{"id":354944,"date":"2026-03-19T20:40:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T20:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/354944\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T20:40:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T20:40:13","slug":"nicole-kidman-jamie-lee-curtis-unpack-bloody-ending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/354944\/","title":{"rendered":"Nicole Kidman, Jamie Lee Curtis Unpack Bloody Ending"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t[This story contains MAJOR spoilers from the season one finale of Scarpetta<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1990, Patricia Cornwell published her debut novel, Postmortem, about a forensic pathologist named Kay Scarpetta \u2014 inspired by real-life former chief medical examiner Marcella Farinelli Fierro \u2014 who investigates suspicious deaths in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Drawing from her experiences working as a crime reporter and then in the Virginia medical examiner\u2019s office, Cornwell blazed a new trail in the traditionally male crime thriller genre. Since then, with her laser focus on cutting-edge forensic science, Cornwell has published 28 more Scarpetta novels and sold more than 120 million copies.<\/p>\n

\n\tOver the years, multiple attempts to bring Scarpetta to the screen have failed. Demi Moore was attached to play the character in the \u201990s after Columbia Pictures optioned the rights to the fourth novel Cruel and Unusual, while Angelina Jolie was supposed to headline a series<\/a> of films starting in 2009. But in early 2021, Jamie Lee Curtis<\/a> reached out to Cornwell, whom she had known socially, to inquire about what had happened to Scarpetta. Once she discovered that the author had regained control over her life\u2019s work, Curtis reached out to her new producing partner Jason Blum about optioning the books for TV, officially acquiring the rights in June.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe following year, Curtis ran into Nicole Kidman<\/a> for the first time at the 2022 Academy Awards, where Curtis was paying tribute to Betty White and Kidman was nominated for playing Lucille Ball in Being the Ricardos. Curtis later learned from Kidman\u2019s producing partner, Per Saari, that she had always wanted to play Scarpetta, because her sister Antonia and late mother Janelle were avid fans of Cornwell\u2019s novels. But there was initially a slight misunderstanding between the Oscar- and Emmy-winning actresses.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was not intending on being in the show,\u201d Curtis confesses to The Hollywood Reporter. \u201cWhen Nicole agreed to do the show, because I was a producer, I think there was an assumption like, \u2018And you\u2019re in the show, right?\u2019 At that moment, it was, as I like to say, \u2018Yes, queen! Yes, of course, I\u2019m in the show!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOnce she finished chatting with Kidman, Curtis, in a fit of panic, immediately called Cornwell and showrunner Liz Sarnoff, who agreed that Curtis could play Kay\u2019s flighty sister, Dorothy<\/a>. With Kidman and Curtis attached<\/a> to star and executive produce, Amazon\u2019s Prime Video officially ordered<\/a> two eight-episode seasons of Scarpetta in September 2024.<\/p>\n

\n\tAmbitiously told across two timelines, the TV adaptation<\/a> follows Kay as she returns to the Commonwealth of Virginia to reassume the role of Chief Medical Examiner. The debut season, drawing from Cornwell\u2019s Postmortem and Autopsy, pits Kay against a new serial killer targeting women. As she hunts for the copycat killer, Kay grapples with the long-buried guilt of a lie told during her first major investigation decades earlier. (Rosy McEwen portrays the younger Kay<\/a> in the late \u201990s.) The series has been the No. 1 series\u00a0on Prime Video since its release weekend, per the streamer.<\/p>\n

\n\tKay\u2019s inner turmoil is \u201cwhat makes her such a great character to play, because she\u2019s so measured [and] controlled. She wants to be right, and she\u2019s been wrong. She\u2019s made mistakes, and she\u2019s had to keep a lie \u2014 and that is a terrible inner conflict for a person like Kay,\u201d Kidman tells THR. \u201cWhat\u2019s been so ingenious about how Liz Sarnoff created this show is the weaving of the two timelines and the coming back to a job. As she said the other night when we were talking about it, when you come back to a job, you want to see what\u2019s changed \u2014 and really, has anything changed? That\u2019s also a fascinating part of the basis of this show.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tNicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis in Scarpetta.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tConnie Chornuk\/Prime<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom the moment Kidman was cast, some diehard fans have continuously expressed their disappointment about the actress not matching the exact way Kay was described in Cornwell\u2019s novels. But Sarnoff, who has a personal connection with the source material<\/a>, insists that Kidman captured the essence of the protagonist. (It also helps that Cornwell herself approved of the casting; the two even share a scene together, as Cornwell swears Kidman in as the new medical chief in the pilot.)<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe knew she could do it because she\u2019s a shapeshifter, and the eyes and the emotion she brings to everything is real,\u201d Sarnoff says of Kidman. \u201cI knew that would be incredibly valuable, because we were going to tell a more emotional story in the present and the more procedural police story in the past. The present is really about the family and the relationships and how they\u2019ve survived or haven\u2019t. Once people see it, they\u2019ll see how she embodies it and understand why she\u2019s perfect for it, because she\u2019s a very cerebral person \u2014 and so is Scarpetta.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOnce they agreed to play sisters, Kidman and Curtis decided to call on some of the former\u2019s previous co-stars to build out the dysfunctional family at the heart of this series. After playing husband and wife in an episode of the Apple TV anthology Roar, Kidman enlisted Simon Baker, whom she has known for over 30 years, to play Kay\u2019s FBI profiler spouse, Benton Wesley. \u201cIt\u2019s a great delight to have a rapport with someone over so much time, and that just walks onto the set with you, whether you like it or not,\u201d Baker says. \u201cWe have a history together, so there\u2019s an ease, a comfort, a trust and a respect creatively.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKidman had previously worked with Ariana DeBose on Ryan Murphy\u2019s The Prom, and Curtis had defended DeBose amid the backlash to her infamous rap at the 2023 BAFTA Awards (where she famously declared<\/a> that \u201cAngela Bassett did the thing\u201d). On the set of Freakier Friday, Curtis personally texted DeBose to offer her the role of Dorothy\u2019s tech whiz daughter Lucy, who is grieving the loss of her wife Janet by keeping her alive as an AI bot.<\/p>\n

\n\tA little before that, Curtis also sent a cold text to Kidman\u2019s former Nine Perfect Strangers co-star Bobby Cannavale<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019d never met her, and she said, \u2018Hello, sir. Would it interest you in playing my husband?\u2019 That\u2019s all it said. I said, \u2018Yeah, tell me more,\u2019\u201d says Cannavale, who stars as detective Pete Marino. \u201cThis is a woman with much experience in this business. She knows how to pitch.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBaker and Cannavale are no strangers to playing law enforcement \u2014 the former famously spent seven seasons playing a savant consultant for the CBI on CBS\u2019 The Mentalist \u2014 but both actors were drawn less to the familiar procedural elements of the murder investigations and more to the use of dual timelines to explore the emotional toll of doing that kind of work for a lifetime.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou still have that familiar genre element that is pulsing away the whole time, and fans of that genre are appeased, but you get to explore the ramifications,\u201d says Baker, whose own mother is an obsessive fan of the Scarpetta novels. \u201cIn Kay\u2019s case, she works to find out how someone was killed. I\u2019m an FBI profiler, and I work to find out why someone kills. The two of us bring that into a relationship where they\u2019re trying to exist as a husband and a wife, and what Liz does very successfully is to explore the recesses and issues of that over time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKidman adds, \u201cWhat I love about this is you\u2019re dealing with a crime genre, but you\u2019ve put in this very complicated family, and these dynamics that start off where we\u2019re all living in a house together. I\u2019ve come back, we\u2019ve all come back, we\u2019re put into this place to try and help protect [and] love [Lucy], and we\u2019re both married to men. And by the end, everybody\u2019s lives have been fractured and shattered.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDetective Pete Marino (Bobby Cannavale) with Lucy Watson (Ariana DeBose).<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPrime Video<\/p>\n

\n\tScarpetta ended up turning into a true family affair for Cannavale, whose younger self is played by his own 30-year-old son, Jacob Lumet. \u201cI would guess that it had occurred to them that my son, who was a working actor, might be an option, but I definitely said something like, \u2018Wait a minute, could Jake come in and read for this?\u2019 He did and met with everybody. I think Jake\u2019s got chops, and he\u2019s earned his way here,\u201d Cannavale says, insisting that he did not have final say on casting his double. \u201cWe worked a lot closer then on Nurse Jackie [where we played father and son] than we are on this, but I\u2019m thrilled as much as a proud parent can be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite having a rare-for-TV rehearsal period with Sarnoff and producing director David Gordon Green before the start of production, the older actors never actually rehearsed any scenes with their younger counterparts. Instead, the actors sharing roles spoke at length with each other to create a common language for their character.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cJake, without even trying, has my mannerisms,\u201d remarks Cannavale. (He can also see the uncanny resemblance.) \u201cI told him, \u2018Don\u2019t worry about that. That\u2019s the easy part. Let\u2019s just talk about where that character is when he\u2019s that age, and I\u2019ll worry about how much he\u2019s grown, but let\u2019s see how much he\u2019s grown to that point. If you were 30 years old and you were a detective with already a spotty record for various questionable, over-the-line [behaviours], where do you think you\u2019re going? What are your ambitions? And what does Kay do to him?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThrough the use of flashbacks, Sarnoff says she wanted to show the moment that \u201cbroke\u201d each of the characters and set them on a path that they have followed into middle age. In a dramatic departure <\/a>from the novels, Kay and Dorothy\u2019s father died in an armed robbery, rather than succumbing to leukemia. \u201cI love that Scarpetta internalizes [while] Dorothy externalizes grief and death. We shared the same awful truth that our father was murdered and yet the way we navigate [is vastly different]. There is a \u2018Life\u2019s fucking short, let\u2019s fucking go\u2019 mentality to Dorothy,\u201d Curtis says.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s also very poignant, of course, in that beautiful speech that Liz wrote later on when [Dorothy] is ashamed that she thought Janet was just this boring person. That\u2019s [another] person who\u2019s also died, and she\u2019s feeling very ashamed that she ever thought that because that person\u2019s not here anymore,\u201d Curtis adds. \u201cThere\u2019s some beautiful internal work being done with Dorothy, but her external life pleases me a great deal.\u201d [Writer\u2019s note: On the day of this interview, in a nod to her colorful character, she intentionally chose to wear a leopard print dress and black stilettos.]<\/p>\n

\n\tA flashback in episode four juxtaposes Marino\u2019s penchant for violence at work with the way he used to beat up his childhood bullies to a bloody pulp. \u201cHis decision to not just fight back against these bullies, but to always fight back is foundational for him, and the idea that people don\u2019t think he\u2019s smart is in his bedrock. Those two things could be the primary elements of his downfall,\u201d Cannavale says. \u201cHe is always going to avenge the insult that he\u2019s absorbed, and that motivates him throughout his life. I think that\u2019s why he\u2019s gotten into so much trouble. It\u2019s why he\u2019s retired. That\u2019s why his marriage is probably in trouble. He\u2019s just a volatile person; he could just as well arrest the suspect as he could kill him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBenton, meanwhile, may have the darkest backstory. When he first read the pilot, Baker was concerned the character was not \u201cmeaty\u201d enough for him to sink his teeth into. \u201cMy character\u2019s a real slow burn,\u201d he says. \u201cPretty much all the other characters in my time period are very outwardly expressive, and [Benton\u2019s] a quiet character in the room, but there\u2019s a lot of noise going on inside him that we start to see later and later.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA scene at the start of episode six reveals that Benton\u2019s depraved therapist mother once pathologized Benton as a sociopath and gave him a book called Why They Kill: Characteristics of Sexual Homicide. Whenever he needs to self-soothe, he returns to his creepy childhood lair in his basement and holds onto a photo of a murdered woman\u2019s body from that book almost like a security blanket.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe \u201990s Benton [played by Hunter Parish] is essentially the same character. I\u2019m the result of 30 more years of holding the struggle inside,\u201d Baker explains. \u201cI think very young [child] Benton has a predilection to watching things suffer, harming things. His mother pathologizing him as somewhat of a sociopath and planting that seed in his head is the bigger issue with Benton. I don\u2019t think he\u2019s ever been able to shrug the fact that he\u2019s afraid that he is a sociopath.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tPast Benton (Hunter Parrish) with Abby Turnbull (Sosie Bacon) and Bill Boltz (Mike Vogel) in the finale.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tConnie Chornuk \/ Prime<\/p>\n

\n\tBenton\u2019s dark turn in that episode was so surprising that some of his co-workers even started to pull him aside with questions of their own. \u201cI\u2019d never done this before, but at the end of the sixth episode, when that script was released, everyone on set was like, \u2018Oh my God, are you the killer?\u2019\u201d Baker says with a wry smile. \u201cAnd I was like, \u2018I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t think so.\u2019 And they\u2019re like, \u2018Well, aren\u2019t you going to have a conversation with them and ask?\u2019 I was like, \u2018No, I\u2019m just going to see what happens.\u2019 So when the last two scripts dropped, I only read my [scenes], because I wasn\u2019t interested in knowing. I didn\u2019t want it to influence me in any way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe final episodes reveal that Kay and Benton\u2019s romance began as an affair, with him leaving his wife and two children for her in the late \u201990s. \u201cThey\u2019re close, but they keep secrets \u2014 but they\u2019re attracted to each other,\u201d Kidman says of that dynamic nearly 30 years later. \u201cIt is a rollercoaster of a relationship, but there\u2019s a lot of chemistry between them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBaker does not believe that Benton regrets abandoning his young family for Kay, but the cracks in the foundation of their marriage reveal themselves as they both get back to work in Virginia. Because Benton is a profiler by trade, Kay often feels less like a partner and more like a subject under observation, leaving her to wonder how much he truly knows about her past secrets. When Kay lashes out in an argument and tells Benton \u201cthere\u2019s something deeply psychologically wrong with you,\u201d those words \u201ccut to the core of who he is, and that crushes him in a way,\u201d Baker says. But when he tries to open up to his wife about his darkest impulses in the finale, Benton is brushed off.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t think he\u2019s necessarily going into that [finale] asking for a divorce, but he\u2019s basically saying, \u2018I need to find the truth, and I need to share it with her.\u2019 She has an idea of what she wants the truth to be, and it ain\u2019t the same thing,\u201d explains Baker. \u201cI think him then asking for a divorce is basically [because he\u2019s] like, \u2018I\u2019m not getting anywhere here. I\u2019ve got to pull the pin.\u2019 I did approach it like this was a coming-out scene to his wife about the essence of, really, who he is \u2014 and it doesn\u2019t land.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA lot of the friction between Kay and Benton stems from the secret that has long bonded her with Pete. Back in 1998, Kay correctly identified the serial killer as Roy McCorckle, a 9-1-1 dispatcher who chose all of his future female victims by their voices. When Kay went to visit Roy\u2019s home, he tried to strangle her to death, but she killed him in self-defense. However, in a misguided attempt to cover up Kay\u2019s involvement, Pete shot Roy\u2019s body. Kay was then forced not only to conduct an autopsy on the same man she killed, but also to lie about her findings.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOne of the great parts of the book series is the whole Marino\/Kay dance. They\u2019ve been colleagues for a long time. Clearly they love each other, but they\u2019ve never crossed that line with each other,\u201d Curtis says. Once Dorothy and Pete got together at Lucy and Janet\u2019s wedding, \u201cDorothy clearly was territorial, but there\u2019s always this energy going back and forth \u2014 and I really find that fascinating. When you marry someone who you know was very involved with somebody else \u2014 your sister \u2014 and then they marry you, there\u2019s got to be that underlying question of loyalty and love. That question, I think, is played out beautifully in Liz\u2019s writing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCannavale hesitates to say that Marino is caught in a love triangle between the Scarpetta sisters, because he thinks \u201cthere isn\u2019t anything romantic\u201d about the way that his relationship with Kay \u201cruns\u201d and \u201crules\u201d his life. \u201cI think he loves Dorothy in the only way he\u2019s capable of loving in a traditional sense that is good enough for her, and he knows that. Love, for him, is being stuck in this terrible situation he\u2019s in with this [other] woman,\u201d Cannavale says.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe has a moment there in the car [in the finale] when he says to Kay, \u2018We could just drive away,\u2019 and he could go another inch there and he doesn\u2019t. I think that\u2019s where he\u2019s forever stuck in that in-between with Kay,\u201d he continues. \u201cBeing with Dot, being around Lucy and Benton \u2014 that all keeps him close to Kay and that feeling. It\u2019s weird that the reason that he manages to stay even closer to Kay is because he marries her sister, but that\u2019s why it makes for a good, interesting, hopefully emotionally complex characterization and story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tKay Scarpetta (Nicole Kidman) in the finale.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tConnie Chornuk \/ Prime \u00a9 Amazon Content Services LLC<\/p>\n

\n\tBy the end of the season, Kay has been abandoned by all of the most important people in her life. Benton has left her to seek solace in the arms of his FBI cyber-investigator partner Sierra (Anna Diop). Pete opts to move out of Kay and Benton\u2019s house and into a hotel with Dorothy. Even Lucy \u2014 whom Kay raised as her own daughter after Dorothy abandoned her periodically \u2014 turns her back on her aunt after Kay disapproves of the way Lucy has been grieving.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo make matters worse, Kay must fend for her life when August Ryan (David Hornsby), the officer viewers met in the pilot, breaks into her house and reveals himself as the copycat serial killer. Mirroring the way she used to break bones at work to relieve stress, Kay beats Ryan to death with a baseball bat, only stopping when a shadowy figure opens the front door to her house. \u201cShe\u2019s completely become wild,\u201d Kidman says of Kay\u2019s ending. \u201cShe\u2019s become a killer herself. She has found in her[self] what she actually investigates, so that\u2019s pretty heavy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCurtis had already wrapped filming and was not on set the day Kidman shot that big, bloody cliffhanger ending<\/a>, but the former vividly remembers her reaction to watching the raw, unedited footage of that final scene. \u201cWhen I saw the look on Scarpetta\u2019s face after that moment of rage and violence and the loss of all control,\u201d Curtis recalls, \u201cand the panic and the fear \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAnd the loss of everything in my life,\u201d Kidman interjects.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cGoing from the first time we see her to that last episode \u2014 in eight episodes of television \u2014 was thrilling to watch!\u201d Curtis continues, complimenting the \u201cspectacular\u201d way that Kidman played Kay\u2019s unraveling in the final minutes of the season. \u201cIt\u2019s just fantastic work. As a producer, I was particularly excited because, again, it\u2019s on her, with all due respect. So if you don\u2019t buy that ride, you don\u2019t buy the show, and I bought that ride because [Kidman] committed so completely to losing it all in that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSarnoff recently revealed to THR<\/a> that the second season, which will adapt Cornwell\u2019s Cruel and Unusual and The Body Farm, will pick up shortly after the events of season one, at least in the present-day timeline, with the identity of the person who opened that front door to be revealed imminently. While Kidman and Curtis were mum about their hopes and plans for season two, their co-stars \u2014 who are not producers \u2014 were a little more forthcoming.<\/p>\n

\n\tBaker, who had still not watched the final two episodes before all eight released last week, quips that he must not be the killer because he is heading back to Nashville to begin production on season two. \u201cI\u2019ve read the first two episodes for next season, and there\u2019s a lot of trying to reconnect again,\u201d he reveals. \u201cBetween Kay and I, there\u2019s a fair bit of fallout about that divorce conversation, which I think is the last time we\u2019re together in that [finale].\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking in early March before the premiere, Cannavale admitted he had yet to drill down into season two, let alone read any of the seven scripts that Sarnoff says her writers room has already penned, but he hopes \u201cto see more of Pete and Benton\u201d next season.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI do wonder, with what Benton is going through now in particular \u2014 Pete seems to ask a lot about what\u2019s going on with Kay, and I don\u2019t think that\u2019s purely for his own [selfish] reasons. I think he and Benton are good friends, so I\u2019d like to see that relationship deepen a little bit more,\u201d Cannavale adds. \u201cI just hope that Marino and Kay get closer to whatever their catharsis is going to be for each other emotionally without actually getting there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tThe full first season of Scarpetta is now streaming on Prime Video. Read THR\u2019s full post-mortem interview with showrunner Liz Sarnoff here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[This story contains MAJOR spoilers from the season one finale of Scarpetta.] In 1990, Patricia Cornwell published her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[78384,93,61,60,21133,5479,140062,282],"class_list":["post-354944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-bobby-cannavale","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jamie-lee-curtis","tag-nicole-kidman","tag-scarpetta","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}