The Big Picture

A Murder at the End of the World’s Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij have discussed the possibility of future Darby Hart mysteries, exploring different settings and storylines, but many factors would have to be present for that to happen. Shooting in Iceland and then in New Jersey proved challenging due to storms, but the effects team did a good job recreating the conditions. The actor-director experience on this project was challenging, as multiple scenes had to be shot in one day, but it was also rewarding due to the increased focus on emotions.

Written and directed by Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, the seven-episode FX limited series A Murder at the End of the World (which is streaming on Hulu) follows amateur sleuth Darby Hart (Emma Corrin), as her past collides with her present and she becomes determined to solve a murder mystery with a growing body count. When the tech-savvy hacker is invited to a retreat at a remote location in Iceland, she’s impressed by the caliber of the other attendees until their reclusive billionaire host (Clive Owen) makes them all wonder if something else is really going on.

The thing that’s so interesting about all the projects storytelling collaborators Marling and Batmanglij make together is that they tell fascinating stories that are compelling and keep you wrapped up in the moment while you’re watching them, but then also further the experience with everything they make you think about afterward. They explore relevant topics from their own unique perspective and point of view while also making you wonder if the world they’re presenting could become reality.

During this interview with Collider, the duo talked about whether they’ve thought about telling more stories with Darby Hart, what they learned from their experience making The OA, what their writing process is like, how they chose which episodes they’d each direct, tackling the Last Supper dinner scene, why they felt it was so important to weave in Darby’s backstory, and the most challenging aspect of recreating Iceland on a soundstage in New Jersey.

A Murder at the End of the World Darby Hart, a Gen Z amateur sleuth, attempts to solve a murder at a secluded retreat. Release Date November 14, 2023 Creator Zal Batmanglij, Brit Marling Seasons 1

Brit Marling Has Thought About the Possibility of Telling More Darby Hart Stories
Image via FX

Collider: Serious question, would you guys be open to doing a Darby Hart mystery show with Emma Corrin investigating different sets of murders each season, and have your own Knives Out universe? We need more of this character.

BRIT MARLING: It’s so nice to hear that you feel that way. Initially, we saw this as a novel with a beginning, middle, and end, and it was just about getting Darby off the ground and having her investigate this mystery in the snow. Of course, we also always thought Darby is so vivid, as a character, and she was so easy for us to write and came out so vividly on the page. As that was happening, we were like, “Certainly, you could take Darby and move Darby anywhere and investigate anything.” But of course, that’s all up to so many factors, including what happens in the world and how that changes and shapes storytelling and what stories are needed or wanted. So, we’ll see.

I just love it because she is one of those characters where it feels like you could put her into any situation and it would be fascinating to watch what that does to her.

MARLING: Yeah, I agree.

The last series that you guys did was The OA, which was fascinating and compelling and ambitious storytelling, but also left fans wanting more and still wishing they had more. Was there anything you learned on that series that informed or shaped or changed how you wanted to approach this series?

ZAL BATMANGLIJ: Everything. We were neophytes to the land of long-form when we started The OA. We were just working off of instinct. It was a tremendous experience and the folks at Netflix, in those early days, were amazingly supportive. The whole thing felt very intimate. The making of it, the writing of it, the shooting of it, and then even the releasing of it felt very grassroots. We learned a lot, doing that twice. I’ll give you an example of something we learned. We wrote most of A Murder at the End of the World before we went to Iceland, but we didn’t write all of it so that we could scout Iceland together and bring some of what we learned about Iceland, about the landscapes, and about the locations, to finishing the writing. We wanted to make it all very interactive. We also went to go scout exteriors, so that when we came to build the sets in New Jersey for the interior of the hotel, they would match the exterior seamlessly and you would never feel that the hotel was a set or CG, or any of that stuff. We learned that stuff in filmmaking, making it whole rather than writing everything, then outsourcing it to someone else to realize it.

One of the things that I find so interesting about the work that you guys do is that there is layer upon layer, any of which could tell an interesting story on their own, but you intertwine all of these things together. When you start with the blank page, is there one seed that always starts it all for you, that everything else builds on? Do you even have a regular way that you guys work, when you work together?

MARLING: There is definitely a seed. I think we learned, early on, that if you start writing too early, it calcifies the story before it’s matured. You get committed to the amount of time you spent trying to make beautiful language on a page, so you’re less likely to throw the page out, even if it’s not serving the story. We realized, between us, that telling the story orally back and forth for a while, keeps it loose and fresh. If things don’t work, they fall away when you come to meet again the next day and you only remember the parts of the narrative that are really sticky. And so, we try to stay in that space for a while, until the story is robust enough that we can tell it to anybody over a coffee or a tea and have them hopefully be leaning forward the whole time. And then, we take out the laptops and divide the work, and actually go and sit and write scenes on our own, and then show them to each other. It’s a long process, but I think it’s one that has really worked for us.

Brit Marling Directing the Pilot Episode Set the Tone for the Show
Image via FX

Are there any deliberate decisions made when it comes to which episodes each of you will direct? Brit, are there ever times when you want Zal to be the one to direct because you’re in more of an episode? Are there conversations where you figure out who’s going to do what?

BATMANGLIJ: It was really important, on this, that Brit direct the pilot because her aesthetic and her sense of so many things needed to inform the whole story. The pilot director sets the tone, so it was really crucial that she direct the pilot. And then, I just picked the episodes I wanted to direct.

MARLING: We were trying to find a way to do it, in which we’d be able to spell each other out a little bit. It was such a long shoot and there was so much, just in terms of achieving it on a writing level, and then on a producing level. Anytime Zal and I are not on set directing, we’re behind the scenes producing what’s coming, so we needed to try to find a way where we could create enough gaps in the schedule where we could direct for a bit, be producing behind the scenes in the next bit, prepping the next work for directing, and then get back out and be on set again. Hopefully, we created a good volley.

Actor-directors seem to fall into one of two categories, where they’re either totally fine with directing themselves or they really don’t want to do both of those things at one time. Brit, what did you learn from that aspect of the experience? What is it like, as a director, to handle a complex story like this when you’re also acting in it and you’re communicating with the cast and crew at the same time?

MARLING: It was very challenging on this story. Maybe an average day is to shoot five pages of a one-hour drama. That would be a very full day. But on this project, we were often shooting 10 pages a day. The dinner scene that’s in chapter one, where you meet all the characters and everyone is there, was an 11-page day and we had to shoot it in a day, and I was also in the scene. For me, it just came down to being so prepared, having so many storyboards that we really had a plan. If we were running out of time, I knew exactly what storyboards I was gonna cut and exactly which ones I had to fight for because there wasn’t enough time to be behind the monitor, and then back in the chair in the scene, after every take. I had to do a couple takes, see if it felt good, and then if I felt I got it, I would check it to be sure, and we’d probably have three takes and move on to the next set-up. That was challenging, but it was also really rewarding.

Sometimes, as an actor, you can get too in your own mind about performance. Sometimes when you are being across all of it, at the same time, there’s just no time to think. You have to surrender whatever you thought the plan was and give up to your emotions in that moment, even if it’s just your pure exhaustion from being on day 85. And then, something real and strange and unexpected can come up, as a performer, because you don’t have your mind in the way as much.

BATMANGLIJ: It’s one of my favorite scenes in that episode.

This is both the most incredible dinner with all these amazing minds all in one place, and the absolute worst dinner since all these characters start getting murdered.

MARLING: It’s the Last Supper.

No Matter How Big the Scene Was, Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij Had to Move Quickly
Image via FX

What was it like to shoot that scene with all the actors together? It seems like it would have been a huge undertaking. It’s so fascinating to watch something like that because it’s not a big flashy scene, but it’s just so interesting to watch all the characters interact. There’s so much going on, and it’s really the only time we get that before everything falls apart.

MARLING: Especially for Clive Owen, who’s introduced in that scene and who has a five- or six-page monologue, which is really intense. He did it so many times for just his coverage, and then continued to do it again and again as we covered Emma, covered Harris [Dickinson], covered everybody else, and at the very end, covered me. That’s a lot of time to be performing something and to be on and to be giving to your fellow actors in a scene. Clive was just so incredible and so committed to bringing as much to the performance when the camera was not on him as he did when it was on him. I find that just incredibly generous acting, and I felt that about everybody that night. It was a hard shoot and everybody was like, “All right, we’re here for it.” Sometimes we’d only be able to do two takes on someone’s coverage. If they got it, I was like, “You’ve gotta trust me. We’ve got it. We’ve gotta move on.” By fire, come hell or high water filmmaking sometimes produces good results because everyone’s just gotta be fast and loose and in the moment.

BATMANGLIJ: It also requires a lot of trust, and I think the crew and the actors trusted Brit implicitly. That’s something that Brit has been cultivating since we first did the first season of The OA. The crew really trusted her. It’s very natural for her to go into the director’s chair and, with that kind of trust, you can shoot an 11-page scene that’s that exquisitely tailored.

You do such an expert job of telling the story of Darby and Bill in the past and in their present. They’re always informing each other, throughout the series. How did you work that out when you were figuring out this story? Did you go from start to finish in the past before layering in the present?

MARLING: It’s funny, it was always there. I’m trying to think about how we found it, and in part, there was just no way to put a young woman on screen as a detective and have it be credible without wink-wink, nudge-nudge comedy. The only way to make it credible was that you had to tell her origin story at the same time and get the audience on board with the fact that she had really logged her 10,000 hours as an amateur sleuth. You had to see her grow up as the coroner’s daughter. You had to see her in the morgue, see her at the crime scene, see her solve something behind her computer. Only then, when she’s back at the retreat and facing all these famous, wealthy luminaries that are around her, do you believe that she can really go toe-to-toe with them and not have it feel like something of a farce.

In some ways, it was baked in from the beginning. I think we also were really committed to telling a mystery that felt warm-blooded. I love mysteries, but they can often be very cerebral, and they just work out your mind. We wanted to make something that worked out your heart as well, so it felt important to tell a love story inside that origin story. That was really a part of understanding Darby’s strengths, but also her weaknesses. She’s incredibly courageous, but she also really struggles to be vulnerable in real-time with people because that wasn’t something she grew up doing.

Why did the distinction between alternative intelligence and artificial intelligence feel important?

BATMANGLIJ: It’s a distinction that’s very important to Andy because he doesn’t feel that what he’s doing, what he’s invented, what he’s bringing into the world is artificial. He thinks it’s just a different way of thinking rather than a synthetic way of thinking. The jury is out, in the sense that the rest of our lives are gonna be very shaped by large language models, and alternative and artificial intelligence, and all sorts of different ways of processing all the data that we’re creating and all the data that has already been created. We certainly couldn’t tell a story about a tech retreat without having some AI in there.

Brit Marling Explains the Challenge of Recreating Iceland On a New Jersey Soundstage
Image via FX

The things that look the biggest or most challenging to the viewer may not always be what turns out to be the biggest or most challenging to the production. Was there a scene or moment that was way more challenging than it would appear to us, as the viewer?

MARLING: One of the things that was challenging was shooting in Iceland. There were some big storms that came up, so there were some things that were partially shot in Iceland, and then the rest had to be shot in New Jersey on a soundstage. Trying to recreate the conditions and circumstances, in terms of performance, we had to match what had been happening outside, but now you’re against a Styrofoam wall of rocks and it’s just green and you have to still capture those same feelings or emotions. We worked with an incredible effects producer, Aaron Raff, and he and his team just did a brilliant job recreating some of those spaces. In the end, it all worked out, but it was a lot of moving pieces at the time.

The thing that I really love about the work you guys do is that the experience I get watching it is always fascinating and compelling, but then there are also all the things it makes me think about afterward.

MARLING: Thank you.

BATMANGLIJ: That’s a nice thing to say.

A Murder at the End of the World is available to stream on Hulu. Check out the trailer at:

Watch at Hulu