[Warning: The following post contains MAJOR spoilers for Murdaugh: Death in the Family Episodes 1-8.]
For Jason Clarke, playing the role of Alex Murdaugh was heavy, both figuratively and literally. The actor underwent a physical transformation to become the disgraced South Carolina lawyer who grappled with drug addiction, stole from his clients, and ultimately murdered his wife and son in cold blood to cover up his other crimes. The biggest transformation, though, was getting into the warped mentality of the man who’d been so cunning and convincing and powerful, until a judge and jury finally saw through it all and locked him away for good.
Throughout all eight episodes, Murdaugh: Death in the Family, ventures to postulate what life was like for Murdaugh amid the growing tensions, after Paul’s (Johnny Berchtold) deadly boating accident put his family in the legal crosshairs of the family of the victim, Mallory Beach, just as his law firm began to find out about his embezzlement scheme, and his wife Maggie (Patricia Arquette) sensed his deception with the drug use.
The finale, which arrived on Hulu on Wednesday (November 19), puts Alex on the stand and, later, at the murder scene to fill in the blanks of what audiences could see in the real-life case, and the results are chilling.
To break down key moments in the finale and his performance in the true-crime drama as a whole, TV Insider caught up with Jason Clarke.
When you were exploring this role, what did you learn about Alex through this portrayal?
Jason Clarke: I learned, I guess, his strength. His monumental, Clydesdale horse [conviction]. I mean, the man has not buckled. In his own way, he’s wavered, he’s learned, he’s been through great humiliation. He’s been through great horror. He killed his wife and son — didn’t shoot himself — dealt with the humiliation in the court of seeing everything laid bare, including his diarrhea with his drug addiction coming off of that, with his money he’s stolen, listed all those people, those poor people that were hurt and destroyed. I mean, the guy’s got the constitution of a horse. And I learned playing him — with that much weight on me, on my frame… I was so bloated, and having to consume so many things or having to not consume certain things when I was drying out the last two episodes myself, in terms of food — it took a lot to be him, to play him. It was exhausting being him… Just entertaining, dominating me. Daddy’s dying, but me. All the time, me. It was exhausting.
In the last couple of episodes, Alex is really focusing in on what Buster thinks, everything he says. Can you talk about just shifting that focus in those moments and just him being so laser-focused on Buster’s reactions?
Yeah, well, I love that simple question that Buster comes up to: “Why didn’t you ask me?” It seems like that was the question that I thought, “Why didn’t the prosecution ask that when you had him on the stand? Why wasn’t this question put across?” Because I couldn’t find it, and it seemed like the perfect question, “Why wasn’t I asked back?” At that point, he truly is all he’s got. And you realize maybe that’s one plank that Alex has got a bit of a lean on. He’s actually doing a bit of support work for him, and that was it… Buster is a continuing line. He’s a Murdaugh, and Bus hasn’t changed his name. He got married. He had the initials on the wedding and all that. There’s something about that torch that he’s planted and handed over and carried on.
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I always thought [Alex] was a shark. The minute he stops swimming, he’ll have to die. I wanted that in the death scene, when you see his side of shooting, there’s that one moment where he locked the gun, and he hears Paul moaning, that he could have blown his own [head off], and maybe for a split second [he considered], and he said, “No.” He’s got the gumption to rack it and turn around, and Paul surprises him, and, bang, gives him a second one, which builds the strength to do Maggie, quite simply. There’s something about these fires that he walked through that hardened him. And then when it comes to [Buster], that scene with Buster, and I, I got nothing again.
There’s three points in this thing where he’s got nothing. The first one is Maggie and I: “I’m going to change…” I wanted to have that element of what you see in the court. He’s got no emotion. I got nothing. When she says, “You’re full of lies.” My little [thought] bubble would’ve been, “Well, she’s not wrong… I don’t believe anything I’m saying here, either. Fair enough.” And then you see it in the courtroom when he’s defending himself, it’s just like [shrugs], “The wicked web we weave. Once you lie, you just…” And then now again with Bus, when Bus catches him out, and at this point, he don’t even give a f***. I mean, dude, really, he just looks at him and says, “You really want to f**ing go there? He might’ve gotten you.” You know what I mean? “I mean, come on, Bus.” There’s an element of like, he just wants to get f*** on with it. He’ll accept his lifelong prison, he’ll get out there and play cards, and then that ending comes in. It’s there within him, an element of nothing’s changed about him, but something has changed in him. ‘Cause you can’t sentimentalize the ending [and show him] wracked with grief or he’s overwhelmed because he ain’t. He’s still sticking by, but at the same point, within his own words, he said, “Every day and every night [he’s visited by Paul and Maggie.” Well, now it’s coming, and it’s there. So it’s gnawing, but that’s what type of man this dude is.
So for you, that final shot of him looking in the mirror, that culmination of this “Man in the Mirror” metaphor that’s been going on, that’s him looking in the mirror and saying, “I can accept who I am because I don’t care.”
He’s in the process of it. He does care. It gets to him. It’s there. Those things are there. I guess it was for me, it’s not just the man in the mirror, but you can’t change the ending. He ain’t giving up. ‘Cause nothing’s happened. He’s just going on. There’s one little recording of him saying, in the trial, where he thinks he’s lies are going to catch up with him, and you hear [it in] his voice. But there’s some element of you can compartmentalize everything, but it came in when you least expect it. The middle of the night, you expect certain things, and that’s the one thing there. That’s why it keeps him driving back to Buster, keeps him a little bit needy, keeps him having a wheel and deal and [say] “You ain’t cheating unless you get caught.” Because he’s got to now, he’s peddling it. There’s just a little more.
Speaking of pedaling, I found that the device of him talking about the canteen and all that stuff is just so heartless. How helpful was that for you to kind of establish that tone you’re talking about?
[Laughs.] I love things like that: “Get ready to put some more money in my canteen.” The other side is that he’s being extorted, and he’s not going to embarrass himself like that. He still deals with his stuff as much as he can, but he needs money. You know what I mean? He can be talking about anything, but it always comes back to him and what his needs are. Just that element of, there’s a double thing going on there. Once you see him in prison, he’s just one dude on his own. He’s having a haggle to get his Gamecocks thing and pay up… And there were things that were coming out through prisoners that were still in there, releasing stuff on his Signal programs and other things that, yeah, people were after because they thought he had money, or he had money.
Disney / Daniel Delgado Jr.
There are several moments throughout the series where it seems like you’re playing a double performance. You’re playing Alex, and then also Alex playing this version of himself. Can you just talk about how that really is heightened in that testimony scene?
Well, that opening is word-for-word. And I really tried to do it exactly, but still inhabit it. And you see at that point, you see him, he’s fighting for his soul and his life, and he always had a strange relationship with the truth, Alex… When you’re on opioids and all that, you’re not feeling as much, are you? That’s the point of the painkillers, to take away the emotion at the end. So I watch him sometimes, I think, “He is crying there. It just doesn’t look like it — it looks fake.” But, I talked to doctors and friends of mine I know, it’s like, “Well, yeah, he’s…” [Imitates Alex’s sobbing] There’s no tears coming because he’s got no emotion. He can’t get it going. He’s in the car and all that. He’s just, he’s on drugs, man. He’s so shocked, and he’s so exhausted, he’s so whatever it is. So you go, “Well, hang on people, he’s doing himself no favors here,” but at the same point, that is his emotion. That’s what he’s got at this point in his full-on life.
And then you see his trial goes on. He loses weight. He actually looks better. He thinks, “This is it. I gotta get up and fight for my life.” And you can see he’d rehearsed, he’d been over it. Even the defense attorney who kicked it off had rehearsed his bit — but kicked it off badly, too much, “This gun!” because he was nervous. He was nervous for Alex, and so you can see the performance and everything creeping in, the calibration that he’s got going on. And once again, that does him no favors. He has a couple of nice moments where he goes into and you see the lip smacking and all that. But he’s just, he’s outside of himself, or he’s inside, outside of himself, coming in and coming and going, and then he knows he’s told too many lies. That ties into that last thing as well. There’s that little man on his shoulder, whether it’s his father, his great-great-grandfather, or somebody in there, he’s got little things in there talking to him, and he’s got his things keeping him down, but there’s legacy.
So I’ve heard there’s more that was filmed of the back-and-forth exchange between Alex and Creighton. Can you just talk about what else we would’ve seen?
It was a couple of great passages I would have loved to have in there. There were a few objections, particularly around the money. I was surprised they allowed certain testimonies to be admitted as evidence because it was [detrimental] — and Alec actually opened it up. He’s the one that opened the can of worms, when you listen. And then Creighton gets straight in there, and that’s when Alex gets really [defensive]. It’s a lot more complicated. You’d have to play it out, because it was one of those moments of, “F*** dude. You f***ed up. Why would you do that?” But then he thinks on his feet, and so he’s answering within it, because the judge says, “You gotta answer this.” And so he’s waiting for his guys, [thinking], “Object, object, object. Shut this down.” And then he finally objects, and the judge admits it. He says, “No, you’re overruled.” It’s like, “What?” And this stuff now, and a whole new thing of testimony — the paraplegic [client he defrauded] comes in, and you just go, “Wow, man.”
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There’s another point where the audience, the courtroom, laughed at him… You can see that they’ve turned against him. It’s become a flash mob. They hate him in that town. Now he’s gone from being their [hero]. You can see that other side of it, that the town has turned a trial by his peers now, there is no empathy left for this man. In a way. I mean, you go, “He’s not going to get a fair trial, because everyone is in this town knows him and knows of him and his family, and the whole thing is turned now.” So there’s just these interesting things that come on, and that’s why his family was so successful as insurance litigators, because a trial by their peers is everyone in the town, and everyone’s making money off that insurance company, so of course they’re going to win and win big, so Walmart wouldn’t go there. There’s things like that which I loved.
I was going to back up to Episode 6 just to have those last exchanges with Patricia and Johnny, because I found them both so sad. It seemed like maybe he was second-guessing it with how innocent Paul was in that moment, and how stoic he was, and then with Patricia, it seems like maybe he was giving her one last chance.
I’m glad you say that. I mean, that was the biggest step we took at all. We compressed a bunch of things there, but to make that work. And it also leads up to Buster saying, “Why didn’t you invite me?” Because you so lean into those things, and then when Buster says back, “Well, why wasn’t I invited?” You go, “Well, good point.” Yeah, the murder itself, Waters laid out his version of how it happened, as a prosecutor, “This is why I think it happened. A lot of things are tied in.” And then we’ve laid out ours. And in my mind, I like what the writers had done, and I was able to make sense from that, because there was no gun found, there was no blood, there’s a bunch of things. So he did a bunch of things very right, and was the element of pre-planned, smart, the phone calls and the texts, but then he made some insane mistakes, like throwing out the window as he slowed down on his way to Mum’s, like touching the phone on Paul’s body, trying to unlock it, but then putting it back to look like it fell out. These things, they were in there, and they’re in the trial, when you go through it, like, “You should never have touched that!” Because then he had to change his story. And you see things start to break apart at that point, which leads then you could do why he said he wasn’t down there, and why he says he gets nervous about being questioned about his marriage and his relationship with his son, all these little things tied.
So for me, it was like there was some planning, but then some last-minute. So I always thought Paul was planned. She was last-minute. Maggie was last-minute. And I’m being very, very general here, just also to justify what I got to do, and also how it played out, post-it. So all I can imagine is thinking, with the boat trial, it just starts off as a silly thought, “If f***ing Paul wasn’t here, I wouldn’t have this f**ing problem, would I?” And then it becomes more and more in a weird kind of a way. And then you go back into the family, and the father, “Did my daddy just tell me to do what needs to be done?” … And then you go, OK, so he solidifies Paul up. And then he’s still got the Maggie problem. Well, she starts to pull away from him, doesn’t she? And you go, “F**, well I’ve lost her. I’ve lost her. She’s gonna know. F*** it.”
That was the last-minute craziness. Or maybe it would’ve been a call for help, if Maggie had come home and she stayed, and they made up that night, and maybe he was able to confess, “Guys, I’m probably gonna go to prison. I’ve ripped everybody off. It’s going to come out. I love you, son. I had dark thoughts, but…” It could have been that as well. It could have led him to that. And that would’ve been the best option if he could’ve just stopped. “You need to stop.” In his own mind — and I did run through these thoughts that, I’d brought them back to the table here, and I just want to apologize and let them in, and let them take my burden and unburden myself to them… but through that, we’re a family, but I gotta go do some time. That would have been a different world then, but he didn’t. It’s those confusions in planning and the way it was done of itself, because there’s things there that can’t be explained away.
For more from Jason Clarke, plus other stars and creatives of the Hulu series, check out our prior episodic breakdowns for Episodes 1-3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.
Murdaugh: Death in the Family, Hulu
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