Who are you when nobody’s watching? Ryan Murphy’s FX series Grotesquerie explores what happens when a person allows their subconscious to overcome them. Raven Goodwin, who portrays the on-screen daughter of Niecy Nash-Betts’ Lois Tryon character, explains how being a part of the show has deepened her perspective of perception.

“What exactly is in your subconscious,” Goodwin asked in a recent interview with Blavity’s Shadow and Act earlier in the season. “And when it does come to the surface, who exactly are you? Because we know what Merritt essentially is addicted to, but we don’t really know why or how. So, I think everybody is just building their own perception of who she is.”

Who does Merritt represent?

Often, children are the ones to break generational curses. However, this is not the case when it comes to Merritt Tryon. Instead, one may say she’s an extension of the pain that her parents continue to carry.

“She’s still suffering, in a sense, as to where she’s misunderstood, and because she’s not really understood, or even if she is, she’s doing it all for a reason,” said Goodwin. “She’s putting on pounds for a reason. And what that reason is, we don’t know. As far as breaking generational curses, I think it helps Marshall [Courtney B. Vance] and Lois realize, more than anything, that everything is foundational. We are what we come from. We are all products of our environment. Yes, there is a mass majority that never recovers. There’s a mass majority that does and figures it out and breaks the curse. But we just have to figure out what kind of person Merritt is.”

“Is she the one that’s going to fall short of the curse, or is she going to actually break the generational curse?” Goodwin asked. “I think that’s the crossroads that we’re at with her. We don’t know if she is or if she isn’t, but she is an intellectual human. She’s very smart and brilliant and ahead of the curse. She’s not a victim. She is everything she’s pretending not to be, if that makes sense.”

What lesson does Goodwin believe Merritt teaches those watching?

Moreover, Goodwin says her character is a testament to the dangers of codependency, noting how unhealthy the relationship between Merritt and her mother, Lois, is.

“It’s the way a lot of parent-child relationships, unfortunately, especially within our community is with coping,” she said. “We don’t always have the best outlets, and I think the drinking, the food, all of that, the enabling, the toxicity of it all… the sex addiction that my father has, which, you know, Black men, you know, they’re looked at as hypersexual and all of that. I think we’re kind of hitting on it all and what it looks like to recover. What does it look like not to recover, and what is this causing Lois? Is it something that’s just her imagination, or is she really being haunted?”

How portraying her has affected her personally.

Grotesquerie touches on a lot of heavy themes. From alcoholism to co-dependency, estranged family relationships, and beyond, the series takes a head-on approach to many topics that are avoided or completely swept under the table for the Black community.

“To be honest, and I’m not being biased, but I think all of it [is important],” said Goodwin when asked which moment stood out to her as the most necessary to capture. 

“I think the scenes with her dad, for me, were intense because my father is deceased, and our relationship was complicated,” she noted. “It was moments where I felt his presence, or I thought about a conversation or a lack of conversation that has occurred over the years, and I think that kind of resurfaced as well. So it was challenging, but that’s the thing about art, and what I love about it so much is that you can actually release some things and heal some things. Amid it, you’re kind of forced to look at your life as you imitate life.”

The full season of Grotesquerie is available to stream on Hulu.