In the Hulu limited series “Candy,” which is based on a real-life 1980 murder, Jessica Biel stars as Candy Montgomery, a wife and mother who shocks her small town and the entire nation when it is revealed that it was she. who brutally killed a friend. Betty Gore (Melanie Lynskey) with an axe. The first episode premiered Monday on Hulu, with new episodes each night through Friday.
Candy is an outgoing and flirtatious mother of two who seems to have it all, but is frustrated when her husband, engineer Pat (Timothy Simons), ignores her sexual advances. Meanwhile, outcast Betty also feels abandoned by her husband Alan (Pablo Schreiber), who frequently travels for work. When Candy starts a clandestine affair with Alan, the tension between the two women, who appear to be best friends, culminates in a bloody murder.
TheWrap spoke with Biel (who is also an executive producer) and Lynskey about how much their diametrically opposite characters had in common and how long it took to film the climactic ax scene. The entire series seems to be moving towards the attack, but we don’t see it right away. The two actresses spent months rehearsing for the difficult scene, which was originally going to last much longer. As it is, the physically demanding assault, shown from Candy’s point of view, still took two full days to film.
TheWrap: How long did it take to film the attack?
lynskey: It was two days. It was originally scheduled to be longer and was condensed. So it turned into a very intense couple of days.
Did any of you get hurt?
Biel: I don’t think it will hurt me. It was more like, by holding the ax so tightly, I had all these weird little things in my hands. But one of the things that was amazing is that I feel like we trust each other a lot. And we were really dancing. You know, we had been working on the sequence for months, separately and together. And so when we were finally there, we knew very well. And we just dance together basically. And no one was hurt. It was something amazing.
Lynskey: Yes. And also our stunt coordinator Gaëlle (Cohen) is so wonderful, so, so careful. And we had the stuntmen who did a couple of moments. A lot of that when I saw it. I was like, “Oh, is that us?”
Biel: Yes, it was great. I always find it empowering when you can do most of it yourself.
When we first meet them, these two characters are very dissatisfied, aren’t they?
biel: Yes they are. They are dissatisfied with a lot. And it’s so good that you realized that you both feel that. It’s a lot of different things combined, but a deep dissatisfaction with their lives. [They’re] alone and maybe regretful, I would think, and with the inability of just not knowing how to communicate about it.
Melanie, I felt so bad for Betty. It’s an interesting role for you compared to “Yellowjackets”.
Lynskey: One of the things that really attracted me to this project is that I read about it while I was filming “Yellowjackets”: the idea of playing someone who was completely different from Shauna, the character that I play in “Yellowjackets”. Shauna is hard on me sometimes, because there’s a kind of inner arrogance and confidence that she has that I don’t have in my life. I relate much more to someone who is a bit shy and has a harder time connecting with people and would rather be standing in a corner. So there were a lot of things that resonated with me, and the scripts were great. So it was a very easy yes.
Why did Candy have such a spell on everyone?
Biel: Good question. I think she had that ability. She’s one of those natural things, someone who’s charming and, you know, able to make anyone feel good and comfortable and somehow enlighten anyone she’s talking to. That is a gift. My representation of her is that she could do that and she had that ability. And she was a bit enigmatic in that sense. And she moved easily through the world, at least outwardly.
Jessica, how do you approach playing a real person like Candy versus a fictional character like in “The Sinner”? Does it make a difference in her approach?
Biel: In an emotional focus? Maybe not. But I feel like there’s a high sense of sensitivity and responsibility that you have when portraying a real life person or someone who existed at some point. You want to be really mindful of never making a joke out of anything or, you know, creating a cartoon, like really, really trying to do justice and service to this story in the way that we want to talk about the themes of this, which is the repression, as you said, dissatisfaction, female anger, social pressures, patriarchal society, gender stereotypes, all in the 1980s.
The first episode of “Candy” is now streaming on Hulu. A new episode comes out every night until Friday..
Reference-www.thewrap.com