The hit HBO mystery series Mare of Easttown wrapped up by both identifying the sad truth about Erin McMenamin’s killer and finding space for an emotional catharsis for Mare. But what about the bigger mystery bedeviling viewers since Episode 1? In other words, if he’s not here to be the killer or some other integral member of the story, what is Emmy-winning actor Guy Pearce doing in this cast? The answer, series creator Brad Ingelsby explains, is kind of personal.
You can listen to Ingelsby’s entire conversation with Vanity Fair’s Still Watching podcast here or dive into some excerpts pertaining to Pearce below.
The truth is the character of Richard the writer was originally meant to be played by British stage and screen actor Ben Miles who is best-known to American audiences as Patrick from the iconic BBC sitcom Coupling or Princess Margaret’s first in a long line of romantic mistakes on The Crown. In other words, though he’s been working steadily for decades, Miles isn’t someone who would have necessarily stuck out to HBO viewers.
Ben Miles in The Crown and Coupling.
But there was a bit of turnover early on in the making of Mare and, after a couple months of shooting in 2019, both actor Ben Miles and series director Gavin O’Connor were replaced. Craig Zobel took over directing duties and Pearce signed on along with him. “That happened when I came on,” Zobel confirmed to Vanity Fair’s Still Watching podcast.
How did Guy Pearce get the gig? A simple favor. Series star and executive producer Kate Winslet had appeared in HBO’s miniseries Mildred Pierce alongside Guy in 2011. (In fact, the production won them both Emmy awards.) “Kate had the idea cause they had worked together before,” Ingelsby told Vanity Fair’s Still Watching podcast this week. “She said, ‘Listen, it’s an easy call I can make, we’ll see if Guy would be interested.”
Kate Winslet and Guy Pearce in Mildred Pierce (2011).
Winslet, who had already asked longtime personal friend Julianne Nicholson to come on board to play Mare’s closest friend Lori Ross, could be sure that she and Pearce had both an established working dynamic and palpable on-screen chemistry together. “To have Kate call me and say, ‘I’m doing a show. You have to come and play this role. This is the story. This is the connection between the two characters,’” Pearce told ET. “I just go, ‘Well, yes.’”
Pearce then had to join a production already well underway. “Guy is amazing,” Zobel recalls. “He jumped in two-feet first. He didn’t have a whole lot of prep before he was able to come the first time.” Pearce shot just one scene before the entire production shut down for several months due to Covid. “Then,” Zobel explains, “we actually had time to between Kate and Guy and I to work on the scenes.”
But because Winslet tapped such a well-known friend of hers to fill in at the last minute, the character of Richard quickly became a source of suspicion for Mare fanatics. Creator Brad Ingelsby agreed with me when I referred to Guy Pearce as an “accidental red herring.”
“I’ve read a bunch of theories online about Guy but he was always he was always written as a character that would just come in and be sort of a light in Mare’s life,” Ingelsby explains. “He came into her life at this very challenging time and he helped her get through it and he was always only that.”
Mare and Richard share a dance in the Mare of Easttown finale.
“I do understand the suspicion,” Ingelsby continues, “Especially because it’s Guy and he’s such a wonderful actor, but, um, but he was always only written as that. It was just a beautiful little relationship that came at the right time in her life that provided some tenderness.” Which means Mare got to bring someone who looks like Guy Pearce to her ex-husband’s wedding. Love that for her.
Pearce’s character then exits the show mid-way through the finale because, while Richard and Mare share a nice connection, her character has some emotional work she needs to do on her own. According to Ingelsby, about eight months pass between the beginning events of the finale and then end. “Sometimes that’s the way relationships go,” he says, “not everything is, you know, a hundred years later, we’re still together. Sometimes someone comes into your life and they help carry you through a particular time and that’s beautiful too. It doesn’t have to last forever to mean something.”
And sometimes, that person is played by Guy Pearce doing a favor for his old friend Kate Winslet.
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