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Forbes
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Interview: ‘Sirens' Cinematographer On Secrets, Inspirations, & More
Netflix has a hit miniseries with Sirens from creator and showrunner Molly Smith Metzler. Last weekend I brought you a look behind the lush curtains at the cinematography of Sirens. This weekend I bring you part two of that conversation. Milly Alcock stars in "Sirens." Inspired by Metzler's original play that itself took inspiration from a real-life experience and place, Sirens stars Milly Alcock, Meghann Fahy, Julianne Moore, and Kevin Bacon. The first two episodes were directed by Nicole Kassell, while Quyen Tran directed the third and fourth episodes, and Lila Neugebauer directed the fifth episode. The series was scripted by Metzler, Bekah Brunstetter, and Colin McKenna. Sirens tells the story of two sisters whose lives took very different paths, and whose choices lead them to a decisive moment in their relationships that will determine their future. This all happens on an island of wealthy socialites and the huge staffs they employ, divorced from the influences and stresses of the outside world… or so they say. The truth is, of course, that nothing is what it seems to be, and mysteries pop up as the past and all of its secrets unravels over the course of a couple of eventful days. If you've already seen Sirens, then you can read out more about the shocking ending here. Suffice to say, the rest of this article and the interview includes information about the plot and events of the series, so consider this your spoiler warning. So without further ado, let's get to the rest of my interview with Gregory Middleton. Again, be sure to check out the first part of this interview. MH: [You spoke previously about the gaze and] capturing that experience from both perspectives in the photography. And it helps a lot with the conflicting themes about the sirens as well. Because of, on the one hand, that gaze and being the hypnotized, and so there's the myth of the sirens that you're drawn in. But then on the other hand, there's the opposite, which is, the sirens were these were women who were stranded, and when they called for help and men would see them, men would crash their boats on the rocks. And [in Sirens] And it's such a-- the way the camera work brings that to life is interesting and complex, but [many people aren't noticing those even deeper layers]… There's so much more people will think about and get as they rewatch it. It's just it's really terrific. GM: Thank you, Mark. It's in it's in Molly's writing, it's in the in the in the concept of the show, because part of it is kind of like, who is the siren? What are sirens? It's a question it's posing. And also the idea of like, you know, there's a certain amount of "sirening" that goes on from all sides, right? It's not like there's a one mythical siren seducing everybody. It's also about self-deception, right? The way Simone says at the end of the show, it's like, well, he was just there and I couldn't stop myself, what was I supposed to do? It was like, I couldn't refuse the call kind of thing. That idea of [being] overwhelmed, I just had to do this, having a sign or a feeling you can't control, to compel you to do something, to compel you to make a choice. And that idea is very internally generated, right? But blaming the siren… [that] the sirens had a power to make me do something, is a way to self-excuse away any responsibility for any choices you make. And that's sort of one of the aspects the show is trying to explore is this idea of self-deception. There's this idea also of calling people who have made me do things monsters, right, the sirens are monsters. Like Simone gets called a monster. The word is used very deliberately by Milly. Because it's a way of blaming, like, 'You made me do this. It's your fault.' Which is like, well, don't you have agency yourself? But the idea of what it's like to feel this way-- with the incredible performances by our amazing cast, in the moment it's like, yeah, I mean if you're sitting in front of, you know, Milly Alcock or Julianne Moore, and they're looking at you like that, you're like, yeah, let's go. You know, you're going to make a choice that they're going to suggest. And [first-person camera] is a way to sort of understand what that feels like, because it's something that's sort of universal. I mean, it's just in my own point of view, is the myths are created out of a desire to express things about what it's like to be a human being. The stories are designed to express some idea. And the idea of someone saying, you know what? I just had no control of it. This, you know, this person had this hold over me and I I was totally beholden, I couldn't help myself. Meaning like, well, maybe they're magic, maybe it was real magic that was doing it. Right? This idea of excusing it away-- like maybe they were a witch or a warlock, or a siren. I mean, they could have been a siren because sirens have this ability to make you do things you shouldn't or whatever. But myths would express ideas about people, and about us ourselves. And in this case, in the show for me it's trying to explore all that. And it's also a comedy. I find the script extremely funny, because people when people are in self deception, they can be pretty damn funny. I mean, I'm laughing a lot when I was reading the script sometimes, because people are saying those ridiculous things. I mean, Michaela is trying to save nature, and yet she got all these like stuffed things on her wall, and she's taking things off the beach. She's like, oh, let's save some wildlife now, but it's like totally deceiving yourself, and what she does is destroying stuff mostly. So I find that can be quite funny. So there's an interesting, dark comedy element to people that are deceiving themselves. And then the core of where that would come from is what the story is about. Like from some trauma, some really intense desire for something, or to get over something, or through something. And then a willingness to be deceived, right? Then in the climax of the show, you know, Kevin Bacon makes a pretty profound choice. But it's kind of self-generated. He's blaming somebody else for his issues. He decides, oh, this is the one thing it will do, it'll make things better for me, and I'm blaming someone else for my difficulties. And, you know, it's sort of perpetuating the cycle. And that'll turn someone else into behaving more the same way. And it perpetuates. MH: It was a fascinating shift in that perspective of, oh, Julianne Moore is heading a cult. And it's that outside perspective of what's behind the glow, and as you slowly come to realize at the end that, oh, well, Paul runs the cult, he's just bored with it. And essentially, he's the one each time, "Oh, they work for me. They work for me. And they work for me. And it's like Paul's really the one that everything revolves around., and he's the power behind the scenes. GM: Yeah, it's kind like he does have the most money. So yes, he is like in that way, his choices have the most impact, and everyone else around him has that. Another aspect that you were mentioning about the cinematography in terms of the effect on these things is, also, I did a couple of things with the camera and the lenses apart from the lighting to help indicate how far into a sort of warped reality we were. So whenever someone had more of a skewed view, and especially also in the "sirening" point of views with people being under the gaze, I was using some lens -- ARRI Signature Primes -- and they have an option, you get these little rear diopters, which are basically like magnifiers from the back of the lens. And they have a way of, like, sort of detuning the lens a little bit, and they can change the shape, like the shape of someone's face slightly. The stronger ones will make the face a bit more round. But also they create more aberrations around the edge of the frame, so whatever you're focusing on seems a bit more isolated. And the character of the way things go out of focus on the edge become more and more broken apart. You see different like bits of chromatic aberration, and it just becomes a very interesting mosaic out of focus, which is a bit subconscious. But it's a very simple technique I can sort of change and add through certain scenes. And it sort of helped out subconsciously, it would affect a little bit like, you can tell things are off kilter now in this way. And now things are more sharp. And there'd be no diffusion and none of that in Buffalo, for example. But when things are really getting trippy, I'll alternate between how much I want the edge of the frame to go a bit mosaically wacky. It basically breaks things apart a little bit. And that was a way to totally subconsciously lead into that. I don't know if it had any effect, we'll see. It didn't seem to draw attention to itself too much, at least, which is important. MH: That's again, yeah, what's wonderful about so much of this. It's the unfortunate nature of what I do that whenever I watch stuff, there's part of my brain I have trouble keeping turned off that's watching it as a reviewer or a screenwriter, thinking about and trying to figure out, you know, how was this shot done or whatever? And for so much of it, I wasn't being taken out of it or focusing out of the story, but then I would remember to put my reviewer hat back on, and then I'd go back and rewatch because it's like, yeah, it was very organic sense of surrealism and shifting tone. You feel it a lot, which perfectly doves tails into something I want to be sure to mention, which is Hitchcock, because this all ties back into, again, the house and the landscapes. GM: Yeah, the cliff house! MH: I mean, I love the way even just how you shot the staircases, for example, the different angles and the focus on them, and just how imposing that outdoor staircase is with the spiral from above. A lot of these shots are subverting kind of secretly and with the satire of the story, the way it projects the mystery and thriller elements, there's even I would say some some horror coding, some psychological horror coding. And it all has a nice Hitchcock feel. But watching it, you don't notice that it's being done to create that feel. So you're getting all those benefits without being like, 'Look here! Look at the edge! Look how this is framed!' It just is, and you feel it more than noticeably see it. That's what makes Hitchcock Hitchcock, I think. And that's what that vibe is. And it contrasts so perfectly with the pastels and brightness and the way that you're using that. GM: Yeah, it's interesting. I think also with Julianne Moore's presence, too, the way she's describing, 'I love walking along [the cliffs],' when she's walking with Devon's character when she's first arrives… and they're walking on the edge of the cliff, waxing poetic about, 'Oh, remember, the sailors used to crash here for hundreds of years.' It's like, was she a siren, was she here the whole time? But she's sort of absconding or taking these myths as her own, because she's a local now and now she's here so she's just immersing herself in the history, appropriating all the local culture and stuff, as another self-deceptive thing. The staircase thing is very interesting, because that's very deliberate in Molly's script -- and Nikki, when she directed the first episode, was like it's aspirational because Simone is running on the beach, and she's happy and running up to this house, right? It's like, I'm going up to this place. It's aspirational, this is where I'm going to go, it's pretty, it's beautiful, it has a majestic feel. But later on with Devon, walking to the edge of cliff, it's like, you know, you might die if you fall off this cliff, right? This idea of it's a threatening place. And then in the later episodes, in episodes three and four, it's like, yeah, you might die if you do fall over. You're going to be in trouble, as we know from what happened to her boyfriend. And we think maybe Jocelyn was killed, maybe the previous wife was tossed off the cliff, so it becomes this menacing thing. And then by episode five, with the climactic turn with Kevin's character, is that like he's ascending the staircase, right? He's going down there to meet Simone. He's thrown caution to win. He's decided, 'I'm just going to go on this journey.' And it's very symbolic. He's just leaving his perch. He's going right down to the water, as far as he can get away from where he's normally isolated, to meet Simone and make this big choice, right? And visually I think… it's just simple screen directions that can help psychologically create a feel for where a character going, like they're going left or right or up or down. It's something about someone climbing something, most people's feeling about climbing something is to have to get to somewhere. When people descend something, usually the feeling could be more about getting away from something sometimes. And it's just like internally psychological for most for most people, and it was used very deliberately in the staircase that was both beautiful and majestic, but also like a bit scary. And trust me, going up on the stairs while we're on the shoot you got to be careful, you know, you got to stay away from the edge. MH: It's some of those some of the hikes in around Runyon Canyon [in Los Angeles] and stuff. There's some of the long ones and there's one that has a really long staircase. And that's the thing I thought of was well, you better be careful going up and down a staircase that high. GM: Yeah, for sure. It was an incredible location that John Pano, the production designer, found. And we did digitally augment the house slightly. But just the idea of this house on a cliff, green, lush, bright, you know, facing the sea. And it provided what was for me, one of my favorite images of the show is Simone being on that rocky cliff. But we finally find that one spot where Julianne Moore's character would be like, this is where I watch the sunset or where I want to look at my domain. And for her to take over that position, and have the sun going down and her glowing was like-- this last transformation into something with the next version of her, the next version of someone who's going to now be a bit of a monster and a bit of a seducing force, you know, and this location provided that. And it gave you all this opportunity to create this type of staging. So it's an incredible place. MH: It's a great mix of the beauty and the idea that look, it's beautiful. But the hidden danger. And then, sometimes even though it's like, well, it's a cliff. It's not exactly hidden. It's the danger people worry about. But it's only dangerous to the person who does it to himself, essentially. And the real dangers are hidden in the real. What's the real danger? Well, you know, there's a lot of it… Big thanks again to Gregory Middleton for taking time out of his busy schedule for this extra-deep examination of the cinematography and making of Sirens. Sirens remains among the most-streamed series on Netflix this week, after nearly 17 million people tuned in over its debut weekend.
Forbes
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
A Surprising Update About ‘Sirens' Season 2 On Netflix
Sirens Once again, we play the game of 'Is this miniseries really a miniseries?' when it comes to something performing well on a streaming service. And while Netflix's Siren is, in fact, supposed to be a limited series, there appears to be a chance it could live on for a second season if some people involved with the show get their way. This development comes from a few sources. Here's star Meghann Fahy speaking to Variety about what she thinks will happen to her character after the events of season 1: 'I think Devon goes back a really different person. You see a huge evolution with her. And I do think that when she goes home, she won't drink anymore. I don't think she sees Ray [Josh Segarra] as Ray anymore. I like to think that she gets herself together a bit, and leaves with more self-respect than she arrived with. Even though she stays and ultimately is stuck taking care of Dad, she's actively made her choice now, and there is power in that for her.' That may be head-canon and not a literal season 2 plot, but Fahy says it's not totally implausible: 'It ends in a very natural way, but I can imagine what the characters' worlds become,' she says. 'I, for one, would love to know what happens to Michaela, where she goes. So I think it's definitely within the realm of possibility. We didn't talk about it on set, but I would love to do more.' Past that, creator Molly Smith Metzler told Glamour: "I wrote the play 15 years ago," she said. "I've been thinking about them this whole time. I could write them until the day I die. I'd never say never, but could I do them justice in another season? I'd have to think about it. The fact that so many people are asking is really encouraging." Sirens And here's star Milly Alcock speaking to Town and Country, who would 'love to explore a season 2' even if the story would need to be separate from season 1. 'But of course, I think that Simone's such a fascinating person. I'd love to.' Once again, here are the pillars of Netflix renewal: That said, I don't know. It takes a lot for a miniseries to break out of being a miniseries as you may have to be, say, White Lotus or Shogun-level popular and acclaimed for that. But we'll see about Sirens season 2. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
The Independent
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Matthew Goode is both good and bad cop in Netflix's 'Dept. Q'
Being a leading man? Matthew Goode quite likes it. He's the star of 'Dept. Q,' based on the books by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen and set in the cold case division of an Edinburgh police station. From 'The Queen's Gambit' showrunner Scott Frank, the nine-part miniseries launches Thursday and sees Goode playing a one-man combination of good cop/bad cop. While Detective Chief Inspector Carl Morck is a brilliant investigator, he is equally successful at annoying people — even begrudging respect for his talent quickly turns into intense dislike. It's not that Goode hasn't been No. 1 on the call sheet before, it's just that he didn't enjoy it. 'It's something I shied away from after the beginning of my career where I was there for a bit and then I had some sort of bad things … things weren't necessarily positive at that point, after that. And I just went, I just want to be, you know, not the lead anymore,' he says. Goode also acknowledges that actors don't get to choose if a main part is 'bestowed' on them and notes that Frank fought to cast him in 'Dept. Q.' The pair first worked together on 'The Lookout' (2007) with the English actor portraying an American thief, a long way from the period dramas Goode has been recently known for, playing suave Brits in 'The Crown,' 'Downton Abbey' and 'Freud's Last Session.' Goode and Frank talked and teased each other in an interview with The Associated Press about working together, cast bonding and breaking Goode out of his period drama groove. The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity. AP: To start with, can I get you to describe your relationship? GOODE: Father and son. FRANK: Taxing, toxic, troubling. GOODE: Well, he's the genius and I just do what he says, basically. FRANK: I wish. We go way back. We made a film together, the first film I ever directed, in fact. And I was lucky that I had Matthew because he was outstanding and made it easier for me at that point. And I think we both just really know one another and I love this man — I would work with him in everything I ever did, but he's a pain in the ass. GOODE: Well, you know. There has to be some cost! FRANK: He is Carl Morck, in many ways. To know him is to want to strangle him. Does that sum it up? GOODE: OK, so now you see what I'm working with. This is the second time he's given me a character that I genuinely don't think that many other people would have taken that chance, because I don't really scream Kansas City bank robber (in 'The Lookout'). And I think this is a part that some people would have kind of gone, it's a bit more sort of Tom Hardy-ish, perhaps. But that's what we are, we're actors, but you don't necessarily get to be versatile a lot of the time, so I feel very indebted to you. AP: And did you write this with Matthew in mind? FRANK: I had always thought he would be terrific for this, and I didn't know if we would end up doing it together, but from the minute I started thinking about it, doing it here, I really thought, oh, and I knew he would love it. I think a lot of times people only see actors in one way or a particular way, is because they don't really see them, they just see the roles they've already played, they're not really paying attention to what else is happening. AP: It's not a period drama. GOODE: There you go, that's a prime example, yeah. AP: So is that part of the appeal? GOODE: I mean a career is, for want of a better way of explaining it, is a bit like a river where essentially you can go, there's the main channel in it, but there's eddies and you get caught in certain things and you get cast in certain ways. So you're not really ever particularly in control of it. Certainly unless you have your own production company or you become a massive star where you actually sort of have the keys to Hollywood and then you have a bit more of a sphere of influence and you can dip your toes in different waters. And he had to fight for me a little bit for this one. He had to go bat for me to actually do the part. AP: Have you played a detective before? GOODE: No, this is my first time, I think. I've got a memory like a sieve now; I've got three kids, that's the only thing I really think about. But no, I think this is my first time. FRANK: I don't think you have. GOODE: Only with my wife with some dress up, but that's about it. AP: Carl seems to wind everybody up. FRANK: A lot of people he winds up are people you want him to wind up and then a lot of times he's shooting down. But then, the people he's shooting down at surprise you by coming straight back at him. They don't necessarily let him get away with Carl being Carl. AP: And he's not a posh character. GOODE: No because (Frank) transposed it from the original Danish setting, Copenhagen, and it works brilliantly, obviously, in Edinburgh, and it becomes this amazing character. But he made the character English. But we haven't given too much detail yet as to as to his past, which I love the fact, because we're aiming to be able to keep doing this because there's 10 books. AP: I spoke to Leah Byrne and Alexej Manvelov, who both had first day nerves and are so good in this. Did it surprise you that they needed reassurance? FRANK: We all need reassurance. Including me. GOODE: Every actor I've ever met. FRANK: Your first day is really scary. There are all these people ... and acting, as I like to say, is the most difficult job in all of this because you're making yourself so vulnerable in front of a hundred strangers. So Day 1 is even worse. AP: And Matthew went out with Alexej for a long lunch? GOODE: I know it sounds a bit unprofessional, but actually, it's really, for me, that's the way that I like to work is to give myself to the other people that I've got major relationships in the show with, because I'm not competitive as an actor. I really want to share the screen. I find it weird when it doesn't happen the other way toward me. And so that's a really important relationship ... and I wanted us to have a great friendship. FRANK: The one thing you can't fix in post-production is casting if you've not cast well. And there were a lot of different relationships happening here, so they all had to work together. And they were all terrific. I would be surprised every day by something one of these actors would do. And, what was really fun for me too, is how much Matthew appreciated the skill on the other side. He was never like threatened or felt he was being shown up, it was like this delight. GOODE: Probably was being shown up.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
What the Show of the Summer Knows About Intimacy
The beach-read vibes are strong with Sirens, a Netflix miniseries set on a moneyed northeastern island compound that, at first glance, seems awfully familiar. The hydrangeas bloom with manicured abandon. The dramatic tension is stoked with top-shelf liquor and minor acts of class warfare. Absolutely everyone has secrets. The enigmatic trophy wife at the center, Michaela, is played not by Nicole Kidman—as is, at this point, stylistic tradition—but by Julianne Moore, effusing lavender mist and toxic insecurity. Michaela is planning an end-of-summer gala, assisted by her sharp-elbowed assistant, Simone (played by Milly Alcock), but things are thrown into chaos with the arrival of an unexpected guest: Simone's down-at-heel, grimly judgmental sister, Devon (Meghann Fahy). The theatricality of the setup—the disruptive stranger, the impending event that will inevitably go very wrong—isn't happenstance. Sirens was originally a play by the writer Molly Smith Metzler (Maid, Orange Is the New Black), which premiered in 2011 under the title Elemeno Pea. Fully Netflixed by Metzler into a five-episode adaptation, the final product is a triumph of the popular-novel-to-series genre: funny, caustic, absurd. The point of this kind of show, typically, is to marry coastal-mansion lifestyle porn with a little light mystery—a body swept onto shore, a metaphorical skeleton rattling its way out of the walk-in closet. On Netflix's The Perfect Couple, for instance (a 2024 adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand's novel of the same name), the question of who murdered a wedding guest is less gripping than Kidman's high-diva turn as a matriarch with a perplexingly ambiguous accent who's as stiff as a Barbie doll in pale-pink silk. [Read: Nicole Kidman's perpetual trick] Sirens, though, has a more satirical bent, a whiff of White Lotus–esque eat-the-rich cynicism and some truly jarring insight into the bought intimacies of lonely 0.001-percenters. By focusing on the scruffy, foul-mouthed Devon—who waits tables in a falafel shop and has been single-handedly caring for her and Simone's ailing father (Bill Camp)—the show sets up a collision based on class, an outsider's dissection of this strange new world. In the first episode, Devon, enraged by an Edible Arrangement her sister has sent in lieu of actually responding to her texts or helping at home, furiously carts said fruit basket via bus, ferry, and a miles-long walk in order to throw lukewarm pieces of melon at Simone. 'Don't send me fruit, you stupid bitch,' Devon shrieks, adding, with confusion, 'Who are you? No, seriously. You're dressed like a doily.' Fahy has played the sphinxlike wife of a compulsive cheater on The White Lotus, and the sassy sidekick of a bride-to-be on The Perfect Couple. Devon is darker, and much funnier—sour, sweaty, gulping water from a sprinkler by the side of the road in early scenes while an appalled dog walker watches. She's desperate to liberate Simone from what she sees as a fundamentally toxic job, but Simone, a yapping blond lapdog in Lilly Pulitzer, has never felt more herself than she does under Michaela's wing. And casting Moore is a fascinating stretch—she's an actor better known for embodying wounded birds than temperamental alphas, and so her Michaela feels notably vulnerable from the get-go. Fittingly, Michaela's quirk is that she's turned her billionaire husband's compound into a sanctuary for rescued raptors, tending to birds of prey so that they can be unleashed into the wild to kill things anew. Her other hobby, so to speak, is described by her acolytes as her 'radical generosity'—spending astonishing amounts of money to help women from humble backgrounds ascend to the highest climbs of society. Devon, you sense, might be her greatest challenge yet. As thrilling as Fahy is to watch, in some ways, the dynamic between Michaela and Simone is the least predictable part of Sirens: the controlled, high-strung society queen being endlessly fussed over by her enthralled attendant. In the first episode, Simone and Michaela check the state of each other's breath before an event; when Simone's fails to pass muster, Michaela gives her assistant her own chewed-up piece of gum, which Simone pops into her mouth without hesitation. Simone also helps Michaela sext her husband, a billionaire named Peter Kell (played irresistibly by Kevin Bacon), squeezing Michaela's breasts together and drafting language that's 'dirty but not too dirty.' And maybe it's the Careless People of it all, but I gasped out loud when a fragile Michaela climbed into bed for the night next to Simone, gazing into her assistant's eyes and demanding secrets like an 8-year-old at a sleepover. [Read: The awful secret of wealth privilege] Metzler is clearly fascinated by money and class, particularly as they intersect with gender. Maid, which starred Margaret Qualley as a young mother who flees an abusive relationship and ends up balancing on a knife-edge of homelessness and badly paid domestic work cleaning rich people's houses, took pains to communicate all the ways in which surviving poverty is its own full-time job. Sirens carefully contrasts the repetitive, arduous work done by Michaela's staff with the #werk performed by Michaela and her devotees. Simone's job skirts the two—she's expected to fawn over her boss and to buttress her emotionally while also dealing with the unpleasant parts of managing a household that Michaela would rather outsource. But Sirens is also particularly thoughtful on the subject of power and how women often wield it, blurring lines between obligation and intimacy—and knowing, always, that the terms of unspecified relationships can change without warning. Nevertheless, Sirens is a very fun show. In a requisite shopping scene, as Devon is made into a woman fit to attend Michaela's gala, she wears a sulky sneer throughout that offsets the $22,000 spotted monstrosity her new companions dress her in. ('I look like Beetlejuice!') Even while the series seems to sense that the dynamics between the three women are the reason we're watching, it continually throws up haphazard potential mysteries: cult-like antics, reclusive former spouses, all those birds. I understand why, but they're much less diverting than the relationships the show excavates, the loyalty and love you can buy but never fully count on. When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Times
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Sirens review — Meghann Fahy's sweary alcoholic lights up this black comedy
How far do you go to please your boss at work? Buy them a cup of coffee, have their back in a meeting. Perhaps. You are, however, unlikely to mist their underwear with lavender or happily accept their used chewing gum in your mouth when they tell you your breath is six out of ten. But that's because your boss isn't giving you the 'perfect' lifestyle you dreamt of. Nor might their cultlike charisma have you under a complete spell. • House of Dragon's Milly Alcock: 'Matt Smith said he felt like a predator' That's the situation between fresh-faced twentysomething Simone (House of the Dragon's Milly Alcock) and the socialite Michaela, played by Julianne Moore in Netflix's swift-paced, largely entertaining miniseries Sirens (just
