Matthew Rhys just wasn’t creepy enough — or so they thought.
When he read the script for Netflix’s The Beast in Me, the role of Nile Jarvis — a real estate mogul suspected of murdering his late wife — seemed just out of reach for The Americans actor. “I read it and I was like, ‘I won’t get this. People don’t come to me for this,'” Rhys tells Entertainment Weekly. “I have these Celtic eyes. I do downtrodden well, I don’t do megalomaniac or sociopath.”
More accurately, he hadn’t gotten the chance to play a megalomaniac or a sociopath … until now. “He brought something else to it,” creator Howard Gordon tells EW of Rhys’s audition. “He’s so charming and funny and charismatic. But he is scary.”
Rhys adds, “I had to persuade them that I can be creepy,” before joking that he parked outside costar Claire Danes’ house to really prove his point. “That seemed to do it,” he says with a laugh.
In The Beast in Me, Danes plays Aggie Wiggs, an author who’s spent several years struggling to write following the death of her young son. When Nile moves next door — and seems very determined to add a running path to the neighborhood — Aggie finds herself butting heads with her new neighbor. At least until she realizes he might just be the perfect subject for her next book.
Courtesy of Netflix
“At the beginning, they’ve both endured these enormous moments in their lives,” Rhys says, referencing Aggie losing her son and Nile losing his wife. “And they are attracted and repulsed by each other for different reasons.”
Aggie quickly finds herself wanting to answer the question: Did Nile do it? Are the rumors true? “This thing could be the beginning of a Stephen King movie,” Gordon says. “It is a really deep psychological thriller. But it’s also a character study.”
And it’s one that’s taken years to execute.
When Gordon got a call from Danes — with whom he’d worked on Homeland — she’d already been attached to the project for years. “It was a spec script by Gabe Rotter that had been in development for five or six years,” Gordon remembers. “It’s a pretty high degree of difficulty, this show. And so Claire reached out to me said, ‘Can you take a look at this?’ And I was really intrigued by the premise.”
The show unfolds as what Gordon calls a “cat-and-mouse thriller” as Aggie finds herself both befriending and investigating her mysterious (and yes, creepy) neighbor. “It’s the idea of the stories we tell ourselves and the stories the public consumes,” Gordon says. “It’s about ambition and wealth, and then at the end of the day, at the center of it, is loss.”
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And yes, it’s also about whether Nile did in fact kill his wife. But to properly deliver that answer, the show provides necessary insight into what — or rather, who — made Nile Jarvis the man he is. A major way it does that? By having Jonathan Banks play his father, Martin Jarvis. Check out a first look at him in the role below.
Courtesy of Netflix
“He’s a scary bastard and he knows it,” Rhys says of working with Banks. “He’s lovable off-switch, but genuinely scary when he flips the switch.”
Martin is another person that the audience won’t be able to figure out right away. “You’re always kind of questioning his motives and what kind of father he was,” Gordon says. “I’m compelled by the idea of having a child who can destroy the life you built. And what is legacy?”
It’s safe to say Banks didn’t have the same problem as Rhys when it comes to being known for that darker side. But for Rhys, it was an issue easily solved by a little theft. “I stole so much from Anthony Hopkins,” Rhys says with a laugh. “If you’re gonna steal, steal from the best.”
The Beast In Me premieres Nov. 13 on Netflix.
