'Disclaimer' stars break down that 'horrific' and 'shocking' finale twist (spoilers)

Spoiler alert! This story contains details about the series finale of “Disclaimer” (now streaming on Apple TV+).

Leila George had no idea her “Disclaimer” character would be so divisive.

In the Apple TV+ drama, the Australian actress plays a married mom named Catherine Ravenscroft, who has a passionate fling with a young man named Jonathan (Louis Partridge). Shortly afterward, he drowns while trying to save her toddler son on an Italian beach. Decades later, Catherine (now played by Cate Blanchett) is a lauded documentarian who becomes the target of Jonathan’s spiteful father, Stephen Brigstocke (Kevin Kline), who blows up her life with an inflammatory novel inspired by the alleged affair.

The book was written by Stephen's wife, Nancy (Lesley Manville). After her death from cancer, he distributes it as a way to exact revenge on Catherine, believing it to be the true version of events.

“I’m always shocked by how much people hate Catherine when they see the first few episodes,” George says. At a recent screening, “my friends were coming out with so many questions, but also like, ‘Oh, she’s so awful.’ And I was like, ‘Just keep watching!’ I hadn’t anticipated that I might be hated for a few weeks.”

Viewers’ attitudes will most certainly change with the show’s seventh and final episode, in which a tearful Catherine defiantly reveals to Stephen what really happened between her and Jonathan. Although a series of dreamy flashbacks depicted a seemingly passionate dalliance between the young lovers, Catherine confides there was no affair at all. After locking eyes at the beach, Jonathan stalked Catherine around her hotel before breaking into her room one night and raping her.

Partridge, 21, wasn’t aware of the twist when he auditioned for writer-director Alfonso Cuarón, so Jonathan’s violent turn came as “a complete surprise” when he read the seventh episode.

“I’d been told there was some nudity, but that was pretty much it,” Partridge recalls. “In terms of my character, that just came out of nowhere for me, which was initially a bit daunting.” He also never read Renée Knight’s 2015 novel, on which the show is based. As a result, Jonathan’s backstory “was very much something we had to sketch together: what makes a person like this, and why somebody might feel entitled to do something like that.”

Review: Alfonso Cuarón's 'Disclaimer' is the best TV show of the year

One of the biggest challenges for George, 32, was the nude photographs that Jonathan takes of Catherine, which Stephen uses to blackmail her years later. The series’ early flashbacks make the photos seem erotic and flirtatious, while the finale reveals that Jonathan was actually behind the camera trying to intimidate and humiliate Catherine.

“It was difficult to match up the photos because the key thing is they have to fit both scenarios,” George explains. “That was the hardest thing for me: being tortured, in a way, and having to sell it as a smile. And making it look like true enough of a smile that it could look like a seduction scene, but at the same time, it's horrific what's going on."

The actors shot the assault sequence with dialogue between their two characters. But in editing the episode, Cuarón instead chose to overlay the scene with narration by Blanchett.

“It’s such a horrific visual that to put too much of it in feels like a weird form of entertainment,” George says. “It’s really just about listening to the voice of the survivor in that moment. He did a brilliant job of making it more about Catherine telling her story, as opposed to this graphic, shocking thing.”

Cuarón also wanted the characters to feel distinct between the two timelines. In other words, don’t expect any hints of Jonathan’s maliciousness if you go back and rewatch earlier episodes.

“I imagined Alfonso would want there to be some sort of clue as to what the reality was, but he wanted it very separate; we only know of the true events because we’re told later, and we don’t want the audience to guess,” Partridge says. “We wanted to keep them starkly different and create the biggest contrast we could, which was this wide-eyed, innocent kid and this selfish aggressor. As an actor, it’s a pretty big gulf to have to go between.”

But there is value in going back and rewatching “Disclaimer,” knowing that Jonathan's obsessive mother, Nancy, likely ignored her son's disturbing behavior.

“She’s trying to preserve her son as this beautiful angel, despite surely knowing what he’s capable of,” George says. “When you know the first four episodes are told from the perspective of his mother, you look back and see that Catherine is this complete male fantasy. You see her walking toward Jonathan with the light behind her and the music playing, and it’s almost amusing. The second time I watched it, I almost laughed in those moments because it’s this ridiculous level of fantasy, and yet you believe it at the start because you’re told that’s real.”

Ultimately, “Disclaimer” is a survivor’s story. “We hear all the time that women are afraid to come out and say when something’s happened,” George says. “If they go to court, then they’re told, ‘Well, you were asking for it’ or ‘You were wearing a short dress.’ Catherine has racked through all those different questions in her head and decided that it wasn’t worth the potential attack.”

She attempts to open up about the assault to her husband, Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen), at the end of Episode 2. But he’s so enraged after learning of Catherine's supposed infidelity that he never lets her get a word in.

“I found it so painful to hear him let his own insecurity get in the way of this real trauma that happened to his wife, the person he should be there for,” George adds. “It’s utterly heartbreaking.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Disclaimer' cast talks 'horrific, heartbreaking' series finale