Nicole Kidman walking in Central Park with a brisk wind flowing through her hair. A close up of her eye. A close up of her hand. A dramatic swing of the accompanying score as it’s clear her character, Grace Fraser, is going through something emotionally taxing. But if you were Grace, the events of “The Undoing,” a new limited series debuting on HBO this Sunday night, might have you more stressed out than a sane person attending a mask-less White House Rose Garden event.
READ MORE: Nicole Kidman awakens from a privileged cocoon of self-delusion in “The Undoing” [Review]
Adapted from the 2014 novel “You Should Have Known” by Jean Hanff Korelitz, the series centers on the Grace in question, a well off therapist whose idyllic Upper East Side life shatters to pieces after her husband, Jonathan (Hugh Grant), disappears after becoming the prime suspect of the murder of the mother (Matilda De Angelis) of a new student at the posh private school their own son (Noah Jupe) attends. Crushed by the news, Grace finds solace and suspicion in her even wealthier father (Donald Sutherland chewing scenery like only Donald Sutherland can chew) and forms a strange connection with a detective on the case (Edgar Ramirez) who may have tunnel vision when it comes to the crime at hand.
Based on the five episodes made available to the press (the finale was purposely left out), there have been significant changes to the storyline and the assumption that Mike is truly guilty of a horrifying crime. That’s thanks to series creator and writer David E. Kelley as well as filmmaker Susanne Bier who directed every episode of the series. Oh, and those aforementioned close-ups? The walks in the park? The melodramatic flourishes? Those are just some of Bier’s wonderfully entertaining contributions that make the whole endeavor seem like a throwback to an Adrian Lyne movie crossed with anything Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman starred in between 1997-2002.
Bier jumped on the phone earlier this month to discuss a project that became an unexpected follow-up to the biggest hit of her career.
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The Playlist: You’d just done “Bird Box” which was this huge hit for Netflix. What made you want to tackle “The Undoing?
Susanne Bier: You know, it was funny. It was really right after, because “Bird Box” opened on [December 14th] and we start shooting this in February. I got involved with this while I was still doing “Bird Box” and I read the first version of the first episode of David E. Kelley’s script and I knew he’d written it for Nicole Kidman, and I was just gripped by it. I was just completely taken by it. And I found it a compelling story, a compelling sort of character, and also the possibility of shooting, describing New York cinematically, was just really irresistible.
I was going to ask about that. It was your first time shooting in New York, right?
It is the first time. It’s insane because New York is so condensed and compressed like everything is kind of tricky, but it’s also incredibly rewarding, and it’s so interesting. I mean, it’s so interesting the kind of complexity of ethnicity and nationalities and everything in such a small area. And you walk in Central Park and you look up to those apartments, you kind of wonder who are these people? How do they live? I wanted to describe that world, but I also wanted to describe the space in between where the sort of entitled world meets the world of scholarship and much less entitlement. So, it was just hugely, hugely interesting.
What it was like to work with Nicole not just in front of the camera, but as an executive producer on the project?
You know, when she’s an actress, she’s like totally an actress. I mean, she can access any emotion with a blink of an eye and she does this totally uncompromising and uncannily sort of insanely, I mean, she can do anything. And she does that. Like when she’s on set, she’s an actress and she just goes all the way, and completely uncompromising. And then, as an executive producer, she’s your friend. I mean, she’s sort of the artistic endeavors friend. And so, you can call her up at night and you can discuss things and she will do whatever she can and she will be totally supportive. And she’s really savvy. She came to Hollywood when she was very young and she understands every single detail about the system. And so she’s like a very important ally and friend in that context.
At Winter TCA, David remarked that you were the mastermind of the piece and that you were in control. He made it sound as though he almost handed it off to you, which doesn’t always happen in television. Can you expand on what he meant by that? Did you take the scripts and make changes?
Yeah, I did that. I mean, I think I always do that. But here’s the thing about David, David is super collaborative and David is like a brilliant writer who doesn’t care about whose idea it is, I mean, I would call him and I would say, “I’m going to do a scene about this and this.” And he’ll say, “Yeah, go ahead. Just do it.” Because I think we very quickly established a sense of trust and a sense of fun collaborating and it was really unproblematic and kind of easy. And I have to say, look, I’m brought up in Europe and I’m brought up in the world of movies and I’m thrown off as a director to have to compromise the vision I have.
Right, exactly.
And David was totally supportive of that as were the cast and as were all the producers. So, it was a very generous and very collaborative, and wonderful creative environment.
In that context, the series plays out like a melodramatic thriller, but were there any specific films or anything previous that sort of inspired you vision?
I did go back and look at Hitchcock just for the fun of it. And just because, I mean, we’re all indebted to Hitchcock at all times, but also because of his female protagonist. But I just let myself be inspired by how I felt the plays and the characters needed to be. I think there’s a lot of sort of irony and sarcasm as the undercurrent in describing that world of privilege.
I’ve only read synopses of the book that it was based on but based on the five episodes that I’ve seen it clearly differentiates at times. For those who have read the book, should they expect a different ending or a twist that goes in a different direction?
Here’s what I want to say. On my first conversation with David, he told me that only the first two episodes were going to be built on the book and they are, and after that, he would just use the characters but treat the storylines exactly the way he thought it should be and he’s done that. I’m sure that the audience is going to be off, which is surprising read the book. I’m not going to reveal anything, but we are not cheating. We are playing a fun chess game.
The series is wonderfully plotted with these cliffhangers at the end of each episode. Since it’s coming out once a week will you go online to see what people think after each episode?
I mean, after I did “Bird Box” I got that social media awakening because it was kind of amazing watching what happened. And it was kind of almost like it was an avalanche. Yeah, I think I probably will. I think I probably will have to kind of go and read and have a bit of fun with what I hope is going to be the sort of discussion or the speculations and conversation about not just who did it, but who can you trust and who do you rely on? And who do you think is who he or she really says they are?
Absolutely. In terms of the production, I’ve heard that you like to rehearse in the morning and then just shoot in the afternoon as much as you can. Is that true?
Oh, well, here’s the thing. I rehearse early in the morning before the crew comes to set and then I shoot in the morning and then I continue shooting in the afternoon. So, I do rehearse. I do rehearse for everything between 45 minutes and an hour and a half. And I do that because if I’m on my own with the cast on set and we own the set and the beginning of the day, then it almost doesn’t matter what happened the rest of the day, because we’ve established this knowledge about today’s scenes. And we’ve just established a profound understanding and a profound alignment of our point of view with today’s scene. And so then everything, which then tends to become very technical once the crew comes, once you start shooting, then everything tends to be very technical, but it doesn’t matter because we still own the core of it. And it’s kind of crucial because it’s also where we play around and have tried this idea and we’ll do a scene without dialogue, or we’ll do the scene with a different kind of dialogue, and it’s like a bit of a playground because you have this hour, which is not committing, where you can just be creative and then it just enables you to treat the rest of the day was so much more liberty and with so much more, how do you say, like a surplus of energy?
I’ve also read that on some of your previous projects, you encouraged your cast to improv in these rehearsals before you shoot. Was that possible on a project like this that so plot dependent?
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And I mean, there’s a lot of improvisations in there, and there are a lot of things invented on set. Loads of them. It does demand that I, as a director, had the overview very clear in my head and have had the kind of oversight of not making mistakes, very clear in my head. But like, for example, the chessboard, just to have a concrete example, the chessboard in the scenes between Nicole and Donald Sutherland was totally improvised. I mean, there was a chessboard on set, but it was just like a prop. And I came to set in the morning and Donald was sitting next to the chessboard. I was like, “Whoa, great. Franklin and Grey should play chess, and that would really add to the characters.” So there were lots of things which kind of becomes intrinsic almost to the plot, which was actually improvised.
Speaking of that, there is a great scene with Donald, I’m not going to spoil what he says, but he refers to himself as something that no one would expect in the scene. Was that actually in the script?
Yes. That was in the script. And I think that was the scene that made Donald want to do the show. I mean, that particular word was kind of where Donald went, “I have to play that part.”
That’s a moment where if handled incorrectly could go insanely over the top. How do you keep it grounded from not just the actor’s perspective, but the directing perspective, the editing perspective?
With ever what I’ve done, I’ve always been aiming at accuracy. It’s sort of one of the things. I like precision, I like accuracy and I like things to have that sort of sharpness. And I think if you’re aiming for that, it’s very hard to really go over the top because over the top is not really accurate. It’s about enjoying it, but not let it run loose.
“The Undoing” debuts on Sunday, Oct. 25 on HBO and HBO Max.
