'The Sinner': Parisa Fitz-Henley says she and Matt Bomer 'never used lines', breaks down our favorite moments
The last episode of 'The Sinner' Season 3 aired on March 26 and with it, we have come to the end of another intriguing season of the crime drama led by Bill Pullman as Detective Harry Ambrose, Matt Bomer as Jamie Burns, Chris Messina as Nick Haas and Parisa Fitz-Henley as Leela Burns. In this exclusive interview with MEA WorldWide (MEAWW), Fitz-Henley breaks down a few of our favorite scenes this season and also explained that the pre-shoot workshop that showrunner Derek Simonds organized, helped all actors in their performance.
Speaking about the workshop, Fitz-Henley said, "He (Derek) made an opportunity for the main cast to come together for a couple of days to do this incredible dreamwork and shadow work to really delve into the unconscious and the subconscious and connect with our intuition with this wonderful teacher Kim Gillingham. He flew her in from Los Angeles to work with us in New York, and she is just so talented at what she does."
She added, "Because this show delves so deeply into the psyche and into the shadow — the things that people often don't want to look at — it was a real gift to be able to work so closely with the people that I was going to continue to work with for several months on accessing those parts."
Coming to the scenes that Fitz-Henley was in, she spoke about three scenes in particular and here's what she had to say about each of them.
1. The scene of Jamie grilling food, contemplating burning his hand, while we hear Leela in the background
This scene in a way sets the tone of Jamie and Leela's relationship as well, and speaking about developing the dynamic that we see on screen between Leela and Jamie, Fitz-Henley said that she and Matt Bomer hadn't really rehearsed to get the dynamics. She explains that the two had a great rapport the first time they met, even before the workshop and the workshop itself helped them further tap into each other to play the couple.
She explained, "Matt (Bomer) and I met for a meal before we started production. Even before we had the workshop that we took part in and, and we just had a lovely rapport right away. So it was generally easy to interact with him," and added, "Also with the work that we did in preparation together, that workshop, we never used lines or anything. We weren't really in character for that, but it allowed us to tap into deeper parts of ourselves and I think it just made it easy to interact as a couple because of it."
2. The tenuous dinner scene with Jamie and Nick (Chris Messina)
This scene sets up a majority of the plot including the suspicion that Jamie was somehow behind Nick's death. Speaking about whether she kept in mind the consequences of this scene on the audience and the future of the show, Fitz-Henley said, "I want to know where something fits in the bigger picture, but there's also a level of trust that comes in. Because you get surprised by things. Sometimes everyone gets surprised by things. Anyone in a team creating something — you have a vision, but once it's actually happening, sometimes things go in a completely different direction than you expected."
She also added, "I think I had a structure in mind, but also a willingness to be flexible. And the thing that I can say about Matt and Chris, which is so fabulous and delicious and wonderful, is that they are both willing to play. They both come prepared. And part of that preparation is a willingness to see what magic happens in the moment. I had no idea what they (post-prod) were going to go with when this was edited because there are many different versions of that scene."
She explained, "We were just reacting to each other and reacting at different behaviors. Chris in particular. Nick is the one in control in that time. He is playing with us and playing with our discomfort and playing with our habitual diplomacy and striving for an authentic moment. So Chris made so many different choices that we got to react to and it was very, very fun to do, but they're very different reactions that came. So it was interesting to see what the show actually decided to go with."
3. The argument about not wanting a baby days before delivery
"It was fun kind of going back and forth with him, but it was a challenging scene," Parisa said and added, "By that point, I think we'd found a rhythm as actors with each other."
Speaking about the comment that Jamie made about how being a white man doesn't mean that he cannot have a moment, Fitz-Henley said, "so being able to kind of let go a bit of the attempt to be polite and gentle with him was fun in a way. It felt like an important moment. I really appreciated that the writers included that conversation because it was really interesting, in particular for a couple that doesn't share the same racial heritage or at least has some diversity in their families. These are things that I know get talked about."
She went on: "There are frustrations about how we each have to move through the world in different ways because the world treats us differently and we're allowed to experience the world in different ways depending on how we're perceived. So, I was really grateful that we had a scene written like that where we could even briefly shed light on that conversation."