[This story includes spoilers for the finale of The Perfect Couple.]
In hindsight, Dakota Fanning‘s line from that first trailer for the Netflix miniseries — “The key to this family is to just stay on the periphery” — said a lot. Though, maybe not in the way her character intended.
Neither the victim nor the murderer in The Perfect Couple were ultimately part of the core Winbury family. And ignoring those eleventh-hour revelations — Nicole Kidman’s WASPy matriarch revealed she had a previous life as an escort, where she met her husband, Liev Schreiber’s old money lothario, as a client — the clan emerged virtually unscathed. It was the would-be daughter-in-law’s maid of honor (Meghann Fahy) who lost her life and daughter-in-law Abby (Fanning) who was revealed to have done the deed in a wild play to make sure her philandering husband could collect on his trust fund.
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Fanning had to miss both the U.K. and U.S. premieres of The Perfect Couple for her Australian shoot of the upcoming Peacock miniseries All Her Fault. But the Ripley Emmy nominee for supporting actress in a limited series piped in on Zoom last week to talk about her key role in the series — including that baby belly, which had the Internet wondering if she was actually pregnant on that shoot.
Your prosthetic pregnancy belly was so convincing, I truly googled to see if you’d recently had a child.
It was an amazing prosthetic. I didn’t wear that one all the time — there was a different one that I wore under clothes — but there was no way she was going to wear a one-piece at the pool. It to be a bikini and you had to see the belly. But we really had to get it right. It was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. And it wasn’t a glued-on situation, I put it on like a corset so it wrapped around my whole body and tied in the back. I was laying there so you never saw my back; it was just so seamless from every side. It’s wild. People on set that day were staring at me a ton and then apologizing for staring. Nobody could believe that thing. I loved it.
WIth an ensemble piece like this, the murderer is obviously one of more exciting offers. How’d you get the honors?
I had worked worked with [director] Susanne [Bier] before on The First Lady, and we developed a really close relationship. She called me about the part, gave me the bullet points, and the last bullet point was that she’s the murderer. I was kitchen, listening her describe it, and I just said, “Yes, whatever you want.” And, at that point, the only other person officially cast was Nicole — so, again, I was in. (Laughs.) Then a lot of pieces just started falling together, Eve [Hewson] is one of my closest friends for years. Jack Reynor, I had never met, but we’d almost worked together at certain points over the years. So, there was a fellowship between us, and it all came together in such an amazing way.
The success of something like this completely hinges on casting at least some doubt on almost every character’s innocence. As the guilty party, how’d you walk that line?
There were certain moments, where Susanne was like, “OK, do a take where you’re the murderer.” We would do a few takes of a lot of things, especially at the beginning. As you keep going,, everything becomes clearer and everything just gets easier. Your instincts kick in for the character. But in the beginning, it was a lot about trying to figure it out. The part about Abby that we ended up leaning into the most was that once she’s done the murder, she’s forgotten that she’s the murderer. In a way, she’s disassociated from that and compartmentalized it in some sociopathic, pathological way. It almost doesn’t exist in her mind.
That ability to disassociate probably helps her put up with her awful husband.
Totally! You’d have to be a world-renowned compartmentalizer just to be in the family to begin with, but Jack and I — getting to have that dynamic play those scenes with him — we became super close. He’s the best, and we often felt like we were doing our own separate show. We called it The Worst Couple. We had our own storyline going at all times, in every scene. It was a whole bit.
As reveals go, there’s the killer and … this out-of-the-blue revelation that Nicole and Liev’s characters started their relationship as escort and client. It’s arguably the biggest twist, and it seems to almost break Abby.
I just thought it was hilarious — the way that that scene plays out and thinking about it from Abby’s perspective. The first mic-drop moment for her is that the Monet is fake. That’s catastrophic to her. Then they say they met in a bar, and she’s like, “Well, Tom and I met in a bar.” She thought she could still save this. When she realizes the extent of it, she loses it. It’s all a facade. It’s not what she thought it was. She tried to save this thing, but what was she even try to save? In the fake Monet moment, you can just see it crumble for her. That’s me thinking of it as a character, though. As a viewer? It’s so funny. Liev says, “I never paid!” And Nicole’s, like, “You paid! Three times!” What is happening!?
In the promotion of this show, a lot has been said about about the dance number in the opening titles. Were you in the rebellious sect or were you on board with it?
First of all, the cast had a WhatsApp chat throughout filming. It wasn’t formed because of the dance. We had that one from day one. And I was in the rebellious side … just out of fear that I wasn’t going to be able to do the dance. I just thought, I can’t do that. So we were all going back and forth over the Christmas break, because we filmed it in January. But once we had this rehearsal day, and I learned that I was going to be able to physically do the dance, I was like, “OK, fine.” Also, talking to Susanne about the intent behind it, I learned that the purpose was to set up this kind of surreal, heightened tone. To immediately nod to the viewer that we’re doing something a little bit zany here. Then it was just fun, because I don’t think I’m ever going to find myself in that situation again.. And I really wanted to keep watching Liev have to do it.
It probably helped that it happened at the very end of the shoot.
It was literally the last thing that I filmed. So, we all knew each other so well. We’d done the Cape Cod portion. We’d filmed in London. These were the final few days in L.A., and I’m not exaggerating when I say every one of has had become so close.
I’ll admit that I was initially confused by the opening titles — but, after a couple of episodes, it felt like The White Lotus opener. It really hyped me up.
I know! It’s really about priming you to get ready for the episode.
