(Warning: Spoilers ahead.)
The famous Philip Larkin poem “This Be The Verse” could lend its opening sentiment for the tagline of the second season of Nine Perfect Strangers: “They f— you up, your mum and dad.”
Many mommy and daddy issues are bubbling to the surface at the Hulu series’ Zauberwald wellness clinic in the Alps, including for those running the unorthodox therapy sessions. Sigmund Freud would have a field day at this institute.
For starters, Peter (Henry Golding) is still sore that his billionaire father, David (Mark Strong), is using this bonding trip to make moves on a business acquisition, and is skeptical that David is the father of Masha’s (Nicole Kidman) now-deceased daughter Tatiana. Yep, Nine Perfect Strangers isn’t dialing down the theatrics as the season continues, making it a perfectly-timed summer release.
Peter thinks he has it tough, in this episode, but his issue is nothing as Imogen (Annie Murphy) has only just found out that her mother Victoria (Christine Baranski)—whom she has been battling all trip—only has a few years to live.
Given that this information only came to light when Imogen revisited a memory from when she was a little girl and found her father’s dead body (by apparent suicide), it is safe to say that Imogen struggles with this new revelation.
However, it isn’t only the Zauberwald guests who dabble in the treatments. Scientist Martin’s (Lucas Englander) parental discord leads the group down a dangerous path when he takes a page from Masha’s book and brews some mushroom tea to talk to his mother, Helena (Lena Olin). If Masha can speak to the dead, then why not Martin?
The trippy Hulu series features bombshells galore, with the previous episode’s double whammy revealing Victoria’s ALS diagnosis. That Helena is already dead is the tip of this twist iceberg. Everything we have seen with Zauberwald heiress Helena in the present is scenes with Masha; it isn’t a massive surprise that Masha’s signature psilocybin tea brought on those hallucinations.
But now, Martin is cracking at the seams after accidentally putting Victoria’s life in danger and discovering that Masha plans to sell the institute (aka his family home) to David. The Daily Beast’s Obsessed sat down with Englander, Olin, Murphy, and Baranski to discuss the twists and turns in the series’ penultimate episode and how these mother-child dynamics fuel the season.
Given that this episode is called “Unhinged,” it feels right that this word comes up during these conversations.
“Honestly, we have rugs with more charm” is how Helena boils down why she has called Masha to her deathbed to give her former patient-turned-student the keys to Zauberwald instead of her son.
Helena knows that Martin is an incredible scientist but lacks social skills. In this episode, Olin gets to sink her teeth into flashback scenes; previously, she has predominantly played Masha’s version of Helena. A third interpretation of the character debuts at the end of Episode 7, when Martin’s first psychedelic trip leads to a warm reunion (in his mind) with his mother.
Olin has long played layered matriarchs who keep things close to their chest, with her Emmy-nominated turn as Jennifer Garner’s mother, Irina Derevko, on Alias being one that lingers long in the memory.
Here, the Swedish actress relished tackling these different, sometimes extreme, sides of Helena. “I love [playing] that,” Olin tells me. “I think we’re so many people in one; you’re one person when you’re arguing with your husband, when you’re really afraid; there are so many [versions].” In the final episodes, Olin has to depict how Martin remembers his mother, which means “that there’s not just what I say and the way I see him.”
There is also complexity to the drug-induced Helena that appears to Masha, as she isn’t simply a sounding board who tells her star student Masha only what she wants to hear. In fact, Helena objects to Masha’s methods (including the memory device), calling her a “broken woman” in the previous episode.
Masha believes this treatment to talk to the dead isn’t like an imaginary friend, emphasizing that contact is real because you access real memories. It gives a spectrum of options for Olin to play opposite Kidman and Englander: “To be able to explore it and be so awful and so loving and so empowered and so afraid and so vulnerable and so strong, that was so fun.”
Englander is equally thrilled about this twist and these scenes. While the earlier dance sequence hinted at who Martin could be if he just let go, the character becomes even more erratic in this penultimate episode. He finally feels freer as he experiences the effects of this treatment for the first time, busting out more bonkers dance moves.
A crisis of faith takes Martin down this path as everything is falling apart. “I was honestly so happy that they gave him some form of release,” says Englander. “I remember when we had dinner and [executive producers] John [Henry Butterworth] and Molly [Allen] were looking at me, and they were like, ‘So in Episodes 7 and 8, there’s gonna be some stuff happening. And I was like, ‘Okay.’ They’re like, ‘No, there’s gonna be some stuff. It’s gonna happen.”
Given that Martin has already had a conversation with Agnes (Dolly de Leon) in which he asks her if he is capable of evil, Englander’s tease about Martin being “stuck in his own way of believing that the world has to be” is a little foreboding: “The journey is more violent than I would wish for anybody to have to go through, but to find release and the possibility of encountering some part of the actual self that he’s not able to feel anymore in his real life, was wonderful to play.”
When Helena enters his lab, she sounds incredibly chipper, telling her son, “I’ve missed you.” It is all he has wanted to hear, but considering how combative Masha’s hallucinations of Helena have gotten, can Martin expect a similar combative dialogue in the finale?
One pair who have been at loggerheads throughout their Zauberwald experience is Victoria and Imogen. Imogen’s anger that her mother kept the ALS diagnosis a secret for this long subsides when the duo manages to have a conversation that doesn’t end in another argument.
“Her intention in coming to Zauberwald is to have a reconciliation with her daughter and ask for forgiveness, and try to find that place and that space where she can reveal this [diagnosis] to her daughter,” says Baranski. “Knowing Imogen is an only child, she will be alone in the world without her father and mother.”
Imogen is in her thirties and comes across like no one can pierce her armor, but the death of her father when she was a young child is something she carries close to her heart. Victoria struggles with discussing serious matters, putting aside her avoidant tendencies during the shared experimental treatment so Imogen wouldn’t be alone.
“I was just grateful to play a character who had such a complicated past, complicated relationship,” says Baranski. “Then her backstory is very fraught, very painful, but also she’s hiding something so profound.”
Baranski says this story arc’s twists and turns are “a real gift” as an actor, as there’s a lot of emotional depth to play with. Her off-screen chemistry with Murphy is evident during this conversation, and I hear her signature laugh (it feels like five years got added to my life) when Murphy talks about the range of out-there moments when Imogen is tripping.
“I’m realizing more and more as my career unfolds, that’s my joy right there, is the more unhinged [Baranski laughs], bizarre, out of control moments that you can fling yourself into and hope for the best,” Murphy says.
One of the most memorable moments during the second group therapy session earlier this season is Imogen and Peter’s shared hallucination, with Murphy going full Heidi in pigtails and traditional Bavarian attire. It is a very different tone to Imogen dressed in her childhood clothes, finding her father’s body.
“Unhinged Heidi was a lot of fun, being motorboated by Henry Golding; I’d never had that experience before,” says Murphy. “This season provided me with a lot of opportunities to jump off the cliff and see what happens.”
She’s speaking for herself, but it applies to the entire Nine Perfect Strangers ensemble. If only Freud were still alive to watch it.
The post ‘Nine Perfect Strangers’ Just Delivered Two Huge Twists appeared first on The Daily Beast.
