Warning: SPOILERS for Mare of Easttown‘s Finale.
HBO’s Mare of Easttown ended with the resolution of its central murder mystery and Siobhan Sheehan (Angourie Rice), the daughter of Detective Mare Sheehan (Kate Winslet) was at the center of the drama. As Mare unraveled the puzzle and deduced who really killed Erin McMenamin (Cailee Spaeny), she and Siobhan finally resolved the rift caused by the death of her son, Kevin (Cody Kostro), by suicide that shattered Mare’s family.
Screen Rant spoke to Angourie Rice immediately after the Australian actress finished watching Mare of Easttown‘s finale. In a post-mortem, we explored how Rice got the role and decided upon Siobhan’s unique look, Siobhan’s relationship with Mare, and the differences between filming a prestigious HBO drama versus Marvel Studios’ Spider-Man movies, where Rice plays Betty Brant.
Screen Rant: Let’s go back to the beginning: What attracted you to the role of Siobhan?
Angourie Rice: I was interested in [Mare of Easttown] because it had two buzzwords: Kate Winslet and HBO. Those are two really great words you want to hear when you see a job offered. I really connected with Siobhan when I read the script. She’s a teenager and when I read the script, she was the same age as me. But she’s had a lot of adult responsibilities from a very young age. She has to care for her nephew, a four-year-old boy. She’s the peacemaker at family functions between her mom and her dad. She also has to keep the peace between her mom and her grandma. I really connected with those aspects of her story. She had these adult, mature responsibilities but she was still struggling just to be a teenager and figure out where she wants to be in her life and moving forward.
Screen Rant: How did you and hair and makeup land on Siobhan’s unique, edgy look and hairstyle?
Angourie Rice: Initially in the script, [Siobhan’s] hair was long and auburn and just had one side shaved. I suggested kind of a Kristen Stewart-type short, blonde thing. I wasn’t sure they were going to go for it. I didn’t think they would. They just said, “Yeah, that’s a great idea, we’ll talk it over.” And then when I got to set on the first day of preproduction, they were like, “We’re gonna cut your hair!” So they did. (laughs) As you can see in the show. I was pretty nervous but the woman who cut my hair, Shunika [Terry], was amazing. She was the head of the hair department and she did such a great job. I was in very good hands. It was a big change but I’m really happy they went for it. I think it works for the character and it was a good change for me as well, I think.
Screen Rant: When did the cast learn who killed Erin and what was your reaction?
Angourie Rice: They sent me [the scripts] all the way up until episode 6. And then the producer, writer, and director emailed me and said, “Before we send you episode 7 [the finale], you have to guess.” And I was like… (laughs) “Wait, this is a condition?” And they said all the people we send the script to, we want to get a response as if you’re a test audience. So I sent in my guess. I had a wild theory that was not true at all!
My theory was that Kevin wasn’t actually dead and it was him. I don’t know why I said that, I had no basis for it. I was just like, “Oh, this might be crazy! Maybe they’ve done that!” But obviously, it wasn’t that. So when I read the script, I was shocked. It was so impactful and so heartbreaking. And I think for Siobhan’s character, she’s not super involved in the mystery but as a viewer and as a fan of the script and the show, it was quite incredible to read that and also just to watch it all play out. To see all the performances, it’s incredible.
Screen Rant: Did you think or hope at any point it could have been Siobhan as the killer?
Angourie Rice: By the time we got to episode 6, I was pretty certain it wasn’t Siobhan. I had ruled her out completely. I didn’t think that it was her. But I had a lot of people telling me that I’m their prime suspect so that’s something!
Screen Rant: Siobhan’s relationship with Ann, while brief, was a sweet bright spot. Episode 6 saw Siobhan break up with Ann but she went down a spiral, drinking, and texting, and calling Ann. It was a glimpse into Siobhan’s dark side. Can you talk about that?
Angourie Rice: Too much blue! You never want to see that much blue texts in a row. That’s a bad sign. Siobhan’s kind of unraveling in episode 6. That’s where you really get to see the heart of her character. The root of her tension with her mom, we see where that comes from. We see what happened a few years ago with Kevin[‘s suicide] and how that influenced their relationship.
We were talking about how it’s a bit of self-destructiveness, right? Everything’s going fine but she feels she wants to mess things up for herself because she doesn’t know what else to do. It’s self-destructive behavior because she still has this unresolved thing with her mom and brother. It’s hard to play because it’s so emotional but the way that her relationship with her mom comes to a head in episodes 6 and 7, I think was such a well-written character arc that I was really excited to do it. The whole story with Kevin I think was written and treated with such sensitivity and nuance, and you have all these aspects of how they dealt with Kevin’s death and how each person involved dealt with grief. It kind of all comes full circle. That’s what I really felt watching the finale. It really ties all together with the loss of Mare’s son.
Screen Rant: My favorite line of the finale was Siobhan telling Mare “the town is better with you in it”. I loved that it was a subtle way of Siobhan telling her mom she’s proud of her.
Angourie Rice: That was a really special scene. That was one of my first scenes with Kate. I think it was my first dialogue scene with her and it was a really nice one to start with. It’s episode 7 and it’s a resolve of their relationship with I think is really nice. I think that is such an important moment because Mare is so resistant to any compliment, ever. It really ties into Easttown and I think that’s really a moment where Siobhan and Mare acknowledge their differences. But Siobhan needs to leave and Mare needs to stay. They can still be mother and daughter with their different needs and in two different places.
Screen Rant: My read on Mare of Easttown is that it’s really about the women in the story having to cope and move on after the men in their lives did something terrible that permanently changed things. Obviously, Lori with her husband and son involved in killing Erin. Helen with her husband. And Mare and Siobhan with Kevin’s suicide.
Angourie Rice: I like that reading. What I love about the show is the women are expected to be the strong center of the family, picking up after everyone when everything turns to sh–, basically. The women [of the show] aren’t allowed to be reckless, they aren’t allowed to make mistakes because they are fixing everyone else’s mistakes. I feel like you see that with Siobhan. She tries to not make mistakes because she’s fixing up everything else, she’s trying to make sure that everyone else is okay. Same with Mare. She’s throwing herself into everyone else’s problems instead of fixing her own.
But what I love about the show, especially towards the end, is it allows these women to have these breakdowns and to make these mistakes. And also to acknowledge that they don’t have to pick up the pieces all the time. They can’t take responsibility for the mistakes made [in the town] and in their family. I really love that scene in episode 7 where Helen says, “You need to forgive yourself.” I thought that was so touching and heartbreaking because it is about letting go of that guilt and that self-blame.
Screen Rant: As an actor, it must be a totally different experience working on an HBO drama like Mare of Easttown and a huge Marvel movie like Spider-Man. How do you adjust to the differences? I don’t imagine there was a lot of green screen in Mare of Easttown?
Angourie Rice: (laughs) Not too much green screen. I mean, there were stunts but I didn’t do any stunts in Mare of Easttown as opposed to Spider-Man where there were a lot of stunts, a lot of green screen. A lot of looking at green dots and orange dots. It is very different and I think each one poses new challenges, each one has exciting things about it. Each one gave me experiences that I can only experience on that set. On Spider-Man, there is no other place where you can ride a gondola and be drenched with water on a pulley system. That’s so cool and you can’t do that anywhere else but on a Marvel set.
With Mare, having those experiences and scenes with Kate Winslet is such a unique and special experience. Forming that community as well. Mare was so much about community and I really felt that on that production as well. So yeah, there are differences but there are also so many similarities. Whenever I come onto a new job, I kind of fall into a new pattern, and there are similarities with the patterns. That’s what’s exciting about my job. It follows a formula and I know what to expect but within that, there are so many variables that make each experience unique.
Screen Rant: Can you give us the tiniest hint about Spider-Man: No Way Home?
Angourie Rice: No. (laughs) You won’t be the first person to give it a crack and you won’t be the last, don’t worry.
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