Elisabeth Moss Has 'Never Seen a Show Like' Her New Series 'Shining Girls'

After her starring roles in Mad Men and The Handmaid's Tale, Elisabeth Moss will be hoping she can make it a successful television hat-trick with the launch of her new series Shining Girls.

The new "metaphysical thriller" is based on the 2013 novel by Lauren Beukes and stars Moss alongside Wagner Moura (Narcos), Jamie Bell (Rocketman) and Phillipa Soo (Hamilton). Moss is taking more control in her latest TV venture not just as the star, but also as an executive producer and director. She says this increased responsibility is heightening her experience in the industry.

Shining Girls in set in the '90s and Moss plays Kirby Mazrachi, a survivor of a vicious attack by a serial killer whose crimes somehow shift Kirby's reality. Moura co-stars as Dan, a journalist helping Kirby uncover the truth about what's happening to her.

Ahead of the launch of the new show, which starts streaming on Apple TV+ on Friday April 29, Newsweek spoke to Moss and Moura about their experiences on Shining Girls.

Elisabeth Moss' career change

As an actor, Moss has received countless awards for her performances across the stage and screen. Her characters, most notably Peggy Olsen and June Osborne, have become pop cultural and even political icons, but she's also starting to find success behind the camera too.

"I've been acting for 33 years," Moss told Newsweek, "and I started producing, maybe like 10 years ago, but more and more producing in the last five years.

"And it felt like it brought this whole other layer to what I love to do, it brought this whole other tidal wave of things that I could think about and talk about and work on." Moss added, "I feel the same way with directing."

As a producer, Moss has worked on a number of projects in the last few years including The Handmaid's Tale and movies like Shirley, Hive and Light from Light.

Her latest venture places her in the director's chair. She directed three episodes of The Handmaid's Tale in Season 4, and she's credited as the director of two out of the eight Shining Girls episodes.

"It's kind of just brought this whole new way of looking at a project and opened it up and after 33 years, the directing has made the acting part more exciting than it's ever been." she said. "It's just a way of keeping exploring the project in an even deeper and more complex way."

Moss's co-star Moura couldn't be happier with his collaboration with Moss. "We became friends, which is something I cherish a lot. I love her," he told Newsweek. "I loved working with her as an actor as a director, she is a great director."

Moura is perhaps best known for playing Pablo Escobar in the Netflix series Narcos. He admitted that he had high expectations before meeting Moss but she ended up exceeding them, perhaps because the two share a similar style when it comes to their work.

"We have similar ways of approaching a scene. We just go there and see where this is gonna go. We're not actors that have an idea of the scene and wants the scene to be what we thought."

Moura continued, "It's like 'let's explore it, let's see where this is gonna go' and and I love that. I just love that and she's just exactly that kind of actor."

Moura's appreciation for journalism

Moura's character Dan Velazquez proves to be one of Kirby's (Moss) only allies within Shining Girls. He's a gruff newspaper reporter who will bend the rules in order to be the first to get the story.

Without meaning to, Moura had actually been preparing for a role like this for years, as he started out working as a journalist in his native Brazil in the '90s and 2000s. Discussing what he learned on the set of Shining Girls, he explained how he developed a greater appreciation for journalism.

"I went deeper into the world of journalists talking to my friends, because most of my friends in Brazil are journalists. Especially talking about the difference between being a journalist nowadays and back in the 90s, which I think is very different," Moura said.

He feels that today's journalism is in a "weird position," pointing to "the spread of fake news" and "world leaders discrediting journalists." He decided to seek out advice from an old school journalist.

"I reached out to this guy at The Chicago Sun-Times, a journalist called Bob Herguth who is one of those journalists that's working [on] one to three stories per year only.

"It was awesome to hang out with him. He took me to The Chicago Sun-Times newsroom. I think I've learned a lot about our about journalism and the importance of journalism, for democracy," Moura said.

"Shining Girls is a mix of genres," Moura added. "It's a crime story, it's a sci-fi thing, but in its core, I think this is a series about women getting killed just because they're women, which is a thing that resonates a lot with me coming from a country (Brazil) where this happens a lot."

Coming back for more

Moss admits she's never trying to replicate the success of the past, and instead chooses projects, and this project in particular, because it's a story she wants to be a part of, which she notes has worked for her so far.

In the case of Shining Girls, Moss said, "I felt like this was a show that I wanted to watch. I wanted to know what happened next after I read the first script. I wanted to know how it ended."

She added, "I also I felt like I'd never seen a show like this — and I watch a lot of TV."

Shining Girls will air weekly on Apple TV+ with the first episode launching on the streaming platform on Friday April 29, 2022.