In “The Girl Before,” everyone is recovering from trauma, including the eccentric architect played by David Oyelowo.
The HBO Max series, premiering Thursday and based on the bestselling novel of the same name by JP Delaney, switches between two timelines that are linked by the architect, Edward Monkford, and his rules.
In the first, a young couple, Emma (Jessica Plummer) and Simon (Ben Hardy), move into his minimalist home to escape from a burglary in their own place. In the second, set a few years later, Jane (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) packs her bags for the same place after her own trauma.
Jane and Emma look alike, but more importantly, they are alike. Both are running from their own nightmares, seeking out routine and comfort in Edward’s neurotic contract that bans pets, children, plants, books and personal belongings.
“The reality is that both Jane and Emma, these different traumas that they’ve experienced have led them to needing to take some control of their lives — to live in a very controlled environment, a confined environment, an environment that has very clear rules,” Oyelowo told the Daily News.
“Having come out of situations that were essentially with no rules, or the rules were broken and they were the victims of those broken rules, I can see, and I hope the audience can empathize with, why they make the decisions they make,” the 45-year-old British actor, who played Martin Luther King Jr. in 2014 movie “Selma,” added.
Meanwhile, Edward is hiding from his own trauma. Or maybe he is just trying to control it. While Jane and Emma are running away, he lives in his baggage, handing out questionnaires to find the perfect woman to live in his home and manipulating them into his storybook tale.
“My character suffers from something called repetition compulsion, which is that he keeps repeating the same psychosexual drama again and again, hoping for it to have a different result from the time at which the trauma happened to him,” Oyelowo said.
“But we all know the result of doing the same thing time and again and expecting a different result.”
“The Girl Before” is at once a murder mystery and a psychological thriller. At times, both Emma and Jane feel as if they’re going crazy, confirmed by the men in their lives working their own angles.
Edward gets away with his crazy, Oyelowo said, because of his genius. The actor compared it to people working in his own industry: “The quality of the work they create excuses them.”
“In society,” he said, “we give people a pass if they are exceptional in one way whilst also being really difficult in other ways.”
For a while, Edward’s goals align with Emma’s, and later, Jane’s. Once they stop, the safehouse that once provided a regimen to counteract the chaos becomes claustrophobic, full of secrets and whispers. The structure is now suffocating.
But in “The Girl Before,” you can’t just leave. Edward’s hold, simultaneously magnetic and disquieting, is unshakeable.
“Because of what he has experienced and how he is now subjecting people to his need for control over his life, he is now foisting that on others and needing to control them,” Oyelowo said. “Ultimately, his journey is one of letting go. And the question is, can he? Will he? What is the cost of doing that? It is certainly not something he is going to do without a fight.
“For everyone in the show, it is about what, ultimately, is going to be the thing that gets you whole: Holding on or letting go?”
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