Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys in 'The Beast in Me.' Netflix Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment Logo text [This story contains major spoilers from the finale of The Beast in Me.] Like a moth to a flame, why are we drawn to the things that could destroy us? That is one of many difficult questions at the heart of Netflix's latest limited series, The Beast in Me, starring Emmy winners Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys. Created by Gabe Rotter and executive produced by 24 and Homeland showrunner Howard Gordon, the eight-part psychological thriller stars Danes as Aggie Wiggs, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author paralyzed with grief over the tragic death of her young son, Cooper (Leonard Gerome), four years earlier. Aggie's life of suburban seclusion is upended by the arrival of Nile Jarvis (Rhys), a formidable real estate mogul who, after being the prime suspect in his first wife Madison's (Leila George) unsolved disappearance, moves in next door with his new wife, Nina (Brittany Snow). Related Stories TV Brittany Snow Teases 'Hunting Wives' Season 2, Unpacks Her 'Beast in Me' Role and Hulu's True-Crime Take on the Murdaugh Family TV 'The Beast in Me' Review: Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys Try Hard, but Netflix's Cat-and-Mouse Thriller Is an Exercise in Prestige TV Monotony Feeling creatively uninspired by her long-gestating follow-up book about the unlikely close friendship between Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, Aggie takes a perverse interest in Nile, who has long maintained his innocence. "He animates a part of her that she has been in staunch denial of - this visceral, predatorial, furious self that is kicking and has become a bit rabid inside of her," Danes, also an executive producer, tells The Hollywood Reporter in a joint interview with Rhys. As much as they might be loath to admit it, Aggie and Nile surprisingly share a lot in common, one of those things being the guilt they feel over the loss of someone very close to them - but they go about processing that grief very differently. "They've been isolated for some time because of their respective traumas and tragedies. And as a result, it brings them to a level where, it's not that they don't care, but their bullshit meter is gone so that any kind of falseness isn't put up with," explains Rhys. "Their intellect, perception of others, and their at times very dry and dark humor bonds them to a degree. So there are a number of elements drawing them and pushing them away from each other, but it's that age-old cliché of the magnets that keep making their way back to each other." As Danes points out, Aggie is the only person in the neighborhood who says no to Nile's initial proposal to pave a communal jogging path in their shared woods, and "he is the only person who refuses to respect her wish to be left the fuck alone" in her house. "So they're both pretty tenacious and uncompromising, and brilliant. I don't think that they've found people who can keep up with them very easily," she says. Claire Danes in The Beast in Me. Courtesy of Netflix (C) 2025 At once irked and fascinated by her new neighbor, Aggie convinces Nile to be the subject of her next book under the guise of finally giving him a chance to tell his side of the story after years of being vilified in the court of public opinion. But, really, she wants to find out the truth about what happened to Madison. Against his better judgment, Nile agrees to let Aggie write his biography - an "extraordinary gesture" that, Danes says, "really terrifies her" - if only because he believes he can manipulate her into believing his carefully constructed version of the truth. By the time she crosses paths with Nile, Aggie has still failed to acknowledge her role in Cooper's death. Rather than facing the fact that she was distracted behind the wheel when she and her son got into a head-on collision, Aggie has convinced herself that Teddy Fenig (Bubba Weiler), a local teen, had been driving under the influence, even though she doesn't have any evidence to back up her claims. In her own twisted way, Aggie "needs to know if [Nile killed his wife] because she needs to know if she killed her son. That question is raging for her, and she's fixated all of her complex feelings, all of her grief, onto this man who she holds strictly responsible," Danes explains of Aggie's fear of looking in the mirror, both literally and figuratively, until Nile forces her to confront her repressed memories. "But there's a much deeper fear that suddenly she has to address in her own life. That's what really is motivating her. That's why she's in desperate pursuit of [the truth], and why she's willing to risk everything. [But] what is she risking, really?" Over the course of the show's first six episodes, Aggie plays a dangerous gam