Don't blink or you'll miss clues in Shyamalan-helmed Apple TV+ thriller 'Servant'
Dorothy Turner is a woman in denial. Or so it seems.
As played by Lauren Ambrose in the Apple TV+ thriller “Servant,” which begins streaming Thursday, Nov. 28, she's a TV reporter who by all appearances has it all: a promising career, a chic downtown Philadelphia brownstone and a successful husband, Sean (Toby Kebbell), a chef, with whom she has an infant son, Jericho. To help with his care, the couple hire Leanne (Nell Tiger Free) as a nanny.
The only trouble is Jericho is a therapy doll given to Dorothy after the real child died suddenly in his crib and the devastated woman came to accept it as the real thing. So, in fact, does Leanne, leaving Sean at wit's end and causing him to lean on his brother-in-law Julian (Rupert Grint), who also knows the baby isn't real, for counsel and a dose of sanity. Then one day, Sean hears cries through the baby monitor and goes upstairs to discover a live infant in Jericho's crib. Which makes him (and the viewer) wonder: Did Leanne steal someone's child and place it there or is something else afoot?
Executive produced by M. Night Shyamalan and created and written by Tony Basgallop, the half-hour series is full of ominous tones and the type of pay-attention-or-you'll-miss-it clues that are hallmarks of Shyamalan productions and designed to keep one wondering who is alive and who is dead — which is one reason Ambrose, a two-time Emmy nominee for “Six Feet Under,” signed on.
“You know, every word has meaning — or rather a better way to say it is nothing is casual,” she explains. “You know, the whole show is subtext. With all the things that are going on with these people and you don't know who knows what and who's perceiving what from which direction, you know, everything is subtext. So that was kind of fun to play in and to have these cool and talented actors to work with.”
Working with Shyamalan, with his famously painstaking attention to detail and his elaborate South Philadelphia studio warehouse, was also a draw for the actress.
“I feel pretty honored, actually, to be the one to get to try to do this really challenging role,” she says, “where it's this ambitious lady who's facing this tragedy and this failure. She's a person who maybe in her life never failed and she has this ultimate failure and it spurs this tragic character and she's this deeply flawed character. And of course, she's dealing with grief in such a strange way that I think is an interesting parable for how we all sort of deny our human experience. I guess those are the main things. I mean, meeting with Night is like, ‘Wow, this guy's amazing and I really want to try this.'”
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“Servant”
Begins streaming Thursday, Nov. 28, on Apple TV+