'Furious': Why Emmy Rossum kept her distance from Lola Petticrew filming the haunting serial killer series

Elisabetta BianchiniMon, July 27, 2026 at 6:33 PM UTC

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Furious: EMMY ROSSUM, QUINCY TYLER BERNSTINE (Disney/Sarah Shatz)

While crime dramas tend to face criticism for lacking nuance and sensationalizing violence, Furious(premiering July 27 on Hulu on Disney+ in Canada, with new episodes released on Mondays), starring Emmy Rossum and Lola Petticrew, created by Elizabeth Meriwether (Dying For Sex, New Girl), is an example of what it looks like when you create a story that leans into the complexity and grittiness of crime stories. Loosely inspired by the 1987 thriller Black Widow, Furious follows two women, FBI Agent Alice (Rossum) and serial killer Catherine (Petticrew), who, on the surface, live very differently on opposite sides of the law, but whose lives prove to be far more connected.

The haunting series begins as Alice is a rookie agent, having recently left the Brooklyn P.D. after she reported the domestic abuse she faced from her then-boyfriend and fellow cop, Marshall (Jake Lacy). No one in the force wanted to believe, and they still don't, except Danny (Scoot McNairy), who calls on Alice to consult on a homicide investigation, the death of a billionaire's son.

As the audience, we know what happened, with the series beginning with Catherine poisoning him to death, establishing her pattern of targeting wealthy, powerful men.

As Alice's investigation continues, she goes to Nora (Quincy Tyler Bernstine), who leads the sex crimes unit, after finding a link to a case Nora worked. Alice has also expressed interest in wanting to be transferred to Nora's department.

"Why do you want to work down here in the basement on sex crimes and crimes against children? Do you hate yourself? Don't answer that," Nora says to Alice when they first meet, the beginning of Nora being a sort of mentor for Alice, who's very honest about the reality of her job, particularly related to sex trafficking involving children.

The woman as the 'perfect victim'

In the first episode of Furious, after a teen who was trafficking girls ends up in the hospital, Nora says something to Alice that epitomizes the entire series.

"Juries want to believe that women who are victims of violence are all good people, but in my experience, being a victim of violence just makes you colder, more calculating," Nora says. "Victimsof violence are the most violent, don't you think so?"

"That's the world that makes sense. Women are supposed to be hit and raped, and go away and die quietly, not start murdering people. Everyone likes it when there's a sweet little woman lying on the floor naked and cut up in pieces. I get so f—king angry. It doesn't matter, anything you do, the ones who are really to blame don't get caught, never."

It's how Furious evaluates and criticizes this socially acceptable image of the "perfect victim" that makes the series not just bold and radical, but thoroughly engaging, rooted in its two main characters, Catherine and Alice, who both experienced violence and share many similarities, but have walked different paths.

"It upends the idea of what a perfect victim is, which is quite often … a role that we're forced into playing in society," Petticrew told Yahoo Canada. "We are looking for good and bad, and that's very easy. This is a good person. This is a bad person. And it strips the conversation of all context and nuance. And this show is dripping in nuance."

"It allows these characters to dance in that grey area and be difficult and hard, but also people who are worthy of sympathy and dignity, and I think that's really important in an age where it seems like we are increasingly getting rid of nuance and context."

"I think it's really interesting to have this kind of invisible thread that ties these two women together. That they're more similar because of their histories than they are different, even though their lives have ended up in such different places. One is an FBI agent, and one's a serial killer," Rossum said in a separate interview.

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'Finding the parts of yourself that maybe scare you'

As Rossum stressed, it all comes down to being honest in portraying these characters' experiences.

"That's the whole job. It's finding people that are like your character and getting to know them, and then also finding the parts of yourself that maybe scare you, or … the parts that make you feel shame, and then kind of cannibalizing all those things and somehow repurposing them into the script that gives you the initial clues," she said.

"Liz is obviously an incredible writer, so everything that she puts on the page is dynamic and sourced from a real place. She and I both got to spend time with current and former FBI agents and current and former NYPD detectives, so that those moments and choices in the way that the people move and the relationships, they are really feeling lived in and sourced."

Furious: SCOOT MCNAIRY, EMMY ROSSUM (Disney/Sarah Shatz)

That also extends to Alice's relationship with Danny, with Furious leaning into how Danny is constantly questioning how he should interact with Alice, when he can and should provide support, and what that looks like, knowing what happened to her with Marshall.

"Danny seems to want to be a hero, and Alice doesn't want him to do any saving of her," Rossum said. "She's a perfectly capable, government-trained weapon, and she doesn't need a protector. And he also seemingly has … a difficult time with the complexity of who she is and how her history shaped her. So it is a complicated thing."

"And there is a tenderness and a trust that's built over however many years they've worked together and know each other, and has always been a chemistry and a natural banter that, when you're working long hours at a job with someone over years and years and years, … I think it is natural for those bonds to develop. And it's interesting to watch it over its lifetime with their misunderstandings and the ways in which they can't fully understand the other one, and how much they're both kind of butting heads, but also really want to come together."

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JULY 16: Emmy Rossum, Lola Petticrew and Elizabeth Meriwether attend the premiere of Hulu's "Furious" at Metrograph on July 16, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)'Yes, we are playing pretend … but we are bringing these very real feelings up'

Interestingly, while Rossum is both a star and executive producer on Furious, she wanted to "stay separate" from Petticrew's storyline, including not wanting to be on set when they were filming.

"I wanted that to feel like they each had their own engine," Rossum shared. "And so I really enjoyed leaving set and going to watch casting tapes, or going to look at upcoming location photos and weighing in on those. That was really fun for me."

But in order for Furious to be executed as well as we see throughout the eight gripping episodes, the set had to be a constructive environment for the actors, including Petticrew and Rossum, to explore all the depths of their characters. And Rossum highlighted how every member of the crew was part of building that trust on set.

"A crew is really a family in a lot of ways. Sure, it's a professional environment, but everybody needs to be … rowing the boat in the same direction in order for it to work. Everyone needs to understand Liz's vision and then be putting their whole hearts forward to execute it," Rossum said. "But it is also important that we have trust. Yes, we are playing pretend. Yes, we are telling stories about people who we are not, but we are bringing these very real feelings up, even if they are not feelings of our own."

"So it is incredibly important to meet actors where they are. Some want you to come close, and some want space. And to understand that everybody has a process, and it's unique to them and valid. And make sure the set is fed, too. Lots of food trucks, lots of donuts, lots of pastries. Make sure that everybody has what they need in order to do the work that we're so grateful we get to do. It's a total gift to get to come to work and tell stories, it really is, and to be with a crew that is this locked in, our camera operator, Wylda [Bayron], she would sometimes just reach out and … we would just hold a hand before we rolled, if we knew that there was something tough we were about to go do. Or there would be a look when something was funny between us. Your operators are really a part of your cast, and they're such a special part of your crew."

Petticrew shared that the environment on set, with the foundation laid by Meriwether, allowed them to feel safe and supported as they dove into every corner of their character, including the darkest moments.

"[That has] a lot to do with Liz and our whole incredible team, who really, I feel, set up an environment where we could draw as much as we were able to out of Catherine," Petticrew said. "And ultimately, all we wanted to do was give her that dignity and that space to be a whole, messy, grey, complicated human being. I'm just excited to see the conversations that come from it when it's out."

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”