‘Murdaugh: Death in the Family’ Cast Breaks Down Key Premiere Scenes

[Warning: The following post contains MAJOR spoilers for Murdaugh: Death in the Family Episodes 1-3, “Family Tradition,” “One Is Missing,” and “Kokomo.”]

The first three episodes of Murdaugh: Death in the Family have finally arrived on Hulu, and they’re packed with power performances by the cast and plenty of Easter eggs for deep-cut followers of the true-crime saga and the Murdaugh Murders Podcast upon which the show is based.

These episodes introduce audiences to the prestigious Murdaugh family and showcase their personalities and complex relationships immediately before and after the deadly boating accident that would first put them in the headlines and the hot seat.

TV Insider caught up with the cast and producers of the series to talk about key moments from each of these segments, so read on to dig into all of the details.

Episode 1, “Family Tradition”

The premiere begins with a shot of a framed poem called The Man in the Glass, which is hung up in the game room. That tidbit will immediately ring familiar to those who watched the real-life case closely, as it was later famously found and sold at a Moselle property auction after the Murdaugh murders. (It also becomes a bit of a sigil for the family that plays out throughout the entire series.)

From there, we see Alex Murdaugh (Jason Clarke) out at the kennels, beginning to weep before making his now-infamous 9-1-1 call to report the murders of Maggie (Patricia Clarkson) and Paul (Johnny Berchtold).

For Clarke, the question of whether or not those tears are real is a matter of interpretation. “We did a number of takes there, and there was an element of Alex going straight into it — literally, that he can perform at times — and of course, there is the reality of coming back after a couple of hours or an hour and a half and being horrified. There is the reality of there was the beat [of silence]; when you listen to that [real-life 9-1-1 call], there’s a slight gap before he goes into it — I’ve listened to that so many times, and … I just let the cat out of the bag there. And the director and [I] worked out how much was real and how much was unbelievable,” the actor explained. “I never wanted anybody to be able to put a finger on me and define me [in the role as Alex]. I don’t think you can.”

Meanwhile, Clarkson points out, “The scary thing about a pathological personality like that, who’s so manipulative, so deceptive, has stolen, cheated, conned, charmed so many people, is who knows why he’s crying? Is he crying because he may get caught? Is he crying because it will give him more sympathy? Is he crying because it’s, ‘What have I become?’ Or, ‘I do love you’? All of that’s possible.”

The episode then flashes back to a purer time, in February 2019, with Maggie picking wildflowers and spending time with her dog, Bubba, while Alex is off taking his hunting buddies’ bet money. If it all seems too halcyon, that’s because it is, and the arrival of Paul with a giant tree limb stuck in his tire from an apparent drunken accident makes that much clear. For the slightest moment, it seems that he might be reprimanded by his parents — that he might even desire that — but it doesn’t happen.

For Berchtold, his version of Paul is absolutely looking for some parental guidance in this moment that never comes. “We’re telling the story of someone who is raised without consequence, and that manifests in so many different ways, especially with the partying and the rebellion. But I think that always comes out of something, some sort of want for, maybe, attention. And especially, I think, being the youngest in a family where your last name [is known to] so many, he just wants the approval of his parents, while actively rebelling against it. That’s what it felt like to me…. ‘Will you please parent me?'”

Disney / Daniel Delgado Jr.

We then see Alex downing some pills before he gives a jury statement about his client, Alvarez, a paraplegic man who was the victim of an auto accident. He preaches about honesty, which is ironic, considering all that we know about the real-life man represented here.

Alvarez is a stand-in for many, many real-life clients who’d become victims of Murdaugh’s financial misdeeds. Showrunner Michael D. Fuller explained the decision to fictionalize this character: “There was no shortage of financial victims of Alex Murdaugh, unfortunately. And at certain points of the process you’re examining, ‘All right, how do we do this in a digestible way, but we also want to tell the breadth of it.’ Whether you know the truth of the story or you’re just coming fresh into our version of it, we saw him with this client and arguing on this client’s behalf, let’s track just one through and then slowly reveal kind of this Russian nesting doll of more and more and more malfeasance.” (It’s worth noting, though, that audiences familiar with the case will still hear the names of those who were, in real life, duped by their lawyer later in the series, as that was also a priority for the creative team.)

Back at his firm, PMPED, Alex’s elder brother Randy (Noah Emmerich) encourages him to settle, but Alex doesn’t appreciate the opinion. Back at home, Maggie dutifully assures him that his brother is just jealous. We soon find out the real meaning of the episode’s title, “Family Tradition,” when Buster (Will Harrison) gets an oh-so-warm welcome home, with a law school acceptance letter in hand, no less, with his black sheep brother looking on in anguish.

Is Paul jealous or resentful in that moment? Per Berchtold, it’s both. “Between Paul and Buster, there’s two different roads that [you can] take, being the child of a Murdaugh. You had the golden boy and then the opposite end of that,” the actor mused.

Cocreator Erin Lee Carr revealed the creative animus for that paralleling of Alex and Randy’s strife with that of Buster and Paul, saying, “Basically, in these intense and privileged families, it seems, based on research, that there’s always a competition between brothers, no matter what age, no matter what time in life, and so there’s always this [question of] who is the black sheep of the family, and by all intents and purposes, that was Paul. And Buster was something in the writers’ room we called ‘the good son,’ right? Buster, in our story, felt more like Maggie, and Paul was sort of the very living, breathing id of Alex. And so we just really wanted to make sure that — children, and sons, are products of their environment — you don’t have to think really hard to see where they get these ideas from,” she explained.

We get the first signs of Maggie’s discontent with Alex as she asks her housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield (Kathleen Wilhoite), if she’s found any of her husband’s medications. (As for why Gloria’s alive at this point in the timeline, Fuller previously detailed that decision, telling TV Insider, “It was more helpful, emotionally, to see what does she mean to this family, what roles does she play, specifically with Paul.”) At the same time, Alex is busy wheeling and dealing with his cousin, Curtis “Eddie” Smith (Mark Pellegrino), as he tries to save his unpermitted jellyfish farm from interference by officials by throwing the weight of his name around.

After Alex’s father, Randolph (Gerald McRaney), is honored for his decades of service as county solicitor, Maggie receives a tennis bracelet from “Big Daddy” that, at least temporarily, assuages her concerns, and she receives some very warm words from her father-in-law about how much he appreciates the effort she’s put in to honor him with a big bash celebration. He has no such kind words for his own son, though; in an impromptu meeting in the playroom, Randolph demands Alex accept a settlement in the Alvarez case that he doesn’t want to, stressing that his duty is not to his client but to his family and his firm.

Back at the big bash, Paul and his friends, including Mallory Beach (Madeline Popovich), prepare to leave for an oyster roast and some more partying, but not before a quick fist fight with his brother that causes a major scene in front of all the party-goers. When Gloria then finds Alex’s bag of pills hidden beneath the bed, she turns them over to Maggie, who asks for her discretion. When she finally goes to confront him in the game room, he’s casually cruel to her. She pockets the pills instead of addressing them.

We then see the devastating events of the boat crash play out in real time, with Paul recklessly and drunkenly speeding, despite his friends’ protestations, and crashing into a bridge. When he winds up in the hospital, he has no idea what he has done. For those who followed the case closely, his outstretched fingers are reminiscent of the so-called “Timmy” personality that Paul reportedly had when he was intoxicated.

For Berchtold, getting the detail right was a priority in his performance. “When I signed on to the project, they gave me this 500-page [folder] that had so much documentation in it, including photos of the hands in those moments, which I couldn’t believe we had. It’s that thing of these tics that we all have, that manifest in certain ways… I know, for me, I was diagnosed with tic disorder. I have my own tics, and that stems from anxiety, and it stems from some deeper sense of trying to keep control or losing control. And so what was interesting to me was trying to figure out what that was for him and throw that in there,” he explained.

Disney / Daniel Delgado Jr.

The episode then closes with Alex finding out that one of Paul’s friends, Mallory, is still missing.

Episode 2, “One Is Missing”

This episode begins with a flashback to show that apples really don’t fall far from their trees. Set in March 1989, Alex is drunkenly joy-riding with his friends after a Civil War reenactment party and decides to run from the police trying to stop him. After he crashes, he smiles and name-drops his way out of the situation, allowing all of his passengers to go down for the crime he has committed.

In the present day, at the hospital, Randolph instructs Alex to track down the other injured kids to demand their silence. He does so under the guise of being their protector. Meanwhile, Randolph himself dispenses with a police officer trying to take Paul’s statement, and Alex threatens a Department of Natural Resources officer about taking statements. He then gives a speech to the gathered kids and their parents about how everyone makes mistakes and they all need to be united in their silence when it comes to the authorities to avoid anyone getting into trouble.

The frenetic energy of this scene is not accidental. As Fuller explained, “It’s like, ‘OK, what would it have felt like to be in that hospital, both from Morgan’s perspective, but also Alex’s perspective?’ He’s going around and trying to play whack-a-mole, and just imagining, but from all we have to go on, we really wanted to try to get you in the feeling of being there in real time. That’s in the immediate wake of what’s clearly a tragedy and the shock of it for the kids and the parents, and then the anxiety over what happened to their friend, and is there any hope to be had? And then watching this man know that this could be very bad for his kid and ultimately himself, exerting his influence and power to try to keep a lid on things. I think it was, ‘What does that feel like?’ And again, we’re just doing our dramatization of it, but what it inspired was, ‘Let’s really try to exist in the feeling of that space.'”

At the same time, poor Anthony Cook is shown still at the crash site, desperately begging the police to let him brave the waters to search for Mallory one more time.

Once back at home, Maggie puts Paul to bed, only for him to thank Gloria a.k.a. “Gogo” instead of her. When Mallory’s parents come to the scene of the boat wreck, they’re prevented from seeing the wreckage, while Maggie and Randolph are personally escorted right to it.

Soon after, we get the first glimpse of Mandy Matney (Brittany Snow), the journalist whose dogged reporting on the Murdaughs would eventually inspire this entire adaptation. She locks eyes with Alex.

Disney / Daniel Delgado Jr.

That tense exchange is somewhat based in reality, as Matney explained that she did, in real life, have multiple moments of being face-to-face with Murdaugh: “I did do a face-off with Alex Murdaugh in federal court a couple years ago, and it was a weird time. I was trying to leave the building, and for some reason he was leaving at the exact same time, in cuffs and everything… And actually, before that, I did a stare off with him in Paul Murdaugh’s court hearing in 2019. I saw him for the first time, and we did a stare-off, and he looked like he was about to approach me. I’ll never forget this. And then court started, and I just will never forget them. Like, what would he have said? That’s so odd, but I remember telling Brittany that was so weird that they brought that to life in that way, when that did happen in real life. I don’t even know if I told people that.”

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Later, as Mandy and coworker Liz Farrell discuss the case, they realize they’re being stonewalled by DNR. Upon seeing the Murdaugh name in the comments of their social media post about the crash, Liz gives her a photo of Alex, and she recognizes him instantly.

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We then see Alex reviewing his overdrawn accounts and asking for a loan from his bank guy before talking Alvarez into taking a structured settlement that we know will be through a fraudulent account — citing Bible verses, no less. Back at home, he denies a distraught Paul the chance to visit the boat wreck scene and help with the still-ongoing search for Mallory, and Maggie accuses him of being “clammy,” a thinly veiled jab about what she really suspects is happening after she hid his drugs.

Disney / Daniel Delgado Jr.

Mandy and Liz present their theories about the Murdaughs’ involvement in the boat wreck, but her boss isn’t sold on her intel, since it’s social media-based and thus invites a lawsuit. Still, the conversation yields a quote that fans of the podcast will know all too well: “That’s a big deal.”

Snow was fully versed on the significance of that quote when she said it. “There was talks of maybe me not saying that line… and I remember saying to Steven [Piet], the director, ‘No, no, we need that in for the people who listen to the podcast, that is a little Easter egg that everyone will know.’ And in the cadence in which she says it as well, ‘It’s a big deal.’ I really wanted to make sure that people who are fans of the podcast felt connected to my character, and it was a good representation of someone that they had listened to and loved. So yes, I knew that was a big deal,” she explained.

After Alex meets with Randolph, and he expresses that it would be better for the family if Mallory’s body is not discovered, Paul convinces Gloria to loan him his car — not so he can visit the crime scene, but so that he can try to visit his girlfriend Morgan. It does not go well. Afterwards, Morgan decides to speak up to Mandy and reveals a video of the night. Her father also warns of the power of the Murdaugh family.

After Alex discovers that his pills are missing, Maggie continues to be coy but is dismayed at Alex’s attitude about Mallory. She then takes Paul out to the water against Alex’s wishes, and there, they learn that her body has been discovered. Paul then slaps himself repeatedly in a moment of self-harm after neither Morgan nor Miley will so much as look at him.

Disney / Daniel Delgado Jr.

At home, Gloria gives him a much-needed embrace, and Maggie confides her guilt to Alex that she was relieved it wasn’t Paul who ended up in a body bag. Instead of fighting with him about the medication, then, she decides to try and dose him out.

Of that decision, Clarkson said, “Her trying to manage his disease, there’s a reason they say that this is a family disease, and everyone loses their mind. She’s trying to manage an insane person doing insane things, and she’s wanting to deny it.”

Meanwhile, Alex, realizing there’s now a dead body at hand, confronts the father of Connor Cook at his home, reminding him of a time when his family got him out of trouble to ensure he won’t turn Paul in for driving the boat that caused it. He later justifies to Paul, “It was him or you, all right?” Back at home, it seems as though the fog, so to speak, may have cleared, but Randolph is there with bad news in the form of a front-page article from Matney about Paul’s involvement in the crash.

Though it’s a fictionalization of the moment of realization that the reporting is a problem for the Murdaugh, there is some basis in reality of Matney’s reporting’s direct impact on the family, as she remembers, “Yeah, I kind of knew that that was going on pretty early on. Maggie Murdaugh actually blocked me from Facebook very early after I started writing about her son. And that felt very weird. And there was just little signs in that way that I knew that they were watching, and I would hear from people who knew the family that it was affecting, that may work was affecting them in certain ways… As somebody who really loved print journalism for a really long time, I love the way that Erin and Michael incorporated The Island Packet, showing the storyline of the pressure that was being created around the Murdaughs, but the headlines of the stories that I wrote, Theresa Moss, there was a team of us at the Packet that just dug in and didn’t stop, and I’m very proud of that.”

Episode 3, “Kokomo”

The third episode begins with Paul’s boat crash hearing, as Paul’s attorneys successfully negotiate a personal recognizance bond for a relatively negligible $50,000, which is a major win for him and the family.

After Alex denies Maggie a chance to be part of the Beach family meal train by eating the food she’s prepared, Gloria works to make Paul feel better, promising that Mallory is in heaven. Alex, after getting a new stash of pills from Eddie, then whisks his family away for a vacation to Kokomo.

There, Alex carries on as though nothing is wrong, insisting his family engage in the “Murdaugh family tradition” of slamming a scorpion bowl drink and sending the ladies off for a spa day while the men go deep-sea fishing.

Paul, however, experiences a flash of PTSD about the boat wreck and refuses to go, after which Buster decides to follow, leaving Alex alone on the trek. Meanwhile, Maggie and Buster’s girlfriend Brooklyn have some alone time, during which Maggie notes, “You have to sacrifice a lot to make them the men that you know they can be.”

Is she covertly warning Brooklyn about getting involved? Maybe, according to Clarkson. “I think she’s starting to realize marriage is not what you think it’s going to be. I think she was subconsciously conditioned her whole life to be a good wife, and, ‘You’re married to a great provider, and you have these beautiful kids’ and all of that. And I think there’s a part of her that’s waking up to maybe that’s a really big price to pay, and maybe you don’t have to,” she said.

“I love the way Patricia played a couple of those moments where her subconscious is eking out,” Clarke added of the moment. “The disconnect is visible at the moment, and I really enjoyed that.”

Paul and Buster then make friends with some Australians at a bar, but when Paul takes things too far again, Buster reprimands him for being a buzzkill and decides to leave.

Meanwhile, Alex, alone at the pool and quietly stressed about the fact that he hasn’t received the Alvarez transfer yet, sees a kid struggling to get into the pool and talks him through getting in, repeatedly promising to catch the child — who just so happens to have red hair like his own two boys — if he jumps in. When the kid then does jump, and Alex declines to catch him but he thrives anyway, the boy’s father is grateful.

Of that scene, Fuller said, “For a moment that has such short screen time, it’s something we talked about so much in the writers’ room, and there was a vigorous debate over, one, does it give him too much humanity, our version of Alex? And two, what is it saying in terms of what he does? And it felt like there was something in that, not catching him but also encouraging him, that felt like it was a window into how he had been with Paul and Buster, whether he was completely present all the time in those ways or whatever… It was like a mini flashback of sorts, where it’s both tough love and encouraging love. That’s our version of Alex’s parenting style.”

Disney / Daniel Delgado Jr.

After Maggie enjoys a revealing spa treatment and seems to be disgusted by watching her husband eat dinner, we get a flash back to South Carolina, where Gloria’s son is concerned about her blood pressure. As Maggie befriends a single woman at a bar and manifests her own divorced life with no kids, Alex is then shown having drinks with Buster before prowling (and getting squarely denied by a woman) at a club. At the same time, Paul begs his new Australian friends to punch him in the face and badgers them until they oblige.

Of that moment and the prior self-slapping scene, Berchtold says, “It all comes from self-loathing and just this self-destructive nature, which, of course, is insecurity…. He’s just on the hunt to feel something real, and that’s how it manifests. But getting in that headspace, it can be a very dark place to be. And so I made a promise to myself when I joined this project that I wasn’t going to get my head, and I was going to let go as much as I could. Easier said than done, of course, but I really tried to let go as much as I could and then allow myself to step out of it as much as I could, too.”

He then calls up Gloria for absolution and gets it. She promises him that he can have forgiveness from God. However, the next day, after Alex celebrates finally receiving his wire transfer from his client’s settlement by buying Paul a lap dance, he experiences another bout of PTSD.

“It was really important for me to absolutely show the good, the bad, and the ugly [of Paul],” Berchtold says of his portrayal of the character. “I think you can definitely be the cause of harm, and then be on the other side of that. And so that was important to just color in that and sort of bridge that gap between villain and victim.”

Back at home, reality sets in for Alex when he learns that the Beach family intends to sue the Murdaughs personally. Plus, as Gloria tries to bring the family’s luggage into the house, she slips on the staircase, and Paul is the first to find her bleeding out on the ground.

This is just the start, of course, of Murdaugh: Death in the Family‘s chronicle of the Murdaugh murders saga, so stay tuned for more bits of our conversation with the cast and creatives of the series as episodes continue to drop weekly on Hulu.

Murdaugh: Death in the Family, Wednesdays, Hulu

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