{"id":135059,"date":"2025-11-14T18:10:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T18:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/135059\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T18:10:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T18:10:13","slug":"is-it-based-on-a-true-story-and-what-drew-claire-danes-to-it-what-to-know-about-the-thriller-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/135059\/","title":{"rendered":"Is it based on a true story? And what drew Claire Danes to it? What to know about the thriller series."},"content":{"rendered":"

What if your next-door neighbor was once the prime suspect in his wife\u2019s mysterious disappearance? Would you keep your distance, or take it upon yourself to find out the truth? In Netflix\u2019s new thriller series, The Beast in Me, Claire Danes opts for the latter.<\/p>\n

Created by Gabe Rotter, The Beast in Me revolves around recluse author, Aggie Wiggs (Danes), who struggles to pen her next novel following the tragic death of her young son. She\u2019s paralyzed by her grief and is unable to write, that is, until she finds an unlikely subject in real estate scion Nile Jarvis (Rhys), who moves in next door. Jarvis, however, isn\u2019t without his notoriety: He was the main suspect in the killing of his wife. Wiggs knows this \u2014 and wants answers. But compulsion and curiosity soon evolve into a perilous, possibly deadly game of cat and mouse.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether it\u2019s Monica Lewinsky or Amanda Knox or Nile Jarvis or whatever, sometimes we are quick to make assumptions,\u201d Howard Gordon, The Beast in Me showrunner and executive producer, told Tudum<\/a>. \u201cBut when we are forced to look at it from another angle, do we have the humility and the compassion to listen and to revise the narrative?\u201d<\/p>\n

When did The Beast in Me premiere on Netflix?<\/p>\n

The Beast in Me debuted on Netflix on Thursday, Nov. 13 at 3 a.m. ET. All 8 episodes dropped at once.<\/p>\n

Who\u2019s in The Beast in Me cast?<\/p>\n

While Danes and Rhys lead the series, The Beast in Me cast includes the following stars as well:<\/p>\n

What drew Claire Danes to the project?<\/p>\n

Danes was drawn to The Beast in Me primarily because of Wiggs. The obsessive, grief-stricken novelist was unlike any character she\u2019d played before.<\/p>\n

“I loved this character who was just kind of a wild amalgam of qualities that I hadn’t quite played before,” she told People<\/a>. “She’s really quite introverted and controlled and contained, but also has this animalistic energy, and that was in an enjoyable contrast.”<\/p>\n

\"Claire<\/p>\n

Claire Danes as Aggie Wiggs in Episode 102 of The Beast in Me. (Netflix)<\/p>\n

Jarvis brings out that \u201canimalistic energy\u201d in Wiggs. Their relationship, which Danes previously referred to as \u201ca little Hitchcockian,\u201d is filled with contradictions \u2014 they\u2019re polar opposites that shouldn\u2019t necessarily work together, yet they do. They find common ground through their similar traumas.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe allowed certain parts of her that she had been in real denial of to surface and breathe. There was part of her that was really desperate for that, and it leads to a lot of mess,\u201d Danes told the Los Angeles Times<\/a> of Jarvis\u2019s effect on Wiggs. \u201cHe animates her, he enlivens her. She is in a very bad way, this paralysis is killing her. And he\u2019s a very unlikely prince to find her in that glass box. It\u2019s perverse, but kind of wonderfully so.\u201d<\/p>\n

What has Matthew Rhys said about the show?<\/p>\n

For Rhys, bringing Jarvis to life was an absolute pleasure. The Americans star isn\u2019t usually considered for grittier roles like this, which is why he was \u201c100% in\u201d after reading the script.<\/p>\n

\"Matthew<\/p>\n

Matthew Rhys as Nile Jarvis in Episode 103 of The Beast in Me. (Netflix)<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t get to play these parts, and I\u2019m desperate to do it just because they\u2019re so enjoyable,\u201d he told Tudum<\/a>. \u201cI got approached by the Beast team, and they sent me the script, and I was like, \u2018Look, if you\u2019d be willing for me to play, I would love to,\u2019 because the material was so rich and the part itself was so alluring \u2014 but also slightly frightening in a challenging sense, because I think it\u2019s very easy to walk those parts into possible clich\u00e9, which I was very wary and scared of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rhys wanted to bring a warmth to Jarvis \u2014 to ground him, in a sense. As he told Tudum, \u201cI wanted there to be a humanity to him, I think, because they\u2019ve [Javis and Wiggs] both been through such enormous moments in their lives \u2014 there\u2019s a damage to him that\u2019s made him vulnerable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is The Beast in Me based on a true story?\"Matthew<\/p>\n

Matthew Rhys as Nile Jarvis and Claire Danes as Aggie Wiggs in Episode 103 of The Beast in Me. (Chris Saunders\/Netflix)<\/p>\n

The Beast in Me is not based on a true story. While it explores themes and archetypes common to true crime stories, the miniseries itself is purely fiction.<\/p>\n

The miniseries, at its core, tells a story of loss and grief \u2014 and the messiness of the human experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s sort of the problem of our time is that people can\u2019t hold two seemingly incompatible truths in their brains at the same time,\u201d Gordon told TheWrap<\/a>. \u201cAnd it does challenge you narratively, but I think that\u2019s where the reality is, because as we know, good and evil and human behavior doesn\u2019t exist in some binary moral, zeros and ones. The fun stuff is in the messy middle.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What if your next-door neighbor was once the prime suspect in his wife\u2019s mysterious disappearance? Would you keep…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[92463,86020,156,92465,18857,1094,111,139,92464,69,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-135059","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-aggie-wiggs","9":"tag-claire-danes","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-howard-gordon","12":"tag-matthew-rhys","13":"tag-netflix","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-newzealand","16":"tag-nile-jarvis","17":"tag-nz","18":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}