Brit Marling Knows Whodunit

The actress, writer, and director of mystical sci-fi returns with something fleshier: a murder-mystery series.

- Rachel Handler

BRIT MARLING has spent her career both co-writing and starring in projects that are grounded in reality yet shockingly metaphysical— including The OA, the Netflix series she created with longtime collaborator Zal Batmanglij about a blind woman who disappears for seven years and reemerges with the ability to see, the conviction that she is a kind of angel, and knowledge of a series of “movements” that induce interdimensional travel. When it was canceled in 2019, bereft fans protested and at least one went on a hunger strike, and Marling and Batmanglij disappeared, creatively speaking. Now they’re back with the FX show A Murder at the End of the World, starring Emma Corrin as Darby Hart, a hacker and amateur sleuth. When tech billionaire Andy Ronson (Clive Owen) invites her to a retreat in Iceland alongside his wife, Lee Andersen (Marling), who happens to be her favorite coder, and a variety of other “original thinkers,” Darby finds herself tasked with solving a murder. “Our goal for a long time has been to figure out how to make things that are compelling and entertaining and accessible but also smuggle some subversive stuff across,” Marling says. “And the better we do our jobs, the less you notice.”

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