HBO 'The Girl Before' stars David Oyelowo, Gugu Mbatha-Raw tackle 'taboo' trauma topics in 'challenging' show

David Oyelowo, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Ben Hardy and Jessica Plummer step into an architecturally beautiful, but ultra-minimalist and technologically advanced house in the psychological thriller show The Girl Before (on Crave in Canada and HBO Max in the U.S. Feb. 10), an adaptation of JP Delany’s best-selling book.

“Initially two scripts came to me, the first two episodes, and I was filming Loki, a Marvel show, at the time and this was refreshing, different kind of material to read,” Mbatha-Raw said. “What really hit me was the fact that there were two female leads in the show that equally had rich, emotional lives, which is quite a rarity for me to read.”

Mbatha-Raw, who also serves as executive producer of the series, actually proposed the role to her friend Oyelowo.

“To be honest when an actor, especially an actor you admire, says they are excited about something that, sorry agents, that has a lot more sway than your representatives coming to you because actors know, I think even more so, good material,” Oyelowo said. “We're looking for meaty roles that challenge us, that take us to places we haven't been before.”

“I knew that her coming to me with something was something to pay attention to and quite rightly, I read it and as I suspected, it was a character the likes of which I had never been afforded before. It scared me a bit because I didn't know if I would be able to play it and do it well.”

What is ‘The Girl Before’ about?

The four-part limited series is centred around a home built by Edward (Oyelowo), an architect who is looking for a tenant for the property but has very specific rules residents have to obey. After prospective tenants go through a questionnaire, with questions like “Would you sacrifice yourself to save 10 innocent strangers?” and an interview process, there is a list of 200 rules that must be followed when living in the home. This list includes no coasters, no magazines, no books, no nicknacks, and there is only one small closet for clothes.

Additionally, the whole house is automated and the residents wear a bracelet to operate all the automation in the home, including turning on the lights, starting the shower and even turning on the stove.

After Jane (Mbatha-Raw) loses her daughter Isabelle after stillbirth, she’s looking for a fresh start and moves into Edward’s home. But she then finds out that the previous tenant Emma (Plummer), who originally lived there with her boyfriend Simon (Hardy), died in the house three year earlier. Even more shocking, Jane and Emma have a striking resemblance physically, but were also going through personal trauma, with Emma having recently been raped before moving into the home. That sets Jane on a quest to find out about the dark past of the house, and its mysterious owner Edward, at the same time as their personal relationship gets more intimate.

Tackling the ‘taboo’ topic of stillbirth, rape trauma

While the psychological thriller genre is quite expansive, one thing that really sets The Girl Before apart is how layered each character is, but particularly the emphasis placed on how Jane and Emma are managing their trauma, depicting the complexity of those emotions but also very honestly exemplifying the systemic barriers in place for both Jane and Emma to seek accountability from those involved in their respective tragedies.

“Stillbirth, unfortunately, is still quite a taboo subject in our society, I think just because it is so sad and difficult to talk about,” Gugu Mbatha-Raw said.

She added that the production partnered with Sands, a U.K. organization that supports anyone affected by the death of a baby. Mbatha-Raw said the organization had a lot of resources and materials that are given to individuals who have lost a baby, and she was able to speak to a bereavement midwife through Sands, which was particularly helpful to get that authentic representation of this tragedy, in addition to speaking with a personal friend of hers who had experienced a stillbirth.

“That was really important to me in terms of having authenticity with Isabelle's memory box that Jane has, all of the items in there were meticulously researched in terms of real items that people would have, from the photographs, to the lockets of hair, to the hand and footprints,” Mbatha-Raw explained.

“As an actor, amidst all the heavy research, you try and make this whole person that has been through these experiences, and obviously in the context of a psychological thriller as well. So there's a style to the show, but hopefully it's grounded with the reality of the psychology of these characters.”

Jessica Plummer also shared that she had a lot of support when working on the character of Emma and she, like Mbatha-Raw, spoke with a therapist, for her specifically an expert on the trauma of rape. They discussed how a person in that situation feels and coping mechanisms. The actor also worked very closely with director Lisa Brühlmann and an acting coach.

“Just different techniques into how I, as Jess, can access feeling what I can only imagine to be similar things, without going to really dark places,” Plummer explained. “Absolutely felt heavy responsibility and hopefully we all did a good job at representing it correctly.”

A cold, empty house still feels like a 'safe place'

While all the actors give powerful, dynamic and emotional performances, it’s this cold, gray and largely empty house that is more like a main character in the story, rather than simply a set piece.

“It definitely helped inform my character, much the same as when you see it on the screen, it had a much similar effect walking in for the first time,” Ben Hardy said. “It was very cold, literally, in terms of the design but also inside, it was absolutely freezing.”

“I think there's also something about just having that house, which we spent so many days and scenes in,...there were times where I almost felt like, I may as well just stay over and sleep in the bed… But you do just get a sense of familiarity with a space where it helps create that world. It felt like when we entered that house, we were entering a world of The Girl Before.”

It’s that familiarity with the space that actually led to Jessica Plummer crying when they stopped filming there.

“We finished shooting in the house before we wrapped the whole show and I went back, for whatever reason,…and it was half knocked down and I cried for like an hour, it was really dramatic,” she said. “It was almost like my friend had died.”

“I don't know if it was the Emma in me that was still so attached to this house or just me,... the familiarity of shooting there, it did kind of feel like a safe place.”