Elisabeth Moss Explains How ‘Shining Girls’ Allowed Her to Revel in Her Love of Genre

Emmy-winner Elisabeth Moss executive produces, stars in, and directs two episodes of the Apple TV+ drama Shining Girls; she joins Awards Daily‘s Shadan Larki to discuss the allure behind the genre-bending thriller.

Newspaper archivist Kirby Mazrachi (Elisabeth Moss) is living in shifting realities. There is one constant, though—she remembers the brutal assault that has traumatized her and fractured her life—even if no one else believes her. Teaming up with the journalist (Wagner Moura), who originally covered her story, Kirby sets out to find her attacker (Jamie Bell).

Now, if you’ll allow me, I’d like to draw a (very loose) parallel between the world of Shining Girls and Moss herself. Each character Moss embodies —a first daughter, brilliant copywriter, brave detective, a mother fighting for her children— is entirely unique, set worlds apart, and requires Moss to exercise an entirely different avenue of her seemingly never-ending range as an actress. Yet, there is one constant—Moss giving an astounding performance. Each time you think you can label something “the best work” of Moss’ career, her next project delivers something new and unexpected. Shining Girls is a total surprise, both in its twisty plot points and in Moss’ ability to fully realize Kirby’s pain and determination.

I tried to ask Moss the key to iconic performances, but she’s far too humble to respond and even balks at the idea of being celebrated as an icon. But the truth is that Moss’ work has defined some of the best television of the last decade and a half. If her goal is to do work that resonates with her viewers then Ms. Moss has accomplished her mission a few times over.

Elisabeth Moss: Oh, thanks. That’s very nice of you.

AD: You’ve done so many projects where there are difficult stories and difficult plot lines. Can you walk me through how you prepare and how you get yourself to go to such an emotionally dark place? What is that process like?

EM: Yeah. It depends on what it is. Honestly, it goes all over the place. You know, for example, if I’m directing, there’s a different process there because I can’t necessarily go off into a corner and get myself into some sort of emotional place before I have to do an emotional scene. I have to do it, and then I have to go watch it, and then I have to either do it again or tell everybody that we don’t need to do it again [laughs]. So, there’s that when I’m directing.

If I’m not directing,  I mean, I am not a method actor. I tend to be much more instinctive; I tend to be much more in the moment. So, I don’t really have necessarily a specific process. There are times when I will pop my headphones in and I will put some music on, if there’s something I just need to focus on or something [where] I need to get myself into a certain place; or just [to] focus really, and just kind of shut out the noise of the set – I’ll do that, but honestly, sometimes I’ll do the opposite. Sometimes if I feel stuck, if I feel like I’m not getting where I need to go, sometimes I’ll completely throw it off.. I’ll just have a conversation with somebody and joke around a little bit and get myself a little bit loose so that when we’re rolling again. I can attack it with new energy. So, it’s all over the place and completely dependent on what the moment requires, where I’m at, what my job is that day [laughs].

AD: In Shining Girls, Kirby has many different realities. Did you treat each one like it was its own world? How did you map where she was in her mental state, and how you were going to approach those shifts?

EM: I attacked it more as one arc—as one story. The one constant that we had throughout the season was Kirby, because she’s the only person that remembers the same timeline. So, even if things change around her, she’s still the same person. And that was a really important thing to ask and get answered really early on—that even if her reality changes, she remembers everything that has happened even in the new reality. So, she has one life, one timeline, and one experience. I wasn’t playing different people; I was playing the same person all the way through.

Because we had to have this one person who could be the mainstay for the audience, right? I guess the hardest thing to do, was just make sure I knew where I was in the story. Obviously, we shoot out of order. Everything gets shot out of order now, or most things. This was that times a hundred because [laughs] the show has so many twists and turns that you really had to concentrate and keep track of where you were in the story, scene to scene!

AD: And, you’ve said that one of the things that really drew you to the project was that Shining Girls is a thriller and that’s not something that you’ve been able to do a whole lot of. How did you like the whole mystery aspect of it—the energy of it? It did feel different from your other work. What was that like for you?

EM: I love genre stuff. I mean, everything is a genre, but I love thrillers, I love action movies, I love horror films, I love sci-fi. This felt like it was this crazy combination of all of them. And I know it’s easy to say the phrase ‘genre-bending’, but it does feel like that’s an honest phrase to use about this show [laughs], in the sense of it’s not sci-fi, it’s not a thriller, it’s not action, it’s not horror, it’s like all of those things combined. It is genre-bending. And that was really exciting to me. It was exciting to me as a producer; it was exciting to me as a director. I got to sort of flex a little bit of my horror film fantasies and horror film knowledge – because I really am a big horror film fan – with a couple of scenes and do a couple of things that I was like, ‘Ooh, this is like a fun little horror movie moment.’ Like, in episode five, when Jin-Sook (Phillipa Soo) is walking through her apartment, and Harper (Bell) comes out, and he’s walking behind her out-of-focus, and then he ducks out onto the balcony: things like that, I was like, ‘Ah, I love this shit.’ So it was very fun for me, not just as an actor, but as a director and producer in this one.

AD: And how did you choose the two particular episodes that you ended up directing?

EM: I am just the least experienced director out of the three, so I took what I could get [laughter], and rightly so. Michelle [MacLaren] obviously was chosen to do the first two. And then Dana [Reid] is an incredibly accomplished director, so she had her sort of choice [of episodes]. We knew that we wanted her to follow Michelle because doing the third and fourth episodes can actually be a really tough thing to do; everyone’s focusing on one and two, and then you have to pick up that mantle and keep it going. And it’s actually not easy, and she did such a beautiful job. I knew that she wanted to do episode six, which was the Harper backstory, which made total sense, and of course, she was going to do the finale, so that left me five and seven [laughs].

AD: One of the plot points or elements of the show that I really related to, is the idea that Kirby wants to be a journalist, investigate, and move forward in her career, but there are so many elements around her that make it difficult for her to live her life and live her dream, and I think that’s something that maybe everyone can relate to.

I wanted to ask you about that emotional core: the fact that she wants to hang on to these parts of her life, these goals that she has, even though she’s being pushed to such difficult places.

EM: That is a universal theme that you can definitely find in this project. What I like about this show is that you can come at it just to be entertained if you want; you can come at it just to be scared if you want; or if you want a thriller if you want a mystery – and it’s got that, it’s got all that. But if you want to identify with it in a deeper way, if you want to find the analogies, they’re there as well. And that’s any good genre piece, right? That is what good horror is; that is what good sci-fi is. It’s taking this construct, and then you fold a very real-life analogy into it; you sort of Trojan-horse this real-life experience into it. And one of the analogies, yes, is just [that she’s] somebody who believes something and nobody else believes her, somebody who wants to be something and isn’t allowed to be that person; her reality that she wants is not fitting with everybody else’s reality, right? And she just constantly keeps getting pushed back every time the world shifts around her – until she finds Dan (Moura), and until somebody believes her, and that’s Dan.

AD: Elisabeth, you’ve truly had so many iconic moments in your career. Peggy walking down the hallway with her box of stuff with her sunglasses and cigarette? The Handmaid’s Tale. And that’s really rare: for an actor to have so many different things that have permeated the culture in such profound ways. But yet, in your real life, you’re very private, you’re very humble. How do you feel about your status as an icon [laughs], a star, while also kind of maintaining who you are and just doing the work—you know what I mean?

EM: Yeah, totally. Well, thank you for saying that. That’s very nice of you to say. You’re calling me an icon while my cat, Ethel, is yelling at me because she wants a snack or something or attention – that kind of sums it up. I don’t walk around in my everyday life being an icon [laughs].  I like to do the work that I do – I love the work that I do; the work I do is very important to me. I feel like, for me… I’m moved by you saying that; I’m moved by the concept of that because all I’m trying to do is help to find the human experience. And all I’m trying to do is play characters that people can see themselves in. And that’s what I love. That’s what’s important to me. I love playing everyday heroin—whether it’s asking for a promotion or asking for a raise as a woman in the workplace, or a mother who is in a dystopian future who has had their baby taken away from them, I want people to identify with these characters that I play. So that’s my goal. So when you say something like ‘icon,’ I feel good because I feel like, ‘Okay, good! That means that I think, something is getting across there.

AD: Absolutely, Your work is resonating.

EM: [Laughs]. I guess I didn’t really answer your question. I think because my workday life is very worky, I work long hours, I don’t have a glamorous life, I don’t have much of social life at all, which is kind of okay with me [laughs]. My life is not glamorous, you know? So it keeps you grounded. There are things that I have and privileges that I have, of course, but that’s not my everyday life. My everyday life is my cat yelling at me because she wants a snack when she knows she has a snack and she’s fine [laughs].

AD: How have these pivotal roles shifted your perspective? I mean, I’m sure it has, but you’ve been doing these big roles since you were very young. I feel like those had to have been very formative experiences, to put it mildly.

EM: I think I probably am more aware, now, of the impact that you can have with a character or the impact you can have with a project or a show; I’m more conscious of that now. So, I suppose I’m more conscious of the role that I can play in this world. I’ve always been somebody who certain things have mattered to me, so I don’t know if that necessarily has changed. But, I suppose I’m more conscious of being responsible in this world, as somebody that maybe people like to watch. Does that make any sense?

AD: Absolutely!  Elisabeth, are you able to tell me anything about what you have coming up?

EM: Yeah! I’m working on Handmaid’s Tale right now, on season five. And I’m directing three episodes again this year and have one left to do. As far as teasing that, this has probably been the most challenging season we’ve ever done [laughs]. So, take what you will from that, you know? It’s been a really big, wild season, and we are really pushing ourselves on every level, and every department is pushing themselves, and we have a really big story to tell this year.

Shining Girls is available to stream on Apple TV+