‘The Undoing’ Episode 1: Why did Elena kiss Grace, are there more secrets from the nude locker room meeting?
WARNING: Spoiler Alert!
A real lady doesn't kiss and tell... but should the kiss stay a secret? HBO's ‘The Undoing’ makes you ponder about the brief brush of lips between two gorgeous actresses — Nicole Kidman and Matilda De Angelis. In its thrilling first episode, the six-part series follows Grace Fraser (Kidman) and Jonathan Fraser's (Hugh Grant) “picture-perfect” married life and then introduces a seductive woman named Elena Alves (Angelis).
When the beautiful young woman enters the high society world, Grace welcomes her into their charity auction group. Delighted to meet her baby daughter Teresa, the two have a rather sweet introduction. As the other mothers from Reardon School take a seat at the meeting table, Elena steals a few glances at Grace. Her lingering looks seem to hold many secrets. During the meeting, when the women joke about how Grace should “auction” Jonathan, there's a subtle shift in Elena's demeanor.
Pulling off her blouse, she exposes her marvelous breasts and feeds her baby. Taken aback by the sudden act, everyone in the room finds it odd and inappropriate. Everyone... except Grace. “She was just feeding her child,” she defends when her friend Sylvia Steinetz (Lily Rabe) calls her up. Sylvia, in fact, feels she was “being passive-aggressive about that.”
Elena's presence in Grace's life hangs like a dark shadow. In another peculiar encounter, Elena walks up to Grace at her gym — naked from top to bottom, exposing every inch of her body. There is an air of awkwardness and a weird connection between the two. Introducing herself again, she says, “We met at the fundraiser committee,” and then thanks her for making her feel welcome. She then sits close to Grace, looks into her eyes and asks, “How can I help?”
Later, when Grace tells Jonathan about the meeting, he says, “Were you a little bit aroused?” In a flash, he then mentions he has a flight to Cleveland the next morning. At the party, Grace and Jonathan come across Elena again when the latter brands her a “nudist”. Making hearts skip in the gorgeous gown that let her flaunt her breasts, Elena kept wistfully staring at Grace. When the two find alone time in the ladies' room, Grace asks Elena if she's okay as she wells up with tears.
“Sometimes I just feel overwhelmed...” Elena tells her and Grace advises her to not be intimidated. Elena tells Grace, “You are the most kind. It is true... I feel it.” She then leaves the event crying as Grace follows her to the elevator and even offers her to take the car so the driver can drop her. Elena says no but she then moves toward Grace in what seems like a hug and kisses her on the lips for barely 0.02 seconds. When she comes back, Jonathan asks, “What's going on with you and the nudist?” A few moments later, Jonathan leaves saying he has a medical emergency.
The uncanny moment leaves many questions behind: Why did Elena kiss Grace? Did they have a deeper relationship? What is Grace hiding about the nude locker room meeting? Are there more secrets we don't know about? Overnight, a chasm opens in their lives: a violent death and a chain of terrible revelations. Left behind in the wake of public disaster and horrified by Jonathan's supposed lies, Grace finds herself entangled in a murder mystery after Elena is found dead in her studio.
In another strange turn of events, Grace realizes Jonathan has left his phone in the room and is unreachable. When detectives quiz Grace about the benefit night, she talks about her first meeting with Elena but doesn't mention how upset she was at the party. She makes no mention of the conversation they had and hides the fact that she offered her a ride back home.
Moreover, the memories of Grace show the gruesome murder from angles that only someone who was at the crime scene could remember. Not just that, she also thinks back to the gym meeting and there are a few shots that weren't shown earlier. What is Grace hiding? Why didn't she tell more about Elena to the detectives?
Many fans pointed the same out on Reddit. “It’s interesting that during one of the flashbacks that Nicole’s character had, we saw a new scene from the locker room meeting that we weren’t shown the first time around. This seems to suggest that the two had way more interactions that we haven’t seen yet,” one said and another posted, “I think they had way more interaction than we were shown. The way Elena was looking at Grace at the party was very intense and Grace was very nervous.”
A third joined in, “That’s what I thought too. She wouldn’t have been as outwardly nervous with the police if the extent of their relationship was what we’ve seen so far.”
So, why did Elena kiss Grace? “There have obviously been interactions between Grace and Elena that we aren't being shown. They almost certainly fucked, for one. I also found it telling that they flashed to scenes of the crime while Grace was in her bedroom with the phone as if she was there and remembering it,” one fan wrote.
Another said, “I found it strange that while being questioned by the police, Grace didn’t mention Elena being upset and leaving the fundraiser early. When she was talking to the detectives that’s all I kept thinking. Immediate red flag for me that she’s more involved than what’s shown on the surface.”
One fan, however, believes Grace hid it just to protect herself. “Yes, I think the reason why she left out such details of Elena being strange, seeming sad, and even kissing her was that she knew they would suspect she was more involved or that she knew more than she was leading on when in fact she didn’t know much else.”
Talking about the kissing scene, Matilda De Angelis — who is an Italian actress and singer — said in an interview, “Wow. I loved it. I was so proud! I immediately told all my friends about it. I think of it as my first kiss.” She added, “I’ve been in love with her basically all my life, and on the day I was supposed to meet her, and when she arrived—she doesn’t walk, she floats on the air like an angel— I was just struck by how beautiful and charming she was. She’s Nicole Kidman, but when you meet her, you instantly feel comfortable.”
When asked how she approached the nude locker room scene and if there were any barriers for her while preparing for it, Matilda said, “Not really. Whether it’s my eyes, or my mouth, or my boobs or my vagina, my body is just another tool to express myself. It’s still me. As long as the goal is to communicate something complex, then nakedness can be a powerful way to express and persuade.”
‘The Undoing’ premiered on HBO on October 25, 2020, and more episodes in the six-episodic series will air every Sunday from 9 pm ET to 10 pm ET. Catch the second episode ‘The Missing’ on November 1, 2020.