Warning: The following post contains discussions of sexual assault and violence against women. 

Alice Black (Emmy Rossum) is a deeply complicated character in Hulu’s Furious. Over the course of the first three episodes, viewers learn that she was once a capable police officer in a relationship with her high school sweetheart, Marshall (Jake Lacy), a fellow officer whose violent abuse ultimately forced her to leave both him and the career she loved.

When she finally took a stand to speak out against him, no one believed her, so she made the decision to leave the force and a job she was good at in an effort to save herself.

Now an FBI agent, Alice’s violent past manifests itself in self-destructive behaviors. She is sometimes unable to shower for days or weeks at a time. She drinks. She loses control in social situations. And perhaps the most disturbing, she meets strangers on the internet to create moments of controlled violence in which she is the victim.

In Episode 4, “Flash Flood,” this become public when Alice’s face bears the physical marks of her activities, exposing her secret to both her friend and former partner Danny (Scoot McNairy) and her abusive ex Marshall.

That pivotal sequence was also challenging for star Emmy Rossum to unpack. The actor said Alice’s seemingly contradictory behavior was rooted in years of trauma, requiring extensive research and conversations with psychologists to fully understand the character’s mindset.

“I often find it’s the moments that we don’t understand at face value in the script,” said Rossum. “That scene in which Alice has been swiping and invites the guy over and then lies to him about who she really is, and we see she is a victim of violence. She’s also inviting strangers over to fight.”

 

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“I thought the complexity of the character was really interesting. It was a scene that took me a couple of weeks to really understand and to work with psychologists to really understand the psychology and the effects of a historical violence on a human being,” explained Rossum.

“Also to really understand being a person in law enforcement and how you have to separate from some of your softness and your vulnerability in order to remain on the job, to remain able to do the job,” said the star. “And so not only has Alice become disconnected from herself because of the violence in her past, but also because of her job.”

Furious, Mondays, Hulu