Alice more pleasant afterward.
“Liz has a very unflinching way of looking at humanity and finds such specificity in character,” Rossum said. “Knowing that Liz has a way of looking at things and not creating perfect victims is really special.”
Catherine has developed a different set of survival skills. She can read a room almost instantly, become whoever someone needs her to be and change direction without missing a beat. She learned how to disappear in plain sight because, for much of her life, people were not looking at her in the first place.
“The worst thing that’s ever happened to them makes them a superpower,” Meriwether explained. “These are women that are ignored and underestimated, and Catherine uses that as a way of escaping and getting away with things because no one’s looking at her. Nobody’s paying attention to her.”
Alice has spent years pretending the worst thing that happened to her is safely locked away. The case has other plans. Every clue, every victim and every new piece of Catherine’s story seems to find another crack in the door.
Sometimes that trauma shows up in ways you expect. Anger. Isolation. Reckless behavior. Sometimes Alice just smells terrible. She cannot bring herself to shower because of what happened to her, and the show does not treat that as some small background detail. Other characters notice. They mention it, usually at a moment when Alice would rather be discussing literally anything else.
Rossum did not go full method and punish the cast with a custom-designed body funk, although Alice did have her own scent.
“It’s like a coffee-slash-croissant smell,” Rossum joked before explaining the deeper thinking behind the detail. “It was a really good metaphor for trauma because it’s a thing that keeps people away from you.”
“It’s a way of distancing yourself from the world,” Meriwether added. “You don’t smell it, but everyone around you does. It’s something that can be in the room without being seen, but it’s always there.”
It is sad, revealing and also, in the moment, pretty funny. There is something inherently ridiculous about watching an FBI agent try to maintain control of an interview after a witness stops everything to tell her she smells awful.
That tonal mix is a huge part of why “Furious” works. This is a show about trafficking, abuse, shame and the many ways institutions fail women. That could become unbearable pretty quickly. Meriwether knows when to let some air into the room.
Sometimes that means a painfully awkward interaction. Sometimes it means bad oral sex and gazpacho somehow ending up in the same conversation. Sometimes it means a child repeatedly saying “vulva” while the adults attempt to continue functioning like normal people.
“You have to,” Meriwether said of allowing comedy into such heavy material. “The audience pays attention more when you feel like you’re not getting hit over the head constantly with pain. You need moments where you’re laughing to actually listen better to what the darker things are.”
She is right. The jokes do not undercut the serious material. They keep the serious material from turning into homework.
Before the interview ended, it would be irresponsible not to ask Meriwether about “New Girl.” The show appears to be getting more popular by the day, which is slightly strange for something that ended in 2018 and also probably exhausting for the person everyone has decided is personally responsible for bringing it back.
Meriwether does not have a firm answer on a reunion. She is clearly touched that people are still discovering the show, but she also does not want to gather everyone back in the loft to admire the loft.
“It would be exciting, but I really would have to have my head around why we were doing it,” she said. “There are just moments where you’re like, I grew up with these people. They make me laugh in a way that nobody makes me laugh.”
That answer probably will not stop Jake Johnson and Lamorne Morris from telling anyone who asks that the entire thing is up to her.
“They’re always like, ‘Well, if Liz wants to do the reunion, we will,’” Meriwether laughed. “And I’m like, ‘You guys, that’s not how the world works.’”
“Furious” premieres July 27 on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ with its first three episodes. New episodes arrive each Monday through August 31.
Listen to the full conversation with Emmy Rossum and Liz Meriwether on The Playlist’s Bingeworthy podcast below.
Bingeworthy is part of The Playlist Podcast Network, which includes Deep Focus, The Discourse, and more. We can be heard on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, and most places where podcasts are found. You can stream the podcast via the embed within the article. Be sure to subscribe and drop us a comment or a rating, as we greatly appreciate it. Thank you for listening. Be sure to subscribe and drop a rating.
Mike DeAngelo is a film writer, podcaster, and entertainment journalist whose work has appeared in Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, IndieWire, and beyond. He is the host of The Playlist's podcasts The Discourse and Bingeworthy.
