"You's" Shalita Grant Doesn't Want You to Judge Sherry and Cary's Marriage
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Warning: This article contains spoilers for the third season of You.
The third season of You is set in the fictional California town of Madre Linda, one so wealthy and insular it can sustain a strong clique among the enclave's adults. Some might call Sherry, Shalita Grant's character, Madre Linda's queen bee.
But that's not how Grant thinks of Sherry. "She's the Queen of Hearts," Grant tells Oprah Daily, referring to the elaborate costume Sherry wears to a themed fundraiser. "She’s the glue of the town but she’s also spiky and protective about what happens in that inner circle. No monarch is purely good or evil. She’s a really complex character."
Sherry and her husband, Cary (Travis van Winkle), are perfectly matched as self-promotional millennials who turned their personal brands into a career. Sherry is a "momfluencer" who documents her life with two children; Cary markets his fitness-centric lifestyle to seem accessible to aspiring he-men. At first, theirs appear to be a marriage of convenience.
But there's more to Sherry and Cary, and their marriage, than meets the eye. In episode 7, audiences learn Sherry's regal baring may the byproduct of her extracurricular hobby. Turns out the adults of Madre Linda are in bed together, and not in a metaphorical sense. Sherry and Cary are at the nexus of the town's swingers.
"For Sherry and Cary, the swinging is more than just sex. It’s also power—the power of swinging with the school principal and being able to email him, knowing he’s going to get stuff done for you. It’s holding people’s secrets, and giving people an opportunity to be vulnerable," Grant says.
When they invite Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) and Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti) to join in, Sherry and Cary's lives quickly become more complicated. Joe and Love are masquerading as newlyweds, but actually are serial killers for whom taking a life is as a casual an act as, say, taking a bath. After their sultry evening goes off script, Sherry and Cary end up locked in Joe's cage, unsure if they'll ever see Madre Linda's palm trees or their Instagram followers again.
Speaking to Oprah Daily, Grant unpacks the show's action-packed swinging sequence, her time in the box, and what she learned from playing Sherry. In short? "Don't judge," she says.
Oprah Daily: Did you learn anything from playing Sherry?
Shalita Grant: Yeah, actually. I’m divorced. I was gay married and now I’m gay divorced. Still gay, so that’s great. For Sherry, I focused on the marriage aspect of it, and what keeps marriages together. I had all this judgement about this specific marriage. But what I learned from my divorce is that you can’t judge. You have to just live. Everything isn’t what you think it is.
One of things I took away is, always be aware of why you’re with the person that you’re with. And what itch you’re scratching when you’re doing that. Even before my marriage, I wasn’t really taking full responsibility for why I’m with the people that I’m with. I’m just, oh the universe, we got together… With Sherry and Cary, I was thinking at first, it’s a marriage of convenience. But honestly, their marriage stayed together! There’s something to knowing why you’re with the person that you're with.
OD: How does it feel to play a character in the very small club of characters who survive Joe Goldberg?
SG: Laughs. Well, listen. I’ve never been killed on camera, so I thought it could go either way. Sherry is amazing. I can’t wait to see the Twitter memes about how Sherry turned her bad into a strength.
OD: So much happens in the swinging sequence’s 20 minutes. It starts off sexy, then becomes awkward, then becomes terrifying. How did you navigate those tonal shifts?
SG: I have to give it up to Pete [Chatmon], who came in and directed, and showrunner Sera Gamble. They’re amazing. Sara is really protective of her set. We had intimacy coordinators to keep things professional. You’re acting, but there are a lot of things that can go wrong, as we've seen. As far as the wild ride goes, it’s really true to life. I don’t know if you’ve ever swung, but it’s exactly what you said. It’s sexy, then it’s awkward. Laughs. Then hopefully no one dies. But it can be a bit terrifying at times. I’m a character actor. Her journey is my journey. How can I get out of the way to make it happen, and use whatever life experience I have to help this out? The swinging episode was buck wild but I was there for it, the whole thing.
OD: Even if you have had that life experience, nothing ends quite like this...
SG: No! That ends in a cage? Hopefully not! That might be at an S&M Club. I have some experience in that world, and you want to be prepared for everything. The way that the sequence starts, you think it knows where it’s going, and then it ends up somewhere else. It starts positive and we end up in the cage. I was like, how can I make that switch the biggest emotional switch for my character?
That’s all in the expectation gap—the gap between expectation and reality is the amount of disappointment you’re going to feel. I was like, I really have to build the expectation for Sherry.
I do nails for my characters, so I did a a pedicure where I put diamonds on my big toe. Laughs. I was like, in Sherry’s mind, she doesn’t know what’s going to happen. She's thinking, what if Joe or Love has a foot fetish? She wants to be completely prepared for that. Every time I looked down in the cage when I was acting, I’d feel so tawdry and so stupid. At the most Sherry thought there was a foot fetish. Actually, she's dealing with serial killers.
OD: I was also struck by Sherry wearing the wrong dress to be trapped in a cage. I was hot and itchy just looking at that.
SG: Laughs. It was a little uncomfortable. I had to be hyper aware of my angles, too, because it’s so sheer. But I did it.
OD: At one point, Sherry and Cary overhear Love and Joe confess to murdering Natalie. What do you think Sherry and Cary told each other, as they awaited Love and Joe's return to the bedroom?
SG: Cary was like, "I'm going to tackle him. I’m so big and so huge. It’s fine. And you know Krav Maga. Let’s just act normal, and then when you say the words, it's time to go time." That’s what we explored.
OD: I kept wanting to watch the Sherry and Cary show when they were in the cage. Just put the camera on them for an episode.
SG: It’s a really funny relationship once they’re in the cage. Everything is there. When you only have one pot to sh-t in, things get really real between a couple.
OD: What are your thoughts on Cary and Sherry’s final iteration? It seems like their marriage is in a better place than ever.
SG: I think that Sherry and Cary did truly work through the problems that they had. What they realized in the cage is that they didn’t have huge troubles in their marriage. If anything, the problem they had in the cage is that they were stuck in a cage together. They’re two people who are constantly trying to make their lives better and who are constantly trying to monopolize every aspect of their life. Sherry and Cary are going to keep Sherry and Cary-ing. Madre Linda is going to keep Madre Linda-ing. This is a blip in their system. They’ve metabolized it—and now they’re the same.
OD: What was it like to film the last scene in the box when you find the key?
SG: That was so much fun. Our last day was that scene. I got to destroy the cage. After days of being stuck in there and the rehearsals, it was so liberating to just open up everything. I’m nosy. When I go to the set, I’m like, what’s in here? I actually learned what was in the bags. It was a great final day.
OD: Did anything surprise you?
SG: No, but what surprised me was that I broke my nail. I use a really good nail hardener. And I smacked Cary, smacked the walls, al this sh-t. I got beat up. My nails were fine. It was the last day of throwing oatmeal and I broke my nail.
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