‘Mrs. Davis’ Stars Betty Gilpin and Elizabeth Marvel Tie A.I. to Motherhood

[Editor’s Note: The following interview contains light spoilers for the “Mrs. Davis” series finale — Episode 8, “The Final Intercut: So I’m Your Horse.”]

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For “Mrs. Davis” stars Betty Gilpin and Elizabeth Marvel, the beginning of their work conveying a knotty mother-daughter relationship came at the end of the Peacock limited series’ Holy Grail quest.

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“That scene was brilliantly but hastily written over a weekend while Beth and I cram studied the outlines for Episodes 3 through 8, so we would know what would happen,” said Gilpin of the first scene she shot with Marvel, which happened to be the climax of the show’s series finale. “I filmed out of order before, but I’ve never done that, where you’re filming the most important scene of the show.” With regard to working on the unpredictable sci-fi dramedy adventure created by Tara Hernandez and Damon Lindelof, which covers humans’ relationships to both technology and religion, Marvel added, “It was just a free for all every day, like I never knew really what was coming.”

Despite not having a complete picture of where the show, about one nun’s journey toward shutting down an all-powerful yet deceptive piece of A.I., was going, Marvel knew that playing the austere Celeste, securities expert and mother of Simone (Gilpin), still meant leading with love. “The relationship between a mother and daughter is so foundational, I always assumed that it would be in this story as well,” said the actress in conversation with Gilpin as a part of  IndieWire’s Awards Spotlight. “The issues that one has parenting are so similar in a weird way to the issues that we’re all struggling with around A.I. Because A.I. does not come from a neutral source, someone has to create it. And how does that affect the ripple effect that it has on all that engage with it, and responsibilities of managing it? All of these questions are kind of intertwined.”

Feeling the guilt of her contribution toward a young Simone getting an arrow through her liver, Celeste’s heavy-handed approach with how she tries to further protect Simone, as described by Marvel, is “she will lock down the entire universe, she will control the entire universe, including her appearance, her work, everything in her reach, is under her control, including, to the extent that she can try, to control the safety of her daughter.”

In turn, Gilpin said that despite being a nun, and trying to embrace the humble life that comes with that religious commitment, “Simone is more like her mother than she would ever admit. That in almost in having the relationship with her parents dissolve, and the man she loved, Wiley, almost die, realizing just loving someone doesn’t guarantee safety, or forever. That there’s going to be the risk of losing them, or them betraying you. That there’s always this underlying thing that it might not be forever. So she found a boyfriend, who, every time she closed her eyes, was right there for her, no matter what, with no risk, similarly to [how] Celeste set up the rules and circumstances of her life, to sidestep risk and vulnerability and pain.”

Simone and Celeste gaining more self-awareness throughout the show lead them to realize that the appeal of Mrs. Davis (also the name of the A.I. antagonist) is that “it’s trying to just give the person in front of them whatever they want to please them,” said Gilpin. “And I think in realizing ‘Oh, it’s not this evil supercomputer, it’s just a reflection of who we are,’” the mother-daughter duo is able to bring the series to a close with a deeply affecting scene that ties all aspects of “Mrs. Davis” together.

“Her proxying for Mrs. Davis, that device of there being this other thing in Celeste’s ear allows Celeste and Simone to have a, under the guise of ‘Oh, this is the A story and like B story,’ [a way to say] ‘By the way, I love you and I’m sorry,’” said Gilpin. “It allows them to slip these messages to each other under the door that they probably wouldn’t have been able to face-to-face just have that bald of a conversation together, which is lovely.”

Watch the full Awards Spotlight conversation between Gilpin and Marvel in the video above.

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