EYDER PERALTA: The first time we meet the serial killer at the heart of the new TV show "Furious," she curls up next to her latest victim and, cool as a cucumber, injects him with a lethal dose of fentanyl and then watches him die.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FURIOUS")
CLARK MOORE: (As Caleb, breathing raggedly.)
LOLA PETTICREW: (As Catherine) I don't like the sounds you're making...
MOORE: (As Caleb, breathing raggedly.)
PETTICREW: (As Catherine) ...But I love your smile.
PERALTA: Catherine Grace - played by Irish actor Lola Petticrew - is hunting men from her past, while the antagonistic FBI agent Alice Black - played by Emmy Rossum - is hunting her in the new thriller "Furious." Five episodes of the series are currently streaming on Hulu. "Furious" was created by Liz Meriwether, who joins us now.
LIZ MERIWETHER: Thanks for having me.
PERALTA: And a warning, this conversation will include mentions of sexual assault and domestic violence. Liz, "Furious" is about two women. Alice is an FBI agent, and Catherine is a serial killer. They're both looking for justice but in very different ways. Tell me about these two women and how they end up on a collision course with each other.
MERIWETHER: Alice is in her first few months of being an FBI agent. She comes from the NYPD as a homicide detective, and she left the NYPD after an abusive relationship with another officer. And Catherine is the serial killer in the show, and the story of her life unfolds over the course of the series. And she has been trafficked as a teenager, and the events of a particular night are what she's trying to piece together over the course of the show. And they are on a collision course. I think collision is the right word (laughter), so.
PERALTA: So you're known for creating sitcoms, like "New Girl" and dark comedies, like "Dying For Sex." "Furious" feels very different. It's loosely based on the 1987 movie "Black Widow." Why were you drawn to that film? And how did you approach updating it into a kind of crime procedural?
MERIWETHER: When I would be in the "New Girl" writers*/ room, which was filled with laughing and jokes, I would come home after laughing all day and just turn on the darkest, twistiest crime thriller as a way of relaxing.
PERALTA: (Laughter).
MERIWETHER: So I somewhat naively thought that I could write one (laughter). But whenever I got kind of overwhelmed by, you know, am I putting the clues in the right places and the nuts and bolts of making a thriller, I fell back on, wait, this is really a story about these two women and the journeys that they're on.
PERALTA: Catherine, as a character, is really interesting. She's really dangerous. She's a master manipulator, but she also has these, like, childlike qualities to her. She doodles on pictures of her victims, and she carries around the syringes of fentanyl that she uses to murder her victims. She carries them in a sparkly purse. Do you think she's kind of in a state of arrested development because she didn't get to have a real childhood? I mean, is she perpetually 15?
MERIWETHER: That was my thinking was that she is trapped in that moment in time. There's a moment in the third episode when she's dancing to a Rihanna song that came out years ago, so I kind of wanted to, like, place her in the past.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WE FOUND LOVE")
RIHANNA: (Singing) Now we're standing side by side, as your shadow crosses mine.
MERIWETHER: I wanted the show to ask the question, how do you get to a place where you see vengeance as the answer over the justice system, which I think is - it's getting increasingly easier to understand how people get there, but also to show that vengeance is something that traps a person in what happened to them. I wanted to kind of explore her trapped in the past, and then by the end of it, kind of growing to a place where she could move through it, could become an adult almost. I personally put some of the stickers on her pencil case.
(LAUGHTER)
MERIWETHER: Like, I was very committed to the stickers.
PERALTA: So this show is super dark, but there's also plenty of funny moments.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FURIOUS")
DIANE DEHN: (As YouTube Therapist) You're going to have days where you don't know if you can go on.
PERALTA: In one scene, Catherine turns to her healing work.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FURIOUS")
DEHN: (As YouTube Therapist) You've got this.
PETTICREW: (As Catherine) I've got this.
DEHN: (As YouTube Therapist) Say it back to me, I can create the life I want to have.
PETTICREW: (As Catherine) I can create the life I want to have.
PERALTA: How did you think about mixing such graphic, dark material with humor? Did you worry that the humor wouldn't translate?
MERIWETHER: I was worried about this show from the beginning to the end.
(LAUGHTER)
MERIWETHER: You know, like, nothing about it felt safe or comfortable to me. It was really important to me to do that because I spoke to, like, three different female FBI agents who had worked trafficking cases and crimes against children. And one of the things that really surprised me was how funny they were. And they just had this really bodied dark sense of humor that I saw and recognized immediately was their way of coping, was their way of holding on to their joy and their humanity in the face of really some of the worst that we have to offer (laughter), like, some of the worst that the world has to offer.
PERALTA: Catherine, as you mentioned, was a victim of sex trafficking as a child, and the men she murders were all involved in some way. How much of this show is a response to the Jeffrey Epstein case? Were you thinking about it? And Epstein, we should say, was a convicted sex offender and accused of sex trafficking young women and girls as young as 14.
MERIWETHER: I mean, I was definitely thinking about it. The show is not a retelling of that story, though. I mean, I made "The Dropout, " about Elizabeth Holmes, which was a very strict retelling of her story, and this is not that. It was important to me to not put the focus on the predator. I was trying to tell the story of the women involved and the long-lasting effects of some of these crimes, because really, women will be dealing with the effects of these kinds of crimes for years and years, their whole lives, so I wanted the show to explore that. It is inspired by a lot of real stories, but it's hopefully kind of putting the spotlight in different places.
PERALTA: I want to ask about a scene where Catherine is talking to one of her victims, a lawyer who knew about the abuse and protected the men who were directly involved. And when he tries to use that argument in his favor, Catherine asks him what I thought was a very astute question.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FURIOUS")
CAMPBELL SCOTT: (As Hal) Please.
PETTICREW: (As Catherine) You think you don't deserve to die, because you didn't film yourself raping girls at the parties?
SCOTT: (As Hal) You don't - please don't kill me.
PETTICREW: (As Catherine) What's the punishment for people who know what's happening and do nothing?
PERALTA: Catherine certainly has her answer. Do you have your own answer to that?
MERIWETHER: I don't have an answer. That's one of my favorite things about writing, is that you don't have to present an answer. You present a conversation. You present a story. With a lot of this show, I felt like if there were an easy answer, it wouldn't make for good television. I always kind of wanted to go to those places where I didn't know what the answer was and the places that made me feel uncomfortable and sort of confused. And that's kind of where I (laughter) wanted to be. Whether or not we find the right punishment, really, the question should be about how do we help the women who've been through it live their lives in the best way they can?
PERALTA: That's Liz Meriwether, creator of the new show "Furious." It's currently streaming on Hulu. Liz, thank you so much.
MERIWETHER: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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