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In the new thriller The Beast in Me, a memoirist takes on a sinister property developer who may or may not have killed his first wife, and it’s not entirely clear which of the two is more dangerous. It has been billed by Netflix as “cat and mouse”, but Claire Danes prefers to think of it as the more evenly matched snake and mongoose.
“I liked the idea of a writer being truly dangerous, and predatorial,” she says of her character, Aggie Wiggs – grieving the loss of her young son and living divorced and alone in a big house she can’t afford – who develops a fascination with her new neighbour. Nile Jarvis (I can get on board with everything in the gripping eight-part series except, perhaps, just about every character’s name) is certainly monstrous, may also be a murderer, but might just have found his equal, because “she’s a real fighter, and she doesn’t have that much to lose”.
When they meet, explosively, Aggie is riding the tail end of the success of a bestselling memoir, and running out of money. Her marriage collapsed in the aftermath of their son’s death in an accident, and Aggie’s behaviour towards the young man she believes was responsible has landed her with a restraining order. “I really grew to enjoy her company,” says Danes. “She’s in a lot of pain that she’s not fully admitting to herself, but I admired her mind, her intellectual integrity and her chutzpah and, ultimately, her depth of feeling.”
Aggie is experiencing writer’s block on her new book, a worthy analysis of the friendship, across the political divide, of the US supreme court justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Antonin Scalia. “I think it’s a story that could offer hope,” Aggie says, uncertainly, over lunch with Nile (Matthew Rhys), her sinister new friend. “No one wants hope,” he snaps back. “People want gossip and carnage.” Sadly, he’s not wrong, but then what we want and what we need are rarely the same thing. Try befriending a sociopath who may end up manifesting your darkest desires and see how that plays out (it’s not a spoiler to say: not ideal).
Their dynamic is all the more fun, and refreshing, because there’s no romantic subtext – Aggie is a lesbian, but Nile is a rich sociopath so, of course, he thinks she wants to have sex with him. “They’re really excited by each other, and wrestling for power with each other, but they’re also genuinely delighting in each other,” says Danes, when we speak over Zoom. “They’re kind of soulmates, but they’re adversaries, and sex isn’t at play. That was interesting. I’d never played that, and I haven’t really seen it before.”
Was she nervous about playing a lesbian character and how that might be perceived at a time when we question whether apparently straight people – Danes is married to the actor Hugh Dancy, with whom she has three children – should be taking queer roles? “Oh, that’s interesting,” she says. “No, I wasn’t, to be honest, but maybe I should have been.” Thoughtful and intelligent as Danes is, I can’t work out if she’s being a little disingenuous. But it was intriguing not to have to be considered “sexy” to a male character, probably for the first time in her career. As a girl, she says, “I had to learn how to cultivate and assume a more feminine affect”. She remembers consciously training herself to walk in a more alluring way. “And suddenly in this role, I felt I could let some of that go. I felt like my 11-year-old self, before I had to present in a particular way, and that was really enjoyable, quite freeing.”
![‘I really grew to enjoy her [Aggie Wiggs] company’ says Danes.](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/817c1110ab82f83967f85354ab4554ebe74b34d8/537_51_2186_1749/master/2186.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
There were parallels with Carrie Mathison, the CIA agent Danes played over eight seasons of Homeland, the role she is still best known for. “She definitely was a dangerous person who didn’t have much to lose, and was deeply isolated and super-brilliant. Carrie probably did use her feminine wiles a little more.” She laughs and adds: “But she was still in a pantsuit.”
Could she imagine Homeland now, in the current political climate where TV networks are nervy in Trump’s America and politics moves ever faster? “I hope so,” says Danes. “I don’t know if another show was so committed to reflecting the political moment as it was happening as Homeland was, and that was really exciting.” She remembers spending a week with intelligence experts, “what I started calling spy camp”, before the writers went off to write each new season. “We would get a forecast. It was a great privilege, and a little TMI sometimes. I miss it. There was something wonderful about being able to metabolise what was happening, politically, and reflect and comment on it in this fictional work. I don’t have that means of expression any more.”
She doesn’t think a Homeland-style show would be impossible to create today, though. “This is a funny metaphor that’s coming to mind, but if you want to wear a ballgown, wear a fucking ballgown. I think it’s a little like that. If you decide to make a show like that, you’ll make a show like that. I don’t know that Homeland was made because the climate allowed for it. I think that show was made because Howard [Gordon] and Alex [Gansa] wanted to make it.” On her own feelings about the state of politics in the US, she says carefully, “It’s scary. It feels very volatile, and I’m really sad about how frightened we are of each other right now. I’m sad about that, so many of us are distrustful of each other.”
It was Danes, who is a producer on The Beast in Me, who brought Homeland producer Gordon in to get it made, after it stalled for a couple of years (she was sent the script during the pandemic by Jodie Foster, who at one point was going to direct). “It’s really the first time I’ve produced a project from the beginning, and that was wonderful, I loved that,” she says, then adds with a laugh: “That’s the nice thing about being old. I’ve made friends along the way, and I can turn to them to make something with me.”
Danes is obviously not old – she’s 46 – but has been working for decades. She grew up in Manhattan, with artistic parents, and discovered a love of acting and performing as a child. The family moved to California when Danes got the lead role of Angela Chase in teen drama My So-Called Life. Danes was 14, and the boy she was supposed to have a crush on was played by Jared Leto, who was 21, an age gap that these days would be considered vastly inappropriate. Did it feel awkward at the time?
“A little, but it was OK,” she says. Everything was awkward then. “I had barely kissed a boy and here I was making out with this Adonis, and I didn’t even know how to interpret the stage directions. Like it said I was supposed to kiss his face, and I did not know what that meant. I didn’t know that there was any other terrain that one could explore.” It was strange she says, “circling these themes in real time. Two months later, what I was exploring as Angela would suddenly become personally relevant to me.” Teenagehood, she points out, “is so Kafka-esque. It’s a really wild ride, and there I was, having a parallel one as a fictional self.”
But it never felt exploitative or damaging, she says. The people who created the show, including writer Winnie Holzman, “were bona fide benevolent grownups, so it was a very solid, sane environment. That was luck. Not every environment is.” But would she say it’s a good thing that we probably wouldn’t cast a 21-year-old man opposite a 14-year-old love interest now? “I really don’t know. We might, would we not? I honestly don’t know what my moral stance on that is. Maybe because it just was my experience, and I felt safe.” But working with intimacy coordinators now as standard is great, she adds. “How did we not have that before? I’m very for it. But it is funny to be working with an intimacy coordinator for the first time as a 45-year-old.” She smiles. “Like, it’s a little late.”
Danes seems to have survived decades in the industry, apparently relatively unscathed. “I think it was good that I took a little time out and went to college,” she says. Around the height of her movie fame, having co-starred with Leonardo DiCaprio in the 1996 film Romeo + Juliet (she was 17 during filming, he was 21), she spent two years at Yale studying psychology.
“My parents were always very present when I was on set as a kid,” she says, “and made sure I was protected and my needs were met, and I had a good tutor, and sufficient rest, that kind of thing.” Others looked out for her. Jodie Foster directed her when she was a teenager in the 1995 family comedy drama Home for the Holidays. What has she learned from the great Foster? “She said a lot of things, but she always has urged me to advocate for myself. And also to relax.”
Mostly, Danes just really loves the work – everything else that comes with being a successful actor – the attention and awards – is, she says, “kind of just noise” even if what she describes as “the undulations of success” are what leads to more work. “I hope that people are connecting with what I’m trying to make, and I also hope that I have another chance at making another thing.” She laughs. “Like, that’s it.”
The Beast in Me is on Netflix from 13 November.
