Novelist Claire Vaye Watkins on the beauty & brutality of the desert

This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Like the main character in her new novel, Claire V. Watkins lives in the Mojave Desert near Death Valley. Also like in the novel, the desert around her is being developed by an energy company for solar energy. Solar might sound like clean energy, great, but solar on this grand scale is wreaking havoc on the desert ecosystem. Like many frontier territories, the desert attracts misfits, loners, drifters, and as Watkins puts it, weirdos. In the new novel, each of those types is represented in a small community of people protesting the, quote, green energy gold rush. But really, what can they do? What power do they have to defeat a corporate project already underway? Is protest futile, delusional, self-serving? There's a lot of questions this novel raises. Like, how could a mother decide to live in the desert when her ex-husband and child have moved across the country for a better job? How has Rose, the new novel's protagonist, been shaped by having had a mother, father, and stepfather who were each addicted to alcohol or drugs? 12-step programs have always been part of her life as a witness or participant. Watkins' new novel is titled Yellow Pine. That's also the name of the solar desert project in the book. Her previous novel, I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness, is her most autobiographical book and quotes from the memoir My Life with Charles Mansfield, by her father, Paul Watkins. The cover describes Paul Watkins as Manson's number two man. His role was procuring teenage girls, recruiting them to join the Manson family. Claire was six when her father died of cancer. In reviewing her new novel, former Washington Post book critic Ron Charles wrote, Among the swelling collection of books confronting our imperiled planet, Claire V. Watkins' fiction remains defiantly alive. Her stories. are rooted in the American West, that awesome expanse of dunes and deserts that uninformed observers would call empty. Where life has adapted to the damning conditions of heat and drought, Watkins finds characters burned away to their elemental anxieties and desires. Claire V. Watkins, welcome to Fresh Air. Thanks, Terry. Happy to be here. Happy to have you. So, it's too hot, I would imagine, to be in the desert. This summer. So, where are you staying for the summer? Yeah, it is too hot. I'm staying in Orange County. I split my time between there and the desert. I think this is the first summer of my life that I haven't spent significant time out in the Mojave. So, yeah, it's a bit sad. Can you describe the part of the desert that you live in and what the environment is like? Sure. I live in the eastern Mojave desert, about halfway between Las Vegas and Death Valley in a little town called Tocopa, where I grew up. It's not for everybody. It's about 100 people. That will be the understatement of the interview. Yeah, it's for about 100 people. And it's really beautiful, just like staggeringly gorgeous landscape and scenery, huge, huge mountain ranges. There's a lot of nature. There's a little river that goes through town, the Amargosa River. It's mostly underground, a subterranean river, but it surfaces in these hot springs. And there's just this, like, explosion of life around the river. What kind of life? Well, pretty much anything you can imagine. Birds, bats, insects. Each hot spring has a lot of endemic species, so living creatures that only live right there. Each of them has a little pupfish. Most charismatically, probably desert tortoises and then less charming creatures, like gigantic, black-biting horseflies. Yeah, it's a very alive, very biodiverse place. So where you described, it's also around where you grew up, and it's also where the main character of your new novel lives. So now I want you to describe how it's being developed. Yes, so the vast majority of land in this part of the country is public land. So it's owned by, in theory, all of us, but it's administered by the federal government. And it has been sort of in the crosshairs, I would say, of what boosters like to call the green energy gold rush. So it's extremely sunny. It's a good place for solar development, in theory, for that reason. It's also kind of. being besieged by other types of energy development, like geothermal and mining. I mean, mining has been happening out there for a really long time, although the scale is getting bigger and bigger. The aquifer has been pretty dramatically depleted. And, you know, there's not a lot of water in this area to begin with in the best of times. So the natural resources are really being pushed to the brink in a pretty dramatic way. And there's been a long, long history of environmental injustice. You know, Yellow Pine and where I live is not far from the Nevada test site where the federal government detonated almost 1,000 nuclear bombs until 1992 when I was about in the third grade. So it's a place that's been, like, treated like a wasteland for a really long time. And that story has been very cooperative and convenient for extraction and exploitation of the natural resources. So I was worried that while I'm really, I feel really convinced that we need to decarbonize the economy and the need for renewable energy is obvious to me, I was really concerned that there would be some really serious sacrifices being made that didn't seem right to me or fair and that I don't think will actually help us transition off of fossil fuels. So in the novel, there's a small group, there's a lot of protesters who want to stop this development of the desert. But the novel really does ask the question, like, what's the point? They're not going to win. There aren't a lot of people around to watch. There's not a lot of media around to report it. They're in the desert. So what are your thoughts about that? Well, yeah, I think at one point they say, you know, it's not a blockade because we're not delusional. But they are still very principled. You know, they can tell that this is wrong. And so it, I think, is a matter of morality. Taking action, even though you don't have a real grounded expectation of being successful, I think there's still value in the action to watch and witness and be able to say that you saw what was there. I mean, that's what drove me out to Yellow Pine was that I wanted to be able to say that I saw it before it was gone. And I guess I kind of, I kind of just feel like if you only engage in an action that you're certain is going to be successful, that's pretty cowardly, really. You know, I mean, we want to be strategic and effective as activists, but there's no guarantee in any of this stuff. And that doesn't mean it's not still a worthwhile way to spend your life. As you mentioned, you grew up near where there are a lot of atom bomb tests and also near where there's a lot of there's a big disposal site for nuclear waste. Yes. So how aware of that were you when you were growing up? I was painfully aware of it. I was, I don't remember a time when I ever didn't know about Yucca Mountain, that nuclear repository that you're referring to. I mean, and that's another win, you know, there's a lot of very gnarly waste going into that mountain today, but not nuclear waste because of people stood up and said, no, you know. So, yeah, I, my parents were involved in activism against nuclear testing and against Yucca Mountain and against water, water projects. And I remember feeling really hurt by it as a kid, feeling like, so they think that's okay to do to me? Like, I'm just a kid, you know. It made me feel like, we were expendable people or that we didn't, we didn't matter. I mean, that was, that's the story usually of this type of exploitation is like, there's no one there anyway. It's a empty place, you know, and that it's already dead. And that's a really confusing thing to be told when you're a lively kid who, you know, I understood that that was wrong and I didn't, I didn't deserve it. And I know, no one does. And yeah, I had a sense of clarity about it that I don't really think has gone away. Were you able to hear the blast go off? Like, did you know when it was happening and were you warned by the government when it was happening? So by the time I came along, the detonations were underground. They were happening in a subterranean way, which was ostensibly better because it wouldn't be, you know, releasing directly into the atmosphere yeah exactly yeah but the problem is of course that that's where the water is there is underground oh right yeah so no i didn't hear them or see them my mom had as a kid she would go up on the roof of her trailer she told me stories about going up there and they would put like sunglasses on to be safe you know um and yeah my my grandma worked in casinos and atomic tourism was like a part of our life what's atomic tourism atomic tourism is the most amazing coping mechanism that the people of southern nevada came up with to deal with the fact that the their own government was was bombing them it was a phenomenon where people would come to vegas to watch the detonations and people would dress up as like atomic bomb girls there were show girls who had like mushroom cloud headdresses you know and they would dress up as like atomic bomb girls there were show girls who had like headdresses and they would dress up as like atomic bomb girls there were show girls who had like and there would be parties to like bomb detonation watch parties up high in the casinos there's still a lot of like i don't know it's almost like the culture sort of metabolized this like ghastly like deeply wrong phenomenon into a tourism gimmick it's incredible it is incredible yeah you have cancer in the family maybe as a result of it like you're right that your father probably died from the mining or from the atom bomb test this is the thing with environmental injustice which is kind of a wonky academic phrase but the way i understand it is it it means you get less life you know that there are some some people who um get more time on this earth than than others some people are expendable in that in this model that we have and we think we can kind of cordon it off it's what what activists are doing and i think it's a good thing that we're able to do that and i think it's a good thing talking about when they talk about a sacrifice zone um yeah we have this myth in america i think that like we can do this stuff elsewhere like war is something we do elsewhere and um but it we do it to ourselves too you know when we when we hurt the land um in the air and the water we're we're hurting ourselves so yeah he could have got it from a number of um shenanigans but at the end of the day it's a good thing he only lived to be 40 years old so you describe how living in the desert means living with death all around you and i want to say that i grew up with westerns on tv and westerns in the movies and one of like the common themes one of the common plot points in westerns is that somebody's kind of trekking through the desert and they're lost and they're parched and they're on the verge of death and buzzards are flying overhead or the villain has dragged the hero into the desert and left and they're on the verge of death and buzzards are flying overhead or the villain has left him or her there to die and they're parched and you know starving and buzzards are flying overhead um so i don't think that's what you mean when you say there's death all around you in the desert so what what do you mean what is dying all around you well it's not that dissimilar from those tropes you know i i think to be a um small you know barely upright hairless mammal walking around in that um climate can be really scary and it does make you feel like oh i could die out here you know it's not we're really not that far away you know you're air conditioning your car overheats you're on the side of the road and it's 120 degrees there will be buzzards circling and i think there's something primal and immediate about that um and i think i was exposed to it mostly because my um my mom ran this little museum and i was like oh my god i'm gonna die and rock shop on the edge of death valley and a lot of tourists would come through especially european tourists maybe they had seen some of those westerns that you had seen and wanted to have a a death valley adventure and and my mom used to say that it was her job to save the european body from the european imagination and i would listen to her and occasionally people would go go missing and i would listen to the dramas of someone not making it which happens pretty regularly out there it's an extreme place did you ever get lost in the desert and worry about dying of thirst yeah i have actually i got um a pretty mild heat stroke uh once when i was in joshua tree of all places the most you know gentrified part of the mojave desert forgive me joshua tree i love you but um i just got really hot and i was on a short walk not very far from my car at all in a place i could have thrown a rock and hit someone's house probably i was really not out in the wilderness but i got so disoriented and heat does something really wild to your brain and i was kind of not sane and couldn't find the path back to my car and everything starts to sort of look the same i got really disoriented and really panicked and luckily it didn't last that long but yeah i've been confronted with how quickly it can happen on on the opposite side um like joshua tree of all places i could have thrown a rock and hit someone's house probably i was really not sane and could have thrown a rock and hit someone's house probably i was really not sane and jesus and moses spent significant time in the desert i mean moses got the 10 commandments in the desert jesus like fasted for 40 days and 40 nights and was tempted by satan um and i'm wondering if living in the desert has um affected your sense of divinity yeah it has i wasn't raised religiously or even very spiritually at all so i came to joshua tree of all places and i was to that on my own later in life um i was given the gift of desperation they say and um just needed help like i had this i came to this point in my life where i felt like um i had kind of exhausted all the like intellectual secular educated uh um ways of living and i needed something a lot a lot older um and when i'm in the desert i can feel a feeling of being a part of something bigger than me um which which is how i how i think of the divine um i can really appreciate um that i'm a part of this living land and i give it something and it gives me something even just thinking about my breath um and these these dark times have driven me to buddhism lately so i um have that practice to kind of draw on and i've done yoga for a really really long time so um but yeah i i think i think that that must be true everywhere that um there's a divine part of me and in all all of this but it becomes a part of me and i'm a part of this and i'm a part of this and i'm a part of this and it's very very clear for me out out in the desert um and that's why i need to keep going out there so on the one hand you're living with death all around you and on the other hand you're experiencing this new sense of divinity living in the desert so um those are both connected and opposite at the same time um yes and and and in your new novel and in your previous novel you write a little bit about living in the face of imminent death and in the new novel um the main character's boyfriend describes how he used to dangle off of a cliff without a rope to feel the presence of god and he describes it as a meditation that focuses you because you can't think of anything else but your body and the rock you feel your breath you feel the wind on your body so it brings you back to your body and it makes you in the world in your previous novel i love you but i've chosen darkness you write about a boyfriend jesse lived like he was dying take it from me you do not want to live with someone who actively lived like he's dying so um can you talk about both sides of that you know the downside of living like you think you're dying and the downside of living like you think you're dying and the downside of living like a sense of exhilaration and why why you thought about this in the first place well i thought about this probably because my first memory is my dad dying when i was six that's really like where i begin in my story i mean he was sick with cancer for a few years before he died and i don't really remember having a time where death wasn't a really a presence in my in my family you know that his his um absence like changed everything and i've come to feel pretty grateful for that actually because i have not i mean i've made mistakes and lived foolishly as much as anyone has but i have been gifted with not being quite perhaps as in as much denial of the fact of death as i might have otherwise been i don't know our culture is so weird about death um it's like they're opposite hands but they're the same hands because there's i don't know as far as i can tell there's There's a part of us that is, you know, infinite and divine, like we were talking about. And then there's a part of us that's very finite and only here for a little while, as far as we know. And we're in this body. And I felt really grateful for that. And it makes me want to live a good life. Well, we need to take a break here. So let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, my guest is Claire Vey Watkins. Her new novel is called Yellow Pine. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Claire Vey Watkins. Her new novel, Yellow Pine, is about a woman, Rose, approaching the age of 40, who, like Watkins, lives in the Mojave Desert. Rose joins a group of people, misfits, weirdos, protesting an energy company's giant solar project, wreaking havoc on the desert ecosystem. Rose has also chosen to live in the desert while her ex-husband, Terry, lives in the Mojave Desert. Her ex-husband actually moves to Philadelphia to accept a better job. And after they agree their daughter would be better off in a Philly preschool, their daughter moves to Philly, too. A painful separation for Rose, but not quite painful enough for Rose to move, too. When the novel begins, Rose is working for an environmental group that she considers part of the nonprofit industrial complex. So in each of your last two novels, the main character decides to live far away from her young daughter. In the new novel, the couple has been living in Nevada, but they've been growing apart, they divorce. The husband gets a job in Philly, close to his parents and his sister, and they agree it would be best for the daughter to go to preschool there in Philly. But Rose stays out west, moves to the desert, and works in a fundraising job with an environmental group. She's kind of relieved to be away from her ex because they've been drifting so far apart, but it's painful to be away from her daughter. In your previous novel, I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness, the main character goes to the desert where she grew up and decides to stay and leave her husband and their young daughter behind if they don't want to stay in the desert. What got you thinking about what it means to live far away from your young child? Well, I live far away from my own young daughter for most of the time. She's with me on break. She's with me on breaks and on summer vacation. So that's a sacrifice that I've chosen to make, and I think it's for her good. I think it's for the greater good, the good of the family system. And I think it got me thinking about right sacrifice and wrong sacrifice. You know, parents have to sacrifice for their kids. And I also notice that when there's too much sacrifice, it can get pretty dark. You know, we get into territory of like martyring ourselves or not living our lives in the name of our kids, you know. And it's so much pressure for a kid to have to bear. Like, they didn't ask for that. They didn't ask to be born, you know. So I'm just interested in the process of a parent letting go. And in the case of. In the book, you know, trusting that the other parent is trustworthy and has got it. And I'm really lucky that that's my situation. If you're comfortable talking about it, can you talk a little bit more about what the process was like of making the decision that this was a good sacrifice and that it was good for the family? You know, I think I would probably rather talk about Rose's approach to it. Sure. That's the main character in your new novel. Right. Yeah. So for Rose, you know, the decision is a mixture of good reasons and maybe some bad reasons. Like, she's pretty guilty. At one point, she describes herself as being sopping with guilt when the decision needed to be made. But she has some good reasons, too. She feels, like, called to defend the land where she lives. She feels that that's a meaningful purpose. And to have a parent that has a meaningful life, I think, is a great gift. To have a parent that is still, like, a full-fledged, whole human being, which is what Rose is trying to do, I think that's really, really important for kids. So your previous novel, I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness, starts with this postpartum questionnaire. And it's a multiple-choice questionnaire. I want to read some of the questions. One, since my baby was born, I've been able to laugh and see the funny side of things. A, as much as I ever did. B, not quite as much now. C, not so much now. D, not at all. Two, I have looked forward with enjoyment to things. C, not so much now. D, not at all. And so on. And so Rose comes up with answers in essay form to all of these, like, A, B, C, D, multiple-choice answers. She counters it with her own real answers. So did you have to take a survey like that? I did, yeah. Questionnaire? Yeah? Yeah. That was the first piece of writing that I did that became that book, I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness. When my daughter was born, I took this questionnaire. And I found the language just very confusing and baffling and funny, accidentally funny, unintentionally funny, I thought. So, yeah. Then I thought, well, this should be an essay test. And then I started writing these little essays in response to the questionnaire. My doctors definitely described me as having postpartum depression. And I, you know, I followed their advice accordingly. But I don't really think that's exactly what was happening. I think I was having a kind of an existential crisis. I think it was like a spiritual confrontation with myself. I had this child and doing something really, like, heroic. A lot of the other stuff that I was doing in my life sort of suddenly seemed really meaningless. And the things that had given me a sense of purpose, like striving in my career, they just suddenly seemed absurd. Can you say more about what this was about, this existential crisis? I was a really ambitious young person. I was striving a lot to do everything in the right way and in the right order. Like, I was a straight-A student. I did really well in school. It helped me get out of my kind of crazy family scene. And I was kind of in a survival mode, I think, looking back on it. You know, using, like, my education and eventually my profession, like, as a university professor, to get safe. And even using intimate relationships. As a way of getting safe. And then all of that was kind of culminated in having this child. And I think I was telling myself a type of, I don't know, almost like a messianic story. Where, like, once I arrive at this place and I'm middle class and I have a husband and a child, all will be good. And it wasn't. I was still myself. And I still had, I had, like, deeper stuff that I needed to confront. That couldn't, the, you know, solution wasn't outside in, like, external validation or money or prizes or prestigious jobs. It had to, like, come within. So when she was born, that was really the beginning of me starting to, like, dig in deep with myself. And just, I think, the way Mary Oliver phrases it is, like, live your one precious life. Well, let me reintroduce you here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Clara Vey Watkins. And her new novel is called Yellow Pine. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. Let's get back to my interview with Clara Vey Watkins. I want to ask you about your father. Because he joined the Charles Manson family. And for people who don't know Charles Manson, and some of our listeners might be too young to have, like, seen documentaries or read books about him. But why don't you describe Manson? Most people would probably describe him as the leader of a cult, a cult of young hippies, who were, as Joan Didion says, participating in the paranoia of their times. And eventually, spectacularly so, it culminated in these murders in Los Angeles in 1969. And my dad was a teenager. For him, in the beginning, the family was all about music and sex and drugs. And he'd come from a pretty gnarly household. And I think. Your father. Yeah. And Manson, too. Not incidentally. Yeah. So, yeah, Manson was a lot older than most of them. A lot of them were young women. A lot of them had those women, the girls, and some of whom eventually committed the murders. They had been, like, given to Manson as children. So, it was a really exploitative scene, it sounds like. What I would say to you. to people if they're not familiar with him, he became this, like, boogeyman that showed the culture. Joan Didion described it, the day of the Manson murders, as the day the 60s ended. And it became this fable, this allegory about how, like, the countercultural impulse was dangerous and could only lead to, you know, murder and mayhem. And it scared a lot of people off of the kind of thing that the hippies were up to. And it gave their enemies a lot of ammunition. Well, Manson used the whole, like, free love, sex, drugs, and rock and roll kind of thing to totally exploit women, young girls, teenagers who had just come to California, who'd maybe run away from home, who had no direction. They just knew they had to get away. And so, you know, he would know how to flatter them and take them to his home and use them sexually. And then, apparently, your father, because of music, started playing with Manson because your father played and Manson played. But then your father, as Manson grew, like, darker, your father became his procurer. He was the one who found the teenage girls and brought them into the Manson cult. And I think it's fair to call it a cult. So, like. Like, how much of that did you know when you were growing up? I know your mother told you some, and then you and your sister learned more about, you know, like, Manson and your father from books like Vincent Pugliosi's Helter Skelter. But how much did you really know? And I should say, your father was not involved with the murders. He wasn't even in town, I think, at that time. Yeah, he was out in Death Valley. So that's kind of where the mythic, like, presence of the desert in our family, it was almost as if, like, the desert was the desert. And so, you know, the desert saved him from being involved. And Manson was the one who first sent him out to the desert to find a hole for them to wait out Helter Skelter in, you know? And that's a really good point about there's nothing really countercultural about Charles Manson, maybe except for that he liked to do drugs. But, like, he was very sexist, very, very racist, you know? And he did some time in prison. A lot of time. Do you know how your father ended up being. Manson's procurer of teenage girls? Well, the way my mom told it, it was because he was very good looking. And he was young. He was young enough to enroll. He enrolled in Pacific Palisades High School, briefly, to meet women. It sounds like in my dad's book he writes about, and it's a tricky thing because it's a co-written book. I don't know how much of this is actually him, and he's not around for me to ask, you know? But he writes about it as being just, like, a wonderful, time for a kid who's, like, come of age in a really violent, repressive, like, 1950s, abusive, scary house. Your father turned against Manson and was one of the main witnesses who testified against Manson. Do you know how he decided to do that? When he wanted to leave the family, at first Manson said, okay, that's fine. Then he changed his mind, and they were in, like, a power struggle for a while. And they were out in Death Valley at the ranches. And eventually there was a night that he describes in his book where he opened the door of the cabin where he was staying with a couple other people who had also defected from the group. And Manson was, like, squatting there with a knife between his teeth. And so he thought he would be killed. And he walked that night across Death Valley, basically, probably around, like, 50 miles or so. But he fled for his life and then went to the police, went to the Inyo County sheriffs. And I think he was trying his best to get safe. He had heard about the murders, but at that point people had been kind of, like, gossiping or alluding to them. I think he was just, like, getting, you know, a very, very hard reality check and realizing that this was not loving paternal guru that he thought he had. What did your mother know about his involvement with the Manson family when they met and fell in love? You know, my grandma met my dad first the night before. He was a bartender, and she had gone out to the bar. And I think she told my mom something like, there's a really cute bartender out there. He was in some cult, but he's really cute, and you should go and, like, chat him up. And my mom did that. And my understanding is they talked about it right away. I think everybody in town pretty much knew. But she was okay with it? Yeah, I think she understood that people make mistakes and can be lost. I mean, she definitely, like, made her share of mistakes. I think some of this was that eventually they got involved in, like, 12-step recovery, you know, where you are part of the medicine from recovering from addiction. is to be honest. So I think they had a pretty profound philosophical and spiritual tradition that was helping them navigate the complexities of what, I mean, that's just being a human. I want to ask you about solitude. As you write, there's a difference between solitude and being lonely. What do you like about solitude? And were you always comfortable being by yourself? Yeah. I started surfing recently, so I'm like, I got a lot of surfing metaphors going on. You really got to kind of try, like, stay in the pocket of not becoming isolated or too lonely or misanthropic, which is a risk for me, feeling like other people are bad, like a malevolent force that I'm a part of. I don't like it when I get into that way of thinking. Ideally, solitude helps me be with others, but I have to be able to retreat from them. I also, you know, most of the peopling I do is in reading and in books. And I have to remember that those aren't real people either, you know, as real as they can seem. Do you feel that one of the downsides of being with others is that you're not able to be with other people? Is comparing yourself to other people, fearing you're coming up short, or feeling like you're competing with them in some way? Yeah, that's a real hazard. I mean, comparison, I think is, especially for an artist, I think it's pretty much useless. You know, I try not to do it at all. I've had times in my life where I have kind of been on a, like, comparison is like a drug I'm trying to kick. Because I'm me, you know, I'm me. I really, for some reason, for me, it's Zadie Smith. I want to be like, why am I not doing what Zadie Smith is doing? And it's like, well, you're Claire, babe, you know, Zadie's gonna Zadie and George Saunders gonna George Saunders, and you just do Claire, you know, that's enough. I feel, I feel best when I can inhabit that and let everybody else just do their own thing, too. It's been great to talk with you. Thank you so much. Likewise, Terry. Thanks for having me. Claire Vey Watkins' new novel is titled, Yellow Pine. After we take a short break, TV critic David Bianculli will review the new series, Furious, created by Elizabeth Merriweather, who also created New Girl, The Dropout, and Dying for Sex. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. The new Hulu series, Furious, stars Emmy Rossum from Shameless as an FBI agent on the trail of a serial killer. Our TV critic David Bianculli has this review. Lawmakers chasing female fugitives almost have become their own subgenre. Lucky is streaming weekly episodes this summer on Apple TV. Killing Eve was a huge hit a few years ago for BBC America. And way back in 1987, the movie Black Widow may have started it all. It showcased Deborah Winger as an investigator in pursuit of a serial killer, played by Teresa Russell, who married wealthy men only to murder them. That very movie it turns out was the official inspiration for Elizabeth Merriweather's new Hulu series, Furious. Black Widow is even named on screen in the opening credits. But Merriweather, who's the creator of Furious, has done more than merely update or remake Black Widow. She's totally transformed it, giving it new purpose and depth, with more unpredictable twists and complicated, flawed, surprisingly funny characters. All those aspects make sense once you remember that Merriweather not only created the very clever sitcom New Girl, but also two excellent miniseries focused on troubled women, The Dropout and Dying for Sex. In the Black Widow movie, Deborah Winger was fine as the film's protagonist, but Teresa Russell as the chameleonic killer was way out of her depth. Furious has no weak links whatsoever. Emmy Rossum, who played Fiona in Shameless and the title role in Angeline, stars as FBI agent Alice Black. She has an antagonistic relationship with almost everybody, including her boss, played by Danny McCarthy. who's got plenty of attitude of his own you wanted to see me you need to stay in your lane why am i being told a brooklyn homicide detective wants your advice on an overdose death i worked out of the brooklyn north homicide squad when i was with the nypd i don't care what you did at the nypd your job now is to stay in the applicant pool and answer the phone when the crazy people google the fbi and call the number on the bottom of their screen i know you're requested to be assigned to sex crimes but leadership will assign you an operational squad when you're ready i know that you know a detective named uh danny kelly because he requested your help i do we worked homicide at brooklyn north together is this the officer you disclosed having a domestic relationship with that wasn't him that was someone else what happened bad breakup so you came running over here because i like to know these things in advance yeah and i just told you alice is on the of a female she suspects to be a serial murderer played by lola petticrew the irish actress from say nothing the more we see of her character who goes by many names and guises the more slippery she gets and also more multi-layered when we first meet her she curls up next to her latest victim who has collapsed on the stairs she injects him with a fatal dose of fentanyl puts her face right next to his and watches him die i don't really like listening to you i don't like the sounds you're making but i love your smile before long she sets her sights on a new victim a wealthy lawyer whom she targets at a party she flirts then sleeps with him but doesn't kill him instead she waits until the next morning when he presents her with a non-disclosure agreement to sign for her cat and mouse game to really begin that game involves him thinking he's the cat not the mouse and she's devious enough to adopt whatever personality and push whatever buttons she has to in order to ensnare him in her web this victim is played by rob delaney who also played a kinky character in dying for sex it says i can't say anything about you i can't do anything to hurt you will you destroy me it's like you own me no it's just you know it says that you can't share any information and there's a liability clause but i want you to own me i want to belong to you look i'm just a lawyer okay and i know we did a lot of drugs last night but i'm not really into the crazy stuff what if i just like stayed here all day and waited for you to come home i i'm not i can't you have cameras you can watch make sure i don't do anything wrong i'm not i'm not going to give you a key to my apartment i don't want a key i want to be locked up there's also a third very shrewd woman in furious nora one of alice's fbi superiors played by quincy tyler-brown bernstein they're all riveting but the male actors are outstanding too not only the ones mentioned already but also scoot mcnary jake lacy and rob yang as alice's former and current colleagues and special notice goes out to steve way from the tv series rammy who plays an at-home patient cared for by the killer like many characters in furious he's hilarious one moment tragic the next finally there's the context and subtext of furious that gives it even more power nora is a student of greek mythology and interprets the myths of both medusa and the furies in terms painting them not just as deadly monsters but as angry victims the primary motivation of the murderer in furious turns out to be not greed or bloodlust but revenge we learn slowly about her own dark past which involves a sex trafficking ring of young girls there are uncomfortable associations with the jeffrey epstein case which she makes clear when questioning one of her victims just before dispatching him what's the punishment for people who know what's happening and do nothing what do they get the fugitive and her hunter don't come face to face until part way through this eight-part series and when they meet accidentally furious ups its intensity and once again explores unfamiliar unforgettable territory it may owe its inspiration to an old movie but furious is a boldly original new tv thriller david bianculli is fresh airs tv critic furious premiered july 27th on hulu and presents new episodes on mondays through the end of august if you'd like to catch up on fresh air interviews you missed like this week's interviews with jean smart the star of hacks and new york times reporter eric lipton about his investigations into how the trump family is profiting from the trump presidency check out our podcast you'll find lots of fresh air interviews you can also watch some of our interviews on our youtube channel and to find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers recommendations for what to watch read and listen to subscribe to our channel and don't forget to newsletter at whyy.org slash fresh air fresh air's executive producer is sam brigger our senior producer today is theresa madden our technical director and engineer is audrey bentham our engineer today is adam stanishevsky susan nikundi directed today's show our co-host is tanya mosley i'm terry gross