Brit Marling (‘A Murder at the End of the World’) on appeal of whodunnits in times of strife: ‘How did we get to the place we’re in?’ [Exclusive Video Interview]

Daniel Montgomery
·4 min read
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“A Murder at the End of the World” creator, director and actor Brit Marling traced the whodunnit genre back to “between the First and the Second World War, which makes sense because that was another time that everyone was kind of looking around and being like, okay, who did this? How did we get to the place that we’re in? And it felt very much like that’s where we were and where we still are.” That led her and her creative partner Zal Batmanglij to develop a whodunnit of their own. Watch our exclusive video interview with Marling above.

“Murder” follows Darby Hart (Emma Corrin), a young hacker and amateur detective who is invited to an Icelandic retreat by a mysterious tech billionaire (Clive Owen). When someone turns up dead, it’s up to Darby to figure out who the culprit is. With characters well-versed in modern technology, naturally the implications of that technology are a recurring theme. “A lot about the way technology has entered all of our lives is beautiful and generative and creative,” Marling says. “And then, of course, there are also things about it that I think, you know, we’re all taking a bit of a pause right now and asking what it means for AI, a computer, a statistical algorithm to be writing our narratives … I still have a lot of questions about it. Even after making a series about it, I still have questions.”

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Marling also plays Lee Andersen, a former hacker in her own right who is now married to that tech billionaire. “I think the characters I write for myself are things that I am not fully willing to explore without having a character as a vehicle to do it,” she explains. “I think with Lee, there was something I was really interested in about what happens when there’s still something flinty inside you, but you’ve made a lot of compromises in how you’ve lived your life, and you’re finding yourself in a life that isn’t your own.”

To make matters even more complicated for Marling, “A Murder at the End of the World” also marks her narrative directing debut. This was her first time helming a project since the 2004 documentary she co-directed, “Boxers and Ballerinas”: “Many times when we were making ‘The OA’ at Netflix I had wanted to direct, but in being the lead writer and showrunner and in every scene practically, there just wasn’t the space to make these sci-fi narratives on the budget and timetable we had to do them under and do all of those jobs at once.” That’s why she decided to take a supporting role in this series, “to give myself the space.”

But would she revisit Darby Hart if given the chance? “We definitely thought of this as a novel with a clear beginning, middle and end that would satisfy the viewer,” she says. “That mystery is closed, but Darby herself as a person has not closed and is clearly a woman of many mysteries. So if the right set of circumstances came together, I could see us bringing Darby somewhere else in the world. Maybe ‘Murder at the Other End of the World,’ and probably not in Iceland. If I was doing it again, I’d probably shoot in the Maldives or the south of France. You know, a mystery in the south of France sounds nice.”

The show is now streaming on FX on Hulu.

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