A huge plot twist in last week’s episode has completely turned FX’s Grotesquerie upside down.
Detective Lois Tryon is unlike any other character that series lead Niecy Nash-Betts has portrayed throughout her career.
For Nash-Betts, she welcomes any challenge with an open heart.
“She’s very, very layered,” Nash-Betts told Blavity’s Shadow and Act in a recent interview about the big twist reveal. “I’ve never played a woman who was battling alcoholism. I’ve never paid a woman, I don’t think, that has been in that much emotional pain from the relationship with her husband and the relationship with her daughter. I’ve never played any woman trying to do all she can amid her own spiral. So that made it very interesting to me on the page, and I was like, ‘I’ve never done this. Oh, pick me. I would love to.’ I’m so happy that I got a chance to discover different parts of my art through this character.”
What was the recent Grotesquerie plot twist about?
In a twist of events following the premiere of Grotesquerie’s seventh episode, Nash-Betts’s character finds herself in a completely different predicament from what fans had just seen with her coping with her husband, Marshall Tryon (Courtney B. Vance).
Instead of her husband being in a coma, Lois was the one who was in a coma, and she has now woken up. Everything that we saw before was happening in her head when she was in the coma. This series of events has made this a completely different series than the first six episodes.
Easter eggs leading up to the revelation
Show creator Murphy recently said that despite the plot twist in episode seven, there were Grotesquerie easter eggs in the prior episodes.
Nash-Betts told us, “My favorite was probably buried in the dialog between Lois and Sister Megan (Micaela Diamond). I feel like she almost moved like, ‘I want you to know it’s me.’ So I did enjoy that. Some of them were a little blatant…like I’m sitting there trying to help my daughter record her video, and then a man just walks behind the back in a nurse outfit, and it’s like wait, what?”
“Every time Ryan calls me for something, I feel stressed,” she continued. “As an artist, I know that it’s not going to be easy. It’s not going to be a cakewalk, but I do know he’s going to be right there as a collaborative partner to walk him through it. My takeaway would be three words–trust your gift. So, when you are called to do a thing, you are built for that thing. I like to show up to things that scare me. I’m like, ‘Being an alcoholic? Oh, lord. What does that mean? Is she plastered? Is she tipsy? Is she hungover?’ It’s so many different levels to that. I was like, ‘Lord, let me start biting my fake fingernails right now.’ That’s how I knew it was for me, because it scared me. I run to the roar. I’m like, ‘Yes, it scares me.’ I’m in because I know that the Most High has equipped me to be able to figure it out.”
The series’ themes
Grotesquerie approaches many nuanced themes, including alcoholism, addiction, and a host of others, so Nash-Betts also spoke about what she believes her character represents for Black women across America.
“If I could capsulate it, I would probably say she’s out here trying to save the world from evil. From all the evil,” she said. “We go on about global warming, AI, women having agency over their own bodies, and ringing the alarm in all of these spaces and places. I feel like, quintessentially, you get up, you push through, and it doesn’t matter what you’re going through…as a Black woman, you don’t have a choice to stay in bed and cry all day. I mean, you gotta get up, and you gotta get after it. I just think that she’s made up of the things that Black women experience on the day-to-day. We still have to keep showing up.”
Grotesquerie airs weekly on Wednesdays on FX.
