Interview: Elisabeth Moss talks about ‘Shining Girls,’ having a women-led crew and the deep affection for her co-stars Wagner Moura and Jamie Bell
“What is a weekend?”
That was two-time Emmy winner Elisabeth Moss invoking the iconic Maggie Smith line from Downton Abbey as we began our chat on a Sunday morning. Reminding ourselves that we aren’t in chosen industries where phrases like ‘weekends’ and ‘business hours’ are non-existent, it’s a funny icebreaker before diving into talking about her work.
Moss may play some of film and television’s most taunted and tormented characters but she as opposite of that in possible in real life. Jovial and effervescent (I don’t think I’ve interviewed someone who laughs as much), our conversation digs into her new role and new show Shining Girls, which recently finished airing its first season on AppleTV+. Moss plays Kirby Mazrachi, an archivist for a Chicago newspaper in the mid-90s who was savagely attacked six years prior. When a recent murder is discovered to have a similar calling card to her own assault, she forges a bond with a reporter (played by Wagner Moura) to find and nab the killer (Jamie Bell).
We jump right into the fact that the show throws the audience into this story, one of split personalities, time shifting and time travel, and gives them just enough information to stay afloat, much like Kirby herself. Often as an audience we’re one step ahead of our protagonist but in Shining Girls, based on the novel by Lauren Beukes and from showrunner Silka Luisa, the viewer is a part of the unfolding mystery and sharing in the suspense.
Moss received the script back in 2018 (“I just thought it was the coolest thing”) to act in and produce, but her time behind the camera on The Handmaid’s Tale more than prepared her to helm this new project that features all women directors; Moss is joined by Michelle MacLaren (Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad) and Daina Reid (The Handmaid’s Tale) as well as a crew largely comprised of women (“It was just the natural thing to do…and all the best people for the job were women”) and talk about the ever-important penultimate episode.
We of course dive into working with her co-stars Wagner Moura, aka “Wag,” who Moss says is “so unbelievably alive, he’s so facile. He has a presence that is absolutely electric.” On Bell, playing heavily against type as the series bad guy, she remarks, “This is the best performance he has ever given. I think that man is going to be somebody who is going to win an Oscar.”
This is AwardsWatch so I would be remiss if I didn’t take a look at how Moss is poised to make Emmy history if she’s nominated for her performance in Shining Girls. She is currently tied with 10 women who have earned Lead Actress in a Drama Series Emmy nominations for two different shows, including Glenn Close, Connie Britton and Barbara Stanwyck. Moss earned lead actress nominations for Mad Men and The Handmaid’s Tale, winning for the latter. She would be in a place all her own if she can nab a nom this year for a third show.
Read or listen to our conversation below. Major spoilers of the series in the last third of the interview (highlighted in white text, 17:54-18:00 mark for audio).
Erik Anderson: Cool. Wait, Elisabeth-
Elisabeth Moss: How are you, Erik?
EA: I’m good. How are you?
EM: I’m good. Thank you.
EA: I’m so glad to finally be able to chat with you in semi in-person.
EM: Same, same. Thank you so much. Thank you for doing this on a Sunday.
EA: Oh my God. I was just going to say thank you for doing this on a Sunday, and then I realized, wait a minute, we’re both in industries where there’s no such thing as weekends or 9:00 to 5:00.
EM: I know. It’s true. It’s true. I know, I know. We like to believe that someone has some semblance of a weekend, but it’s not really the case.
EA: It’s not.
EM: Have you ever seen that scene with Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey where she says, “What is a weekend?”
EA: Yes. I was like, “Thank you, Maggie. That is my life.”
EM: Exactly. I literally thought of it yesterday as I was driving home from work. I was like, “What is a weekend?”
EA: Exactly. I’m constantly trying and having to ask my family, “The Tony awards are tonight, so I have to work on that. Sorry about dinner.”
EM: Right. Of course.
EA: I think we all-
EM: Yeah, we do not do business hours around here.
EA: I’m telling you. I’m telling you. All right. Let’s have some fun. How did you first come to Shining Girls? Was it as an actor, producer, director, or did it come to you?
EM: It came to me as a offer to act and produce. It came to me three years ago, I think, while I was shooting season three of Handmaid’s Tale. Must have been 2018.
The first script came to me, and I just thought it was the coolest thing. I just was like, “This is such an interesting story. I’ve never read anything like this before.” I hadn’t read the book, which I actually think was good, because I was really coming in it as an audience member with no attachment to the book yet. It just was this … I got to the end of the script and was like, “What? What’s going on?” and then had to … I was like, “Can I read the second script?” They sent me the second one. I was like, “Oh my God. Now what?”
I just fell in love as a storyteller, honestly. Sometimes you attach to a project because you’re like, “Oh my God. This is purely just character based. I just want to play this type of person,” or, “I want to work with this director,” or whatever it is. But this one was like, “I love this story. This is cool. I haven’t seen this.”
EA: Something I really loved is how the show just thrusts you right into the story and doesn’t explain the time shifting element. It just happens. You’re watching it, and you’re on the same ride as Kirby or Sharon, depending. It puts so much faith in the audience. I really love that.
EM: Thank you. I’m really happy to hear you say that, because I follow your work and respect your opinion. One of the things that was really important to us was having faith in our audience, and believing that they would get on board and come along for the ride. We had a lot of conversations on a micro and macro level about that, whether it was about a scene, or a moment, or an episode, or the entire season.
It was really, really important to us and especially important to me, because I know what my audience is, having been doing a few shows for a while. I know who my guys are here, and I know what they like, and I know what this audience is. I know that they’re really smart, and they want to be treated that way. So it was really important to me to just go, “Look. We have to …”
There are times when we might need to try to explain this, because it might just be too confusing, and we would try to work on that, but there were times we didn’t want to lose the audience in the confusion, but there were times we were like and I was like, “If they’re with the characters, if they’re with Kirby, they will come along for the ride.”
The version of the show where the audience understands why everything is happening, and every little detail, I’m telling you, is a terrible show. That isn’t what we wanted to make. You know?
EA: Yes. One of the best elements of that that weaves the storyline in through the metaphor is Phillipa Soo’s Jin-Sook, who’s constantly, just by virtue of one of her jobs, is talking about particles, and one impacts the other, even across space and time. She’s constantly dropping these little bits and pieces that are the theme of everything that we’re watching. I don’t know. I just loved it. It just threaded so well.
EM: Thank you so much. I love that you remember the line, because that was one of those moments where we were like, “Is this too much? Are we … Does it feel cheesy, like we’re trying to explain this to the audience?”
That was one of the moments, those kinds of moments, and they happened a lot with Jin-Sook, where we were like, “No. This is her job. This is who her character is and what is important to her character. And it’s a way for us to throw a bone to the audience and be like, ‘This is what we’re talking about. This is the theme. This is what’s actually going on.'” So I’m very glad you picked up on that.
EA: Yeah. As the story goes, and the time shifts, and the time travel starts to happen more frequently, how did you keep track of who and where you were at any given scene, just to keep your performance grounded?
EM: Yeah. Well, normally, I’ll just carry around the script that we’re currently shooting. Right?
EA: Yeah.
EM: This one, it was just like I had to have all eight scripts somewhere nearby most of the time, because it was a real challenge. There’s always a normal challenge with keeping track of where you are, but you’re like, “Well, this is the most basic part of my job is to understand what scene I’m in.” So that’s fine.
But this was a hundred times that, because we shot everything, obviously, out of order. We shot all eight episodes out of order. We weren’t shooting episode seven and eight necessarily at the beginning, but by the end, we were shooting all the episodes. So you really had to be careful. You had to be really careful that you knew what had happened and what had not happened, what your character knew and what your character didn’t know (laughs).
Of course, as a director, you’re also then having to remember what everybody else knows too, because an actor comes to you. Oh my God. It’s so terrifying when they come to you and they’re like, “So…haa…has this happened?” By God, you better know the answer. You can’t look at them blankly and say, “I don’t know.” (laughs)
EA: I think we have to give a special shout out to your script supervisor Marianna Harrison for keeping all of it together.
EM: (laughs) Yesss.
EA: I think they need to make a special Emmy for her for the season or something, because she’s one of those unsung heroes in a story like this.
EM: (laughs) I know. We actually had two script supervisors because one of them left. So then we had somebody else come in. Can you imagine what that job was like trying to catch up on the show?
EA: Oh my gosh. (laughs)
EM: She did a brilliant job too. So yes, I agree.
EA: Wonderful.
EM: I don’t know how you would quantify it, but there really should be an Emmy for script supervisor. (laughs)
EA: I think so. There’s something there, I think.
EM: Yeah. I know. (laughs)
EA: Speaking of directing, all the episodes of this first season are directed by women, including yourself, obviously. The source material, show runner, and the lion’s share of the crew are led by women. How was that experience different from other projects that you’ve worked on?
EM: It was awesome. I was involved in this as a producer from before Apple came on. I was involved with Appian and MRC. They were there, and then I came on, and then we found our home in Apple. So I got to be a part of the hiring process and the crewing up process from the very beginning.
Now, I did that on Handmaid’s too. We did, obviously, have a female director, the first three episodes, blah, blah, blah. It was always very important to us on this, but that was a few years ago. Times have, you know, thank God, changed even a little bit since then. The recognition of how important that is has improved a little bit more, right?
EA: Yes.
EM: Inclusivity and all of these things have become even more important in the past five years.
So I got to be a part of that hiring process. It was just very … It wasn’t like we all sat down in a room or a Zoom room and were like, “We’re hiring all women.” It was just the natural thing to do. It just felt like every step of the way, we were looking at women. Sometimes, we would just be only looking at women. It just felt very natural. All the best people for the job were women. It was actually so easy. The only thing that was hard were how many great women were working and unavailable.
EA: That’s a good problem to have.
EM: It’s a very, very good problem to have. Very different. It’s very different from 10, 15 years ago. That’s for sure.
EA: Yes, absolutely. I have to say, one of my favorite moments of all of it, of the season, was early in the season, when you jump on stage with Amy Brenneman who plays your mom. It was such a very Her Smell moment, which is one of my favorite things that you have ever done.
EM: (laughs) Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. I couldn’t help but see the parallel there. (laughs)
EA: It made me so happy.
EM: I know, I know. I really did have kind of a fun Becky Something flashback when I was in that costume and the wig, and then yeah, the singing, and when me and Maddie were dancing on the dance floor.
EA: Yes.
EM: I actually put in that dressing room, in the punk version of that dressing room, of Sid’s there’s a Becky Something poster.
EA: Oh my God. I must have missed it. I will have to rewatch.
EM: I don’t know if ever got the limelight in the way that I wanted it to. I think was in maybe one of my original cuts. It might have gone by the wayside at some point. But it’s there.
EA: Speaking to that, you have two episodes, episodes five and seven. Why did you choose those episodes to direct?
EM: I didn’t choose them. What happened was I am the baby director here amongst these three women. I’m the least experienced. (laughs) So rightly so, they had first pick. Of course, Michelle was hired to do the first two, because that’s who Michelle MacLaren is, and rightly so.
Then Daina came on as our producing director. Of course, she’s Daina Reid, so she has the choice of which episode she wants to do. She was going to do three and four. We knew that. Then between five, six, seven and eight, she wanted to do six, which was the Harper war flashback one, which was going to be really fun. And of course, she’s going to do the finale, because she’s Daina Reid.
That left five and seven. I was like the cleanup crew. (laughs) I was like, “You got it. I’m here. Just tell me which episode you want me to do.” (laughs)
EA: I had just talked to Isabel Sandoval last week for Under the Banner of Heaven.
EM: Oh yeah!
EA: She also did the penultimate episode of that show, which you did here for Shining Girls. For me, that is often the best episode of a series, because you get right next to the last episode. You get so much information. You have to consume so much. There’s so much going on. So secretly, it’s almost always the best episode.
EM: Yeah. [whispers] I kind of did know that. I kind of knew that. (both laugh) It wasn’t my choice, but I was very happy to get seven. I nine, I did the penultimate episode of Handmaid’s Tale in season four, so I was familiar with the concept of the penultimate episode and you’re absolutely right. I think because everything that you’ve been setting up throughout the season tends to come to a head in the penultimate episode. Right?
EA: Mm-hmm, yeah.
EM: Then the finale is the finale. The finale is just wham, bam. It’s ending with a bang. But you do, in the penultimate, get this fantastic thing where you get all the stories that have been building, and you get to bring them all to this head, which is really fun.
EA: Yes. Yes. I have to ask you about your co-stars. We just did an interview with Wagner Moura. He said, quote, that you are “truly one of the greatest American actors working.” His affection for you was tremendous.
EM: That’s so kind.
EA: Jamie Bell, who is certainly one of my favorites, we don’t see him in a role like this very often.
EM: Mm-hmm.
EA: What was it like with each of them?
EM: I got so lucky on this one. My God. Let’s start with Wag. Where do I even begin with him? He’s like no other actor I’ve ever worked with. He is so unbelievably alive. He is so facile. He’s so present. He has an energy to him that is absolutely electric. It electrifies you as an actor. It electrifies you as a director. It is contagious and infectious. It’s inspiring.
Him and I really just fell into this work/love relationship where we just became really good friends. It was a surprise to the both of us, I think. We have very different backgrounds, and we never met before, and we’re both of an age where we’re not necessarily making new friends (laughs). But we just clicked and had this chemistry that is just so exciting to me. He’s just absolutely so phenomenal in this show.
EA: Yes.
EM: When we heard that he wanted to do it, we were like … You should have heard some of the calls and the texts and the things that were very, very violently and very aggressively saying, “Do not lose him. Do not lose him. We have to have him. Do not fucking lose him.” Anyway, I echo the sentiments.
Then Jamie, this is the best performance I think he’s ever given. I think he has a well of talent that he’s just tapping the surface. I think that man is going to be somebody who is going to win an Oscar. He’s going to find that role. He is so, so talented. I’m so excited to be at any part of this part of his career.
He’s also just really lovely and fun and king of … same thing, very facile, very creative, very instinctive. Gives you everything he’s got, man. He does not hold back.
SPOILER ALERT (highlight text)
In episode seven, when Harper kills Dan, oh my God. I had to check on these men after every take, because the scene that we shot is much longer than what’s in the show. My director’s cut has a much longer version of this scene. They were just going at it, and giving everything they had to every take. I just had to check on them and be like, “You guys okay?” It was incredible. It was incredible.
END SPOILER ALERT
EA: We’ll close with, what does the next season of Shining Girls look like to you? Where do we go?
EM: (laughs) That’s a very, very … I applaud the way that you asked that question. I very much admire the way you asked that question. Very good job. (laughs)
Look. I really actually just don’t know, at this point, what our plans are. That’s an honest, genuine answer. I really actually just don’t know. I’m not going to lie. Of course, it’s not like we haven’t talked about it. (laughs) Any time you do anything, everyone’s like, “Well, is there going to be another one?”
I don’t think we were even necessarily sure, at the beginning, whether or not this was going to be a one off or have more. But I do think that … For me, I feel like … Personally, I feel like there’s more story to tell. I think that where Kirby’s gotten to, I think, I almost feel like we’ve just got started near the end of the season.
EA: Yeah.
EM: I want to know more about the house. I want to know more about what’s going on. I want to know more about how the house works and stuff. We couldn’t get too bogged down in that in the first season. That would’ve been, like I said, the bad version of the show. If I’m being honest, I do feel like there’s more story there. Whether or not we all want to hold hands and go on that journey, I don’t know. We’ll see.
EA: Yeah, we will.
EM: Yeah.
EA: Elisabeth, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.
EM: Thank you very much. I really appreciate it, Erik. It’s nice to speak with you.
EA: You too. I wish you the best always, and definitely with the show.
EM: Thank you. Thank you. Keep doing your work. I’m watching and reading.
EA: Thanks. Take care.
Elisabeth: Take care. Bye bye.
EA: Bye.
Elisabeth Moss is Emmy eligible for Outstanding Drama Series, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series and Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series for Shining Girls from AppleTV+.
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
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