Kerry Washington and Elisabeth Moss are breaking down the first two episodes of Imperfect Women, their new Apple TV series.
Imperfect Women follows a mystery surrounding the death of a woman named Nancy, with the story unfolding through the perspectives of the people closest to her, primarily her best friends. Kate Mara is the third of the Imperfect Women, with Washington playing Eleanor and Moss playing Mary.
Each episode ends with a major reveal
At the end of the second episode, Washington’s Eleanor opens a letter that has a bombshell apology from Robert (Joel Kinnaman) to Nancy.
“I think the end of two is such a great example of how this series progresses,” she said in her and Moss’s cast interview with Blavity’s Shadow and Act. “At the end of every episode, there is a jaw-dropping cliffhanger of a revelation where you just don’t know what to believe, what to think, who to trust. And it starts in two, and it does not stop. This train, once it leaves the station, it does not stop. The end of three is also like, ‘What do you mean?’ So it’s so fun.”
The story shifts between multiple perspectives
Washington explained that the show’s structure shifts between different characters’ points of view.
“It feels like you’re hearing this whole story through Eleanor’s point of view and her lens and her experience,” she said. “And then suddenly the show flips and it becomes Nancy’s story and her experience and her world. And then it flips again. And it becomes Mary’s experience. And every time that happens, you learn more and more about the limitations of somebody else’s truth because you’re having to filter and factor in another level of truth.”
Elisabeth Moss teases Mary’s role and backstory
Moss said her character’s story is revealed later in the season as the perspective shifts again.
“Mary is very difficult to speak about, because her story is really revealed in episodes six and seven,” Moss said. “So that’s when we switch point of views for the third time, and we get to hear Mary’s story. It gets wild. So it’s really hard to talk about Mary because there’s so much throughout the first five episodes that we don’t know, and that she doesn’t know as well. There’s a lot that’s revealed to her in [Episodes] six and seven.”
Moss said Mary is driven by the loss of her friend Nancy and the lack of answers surrounding her death.
“Honestly, on the surface, she loves her friend. She loved her friend, Nancy, and she was one of the most important people in the world to her,” Moss said. “And she cannot live with the fact that she doesn’t know who killed her, that she doesn’t know what happened to her. And what a brutal, brutal reality that would be.”
She continued, “And I tried to put myself in the place of that reality and of not having the answers. I cannot imagine what that would feel like ultimately. But to me, that’s really what’s driving her through those first five episodes, is how can I live with the fact that my best friend died and I don’t know why, and we don’t know what happened to her, and we don’t know who did it, and she just cannot let go of that. There’s obviously an underlying reality that you’ll find out more when we get to her story of perhaps some other things that are driving her, or some things that she’s running away from and not looking at that are driving her towards this other objective.”
Imperfect Women airs episodes each Wednesday on Apple TV.