SPOILER ALERT: This post contains stories from Episode 7 of “Imperfect Women,” now streaming on Apple TV.
Elisabeth Moss is no stranger to portraying a desperate mother on TV. The “Imperfect Women” star spent almost a decade playing June — the lead character of “The Handmaid’s Tale” who recently made a reappearance in the spinoff series “The Testaments” — whose key aim is to reunite with her abducted daughter.
While her acting in the dystopian drama was hardly unconvincing (Moss won an Emmy, a Golden Globe and a Critic’s Choice Award for her work in “The Handmaid’s Tale”), playing a mother on-screen has a whole new level of depth for the actress now. Moss had her first child in 2024, an experience that helped her connect with her role as Mary in Annie Weisman’s adaptation of Araminta Hall’s novel “Imperfect Women” for Apple TV. Optioning the rights six years ago, Moss also serves as an executive producer for the show – the first project she picked up with producing partner Lindsey McManus after launching their Love & Squalor production banner in 2020.
“I played a mom for many, many years, and I think I understood it,” Moss told Variety. But post-motherhood, she says “there’s something about the emotion that is more on the surface. I don’t have to use my imagination as much. Your head just goes to a darker place, faster, and the emotion is just closer to the surface.”
As of Episode 7, Mary is in her darkest place yet.
Married to a presently unemployed professor, Howard Simpson (Corey Stoll), Mary, often referred to as someone with great talent and wasted potential, is shown to spend most of her time taking care of her three children, occasionally writing and taking part in workshops — until her best friend Nancy (Kate Mara) is murdered.
What follows is a harrowing chain of events, as the show’s narrative volleys from the perspective of Eleanor (Kerry Washington), the third member of their trio, to the murdered Nancy and finally to Mary. Upon finding an obscure Latin translation of Howard’s in Nancy’s notebook, Mary realizes the two were having an affair before her death and confronts Howard, who vehemently denies any involvement with Nancy.
After realizing he lied to her about his ex-wife years ago and finding Nancy’s ring in Howard’s closet, Mary flees to Eleanor’s house and shares her theories, before receiving a call from Howard informing her their daughter is in the hospital, unconscious after overdosing on the Adderall Mary was shown to secretly be stashing earlier in the episode.
Mary is handed an emergency protective order by the police that demands she not have any contact with her children until the investigation is over. When Howard makes it clear he knows she took Nancy’s ring, the two have an explosive fight in the hospital, where she accuses him not only of murdering Nancy but also deliberately providing their daughter with the Adderall – after all, Mary had left the pills on the cabinet’s highest shelf, far out of the reach of a young child.
Howard provides the cops with a box of Nancy’s belongings, which an embarrassed Mary admits to stealing, with it later being revealed that Mary and Howard used to role-play as Nancy and her husband Robert (Joel Kinnaman). When Mary returns to her home to look for further evidence, Howards finds her and convinces her of an unfortunate truth: She has nothing concrete against him. And without evidence, there’s no chance she can regain custody of her children. She eventually agrees to keep quiet in exchange for the ability to be with her kids, telling Howard, “I won’t say a word. I’ll be good.”
All of this turns out to be a moot point, when an upset Eleanor calls in a favor with Robert and has Howard taken in for questioning regarding Nancy’s murder. Mary crumbles on the front porch, sobbing and telling an unbelieving Howard she had nothing to do with his arrest, while he tells the police to call the Department of Children and Family Services. Mary is forced to say goodbye to her kids as they’re taken away by the authorities, seconds before the TV news reveals a new suspect in Nancy’s murder case.
Below, Moss spoke with Variety about Mary’s intuition, her relationship with Howard — and why her role as a mother is her biggest motivating factor.
The show began with you optioning the novel. Where did you first come across the book? And did you know that you always wanted to play Mary?
Yes, I did. I came across the book in an airport when I was going to go shoot a film in Hawaii, and I wanted a good beach read. I loved the cover, I loved the title, and I was like, “You know what? Let’s see what it is.” I wasn’t intending to buy it or option it, but I was taken by it, and told my producing partner, who wasn’t even my producing partner at the time – “Can you read this book?” And she did, and she loved it. That was in November of 2019, and then we took it to Apple in January of 2020. And I definitely always knew I wanted to play Mary, especially when I got to Mary’s part. The show is a bit different from the book, but it’s equally as exciting, just in a different way. I felt like she was in the background most of the book and what ended up being part of her story was an obvious statement about how she was pushed to the side because she was a housewife and a mom and didn’t have ambition or a big career or a lot of money — any of the things that made someone else stand out. And so, I thought, “Oh, that’s interesting. Why is that happening? Why are they pushing her to the side?” That’s the one I want to do.
Do you think she’s underestimated before her viewpoint gets introduced?
Oh, yeah, she’s in the background and aside at the beginning of the story. And I think that it’s on purpose that she’s being underestimated. It’s on purpose that she is being pushed to the side and not in the spotlight. She’s a little bit invisible, which I think is very common of women who don’t have a big, fancy job or that kind of thing.
Eleanor cares very deeply about Nancy, but Mary’s character has always been shown to be more invested in actively trying to solve her murder from the start. Why do you think that is?
It’s a hard question to answer. I think that there’s something about her life that isn’t making sense. She’s like, “If I solve this mystery, I will be able to figure something out about my life. Something will make sense.” And then it becomes obvious that’s not going to work. I mean, it is kind of how she figures out a lot about her life. So, she’s not wrong. Maybe there’s an instinct that she’s having, about there being a connection between Nancy’s death and something about her life.
Everyone on the show is kind of unreliable in a sense — there’s some level of motive or the other when it comes to possibly murdering Nancy. Did you try to play up the unreliability angle, especially with Mary’s drug use to make viewers question her?
Yes, I think so. Not in a way of trying to mess with you on purpose, but in the way that everyone is an unreliable narrator in the story because they’re all so flawed and so imperfect. In the beginning, you think, “I don’t like this person, or this person is my favorite.” You can’t help but place judgment a little bit. And the idea is, then we will show you the other side of the story. We will show you behind the scenes. We’ll show you what you didn’t get to see and why. So that person that you thought was your favorite isn’t going to be your favorite anymore, and that person that you hated, you’re going to end up seeing why they are actually the way that they’re acting. So, it wasn’t like trying to fuck with you to fuck with you, but more about these people. No one in this story is without blame; no one is perfect. No one is the hero, even Mary, who is arguably the least suspicious, ends up being the one who has a drug problem that definitely could have clouded her judgment.
It’s really interesting that Mary always believes Howard – as shown in the flashbacks where he says he asked for a divorce from his ex-wife, who later tells Mary the roles were reversed – except for when they’re talking about Nancy, and she finds his translation in her notebook. Why is that the one time that she doesn’t believe what he’s saying?
I think it’s one of those things that she knew and suspected all along, and it’s almost like the nail in the coffin, you know? It’s not that this is more damning than anything else. It’s just that’s the one thing that she can’t ignore. There have been so many times in the past when she has ignored her instincts. And I think we’ve all had that experience where, for some reason, something happens, and it’s just the straw that breaks the camel’s back. For some reason, you can’t ignore that one.
As the season progresses, she finds out that he’s obviously very different from the person she thought she married. He does a lot of inexcusable stuff, including poisoning their child. How did you approach figuring out how a person would begin to deal with such revelations about the person they’ve married?
I feel like it’s really hard for me to talk about process, because I don’t have a process. When I read something, if I connect to the character, it’s almost for reasons that I can’t even explain. It’s not like I’ve experienced it, or I know what that feels like. It’s just like there’s something about it that I feel like I understand and can portray.
In a difficult decision, Mary goes back to Howard. How did you feel about that part of the script, and how did you react when you read it?
She’s gonna do anything to be with her kids, period. There’s no question. And anyone who has ever loved anyone that way understands that she’s gonna do whatever she has to do to be with her kids and also to protect them.
The scene where Mary has to say goodbye to her kids as they get placed in productive custody is really hard to watch. What do you remember about filming that scene?
It’s so different filming that stuff now than before. I don’t want to say it’s easy, but it is something that I can connect to pretty easily.
With that kind of scene, I tend to want to shoot my coverage first, because I know that the emotion is going to be real and it’s going to be right away. I can repeat it and manufacture it if we have to, but I would rather use the real thing and my first instincts. Daina [Reid] shot Episodes 6 and 7, a director I’ve worked with many, many times. [Moss and Reid previously worked together on “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Shining Girls,” and “Run Rabbit Run.”] This is our fourth show together, and I can say anything to her. She knows me very, very well as an actor. And that was a moment when we weren’t sure whether or not we would do. [But] we decided that it was just too important, we had to see her watch those kids walk away. The idea of putting on a brave face and not crying, and making sure that your kids don’t see you cry, to me, is just so poignant, and I luckily have not experienced anything close to that. I am using my imagination to a certain extent, but my imagination is very strong, and so the idea just killed me. It just broke my heart, the idea of having to see that happen.
When you say it’s different filming those scenes now —
I think becoming a mom definitely gives you a little bit more of an understanding? I mean, I played a mom for many, many years, and I think I understood it. But I think there’s something about the emotion that is more on the surface. I don’t have to use my imagination as much, like your head just goes to a darker place, faster, and the emotion is just closer to the surface. So, I don’t have to dig as deep to get it, if that makes sense.
Going back to Mary and Howard’s relationship, it’s revealed that they used to roleplay as Nancy and Robert. Do you think that role-playing made Howard want the real Nancy?
I think that’s Mary’s fear. That is definitely something that she’s gonna be worried about. But she did not make him a sociopath. Believe me, it’s a valid question, but obviously, the truth is no, of course not, she didn’t make Howard who he is. I think that he probably agreed to it and liked it because that instinct to be aspirational and be someone else was already there in him and her.
A lot of people in the show use the word obsessed when describing Mary’s relationship with Nancy, especially when it’s revealed she’s been hoarding her things. How did you view that scene?
I don’t know if she’s obsessed, but I think that there’s a lot of envy and jealousy there. Mary wishes that she has what she thinks Nancy has. It’s not the real Nancy. She’s envious of the idea of what Nancy has, and I don’t think she wants to be Nancy. She just wants to be this better version of herself.
It’s also difficult for her to balance her grief and obviously, anger and betrayal over Nancy’s affair with her husband.
Incredibly complicated, which makes for really fun television! We love complicated stuff like that. It’s much more fun to play three things at the same time. But I think the thing that is most important, honestly — and this is what I kept saying when we were shooting — is the kids. There’s all this stuff she’s dealing with as a mom, the fact that he is threatening to take her kids away and does separate her from her kids, the fact that he poisons their daughter, is a bit more important than anything else. Who fucking gives a shit about the affair? Who cares about the fact that her friend cheated when her child was poisoned by her husband and her father? Very little else matters.
I also want to ask you a bit about your involvement on the producer side of things. Did you have any specific notes for Mary that you really wanted to include in the show?
I thought it was written really beautifully by Annie, and Kay [Oyegun] wrote a lot of the stuff later and I think that they both had beautiful instincts. Maybe the only thing, I guess, would have been to focus on the kids like that. I just couldn’t help this feeling that nothing mattered more than the fact that her kids were being taken away from her and that they were possibly in danger. And so anytime we got into an argument about the affair or Nancy or the murder, the only thing I kept going back to and kept reminding anyone writing was that nothing else matters to Mary, except for getting her kids back. Everything else is secondary.
Without giving the finale away, what do you think viewers are going to be most shocked by?
That’s hard to say. What do you think off the record?
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That’s what I hope people are shocked by! I was hoping you’d say that. For me, that is definitely the most shocking, exciting, fun twist at the end, because everything you think and suspect is absolutely true. And we wanted you to think and suspect, and you’re supposed to be like, “Wait, what?” So, for your question, I think the viewers are going to be most shocked by literally the last moments.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
