Erin Jensen|USA TODAY
Spoiler alertThe following contains details from the finaleof "The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window," including the identity of the murderer.
Kristen Bell says cameras missed a top-tier performance:the one she gave while pitching her new Netflixseries, a satire on psychological thrillers like "The Woman in the Window" and "The Girl on the Train."
"Tryingto convince different networks and streaming platforms what we were trying to do when the tone hadreally neverbeen done before, that wassome of my best acting," shesayslightheartedly. "'Trust me,it's going to befunny, and it's going to be scary and suspenseful.'"
Bell is an executive producer for "The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window," an eight-part limited series now streaming.She portrays Anna, a woman weighed down by grief following the death of her young daughter three years earlier, which resulted in the crumbling of her marriage.
She spends her days observing life inthe neighborhoodand becomes infatuated with a new neighbor,Neil (Tom Riley),a good-lookingsingle dadwhom she grows suspicious of after seeminglywitnessing a murder at his house through her window. But Anna's tendency to mix booze and medication can cause hallucinations, so there's a chance she saw nothing at all.
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Anna leans into the typical characteristics of protagonists in these types of thrillers for comedic purposes.She drinks red wine, not by the glass, but by the bottle.Instead of being agoraphobic, likeAmy Adams' character in Netflix's "The Woman In The Window,"for example, Anna has a paralyzing fear of rain.
"The show starts out subtle, but you start to notice the clichés," says Bell. "For instance, my character'sself-absorbedpersonality. She is anartist, and she can't paint anymore (due to her grief).But she knows she should becauseshethinks she's too good.And you see her paintings, and they're very average." Bell says the "character is the least like me I've ever played" because"I don't drink or stare at my neighbors." But shesees Anna asultimately"a kind person at heart, and she is sincere."
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Co-creator Rachel Ramras, an avid reader of this genre, adds that even"the title is a way of letting the audience know you can laugh, and you should be looking for the funny moments, as well as the scary and exciting moments."
Ramras and her fellow showrunners,Hugh Davidson andLarry Dorf,have a backgroundin comedy ("The Looney Tunes Show," "Mike Tyson Mysteries"), but they took their new series very seriously.
"This isn't like a spoofwhere we're making fun of the ways those movies were shot or anything like that,"Davidson says. "Ours is totally committed to being a thriller, while at the same time pushing certain elements to such an extent that you could find it absurd and let yourself laugh at it."
"It's like we took a psychological thriller and turned everything up to an 11," Dorf says.
Ramras said the writing team worked with "Sharp Objects" creatorMarti Noxon on an outline for "The Woman in the House" to ensure the seriesplayed out like a true thriller.
"If at the end of the day you're not feeling like, 'I have to watch the next episode to find out what happens,' then it doesn't matter how funny it is," says Ramras."So it was a challenge for us as writers."
The series also posed challenges for Bell."It was difficult to keep a straight face in alot of the romance scenes because they were so cliché," she says. There was also the scene when she had to becovered in mushroom soup while shooting a fight scene. And the icy shoots when ombrophobic Anna was caught in the rain.
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"I was being covered in ice-cold water all the time when it was 50 degrees outside.That's not the most glamorous job I've ever had," Bell says. "Wewanted that every time shewent outside that she had this imposing threat. (So)was Isopping wet for half the shoot? Absolutely."
Bell is also a fan of the series finale."There was a part that was so outrageous when I was reading it, and yet itfelt fully truthful to the tone we were attempting to commit to.It felt right, even though it'sabsolutely absurd, and I don't think there's going to be anyone who watches the first episode and can predict the ending.And I say that as a person who wason 'The Good Place,' where we found out we were in hell.That was more predictable to me than how thisshowends."
Here's what happens: In the final episode, Anna faces her fear of the rain and crawls to Neil's house to rescue his elementary school-agedaughter,Emma (Samsara Leela Yett). Anna finds her handyman Buell(Cameron Britton), whom she suspected as the killer of Neil's girlfriendLisa (Shelley Hennig), with his throat slit. She turns her suspicions to Neil, but he is also dead, thanks to his own daughter. Emma, with bloody knife in hand, tells Anna, "People always underestimate children, underestimate what they're capable of."
Emma stabbed Lisa because she wouldn't buy any candy bars, and it wasn't it's not her first killing.The sinister killer also altered the integrity of a dock soher pregnant mother would fall into a lake and drownbecause she wanted to be an only child. Emma also pushed her teacher from the top of a lighthouse. She planned to set Anna up for her dad's deathand kill Anna to cover her tracks. Emma would tell the cops she did it in self-defense.
"We wanted to push that to a place that seemingly we haven't seen before," says Davidson. "We wanted a genuine surprise at the end that we also thought was funny."
Adds Ramras:"And we were able to find an actress inSamsarawho was able to pull it (off)."
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