‘Sirens' Creator on the Power of Lilly Pulitzer, Michaela's Bird Obsession and Turning Greek Myth Into New England Nightmare

Yahoo

25-05-2025

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from all five episodes of 'Sirens,' now streaming on Netflix.
Hey hey! Starch your pastels and delete all your incriminating texts — Molly Smith Metzler's new black comedy series 'Sirens' is now streaming on Netflix. Adapted from Metzler's 2011 play 'Elemeno Pea,' the series follows Devon (Meghann Fahy) a prickly, blue-collar New Yorker who visits her sister Simone (Milly Alcock) at the ritzy Nantucket-ish estate owned by Simone's glamorous boss, Michaela (Julianne Moore).
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Though Devon visits Michaela's island intent on chewing Simone out for leaving her alone to take of their aging father Bruce (Bill Camp), Devon is quickly suspicious of the strange, cult-like behavior at her sister's new job.
While ducking the prying eyes of Michaela's all-seeing house manager Jose (Felix Solis), Devon works to uncover the truth about what's going on at Cliff House and why Simone (who gets the special privilege of calling Michaela by the nickname 'Kiki') is so attached to her mysterious boss.
Over the course of one candy-colored weekend, Devon discovers a sordid affair buried in Michaela and her husband Peter (Kevin Bacon)'s mysterious past and races to free her sister from their clutches before she's brainwashed into the coastal elite for good.
Ahead of the series' Netflix debut, Variety spoke to 'Sirens' creator Metzler about the murky lines between hero and villain, the double meaning in the show's title, and why uber-rich New Englanders are so obsessed with Lilly Pulitzer.
I like that you feel that way, that it's cyclical. Part of it is intentional — this is an adaptation inspired by the sirens of Greek mythology, which is a tale as old as time. We open the show with the shot of Julie on the cliff, and we close it with Simone. They're standing in the same place on the cliff, kind of like the island's always going to be there, and this story is going to continue to go on and on.
There's something about that that felt very whole and complete, because that's the surprise of it. That's the treachery of this world, that's the trap. I was also really keen to flip the perspective. We're often hearing about the sirens from the sailor's point of view, and this series is about what it means to be cast in the role of a siren. I don't think any of these women would voluntarily call themselves sirens, but they're all cast in this role.
Casting Kevin was so easy. We were like 'You know who would be amazing as Peter? Kevin. Do you think he'd do it?' And Kevin said yes. Peter isn't in the play, so I was creating this role for the first time with Kevin Bacon. It was really, really fun.
He's the perfect Peter, because even though he's Kevin Bacon and he's 'Footloose,' in person he's so warm and humble, kind of has a working-class vibe. I loved that for Peter, because Peter's power is so huge, it's almost hard to dramatize. I wanted him to feel like he was fighting against that all the time; he's trying to disarm people and give his power away. I really wanted the audience to forget how much power he has; I wanted the audience to feel like Devon did, 'This guy's cool.'
I also don't know that I would call him the villain — I don't know that Kevin would call him the villain, either. At the end, when he's saying 'I want love and family and goodness and I want my life to matter,' he really means those things. He feels that he's been wronged by a monster.
That's the question I'm interested in: How are they heroes and villains of their own stories? I'm excited to hear people's interpretations of the ending. We looked at so many different takes of Simone on that cliff, and we went with the one we went with because it has a bit of a Mona Lisa quality.
She's a little bit smiling, a little bit not, and it's hard to know exactly what she feels in that moment. I have my answer, but I love that we give the audience that question. Is it fair, the people we cast in the roles of 'monster' in our lives? Are we villains? Are they? What is a monster, really?
The play is a five-character, 90-minute play that happens in one room — the guest house. The five characters are Michaela, Simone, Devon, Ethan and Jose. I wrote the play a bazillion years ago, but they've been with me this whole time, they're the core cast on this show too. From there, really everything else changed. It's a five-hour mini-series, we're never just in one room. The vibrancy of this world: the cliff, the island, all those visual elements, it was extraordinary to be able to bring them to life.
Then there are the characters we hear about but don't meet in the play: Bringing in Peter was huge. Devon and Simone's father we hear about in the play, but to have him come on and be Bill Camp? There are so many things we hear about onstage but don't get to see, like how many people worship Michaela. It's one thing to hear about that on stage, but we don't get to see it in person. Everything got wider, deeper, more layered, more lush, more pastel, more cult.
Quite simply, I spent a summer in Martha's Vineyard and I've since spent some summers in Nantucket. My best friend has a house there, and it's for real. Lilly Pulitzer is for real. They all have it on in Nantucket. Then there's the Nantucket reds, the salmon color pants. The first time you see it, you're like, 'Where am I?' It's so bright. It's sort of like, if you've been there, you're in on the joke, you know the pants to buy. It also takes a certain status to put on a dress like the one Simone has one when we meet her.
It's ridiculous. I love Lilly, I have some Lilly, but it's a little ridiculous. There's something so saturated and bright about it. We're so fortunate Carolyn Duncan, our costume designer, took that and just ran with it – most of the stuff on the show that looks like Lilly Pulitzer is actually custom.
Simone's a very difficult role. Milly is such a fantastic actor — it was only her, ever. What was important about Simone is that we [the audience] can't get ahead of her. We have to wonder, we have to be trying to figure her out. She can't tell us everything. She has to break our hearts a little.
To have this ability to contain secrets but to withhold them and have this facade with Michaela that's totally different than the relationship with her sister, to keep all those plates spinning, that's a tall order. She's so precise in when she turns certain cards over in her performance.
Adapting this story for 2025, there's a class gap in our country and the wage gap is just getting bigger and bigger. A lot of people are in a position like Devon: You have aging parents, and now it's suddenly your new job, but you don't have any money for it. It's a way for me to talk about my favorite subject, class and socioeconomics.
There's also an expectation that you're not going to go through that alone — you're going to have your siblings. What happened to Simone as a child is horrible, and in her brain, she is therefore absolved of having anything to do with her father. Is that fair? I don't know, but I think that's a great question between them, a great conflict. What do you owe the people who raised you? Can you change where you're from? Can you actually go forth and absolve yourself of your parents and never go back?
These sisters have a code word — in the play, it's 'Elemeno Pea,' which is the name of the play and there's a whole story behind why that's the code word. In the show, 'Sirens' being their code word, it's the ultimate '911, drop everything, I need you.'
When I was writing the Greek mythology element and naming the show 'Sirens,' in the script, I had them text each other the sirens emoji. It came from a subconscious place — maybe instead of the emoji, it's the word 'sirens,' and then we get to have this beautiful double-meaning. That never happens as a writer, but it just coalesced and landed in my lap.
In my summers in Martha's Vineyard, when I worked at the Yacht Club, I had noticed that they picked up each other's way of saying things. One woman would come in with a new bracelet that just dropped in town, and then they'd all have it.
They did it with language, too, they had their own way of speaking and there was a contagion to it. In my mind, Michaela just sort of said it one day, and then Simone said it back, and it became something the two of them say. I just made it up.
That's in the play. There are very few things that are verbatim in the play that make it to the series, but Jose calling Michaela 'Mi Amor,' and then later transferring that to someone else, that's always been in there. I love Jose.
I wanted to keep it because it's a good reminder that Jose has a lot of power in this house. He sees and knows everything, and says nothing. He knows where all the bodies are buried. He's higher up on the food chain than Michaela, even though it doesn't seem like that when you meet them. There's a tinge of condescension to 'Mi Amor' as well.
So, the locket — no, there's no drugs, but the lockets are a real thing in Nantucket Island. It's something you can only buy in Nantucket, they're called basket necklaces, and they usually have ivory from Wales in them. But they're very expensive, they're handmade, and everyone in Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard is wearing them.
It's a status symbol. You're not in the club if you don't have one. Carolyn Duncan made that happen, made all of them happen. It's a great symbol of having arrived. You have the key, you have the necklace, but it's a little culty. It's a little like wearing a cross, like a religion. You know something that everyone else doesn't.
When Homer first describes sirens, he describes them as half-bird, half-woman. Eventually, over time, they became the sexualized mermaid thing, but their original portrayal was half-monster, half-woman. They're awful, they're ugly — it's really interesting how it changed over time. So that's part of it, it's a nod to the original Greek mythology. The other part is, Michaela has filled her life with something to mother, something to care about. And I think she might consider herself a rare bird.
But they're also predators. They look very beautiful, but they'll rip your face out and break your heart and come back and smash your window. They're not sweet. Sirens are not sweet. They're half predator.
This interview has been edited and condensed.Best of Variety
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