Inside ‘The Beast in Me’: Daniel Pearle on Crafting The Perfect Script for Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys

The Beast in Me is a two-hander between two heavyweight characters and performers. Aggie Wiggs (Claire Danes) is a writer with knife-sharp wits, dissecting the life and potential crimes of her neighbor and interview subject, Nile Jarvis (Matthew Rhys), a billionaire with powers of persuasion or deep manipulation. Jarvis is a rabbit hole Aggie goes down to see if he murdered his wife.

The Gabe Rotter-created series, with Howard Gordon (Homeland) in showrunning duties, is a drama that plays as personal as thrilling. The pilot is written by Daniel Pearle, who sets the stage for a psychological cat-and-mouse game between Aggie and Nile. Pearle previously wrote A Kid Like Jake for the stage and adapted it for a film, which starred Danes. Pearle’s work has played at Lincoln Center Theater and London’s Old Vic, to name a few of the homes for his stories.

With The Beast in Me, he brought some of his theater background to play with Aggie and Nile – a complicated relationship, to say the least.

The first meeting between Aggie and Nile Jarvis is excellent. Immediately, it’s verbal sparring to see who controls the narrative. What did you want to establish in their first meeting?

I’m glad you mentioned that, because the show is so much about narrative and about language. That was what excited me most. I love those kinds of scenes, that kind of dialogue, but you need two amazing actors to pull it off. It has to be a real tour de force.

What was exciting to Gabe [Rotter] and to Claire was that, at its core, even though it’s a TV show with lots of characters, it’s really a two-hander between these two alphas in very different ways. Language was key because, as you said, it’s so much about narrative.

You’ve got a writer as your protagonist. Words are her weapon. 

They’re weapons, used as ammunition by both of them. I actually think of Nile as someone who enjoys a worthy opponent. There’s no romantic connection between them, but the pilot has its own version of a meet-cute. She’s fun for him, and he likes when people push back. I think he even has a line about how most people walk on eggshells and suck up to him, and she’s the only neighbor who says no to his little jogging path. Those details mattered because the whole story grows out of this chance encounter that sets everything in motion.

There’s no veneer of kindness when you introduce Nile. He doesn’t play nice. How did you want to introduce him, not just to Aggie but to audiences?

We talked a lot about that character’s voice, and it evolved over several drafts. There are obvious likenesses to Trump; you can draw some Robert Durst parallels, some Alex Murdaugh parallels. Unfortunately, many prominent men take what they want and don’t give a shit who they trample.

As we finessed the dialogue, we were exploring when he chooses to speak, when he’s okay with silence, and when he doesn’t feel the need to fill it. One of the most intimidating things you can do is sitting in an awkward silence, if you have no self-consciousness about it or no need to make someone else feel comfortable.

We were also excited about Matthew, who’s such an amazing virtuoso actor and often makes unexpected choices. We didn’t want Nile to be a mustache-twirling cartoon villain. Villainous sociopaths are everywhere in pop culture, but frankly, we wanted him to be a monstrous sociopath who’s still three-dimensional with his own full and lived-in psyche.

There are the charming, devilish qualities, right?

He’s smart, incisive, and ultimately, he gives her something she desperately needs.

On a similar note, how did you want to introduce Aggie — the eyes and ears of the story — to audiences?

When we meet Aggie, she’s been grieving for four years. She’s isolated in this cocoon of grief that’s hardened around her. Nile punctures that. Claire and I talked about how, in some sense, he may be one of the first people in her life who isn’t tiptoeing around the fact that she’s suffered a loss.

Everyone’s probably been trepidatious about mentioning her son. Strangely, Nile shakes her out of that. And he’s interesting to her — he brings her creative spark back to life. She hasn’t had that high in several years.

They are two characters who are both incredibly lonely. They offer something to each other even as they antagonize each other. Each gets something from the other; that’s where the show lives.

There are moments where, right or wrong, a part of you hopes Nile isn’t as bad as your gut says. How important was challenging audience expectations?

Constantly. The show only works if the audience is asking those questions, if they’re on their toes, not quite sure how bad he is or whose side they’re on at any moment. In a psychological thriller, if big questions feel answered by episode three, you’re screwed. No one’s going to stay engaged. It’s peeling the onion so the twists feel both truthful and inevitable.

How do you do that?

I get annoyed when I’m watching a show and there’s a plot twist that’s surprising but feels random, like I’m being manipulated. It contradicts what I’ve seen and doesn’t develop.

The challenge is that if it’s too consistent, there are no surprises; if it’s too random, we’re just being jerked around. Some of that is fun, but in crafting the arc of the show, the question was always: Where is the hammer going to drop?

For example, how far is Aggie willing to go for a story?

We talked a lot about her fascination with this man and what it says about her. That’s a question she’s forced to confront more consciously herself. The fun of a character like this is figuring out what’s operating her consciously and what’s operating her unconsciously.

In episode two, she gets the idea, if I write a book, I can be an amateur detective. I can use the book to get closer to him and figure out if my crazy hypothesis is true. At the same time, she’s genuinely excited about writing a bestseller. Both things motivate her. She might tell herself she’s only doing it to find the truth, but there’s a fair amount of ego and creative excitement in there too.

There’s a fun bit where Aggie asks an FBI agent why they’re meeting under a bridge: “What’s with all the cloak and dagger?” How much cloak-and-dagger did you want in the show?

We wanted grounded characters who feel real, but it’s a fun genre, thriller and suspense. Howard comes from 24 and Homeland, so he’s kind of the king of suspenseful twists and turns. The short answer: as much as possible without it feeling fake or forced. You want the story to feel propulsive. It’s not only a mystery, but there’s a mystery component.

I had a teacher in grad school who talked about “Hamlet,” how it is this profound play about existential angst and grief, but the first three acts are also wall-to-wall plot: murder, mystery, murder, mystery. It allows you to then explore the deeper themes and the psychic weight of grief. I think plot is fun. It hooks us.

And it’s fun to see Aggie at a safari party — she’s in the animal kingdom. Did you ask Gabe, “Did you name Aggie after Agatha Christie?”

I didn’t ask him that. I don’t know where the name Agatha came from. She was always Aggie Wiggs. There were several characters we had to rename for legal reasons, but thankfully Aggie Wiggs was cleared. I loved Agatha Christie growing up — those were my favorites.

At one point, Nile insults her, saying she’s not as composed as her writing. It’s funny because it’s often true that writers aren’t as fluent as their prose. Did that ring true to you?

There’s an amazing Joan Didion interview where she says she’s a bad conversationalist because she gets halfway through a sentence and starts rewriting it in her head. She says, “I’m so much better at a typewriter than in person.” I think that’s very real.

Claire is so identified with Carrie Matheson from Homeland, and Claire has all that strength, but it was important that Aggie wasn’t just a ball-busting badass. She’s a writer, neurotic, and trips over herself even though she has deep inner strength and fortitude. How much of that strength is a cover for insecurity? Claire played with that.

What do you appreciate about how Claire Danes delivers lines?

She’s so precise yet never rigid. She’s fully present and fluid in the moment. She loves words, she loves language, and she’s so intelligent. Writing long, dialogue-heavy scenes for her was incredibly fun. She carries them emotionally and also hears the music of a scene, the music of language.

Coming from theater, I’ve always loved rhythm and pacing, and she just has that. She nails it. It’s always more fun when you can picture an actor’s face as you’re writing a scene.

She’s one of those people whose face can say a lot.

It’s wild. I’m convinced she has more facial muscles than most people. Her face is so expressive. You see every thought in her eyes. Matthew Rhys, too. One of the challenges of this material, especially in the pilot, is how alone she is. She doesn’t have a scene partner for big stretches, which is a huge ask when you’re trying to engage an audience. But she’s one of those rare actors where you see everything happen behind her eyes.