Spoilers ahead for this week’s episode of Bad Monkey.
The fourth episode of Bad Monkey goes full beach-bum Columbo. Told primarily through a series of flashbacks, “Nothing’s Wrong With It, I Just Don’t Need It Anymore” clues viewers in to the fact that Eve (Meredith Hagner) is the psychopathic mastermind at the center of this saga, which began years prior when she met Nick (Rob Delaney) as a shot girl in a Miami nightclub. Her dreams of becoming an actor faded, and the undivided attention and wallet of goofy single father Nick are exactly what she’s always wanted. They live a pretty charmed existence thanks to the constant stream of cash from Nick’s fraudulent Medicare business, but when the Feds start asking questions, the claws come out. And by claws, we mean Eve advises her husband to eschew cutting off two fingers to fake his death in favor of a whole damn arm. “That’s so lame,” she advises, “people have done that to get a free fucking sub sandwich down at the deli.”
We could maybe excuse the arm thing, but as her favorite book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, foretold, our gal can’t stop. Soon she’s advising Nick to kill off every loose end that may expose their secrets, including his best friend and accomplice (Zach Braff). Hell, she’ll even do some murdering herself if need be, so don’t you dare try to confront her in a parking garage with some “me not we” bullshit. And in a perfect world, her stepdaughter would be dead, too. “She’s someone who’s a textbook sociopath. She feels no empathy and she’s only out to protect herself,” Hagner says. “She’s in survival mode.”
I’d love to know your reaction when you got to this particular script and realized, Damn, I’m the one true diabolical bitch.
It’s so great. When Bill Lawrence thought of me for the character, all I got was the pilot script. Eve is much bigger in the series than she was in the Carl Hiaasen book. I would’ve been happy to play a small role in this show, but when I read the pilot, I was given a sort of promise for a bigger story to come. And when I got the script for this episode, I was like, Holy shit. This is a real gift for an actor — a tremendous opportunity. This type of writing doesn’t come along all that often. It was a shock how epic it was. It’s kind of scary. I mean, I play a really bad person.
What scared you?
I always love the feeling of reading something and having a bit of fear about if I can pull this off in the way I want to. I wanted to play a villain or psychopath in a way that felt like: This is a girl who doesn’t view herself as a bad person at all. She would do horrible things with the ease that someone would order a latte. She’s playing against what we think of as a typical psychopath. A lot of documentaries on serial killers home in on how charming those people are. Eve is someone who’s figured out exactly how to manipulate people. She finds herself a really good and kind person, but there’s a fuse in her brain not wired correctly.
We do get some indication that Eve’s behavior comes from a place of survival and that she had a shitty childhood. Is this deserving of more sympathy?
The backstory that I created for her — and yes, this is an annoying actor thing — is that she’s someone who experienced extreme trauma. I pushed for a couple of extra moments in that episode where she says, “I came from this and I can’t go back.” I had to pepper in this concept that I think she experienced abuse. That’s the only way I could justify it for myself. What happens to someone like that? Something is haunting her, and it’s horrible. Not to justify her actions, but it’s kind of like, Who’s somebody so psychotic because of this extreme trauma but also plays this role of a charming and sexual woman?
I spent the episode trying to better understand the motivations for Eve’s behavior, and in the final scene, Nick asks, “What’s wrong with you?” So I want to pose that question to you. What’s wrong with this woman?
She’s a fucked-up soul. It comes down to the nature-versus-nurture question. Are psychopaths created or are they made? I think of her as an amalgamation of both. It’s a genetic thing mixed with this backstory, and she just happens to be a squeaky-looking blonde who’s cold-blooded. I never viewed her as a bad person, because in her mind, she’s entirely justified in her actions. So to try to ground her and make her feel real, I almost was like, Oh, well, of course we’re going to fucking kill this person, because this is what you do when you’re trying to survive the world. It’s like how a normal person would think, Oh, I spilled a glass of red wine on my rental apartment’s rug, of course I’m not getting that security deposit back. With the ease of how someone might think that, it’s the ease in which she thinks, We’re going to kill your best friend. That’s the irreverence of it — she tricks the people around her into thinking it’s not so bad.
When she and Nick meet at the nightclub, there’s this quick line from Eve where she says, “I’ve been waiting to be recognized.” I think that’s a good summation of why she likes Nick, but is there anything deeper to their connection that may not be apparent? Does she truly love him?
She 100 percent felt seen by him, and she has an inflated idea of herself. She’s self-aggrandizing and deeply narcissistic. She probably got no attention from anyone in her family, ever. There’s something about the kindness and goodness of this guy that she recognized. Morality exists on a spectrum. There’s nuggets in there that I tried to play in the episode. If she had gone down a different path, she might have actually been a nice person. But she’s the girl-next-door gone so wrong.
The pure side of herself initially does fall in love with him because he represents that side of goodness — Look at me with this kind person! — but it goes so south for him. All they both want is to be seen, but they pretend they don’t, and actually being seen by somebody is an aphrodisiac for her. Narcissistic people quite often tend to find people who can be easily controlled. Eve knew so quickly that she could wrap that man around her finger.
You have the pleasure of acting beside one of the funniest people ever committed to Twitter, Rob Delaney, but your interactions grow bleaker and bleaker as the characters realize their plan is spiraling. How did you two find levity when the cameras weren’t rolling?
I don’t do Twitter, but he’s such a lovely person. He’s a true joy to be around, but above all, he’s kind. Bad Monkey has such a unique tone, and I got lucky to have a scene partner who understood that our characters are playing the drama and grounding into the circumstances. It’s a comedy in how we put our foot on the gas and we lean into what feels funny, but it’s always played very straight. The writing wasn’t to be played lightly. Rob gets what’s funny about these people at this demented core.
How does one prepare for a scene that involves watching someone cut a man’s arm off?
It’s true what people say when you’re making a horror movie: It’s not actually scary. But this scene was really visceral. The idea of that happening around me was tough and icky to get through. And all Eve cares about is whether her shirt would get ruined from the blood. Oh, honey, this isn’t great for you, but I definitely didn’t wear the right shirt. How soon can we order dinner after? She just doesn’t care.
Do you personally consider someone chopping off their arm to be a romantic gesture?
No, I don’t. I used to joke, since I was a struggling actor for so many years, that if someone came into an audition room and was told, “You can get this part, but you have to chop your pinkie toe off,” there are a lot of girls who would do that. But not me. I have standards! If someone tried to chop their arm off for me, I’d run for the high hills.
Your final moment in the episode implies that Eve would kill her stepdaughter to ensure the scheme is never discovered. What was your read on that?
She wants to kill Caitlin more than anyone in the world. She wants to be the only person in Nick’s eyeline, and the fact that she has to share him with his daughter — and his daughter is a lovely smoke show — is absolutely devastating to Eve. She’s trying to hide it, but if she could shoot Caitlin right then and there, she would. She’s a master master manipulator. And of course she wants her dead.
We’ve seen Eve manipulate, murder, and be an all-around awful person. Is there anything you feel she definitively wouldn’t do? Does she have a limit?
I don’t know if there’s much of a limit to what she’ll do for what she needs, honestly. We’ll learn throughout the show that there’s not a lot Eve won’t do. I’ll leave it at that.
I’m worried about her dog now.
No spoilers about the dog.
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