‘A Murder at the End of the World’: Emma Corrin Talks Premiere Death & Darby Trusting Lee (VIDEO)
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the first two episodes of A Murder at the End of the World.]
Where better for a murder mystery than a retreat, hosted by a reclusive billionaire (Clive Owen‘s Andy), with a group of strangers, among them a an amateur sleuth (Emma Corrin‘s Darby)? That’s the premise of A Murder at the End of the World.
The first two episodes bring together that group, at an isolated hotel in Iceland, with the premiere ending with Darby witnessing Bill’s (Harris Dickinson) death; the two had been estranged, and she was shocked when he showed up (late) to the dinner that night. But while Andy might be ready to blame an overdose for Bill’s death, Darby thinks murder.
Darby’s complicated feelings for Bill directly play into her investigation, Corrin tells TV Insider in the video interview above. In fact, the two did a bit of crime-solving together in the past, trying to track down a serial killer, and her father was a coroner, so she grew up around crime scenes. “That’s in her bones,” Corrin notes.
“But this is an investigation with whole new stakes,” they continue. “I think she is forced to reckon with her past and that relationship with Bill and knows that to do that justice, to do him justice, she has to investigate.”
While the nature of the mystery, guests, and setting make it hard to trust anyone (“It becomes a bit every man for himself”), Darby does tell Andy’s wife Lee (Brit Marling, also a co-creator, executive producer, writer, and director on the series) she suspects someone else injected Bill and killed him.
“I think at that point, Darby’s desperate,” Corrin explains. “I also think that when you’ve got this hotel full of people and you don’t really have any particular leads, you kind of want to start pressing buttons, even if it’s going to end up badly for you. She just wants to test people to see their reactions to things.”
Darby also grew up admiring Lee; she dedicated the book for which she does a reading in the premiere to the hacker. As a result, part of her “wants to trust this person,” Corrin says, “maybe can’t quite believe yet that Lee could ever actually do something like this.”
Watch the full video interview above for more from Corrin, including what Darby thinks of Andy and the AI Ray (Edoardo Ballerini) and what they can say about that person in a mask who was at Bill’s door before his death.
A Murder at the End of the World, Tuesdays, Hulu