‘The Last Thing He Told Me’ director Olivia Newman breaks down the powerful ending [Exclusive Video Interview]
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This article and video contain spoilers for the full series of “The Last Thing He Told Me”
When “The Last Thing He Told Me” gets to the end of its twisty story, the thriller’s central conflict is not resolved via violence or trickery but rather a simple conversation between two people about the well-being of a child.
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Based on the book of the same name by Laura Dave and adapted for Apple TV+ by Dave and her husband, Oscar-winning writer Josh Singer (“Spotlight”), “The Last Thing He Told Me” focuses on a woman named Hannah (Jennifer Garner), whose new husband, Owen (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), disappears and leaves behind a note imploring Hannah to protect his daughter, Bailey (Angourie Rice). Over the course of the seven-episode limited series, Hannah and her stepdaughter travel from San Francisco to Austin, Texas, and find themselves embroiled in a larger conspiracy that includes Owen’s former father-in-law, Nicholas (David Morse), a lawyer for the mafia. It all ends in Nicholas’ study, where Hannah and the imposing litigator negotiate the terms that would allow Hannah and Bailey to return to their previous life – at the cost of Hannah ever getting to see her husband again.
“The story is about family and what you’re willing to do for your family and the sacrifices that you have to make to protect your family,” director Olivia Newman tells Gold Derby in an exclusive video interview as part of our Meet the Experts: Directors panel. “This whole journey that Hannah is on is also, for her, a discovery of what it means to be a parent.”
Newman directed the show’s first two episodes and its finale. Of the climatic sequence in the last episode, she compared it to almost “staging a play,” where both Garner and Morse are afforded ample opportunities to mine deep emotions and contradictory feelings.
“These two people are going toe-to-toe debating the question of, ‘What is best for a child? How do we find a compromise here that allows this child to live the best life she can?’ It’s the common ground that they both share despite all of the anger and all the differences and the sacrifice that Hannah has to make, which is giving up ever being with the love of her life again,” Newman says.
That moment of choice is a highlight for the show and Garner as well. The actress, a four-time Emmy Award nominee for “Alias,” has to process Hannah’s decision to cut Owen out of her life forever almost in real-time.
“It was just crushing to watch Jen go through that – especially doing multiple takes of it,” Newman says of the scene. “But she knew this character so well. She could speak for herself about why she connected so deeply to Hannah, but I think Hannah is a very different person than Jen Garner. And that was one of the wonderful challenges. Jen is such a naturally maternal person and Hannah is not. So to sort of watch Jen fight against instincts in terms of who she really is and find that really singular character was just such a joy.”
All episodes of “The Last Thing He Told Me” are streaming on Apple TV+.
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