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When Julianne Moore first decided to sign up for Lisey’s Story, the upcoming Apple TV limited edition series, from the mind of author Stephen King, she went straight to the source.
« He was so wonderful and inviting and excited … ”, the Oscar winner told TVLine. “He was very ill and close to death, but was recovering, and when he got home he found that his wife had cleaned up his office so that he felt as if he no longer existed in this world. So that was his inspiration for the story: ‘What would happen if I suddenly disappeared from my own life?’ ”
Enter Moore’s widow Lisey, who suffers a serious setback after meeting her famous writer husband Scott Landon (The Knick’s Clive Owen) has lost. When we first meet her (the first two episodes of the series premier on Friday June 4th, with new episodes added weekly), she is still very sad. Those feelings are made worse by the deteriorating mental health of her sister Amanda (Joan Allen of The Family), the appearance of a terrifying and violent stalker from Scott, and a posthumous treasure hunt that her husband left behind.
Moore spoke to King (who wrote the scripts for all eight episodes himself, adapted from his 2006 novel) on « The Secret World Couples Share » and what it actually means to build a life with someone else.
« When you’re in In a partnership, the only other person who knows what you’re sharing is your partner. So you build a universe of two and wear it no matter what, ”explains Moore. « This core understanding travels through your relationship. »
That can be said a lot about the marriage between Lisey and Scott. The series travels back and forth through time, with numerous flashbacks and dream sequences that help describe the couple’s past darkness that continues to haunt Lisey’s presence. Lisey’s story, in turn, employs its title character through emotional and psychological warfare. Love, fear, trauma, grief and more permeate multiple timelines as well as a fantasy world that Scott created in his youth called Boo’ya Moon. What is real and what is being faked begins to blur as Lisey’s memory collides with reality.
With all the emotional whiplash, one has to wonder whether it was particularly stressful to be constantly immersed in such heavy feelings and arguments .
« No, I think it’s exciting, » countered Moore. “I love the experience layers. I like the fact that we had four different timelines. It was really difficult sometimes to keep track – and also where she was emotionally in the story – because obviously it’s very different where she is at certain points in the present, where she is suffering so much loss, than where she is was when she was in the happiest part of her marriage.
« That’s life, » she continues. “This idea that your experiences are not just from the present but are accumulated so that you can always think deeply back to remember what happened to you or how you experienced something, and that informs you about what you are experiencing in the present. Psychologically it was interesting to play. «
For these reasons and more, Moore was drawn to Lisey and appreciated King’s realistic and human approach to storytelling.
» When he got on the [storytelling] scene, it felt almost revolutionary, « she says. “Here was this writer talking about what our normal everyday life was like and he takes all that stuff and adds that element of psychological horror that really relates to our emotional states. It’s just so beautiful. ”
This psychological horror is taken to extremes in Lisey’s story when the threat from madman Jim Dooley (In Treatments Dane DeHaan) turns brutally violent as Amanda’s self-harming tendencies come to a head. Add all of this to her afterlife husband’s news and it is safe to say that Lisey is going through it. Despite everything, she has to use her own inner strength and loving memories to free herself from the tormenting, never-ending grief.
« When you meet Lisey for the first time, she is in a liminal state. She’s someone who’s usually very realistic, and she’s kind of … off the mark, ”shares Moore. “She knows who she was when she was a kid with her sisters. She knows who she was when she was with Scott, but she doesn’t know who she is now – and she has to find out. «
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