Seeking justice can be a lonely business. Making “Furious” was a team effort.
That distinction was warmly apparent when Emmy Rossum, Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Steve Way, and composer Ariel Marx gathered at Vidiots on October 16 for IndieWire and Disney’s “Pass the Remote” screening of Episode 1 and a conversation about bringing “Furious” to life.
With Halloween decorations filling the lobby and a deeply invested audience carrying the conversation into a reception afterward, the evening celebrated a cutting-edge thriller that finds connection in some very dark places. Way stole the show, much as he does in the buzzy crime series — despite his character, Alden, never appearing in the episode we screened. The actor teased that Alden’s encounters with law enforcement offered a chance to make the role personal.
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“If I was in this situation,” he recalled thinking, “How would I… fuck with the feds?”
His answer plays out later in “Furious,” but the show’s blistering comic timing was on full display at Vidiots. Getting this particular group of troublemakers together began with Rossum embarking on a retro viewing project several summers back. Four years ago, the star and executive producer said she was hunting for older films with ideas worth developing into a long-form series.
That search led her to Bob Rafelson’s “Black Widow,” the 1987 thriller starring Debra Winger and Theresa Russell. She was fascinated by its evolution from an FBI agent’s pursuit of a female serial killer into an unusually moving relationship between two very different women.
“I just impregnated her with the idea of creating the show,” Rossum joked of creator Elizabeth Meriwether, taking care to credit the writer as the real “Furious” mastermind.
Rossum brought the project to Searchlight and Hulu, which had previously worked with Meriwether on “The Dropout.” Later, asked whether she liked the writer’s work, Rossum had an immediate answer. “It was a slam dunk yes for me,” Rossum said.
The partnership produced Hulu’s electric new hit, which premiered July 27 with three episodes before rolling out the rest weekly through August 31. “Furious” follows FBI agent Alice Black (Rossum) as she pursues Catherine (Lola Petticrew), a serial killer whose story complicates the distinction between perpetrator and victim. Its suspense extends beyond who will be caught to whether the institutions charged with protecting people can be trusted to deliver justice.
Rossum has a gift for making complicated women feel fully, vividly alive, from the effervescent “Angelyne” to the wounded, tenacious Alice. But a scene in Episode 1, in which Alice invites a man inside to fight him, initially made even her want to throw the script across the room.
Understanding it meant inhabiting a woman who could be powerful, repeatedly victimized, and drawn toward danger as a means of feeling alive. Alice’s disconnection from herself is also bound up in her particularly brutal profession, where, Rossum said, “any vulnerability and emotional connection to yourself is not an asset, it’s a liability.”
Finding the sound of that complicated world began early, too. Marx, who had collaborated with Meriwether on “Dying for Sex,” joined during the script stage, experimenting before finished cuts and deadlines narrowed the possibilities: “She finds a way to make everything feel incredibly authentic and to make you laugh when you don’t feel like you should and to really empathize for someone you didn’t think you could,” Marx said.
An initially jazzier score gradually became stripped down, its defining elements emerging as “vulnerable, guttural female voices” and industrial percussion. Meriwether encouraged Marx to remember Catherine’s full humanity when scoring behavior that might otherwise invite familiar serial-killer cues. “No, remember the other aspects of who she is,” Marx recalled being reminded.
That attention to emotional complexity also shaped Alice’s relationship with fellow agent Nora Washington, played by Bernstine.
“Nora, that character, in my opinion, is one of the greatest roles ever written,” Bernstine said. Although Nora initially “hazes” Alice to an extent, she slowly recognizes something of herself in the younger agent. Developing that bond came easily to the cast. “I feel like we’re family,” Bernstine said.
For her part, Rossum said she knew Bernstine was right for Nora before their chemistry read, and working together only confirmed it. She praised her co-star’s bravery, vulnerability, and willingness to play: qualities that let her move effortlessly between pathos and comedy.
That openness has made Bernstine a collaborator of choice for other remarkable artists, including “The Silence of the Lambs” director Jonathan Demme. She recalled the late filmmaker’s tremendous kindness during their work together on “Rachel Getting Married,” as well as the stage production “Family Week,” describing the latter experience as “beautiful and messy.”
On “Furious,” that spirit of discovery found an enthusiastic partner in Rossum, who remembered watching Bernstine onset and telling her, “I can’t wait for you to watch what you just did.”
The affection extended to Way, whose ability to balance humor and authentic emotion Rossum praised heavily. With material involving trafficking, sexual assault, and violence against women and children, she stressed just how much mastery over that range matters.
“Statistically there will be people in this room who have experienced these things firsthand,” Rossum said. “I think it’s incredibly important to have those moments of levity so that we can go to those very real places together.”
Way understood that responsibility through an especially personal lens. His healthcare writing often makes him angry, he explained, but comedy helps audiences receive his more challenging ideas with a sense of curiosity and grace. Alden’s relationship with the dangerous Catherine also allows “Furious” to serve as a different kind of recognition. Both characters know what it means to need help from systems that have failed them and seeking that support becomes a radical act.
Rossum described a parallel connection between F.B.I. agent Alice and Catherine, as well: “There’s almost like this non-sexual love story between them because they feel seen together,” she said.
Of course, there was plenty more to discuss; some requiring considerable spoiler restraint. About half the audience raised their hands before the screening to indicate they had already seen “Furious.” And afterward in the lobby, fans and guests struggled to keep late-season revelations to themselves. That’s an endorsement of bingeing the now-complete season if you haven’t seen it yet.
Beneath the laughter ran a celebration of disability in comedy, with Way’s command of the room demonstrating exactly why Alden shines in the show. Asked when he knew the series had accomplished something special, the actor described waking up to messages from disabled people he had never met, thanking him: “It’s heavy. It’s really heavy,” Way said.
Before “Furious,” the performer and comedian had gone three and a half years without doing a television show. But Meriwether wrote Alden just for Way: “She and I together have raised the bar for what it means to have authentic and accurate disability representation on TV,” he said.
For a team telling a story about broken systems, those messages offered a meaningful measure of success. With Season 2 already confirmed, there’s reason to hope television will keep making room for critical stories like these. “The fact that disabled people would go out of their way to say thank you,” Way said, “I think we did it.”
Watch the complete panel in the video above.
“Furious” Season 1 is now streaming on Hulu.