The Undoingrevealed its killer in itsseason finale.
Then, he was planning to jump off a bridge.
EW spoke with the guilty party himself, Hugh Grant, about playing Jonathan.
Credit: Niko Tavernise/HBO
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: At what point did you know he was guilty?
Was that part of the initial pitch?
And the answer was yes.
That was one of my questions: Is he a sociopath?
Does he feel empathy?
I imagine you had to decide for yourself exactly what you were playing.
I needed to be convincing for the sake of the story.
So he believes that he didn’t do it, even though he knows intellectually that he did.
He loves them loving him, that’s like rocket fuel to him.
He must have it.
And, of course, she recoils and takes the boy away.
I loved him telling his son that it wasn’t the “real me” who killed Elena.
It was a look into how he’s been compartmentalizing everything all season.
He can no longer pretend it didn’t happen.
But it’s all bulls—.
Nicole has talked about the intensity of director Susanne Bier’s directing style.
What was the actual filming of those moments like for you?
So I wasn’t intimidated by her camera work.
Particularly when the stage direction is “he’s losing it.”
That’s extremely dangerous.
it’s possible for you to be ridiculous in a millisecond.
The cutting between that silly song and me smashing poor Elena’s head is pretty good.
Yeah, it’s terrifying.
Do I know my wife?
Do I know my father?
Do I know my son?
Could they secretly be absolutely diabolical deep down?"
I think that’s part of the lure of entertaining films and television.
So much of the series' big twist was on your shoulders.
Did you feel a pressure to make the audience believe Jonathan wasn’t guilty?
It must be something much cleverer than that.
Sometimes the obvious choice is the biggest twist.
Of course, she’s done exactly that to herself.
So this is the correct ending to that story, as it was the ending to the novel.
Many people are calling this your greatest performance.
Did it feel special making it?
I knew it was very high pedigree and I was privileged to be a part of it.
That’s the real unmasked Jonathan.
The rest of the time it’s all about masks and how many masks he’s wearing.
But you really just got to live with a character’s lies for longer.
Levels and levels of lies.
I always have thousands of notes all over my script.
They’re explaining to me what the character’s thinking and their motives for everything they do and say.
With this character, I had to have a double set because there were two people having thoughts.
But always there was this imperative that I couldn’t give the game away to the TV audience.
