Scoot McNairy Talks ‘Furious’ Most Shocking Finale Moment

Editor’s note: The below interview contains spoilers for the Furious Season 1 finale.

Hulu’s new crime thriller Furious from creator Liz Meriwether is certainly rooted in darkness based on its very premise, but there have been welcome elements of levity — and even romance — as the cat-and-mouse chase between fledgling serial killer Catherine Grace (Lola Petticrew) and FBI agent Alice Black (Emmy Rossum) ramps up. While Alice begins the series grappling with lingering trauma from an abusive relationship in her past, one character who’s immediately framed as both a supportive friend and investigative ally is NYPD detective Danny Kelly (Scoot McNairy).

Despite the very mutual interest between them, there are a lot of personal and professional obstacles that initially interfere with the possibility of Alice and Danny taking their relationship to the next level, but as the two work together to solve the season’s biggest mystery, they slowly reach a place of new understanding. There’s no telling what the future has in store for their romance, especially since Alice is holding onto a particularly dark secret regarding her hand in Jay Easton’s (Peter McRobbie) death, but Furious‘ Season 2 renewal establishes a possible crossroads where Alice will ultimately have to choose between her newly achieved happiness and a possible vengeance mission.

Before the finale’s premiere, Collider spoke with McNairy about cracking the code on Danny’s biggest defense mechanism, why he was excited to flip the script on the “toxic” male detective trope, the parallels between Season 1’s two shower scenes (and what they mean for Alice and Danny’s overall dynamic), how Danny would react to the Furious finale’s most shocking twist, and more.

COLLIDER: What was your journey to becoming involved with Furious and being cast as Danny?

SCOOT MCNAIRY: Liz [Meriwether] reached out to me first. It wasn’t a big process. I’ve been watching Forensic Files for 20 years, and I went on the whole COVID binge of crime novels and crime documentaries, so I was really wanting to explore this world. But Liz is an incredible writer, and I was well aware of her beforehand. I got a call that she was doing a show about a homicide detective and a murder set in New York, and I read the script, but I was like, “Sign me up. I’m in. I want to work with her. I want to work with this writer.” I think she’s incredible.

There’s more detail about Danny spooled out over the season, like his son and the situation between them. When did you learn about that facet of the character, and how did that better inform who Danny was for you?

MCNAIRY: Liz did a phenomenal job at piling everything she could on top of this character. He’s going through a divorce, he’s in financial trouble, he’s got to put his kid into care, and everybody at work hates him. And now, the one person in his life isn’t being honest with him. I mean, he just has nothing. A lot of what came from that is that when so much stuff is piled on top of somebody, I started to embrace this facade that Danny doesn’t care about anything. Like, “Fuck that. Who cares? Who gives a shit? Fuck him. Eat a dick. Screw you.” It’s got this cadence to it that he doesn’t care, and really, what it is is a protective shield, as well as his humor, to keep everyone away, or from knowing what he’s dealing with.

That’s what makes Alice and his relationship so strong. These two know each other’s flaws and the worst things about them, and they still love each other and care for each other and accept each other, regardless of all the shit that comes with them. That part, the relationship between Alice and Danny, is what helped to define Danny’s character for me, as well as those things that Liz told me.

She gave me a huge hole to have to crawl out of, with nowhere really to crawl out of. I love that this relationship is not defined through the characters, Alice and Danny, but it’s also not defined to the viewer. They’re getting to understand and uncover this slowly, in pieces. Liz just did an incredible job at satelliting these themes with the shower, and through all that, you see that Danny is rock-solid. He’s the same, no matter what. All those things are what helped me, but I’ll be honest, Liz teed it all up on a silver platter for me. All I had to do was read it. She writes, and she puts this stuff on the page somehow. You can see it. You don’t have to uncover it or excavate it.

Scoot McNairy Explains His Approach To Those Parallel Shower Scenes in ‘Furious’

“He does become caretaker at that point.”

Image via Hulu

There are so many aspects of Danny’s life that feel messy, to your point, but at the same time, he presents as almost a safe space for Alice. The first time Danny hears from Alice’s sister about why she has so much post-traumatic stress wrapped up in taking a shower, he offers to just sit in the bathroom with her, and that’s paralleled in the finale. How did you and Emmy want to approach those scenes, which are inherently intimate without being sexual? They’re simple moments, but there’s so much at play, as well.

MCNAIRY: I think you just said it: Simple. Don’t overthink it. But for me, I think the payoff of that scene is the scene before it, with the sister, because what you’re seeing is a moment for Danny to make a discovery. He’s just pleaded to himself that, “Nobody at the department likes me. You don’t know what this is like. I’m telling you something about myself, so this is when you tell me something about yourself.” When the sister tells him that, that is a massive discovery for Danny. “Something’s going on with my partner, my friend, and she’s not telling me about it. This has never happened before. Something’s really, really, really wrong, and what she needs right now is a friend. That’s all she needs.”

That moment is a payoff to the discovery that he needs to make his character transition. He does become caretaker at that point. What I love that Liz has done is taken societal norms and flipped them. Women in society are seen as caregivers, but yet Danny is the caregiver in this. All those juxtapositions and taking norms and turning them upside down has been what’s been really fun — to be a part of a show like this and also to play a character that’s not a toxic masculine detective. To play a sensitive, caring, vulnerable human being that does the job of a detective. Those are roles that don’t get written like that, so I got really lucky that this thing came to me.

The season really builds up to everything that’s going on with the drive and what’s on it, and it comes into Danny’s possession via Steve [Way]’s character, Alden. Danny isn’t sure what to do with the drive, but he takes it to Alice and admits that she’s on it. He also tells her that he loves her, but confesses he can’t get the sight of her in the video out of his head.

MCNAIRY: I think that’s another incredible defining moment of him giving the control back to her, and saying, “I’m not going to control this part of your life, but I can control my part of my life. My part of my life is: Here’s the drive. You do what you will with it. I’m done. I’m out. I don’t want to be a part of this anymore. I just want to be a part of you.” We’re trying to define this relationship the entire season, and I think at the very end, he’s saying, “Let’s define it. Let’s define this.”

Going back to Liz turning things on their heel — when Jake’s character [Marshall] says, “I can’t stand people in a wheelchair. Freaks me out.” He ends up in a wheelchair in the end. It’s peppered all over the whole thing, just really, really incredible TV moments that she’s kind of flipped. Liz did — I’m sorry I keep going back to Liz — a really great job at showing this really intricate, difficult detective crime thriller. It’s hard to do, and I’m just in awe and impressed by it.

Scoot McNairy Has 1 Big Memory From Filming That ‘Furious’ Finale Beach Scene

“When I say freezing, I mean it was freezing.”

Image via Hulu

I wanted to talk about those scenes between Alice and Danny on the beach and in the condo. I’ve got to be honest: Danny saying they don’t have to do anything? Probably one of the hottest things that he could say in the moment. There’s also the fact that he submits to letting her undress him. He even says, “I can’t get rough with you,” because he knows that she’s had those experiences with other men. How did you and Emmy want to approach that subversion of roles, like you said, where Danny’s letting Alice dictate the pace of their intimacy?

MCNAIRY: It was freezing that day on the beach. When I say freezing, I mean it was freezing. So when you’re asking, what do you remember? [Laughs] I remember trying to get warm. We literally had to take off our coats, run over there, stand in the sand, do the thing, and that’s normal, but it was cold. It was really nice to get it moving to the condo. It’s just so much warmer.

There were some conversations about blocking. I think it was more so with [director] Cory [Finley] and Emmy and me trying to figure out, like, what’s the best place for this scene? We started out with a bar in between us, and I just remember being like, “This doesn’t feel right. This is a moment of connecting, and there’s something in between us.” Other than that, we wanted to keep it simple. Knowing how much you’ve already shot in the relationship that you have, and from being at work for three months, there usually doesn’t need to be a lot of discussion because you’ve already got yourself there as the actor. You kind of know or feel it.

If anything, what it’s showing is, “I walk. I don’t run. I’m a rock. I’m steady. I’m the same guy you’ve known. I don’t waver.” The shower scene in the finale stands for that. To me, it shows that this guy is the same. He doesn’t change. He has his ways, and he sticks to them. What Alice needs in her life right now is stability. What it’s showing is, “Okay, well, take it or leave it, but it’s right there. Here’s somebody who’s stable, who loves you, and cares about you, who is going to show up for you. It’s in your ballpark now. You make the move. You tell me what you want.”

The finale ends with that big reveal of what really happened between Alice and Jay Easton, which could potentially hang over another season. What do you think Danny’s reaction would be if he found out?

MCNAIRY: I think everybody has a line. It may be way up there. You could murder a thousand people, and okay, that’s not crossing the line, but the point is that everybody has one. I would imagine that he’s going to have that line crossed, and we’re going to have to see how that unfolds. I would gamble. But yeah, Danny has a line, 100%. He has a line he won’t cross for anybody. I don’t know what that is yet, but I’m sure Liz does.

All episodes of Furious Season 1 are now streaming on Hulu.