‘Grotesquerie’: Lesley Manville On Why She Thinks Redd Is “A Good, Kind Human Being” Despite Her Transgressions

Katie Campione
·9-min read

SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from the finale of FX’s Grotesquerie.

In FX’s Grotesquerie, Lesley Manville plays an ill-mannered nurse with a bone to pick with Lois (Niecy Nash-Betts), whose husband she’s caring for while he’s in a comatose state. Or, at least, that’s how Lois sees her.

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When the series reveals all is not what it seemed, that includes Redd, who is actually a former sex worker trying to make ends meet in the modern era. Sure, she’s been having an affair with Marshall (Courtney B. Vance), but that doesn’t make her a villain, per se. Not in the way Lois makes her out to be.

“I think Redd is a good, kind human being,” Manville tells Deadline, adding that she finds her character quite “industrious.”

That’s why she found the end of the series, when she rejects Marshall’s vision for the future of their relationship, “brilliant.”

While it’s true that, at one point, she was lusting over Marshall, that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. After Lois shuts down his plan for the three of them to live together, Redd tells him she only played along with presenting the idea to his ex-wife so she could see the embarrassment when she rejected it.

“She wasn’t in it for the for the full time, 24/7 relationship, and certainly not his vision of utopia, which is to be living with both women and having the best of both worlds,” Manville tells Deadline. “Both women can see that it’s a win-win for the man, for Marshall, but it’s not so much of a win-win for them. Redd doesn’t want anything to do with that.”

In the interview below, Manville spoke with Deadline about the finale, the interesting distinctions between the two versions of this character she played, and more.

DEADLINE: How did you begin to explore the dichotomy between who Redd was in Lois’ mind versus who she was in reality?

LESLEY MANVILLE: That was conversations with Ryan. When he sent me the series to read he said ‘There is a kind of big shock in Episode 7,’ and big shock didn’t really do it enough, I don’t think, because it was cataclysmic shock, really. But, obviously that’s such a delicious proposition to do a series, and for seven episodes play one character, and for three episodes play a different character, or a different version of that character. Then Ryan said, ‘Look, given that Nurse Redd is a figment of Lois imagination, when she’s in the coma, we can kind of do what we want with her.’ Given that we’ll see her in the last three episodes as herself, maybe the real her should be American, because that’s where the series is set, and that perhaps, as Nurse Redd, she could be British, and very British. There is going to be this look about her that’s very neat and clipped and tight and fastidious. She’s going to have this red hair that’s immaculately styled, and she’s going to have way too much makeup on for a nurse, and big, long red fingernails — and kind of a nurse’s uniform, but you can see that it isn’t really a nurse’s uniform. It’s all very heightened, the look.

All of those things evolve. It starts with Ryan, then it moves on to me and my thoughts, and then you talk to costume and hair and makeup, and you layer all of these things on, and then, there she is. But I think it was quite confusing for a lot of people watching it, because they were just thinking, ‘Well, this doesn’t look like any nurse that I know.’ So I think people started to think we were in some strange parallel universe or existence, or because that is not a realistic nurse that I’m presenting. It’s obviously heightened and surreal in some ways. That’s the carrot on the stick to make me want to do a job. It didn’t disappoint, for sure. I loved doing it, and I thought it was really very good that we decided when she’s no longer Nurse Redd that she’s not [actually] a nurse. She’s having a relationship with Marshall, and she’s plowing her way through life trying to make a living post-COVID, when she obviously did used to work in a strip club…she’s quite industrious, but very kind and very, very loving towards Marshall as well.

DEADLINE: In the finale, she tells Marshall she only went along with his idea to ask that they all move in together to see Lois embarrass him. What did you make of her position between Lois and Marshall?

MANVILLE: I think the thing about Redd, she has this fantastic speech to Lois, and she says ‘It was great when it was just an affair, and I got him part time. That was terrific.’ Redd did her own thing, she had her own life, she worked. Then suddenly he’s moved out, he’s left Lois, and he’s with her all the time, and it’s a different ball game entirely for Redd. That’s not what she wanted. She wanted it to be an affair a few times a week. All the things that she says in the speech, which was a bit of comfort, some talk, a little bit of drinking, and some sex, and that’s it. Then the next morning, you say goodbye. She wasn’t in it for the for the full time, 24/7 relationship, and certainly not his vision of utopia, which is to be living with both women and having the best of both worlds. Having the wife who he still does love, but also having his relationship with Redd, which is warm and comforting and cozy in some ways, but it’s primarily a sexual relationship.

Both women can see that it’s a win-win for the man, for Marshall, but it’s not so much of a win-win for them. Redd doesn’t want anything to do with that. As she says, she just wants to go off and live in Tarpon Springs, because it’s nice place where it’s just a bit calm, and her life could just be. She’s quite an evolved woman, really. She realizes that, yes, it’s great to have a man for certain things, but you really don’t want to be having to look after them and clean up after them and cook for them and basically mother them. She’s not interested in that.

DEADLINE: How do you think Redd actually views her role in Lois’ pain? She obviously isn’t the villainous person Lois made her out to be in the coma, but she isn’t innocent, either.

MANVILLE: Nurse Redd, you have to put out of the equation, because that’s completely a figment of Lois’ imagination. I think Redd has an absolute sense of herself. She’s interested in being autonomous. I think that she sees her affair with Marshall as not harming anybody, it’s nice for her, it’s nice for Marshall, and he seems to be in a certain amount of pain. She’s comforting. She’s probably suspecting Lois to be less bothered by the affair than she turns out to be. But I think Redd is a good, kind human being, which is why she’s happy to to talk to Lois. Isn’t it brilliant? You see that it’s the women who come together and that they want to talk about this man who they have a shared interest in. I wouldn’t see men doing that in quite the same way. These two women are talking about this man that they’re sharing and they’re just kind of trying to work it out…it’s just another indication of how brilliant women are, that they can even go and deal with a very tricky situation and confront it in a really relatively gentle way and grown up way.

DEADLINE: The series has a ton of commentary about women’s rights, religion, climate change and more. What were some of the themes presented or questions asked in the show that you found most compelling?

MANVILLE: Well, because of my work schedule, I’m not only doing a play in the West End, eight shows a week, I’m also filming a series. So I have not sat down on sofa and watched Grotesquerie — or indeed, Disclaimer, which is another series that I’m currently in for Apple. I have not watched them, because I haven’t got the time yet. I will have time in about four weeks. But obviously, from my memory of reading the scripts, you’re absolutely right. There are so many issues raised in Grotesquerie. Very interesting that you’ve got an election coming up. The rather brutal world that Grotesquerie at times presents, it throws the spotlight on on all of that [and] what you’re going to buy yourself in for the next four years.

Of course, it throws up the question of religion. I’m not going to get into that now, because we haven’t got long enough. And as I say, I haven’t seen the series to kind of scrutinize that aspect of it, because that side of the story, I’m not involved in at all. Redd’s side of the story is very much about private pain, I think, and the human condition and how you navigate a life for yourself and how difficult that is, and sometimes that does mean fracturing marriages and pulling relationships apart. But I don’t think Redd is entirely responsible for that, because Lois and Marshall are in a strange place anyway, for all sorts of other reasons, not least of all, the dynamic of Merritt, their daughter. So my story is very involved with the complexities of the human condition, really, and how everyone’s looking for some comfort, some release from the hell of life. I don’t mean everyone’s life is hell. But you know, the complexities of life, the difficulties of life, sometimes just existing day to day and having a simple bit of human touch and warmth and love from somebody can make surviving in the very brutal world that we’re all trying to survive in a little easier.

I think that’s partly why you sort of understand Lois and Redd and their conversations about Marshall and what they feel about that is very adult and realistic. If you juxtapose what the women feel about it with what Marshall feels about it, his take on it all seems much more self-centered and selfish, whereas they are much more philosophical about it, and knowing the limitations of what either of them can hope to achieve from a relationship with him.

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