MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
You do not have to watch the new Netflix drama "The Perfect Couple" for long to figure out that the perfect couple ain't so perfect. In fact, just about every character is hiding all kinds of secrets. Now, the setting, however, is perfect, in fact, idyllic - a gorgeous house facing the gorgeous sea on the island of Nantucket with everyone gathered for a family wedding. Then a member of the wedding party is found dead, floating in that gorgeous sea, and the clues start piling up. Susanne Bier is the director of "The Perfect Couple." Hi there.
SUSANNE BIER: Hi there.
KELLY: Hi. So I have to confess, it did actually take me an episode or two to figure out who that title, "The Perfect Couple" - who it refers to. There are a couple of contenders. I want you to start with the bride and groom. Would you introduce us?
BIER: So the bride is Amelia Sacks, and she is Eve Hewson. And she is kind of the - you know, the person who brings us into the story in a way. And she's also the person who we somehow, as an audience, identify with. Essentially, to excuse my language, she's the only one who is not a deeply flawed, f***ed-up human being. And - but she's fun, and she's interesting, and she also has secrets.
KELLY: Yeah.
BIER: She's marrying Benji, who is Billy Howle, who's the son of the presumably perfect couple. And he is also weirdly carrying secrets and sort of slightly enigmatic, very handsome. And they're the first perfect unperfect couple that we meet.
KELLY: All right. And you've already teed us up for the second contender here, Benji's parents, who I will note are played by the actors Liev Schreiber and Nicole Kidman. And they do seem totally perfect, but to say that there are some tensions in that marriage would be an understatement.
BIER: I think that's a bit of an understatement, but there's a lot of passion going on. So there's definitely tension, but there's also deep attraction and a lot of wonderful, juicy, delicious mess going on between the two of them.
KELLY: I saw you quoted as saying that the setting intrigued you - the beauty of Nantucket, this Massachusetts Island, but also - and this is your words - the oblivion of the upper classes. Would you explain that?
BIER: Well, this is an incredibly privileged family. And because they are this privileged and because they are this wealthy, they have, like - the sense of entitlement has no borders. It's limitless. They literally think that they are beyond the law. I mean, they would literally think that driving across for a red light does not apply to them. But I think what kind of drew me to doing this was the mix of the fun of the sarcasm of, you know, penetrating that world. But essentially, they're still all human beings. And weirdly, you can't help yourself actually kind of loving them in spite of all their very obvious, very annoying flaws.
KELLY: How much do you sweat a detail like - OK, in this scene, they're going to be drinking champagne. But what - like, how good does the champagne need to be? Are - they're going to be driving a fancy car, but, like, what's going to tip it over the edge into caricature?
BIER: This is so funny that you just mentioned champagne because that was one of the things - they brought a champagne to set, and I was like, no, no good - not good enough. It has to be...
KELLY: Oh, really? What was it...
(LAUGHTER)
KELLY: ...So that we all don't buy it?
BIER: I can't remember which it was, but, you know, it has to be right. It has to be classy. It has to be classy for real. So for things to be classy for real, every single detail needs to be right. But that doesn't mean that it has to be, you know, the cliche or the archetype of wealth because I think what often goes wrong when you describe wealth is that it becomes a sort of - the obvious thing. So it needs to be the right champagne, but these people might have a very particular taste.
KELLY: I want people listening to know this is not your first time at bringing the rich and dysfunctional alive on screen. You also directed the series "The Night Manager." You directed "The Undoing," also with Nicole Kidman, by the way - very different shows but also looking at how money - what money can buy, how money can tear a family apart. And I read and wanted to ask you - I read you have a therapist who you have talked to over the years about dynamics in these type families. Can you share any of what you've learned?
BIER: Well, it's very interesting because I do have a therapist that I regularly talk to about stories and about characters and about storylines because for me, it's important to have somebody who's not part of a fictional industry. I mean, you know, the movie, television industry - we deal in fiction. We deal in inventing characters. We deal in inventing things that are patterns that we imagine.
And for me to talk to a therapist who is, like, a super-experienced therapist who's been dealing with lots of families in various stages of dysfunction is very, very helpful because I've actually got someone who is not from my world but who understand it. And she can be, like, a sounding board. And it's been very helpful for me.
KELLY: And is it true that truth can be stranger than fiction, that some of the real-life families she has worked with are more outrageous...
BIER: Ooh.
KELLY: ...Than anything you could make up?
BIER: Oh, gosh, yes. But also, I want to say that I think truth - there is a brutality to truth which we - yes, we do - we have a whim of that in what we do. But we don't necessarily want to - you don't necessarily have to portray the truth in a one-to-one manner in order to understand that the truth has an undercurrent. I think at times you need to seduce audiences in order to understand the truth, and that doesn't mean to be one to one.
You know, I come from a tradition of quite sort of very, very realistic - like, Europe for many years did a lot of super-realistic TV and film series. And at some point, it also got a bit self-indulgent, and it got a bit boring. And I felt that seduction had gone away. Does that make sense?
KELLY: It does.
BIER: You know, you have to...
KELLY: It does.
BIER: In order to make a point, there's got to be something enticing. And I think, you know, I do want to make a point with this series. I do want to make a point in, no, entitlement does not come with a permission to be disrespectful. It does not come with a permission to break all the rules. But in order to make that point, I do think it has to be fun and seductive and delicious. I think that's a much stronger point to make than to make it, like, not seductive.
KELLY: Well, Susanne Bier, this was fun and seductive and delicious. Thank you.
BIER: (Laughter) Thank you so much.
KELLY: Susanne Bier directed the new TV thriller "The Perfect Couple." It's out now on Netflix.
(SOUNDBITE OF RUPERT GREGSON-WILLIAMS' "THE PERFECT COUPLE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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