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Elisabeth Moss sparkles in metaphysical
CAST as director, executive producer and star of her latest outing, there’s little Elisabeth Moss can’t put her hand to. The Handmaid’s Tale actress, 39, leads Apple TV+’s Shining Girls, an upcoming eight-part metaphysical thriller based on the 2013 bestselling novel by Lauren Beukes.
Adapted for the screen by Silka Luisa, the drama places Moss as Kirby Mazrachi, a Chicagobased newspaper archivist whose journalistic ambitions were put on hold after enduring a traumatic assault.
When she learns of a recent murder case which mirrors her own, she sets out – partnered with seasoned yet troubled reporter
Dan Velazquez (played by Wagner Moura) – to uncover her attacker’s identity. Much to the disdain of her assailant Harper, a distinctly dark, mysterious loner who seeks out women “whose aura of life and energy compels him” – in a portrayal brilliantly executed by Billy Elliot star Jamie Bell.
It’s a gripping tale, says Moss:
“If somebody has had a traumatic experience, whether it’s an attack, like Kirby goes through, or if it’s something like losing a job, a divorce, a pandemic, a war, or whatever it might be, it turns your entire life upside down from one second to the next.
“And what Silka is doing is telling that experience: how you’re never quite sure where you are, you’re never quite sure what’s going to happen next, you are constantly on the lookout for when that is going to happen again.”
“It’s different from the book in that the book follows both Kirby and Harper’s points of view, whereas the series is more about Kirby’s point of view,” notes
Michelle MacLaren, 57, who makes up the all-female directorial team alongside Moss and Daina Reid.
“We wanted to make this very voyeuristic. Kirby has been traumatised, she had something happen to her by a man who stalked her, and so we wanted the audience to experience what these women went through, what Kirby is going through, that feeling that somebody’s watching all the time. That was definitely our approach.”
Clever timeline shifts throughout the “time-travelling series” add to the character’s sense of a blurred reality, she explains.
“It elevates her trauma; they’re ultimately a metaphor for how we deal with trauma after the actual act. And so it was exciting to execute this, but most importantly, to focus on the emotional relevance of trauma. And to really understand from Kirby’s point of view how she was experiencing this.
“She starts out very vulnerable, and she gets stronger and stronger throughout the story. She is not a victim. She’s a survivor.”
But jumping between narratives can risk confusion, realises MacLaren, who won two Primetime Emmy Awards for her work on Breaking Bad.
“We realised, ‘OK, how do we do it in a way that the audience understands a shift is happening, without revealing too much, without making it too complicated, but complicated enough that it keeps them guessing?’”
“So the shifts actually evolve, they grow. So we started out very