This text incorporates spoilers for the finale of “Murdaugh: Death in the Family.”
Jason Clarke insists he’s not a way actor, however to tackle the function of Alex Murdaugh, he grew to become so immersed on this planet of the disgraced lawyer and convicted killer that he usually dreamed about him.
The function of Alex in Hulu’s “Murdaugh: Death in the Family” demanded a number of Clarke — mastery of a South Carolinian accent, adoption of Southern allure, vital weight achieve and the emotional stamina to faucet into the psyche of a person who killed his spouse and little one.
Clarke reveled within the problem. “Like a Sherlock Holmes sleuth,” he mentioned, “you’ve got to crack it.”
That meant Clarke spent hours fascinated about Alex’s perspective on the crumbling of his household’s authorized dynasty, the investigations into his funds, the murders of his spouse Maggie and son Paul, and his eventual trial.
“It just started to sit inside me,” he mentioned on a Zoom name from New York in October. As Clarke was growing his model of Alex, his in depth work led him “to dream about it, to think about it, to justify him, to listen to that court case, to argue his way out of it, to find the mistakes or the injustices that he suffered in the trial that I thought I heard or saw.”
His desires primarily revolved across the trial — arguments between Alex and his authorized workforce, proof that was contested and Alex’s fixation on justification for his actions.
“Murdaugh: Death in the Family,” which launched its finale Wednesday, dramatizes the years-long mysteries surrounding the household, together with a lethal boat crash, the sudden loss of life of the household’s housekeeper, severe monetary crimes and the murders of Maggie and Paul. Co-starring with Clarke are Patricia Arquette as Maggie, Johnny Berchtold as Paul and Will Harrison as Alex’s eldest son, Buster.
Past the emotional character work Clarke did, which included finding out the recordings of the trial, studying books on psychology, and dealing with dialect coach Tim Monich, Clarke underwent a bodily transformation to grow to be Alex. He gained about 40 kilos, wore a wig and dyed his eyebrows since he didn’t wish to depend on prosthetics. The physicality of the character helped all the things click on into place.
Clarke spent months getting ready to play the disgraced Murdaugh household patriarch.
(Rick Wenner / For The Instances)
“I’m not a method actor, but you’re allowing it to creep into you, you know what I mean? You’re allowing yourself to creep into it,” he mentioned. “All of a sudden, you become the reflection you see, with the lenses on, with the hair, with the makeup, with the weight, the suit, with the clothes, that all of a sudden, hang on. I am what I am. And there’s nowhere I won’t or can’t go.”
Clarke is not any stranger to enjoying characters based mostly on real-life individuals — he portrayed Sen. Ted Kennedy within the 2017 movie “Chappaquiddick,” Lakers common supervisor Jerry West within the HBO sequence “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,” mountaineer Rob Corridor in 2015’s “Everest” and lawyer Roger Robb in 2023’s “Oppenheimer” to call just a few.
Sequence co-creator and showrunner Michael D. Fuller mentioned Clarke’s efficiency in “Oppenheimer” confirmed him Clarke may pull off the difficult function. Though the characters are very completely different, Fuller mentioned he noticed the “physicality, the confidence, the masculinity” required to play Alex in that efficiency. And Fuller’s hunch proved appropriate — not less than within the eyes of Mandy Matney, the journalist whose podcast supplied supply materials for the sequence and who was an govt producer on it. In accordance with co-creator Erin Lee Carr, Matney “would get a chill in her body because she felt like she was looking at and talking to Alex Murdaugh.”
“He’s just one of our best living actors,” Fuller mentioned. “There’s always something human about him, there’s always something confident about him, and then there can be something scary about him. That’s why I think he was singular for this part.”
The sequence’ finale was the last word take a look at of Clarke’s expertise. It follows the theatrics of Alex’s trial and depicts the complete sequence the place Maggie and Paul are murdered. Their murders have been first depicted in an earlier episode, however the viewers doesn’t see the killer in that occasion. Nevertheless, within the finale, Alex is depicted because the perpetrator.
Within the courtroom scenes, a lot of Clarke’s dialogue is lifted straight from court docket transcripts. “Oh, what a tangled web we weave,” Alex says in response to the prosecutor questioning why he lied about his whereabouts on the night time of the murders.
That line, Fuller mentioned, is “on the nose, but it’s also spot-on.” Placing a stability between what statements Alex and others made and taking inventive license was all about “finding those little breadcrumbs that give it that sense of reality and authenticity.”
The moments that haven’t been documented — what household life regarded like contained in the Murdaugh residence, what Maggie and Alex’s marriage was like behind closed doorways and what precisely occurred on the night time of the murders — are the place Clarke, the solid and the writers wanted to depend on the belief that they had constructed with the viewers.
A methodical, but simplistic strategy to filming the homicide sequence within the finale was necessary to each Clarke and the co-creators. Fuller mentioned on the 2 nights they spent filming that scene, the solid and crew took a second to acknowledge the real-life victims and the occasion they have been about to dramatize and guarantee they have been “treating it with the reverence and sensitivity it requires.”
As Alex is proven finishing up the murders, he acts shortly and certainly, and his face is sort of impassive.
“You don’t want to do things that don’t need to be done because you undermine the rest of it,” Clarke mentioned. “There’s a coldness to what happened. It was the act itself.”
Clarke mentioned taking pictures that scene was “not something you want to do too many times.” What appears to have struck him the toughest, particularly as a father of two sons, was that Murdaugh didn’t “have to be filled with hate or anger” to kill his members of the family. Within the sequence, Paul will get a glimpse of Alex simply earlier than he offers the ultimate blow, which is a second that Clarke wished to emphasise. “That’s the full horror,” he mentioned.
Though Clarke knew a lot of his work on the sequence could be heavy, he additionally knew that “the rest of it was fun,” he mentioned. “There’s a lot of joy and fun and games and entertainment and lunacy.”
(Rick Wenner / For The Instances)
The actor referenced his work on the 2019 horror film “Pet Sematary,” by which he performs a father whose daughter is killed (after which resurrected with a brand new, disturbing demeanor), saying these kinds of roles have grow to be more and more difficult to carry out. Clarke mentioned, “I don’t know how much more of that I can do.”
The ultimate moments of the sequence present Alex alone in his cell, catching a glimpse of his reflection after joking with (and swindling) a fellow inmate. When he sees himself, his reflection seems within the blue raincoat he wore when he killed Maggie and Paul. It’s a reference to “The Man in the Glass” poem — which the real-life Murdaughs had framed of their residence — about private integrity and accountability.
“The only person he cannot lie to is himself when he’s alone,” Carr mentioned.
That second was initially conceived as one thing rather more emotional, Fuller mentioned, however Clarke pushed again on that, favoring a extra ambiguous look on his face. He wished the viewers to interpret that second on their very own, and Fuller agreed.
“We’re not going to hang a lantern on exactly what he’s feeling here,” Fuller mentioned. “He’s still alive, he’s still in that prison cell, both in real life and in our story.”
After filming wrapped, Clarke took a seashore trip along with his sons and his spouse (their journey was rather more enjoyable than Murdaugh’s escape to the Caribbean depicted within the sequence). He nonetheless had purple eyebrows, he was nonetheless heavier than traditional from the shoot and he was “still a bit sensitive,” he mentioned. However finally, he dropped the burden, his eyebrows returned to their pure shade and he was in a position to faucet again into the enjoyable he had on set when he wanted to re-record dialogue and put the ending touches on the sequence. He was in a position to respect enjoying to Alex’s swagger and allure and embracing the collaborative spirit of the set.
“As much as it hurt, it was enjoyable, and I’d be dishonest to say otherwise,” he mentioned. “I enjoyed disappearing.”
There’s nonetheless some elements of Alex he can’t fairly appear to shake but, although, as evidenced by how simply he’s in a position to swap his Australian accent for a definite Lowcountry drawl over the course of the dialog.
“I still love that accent. “I love ‘bo,’” he mentioned of the South Carolinian equal of “mate.” “I still find myself calling people bo, they just don’t get it. Australians don’t get it.”
