‘Grotesquerie’ Director Says Everything Will Make More Sense After Episode 7
[This story contains spoilers up to the sixth episode of Grotesquerie.]
If you’ve been watching Grotesquerie and can’t quite put your finger on what’s going on after six episodes, you’re not alone. The ultimate plot of the Ryan Murphy series has been held close to the chest from nearly everyone outside of the producer’s inner circle — even the show’s own cast doesn’t know exactly how the series is going to end. But a pending revelation in episode seven (releasing on Wednesday night) promises to piece together the events that have been leading up to this point, says executive producer and director Max Winkler.
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“It’s going to all be figured out,” Winkler tells The Hollywood Reporter. “More information will be revealed [this] week in a way that will be good and satisfying. Every decision that’s been made in the first half of the series is leading up to that.” [Read about the big twist reveal in episode seven.]
And that makes sense — given that the sixth episode ended on the cliffhanger promise that the serial killer’s identity may be revealed.
Grotesquerie stars Niecy Nash-Betts as Lois Tryon, a small-town detective trying to solve a series of heinous murders with the help of Sister Megan (Micaela Diamond), a nun and journalist with a true-crime kink. Lois feels personally targeted by the serial killer, who identifies himself as Grotesquerie; her hunch ultimately being proven right by messages left behind for her at the latest crime scenes.
The fourth and fifth episodes — the fifth, “Red Haze,” being one of five total episodes directed by Winkler — paired up Lois and Sister Megan as they traveled through the desert searching for answers while still wrestling with their own vices. Sister Megan, believing the sin of her lustful encounter with Father Charlie (Nicholas Alexander Chavez) has brought them to this dark place, ended that episode with a gun shot to the chest, and her fate remains up in the air after episode six.
“We’re leaving the controlled clinical murder case study of episodes one and two, and we’re starting to explore the surreal a little bit more and get into Lois’ mind, as well as Sister Megan’s,” Winkler explained of the midway-ish point of the season.
In the chat below, Winkler (son to acting icon Henry Winkler), who also directed episodes one, two, six and seven, talks about working on his fifth Murphy project and why he considers Nash-Betts an “American treasure” as he shares cryptic insights on Grotesquerie’s labyrinthine plot.
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As a director, what drew you to Grotesquerie episodes five and six specifically?
Nothing. Ryan kind of decides what he wants. I did one and two, Ryan did three and Alexis Martin-Woodall did four, and that was just the next slot I was going to do. I loved the scripts. We got the scripts beforehand, and I’d always felt like the opening of five — being trapped at this hotel in the middle of nowhere with a fire in the distance — would be an opportunity to do something brave with the camera to maximize the tone and feelings of the show. That was something I got very excited about and started planning very early.
There’s a moment in that episode of simultaneous chaos that happens, with two cars crashing as a man attempts to drown the receptionist and Sister Megan finds herself in the line of fire. Were those scenes shot in single sequences?
Yeah, we rehearsed for four days. We planned it for a couple of months, and we kept going back on whatever days off we could steal and and walked it with actors, ADs, camera operators and stunt coordinators. You drive an hour and a half, and you try to make it through the heat, because it’s 120 degrees out there, and figure out the exact time of day where the sun is going to be and how we can do it.
The idea was always to do it at magic hour, only because we could not have as many lights and we could figure out their path without having to have so many grips running around with flags trying to block the lights and protect our actors. We just tackled it a little bit at a time and figured out how to get cameras through windows and how to get cameras off of car rigs, and how to have teamsters drive in large platforms and camera vehicles to get to our camera operator Neal Bryant, who’s a genius who had won the camera operator of the year award the year before for his work on The Last of Us. Knowing that we had him on Steadicam, I knew we could try and do this. Carolina Costa, who’s the cinematographer who did the pilot with me — who I made Flower with, and love and admire — and Anna Ramey Borden, our first AD, and I kind of shared it all together, both the risk of it as well as the pressure of, “If we can’t pull this off, we’re fucked.”
Is there a significance to the Last Supper snow globe which explodes and sets off that stream of events?
Yes, very much. That will make more sense as the show goes on, definitely.
Should audiences actually be trying to figure out the mystery of who’s behind these killings?
Absolutely. It’s going to all be figured out. More information will be revealed [this] week in a way that will be good and satisfying. Every decision that’s been made in the first half of the series is leading up to that. I think it’s very fun that people are trying to figure it out, and I’ve enjoyed everyone’s hot takes.
In episode six there’s a disturbing scene at a milk factory where women are chained and their breast milk is being pumped into babies. It feels like there are some overlapping themes with American Horror Story: Delicate. Is there a connection there?
Zero.
Okay, what’s going on then with the pregnant women and the babies?
It’ll make more sense as you go on.
In that same episode, it’s revealed that Nurse Redd (Lesley Manville) had an affair with Marshall (Courtney B. Vance) in the past. Talk about that backstory and building the tension between Nurse Redd and Lois when she confesses to her?
Niecy and Lesley are both so humblingly good at their craft that when you put the two of them at a dinner table, there’s not a lot you need to say and there’s not a lot you need to do except point the camera and let them work. They have different processes, but watching them interact together is stunning.
In the flashback scenes with Nurse Redd in Marshall’s lecture hall, she’s literally as giddy as a schoolgirl.
I know, it’s so cute — how she claps. I’ve been a fan of Lesley’s since seeing what she did in Phantom Thread and then seeing her work in The Crown. Getting to work with her was a proper bucket list moment for me. I’d never worked with Niecy either, and I really feel like Niecy is an American treasure. I feel like Niecy is the actress America needs, in a weird way. She’s so brilliant and funny and truthful, and has such incredible self-confidence. They’re very different actors, but post-Trump or in Trump America, I felt like Jennifer Coolidge was what we needed. She is kind of like the American dream. And now I really believe that Niecy is the perspective of a generation of people who are sick and tired of taking shit. She’s so strong and fucking funny. I get emotional talking about her, because the way she bets on herself and the way she sees herself so accurately with how the rest of the world sees her, there’s something about her that’s like a true movie star.
At the end of episode six, there’s a montage that flashes across the screen before Lois pulls the trigger on her attacker and we see Merritt (Raven Goodwin) and Ed Lachlan (Travis Kelce) together, and Nurse Redd with Marshall. What’s happening there?
Ed and Merritt are forming a relationship together. It’s set up in episode four before Lois leaves town. And we know why Nurse Redd has taken such a vested interest in Marshall. So, Lois is alone. Her workaholism, her alcoholism, her resentments. Her anger with the status quo keep her very, very alone and right at the scene of the crime. The only thing she’s married to is her work because anything else would force her to actually have to reflect and look at herself, which she’s not ready to do.
There’s an obvious display of various vices in this series, but it doesn’t feel like there’s a huge moral indictment on their choices. Should viewers be looking at themselves through these characters? Is this just entertainment?
I don’t know. It’s not a mystery that [Lois] is an alcoholic. And it’s not a mystery that she’s also really good at her job. She’s kind of functional, but it’s catching up to her. No one can ride that wave forever, and she goes hard. She’s totally isolated. She doesn’t know how to ask for help. She refuses to ask anybody for help, unless it’s to help solve a crime, but never for herself, which you need to be able to do if you want to make it. But there’s no judgment on it. She can be mean as a snake and tell it how it is, but she also is authentically herself. So it’s hard to turn on somebody, especially a character, when you know that they’re themselves. You can tell she’s wrestling with things. Her performance in episode three, both at the dinner table with Merritt and at that crime scene, it’s not just about the victims. It’s about the whole system in place that forgets to give these people names. She carries a lot of that weight around with her.
This is your fifth Ryan Murphy project. What do you enjoy about working with him?
I love him. My favorite part about it is his brain, and then also the creative freedom you get to have when working with him. I really experienced it for the first time on the Capote show, Feud, where you’re working with material and scripts that are so stunningly nuanced and layered and elegant. I find him incredibly creative and also very trusting. Working with Ryan and the president of his company, who I work with very closely, Alexis Martin-Woodall, is one of the more creatively fulfilling experiences because his shows are about something. And it’s interesting when you can make a show that affects the culture in some way — and you also simultaneously get to rehearse for four months and do a 17-minute shot that’s supported by FX studios, which is one of the greatest studios in the world, and FX marketing.
I’ve never had the opportunity to do that in movies yet because my movies are smaller, and you never have the time and you never have the money and everyone’s doing a favor and you can’t afford to bring the camera operators out on an off day to walk the sets with you. So you end up taking risks and sometimes swinging out. So to me, the blend between making something that is inherently commercial and fun and bingeable and a murder mystery, and also have it be about something, all the things we’re talking about Niecy’s character going through, and you get to be brave and try crazy shit, it’s the perfect blend. All while you’re working with brilliant actors like Niecy Nash and Micaela Diamond and Lesley Manville and Courtney B. Vance and Raven Goodwin. You can’t really ask for more.
Does your creative process change at all when you’re working on a horror series like this versus Feud or Monsters, which are rooted in true events?
No, I try to serve the story. I never would have done that shot for episode five as a one-er if it didn’t serve the story. I would never want to do it just because it’s cool or ambitious. You approach these things all different ways. But whether you’re working with Javier Bardem [in Monsters] or you’re working with Niecy Nash, I’m there to tell the story the best way I can, the way any of my idols would do with work in the surreal, like in episode five, or whether it’s in a story of intergenerational trauma with José and Kitty Menendez and Lyle and Erik [in Monsters]. I approach things the same way. The difference between my movies up until this point and working with Ryan is that nobody saw my movies when they came out, because people don’t really go and see independent movies. So the fun of actually getting to engage with people and talk about things, not five years later when the movies come out on Hulu and people finally see them, but actually getting to make shit that people are seeing and reacting to that are inherently commercial while also being artistically fulfilling for me is a dream.
Speaking of dreams, episode six ends with Niecy seemingly shooting someone, is that a real event?
I can tell you exactly what happens right now. Are you ready? I’m just kidding. I can’t. But I really think if you watch episode seven, stuff will be explained.
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