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NEW YORK, Nov. 14 (UPI) -- The Crown, Pennyworth and My Policeman actor Emma Corrin says that, much like their Murder at the End of the World character Darby Hart, they wouldn't hesitate to accept an enigmatic invitation to meet with a group of brilliant strangers in a far-flung locale. "I have a similar curiosity as Darby does, which is anything she's a bit scared by, she wants to do more," Corrin told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.
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The new FX mystery-drama, premiering Tuesday on FX, was written and directed by Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, the creators of The O.A.
Their latest collaboration follows 20-something Darby -- a Midwest America coroner's daughter, amateur sleuth and true-crime author -- to Iceland, where she is greeted by tech billionaire Andy Ronson (Clive Owen) and a handful of innovative scientists brainstorming solutions to the world's most pressing problems.
When one of the guests turns up dead early in the gathering, Darby takes it upon herself to unravel what happened.
Corrin described Darby as a complex character who "doesn't suffer fools."
"She grew up on crime scenes and I think that seeing that side of the world and that side of life, which is basically just a lot of death, made her grow up with her feet on the ground," Corrin said.
"She is very observant and she finds studying human nature the most fascinating thing. It was that aspect of her that really made me want to play her."
Assisting her father in the morgue and later investigating cold cases with her computer hacker boyfriend Bill (Harris Dickinson) takes an emotional and psychological toll on Darby.
"It leaves her with this feeling that she doesn't want anyone to be left behind. She has seen so much death and a lot of it is not accidental -- these murders of women who go unnamed across America," Corrin said.
The character grows up almost feeling like it's her mission.
"This is something she feels she has to do to not leave any woman behind, to name the dead and find justice. She has that fire in her belly," they said.
Filming for months in a remote location helped the cast -- which also included Britian Seibert, Rauk Espaeza, Alice Braga and Jermaine Fowler -- to get to know each other and eventually bond.
"My first day of shooting on a frozen lake and we took snowmobiles to set and that was just the wildest way to kick off any production," Corrin said.
"That day was freezing, biting cold. Brit actually got hypothermia that day. Anything like that you are sort of trauma-bonded," they said. "That worked for the series because we went through this insane experience in this remote place, which was so similar to what these characters were going through."
In creating the show, Marling and Batmanglij started with the character of Darby, then built a world up around her.
"We were interested in telling the story of a Gen Z amateur sleuth/detective and making it feel very credible and real and grounded," Marling said.
Batmanglij said he couldn't imagine anyone but Corrin playing the "ferocious" Darby.
Marling also plays Andy's wife, Lee, a great mind in her own right, who has endured much pain in her life.
"Lee is a coder and hacker who rode the early wave of the Internet and was very exited and dazzled by the kind of wilderness the early Internet presented before it calcified," the actress said.
"But she got really burnt in that space. She wrote a manifesto, speaking out against misogynistic forces on the Internet and she's doxxed and stalked and her computer's hacked and she retreats from the world and becomes a recluse, living on her own and licking her wounds and then two different men at two different times find her."
Marling and Batmanglij said they naturally infuse the entertainment they create with important issues pertaining to the environment, safety and technology that reflect what real people are facing in the world today.
"Those are the things we are grappling with and wrestling with," Batmanglij said. "As we come to tell a story, that is the weather that we are inside of."
