[Editor’s note: The following contains major spoilers for The Better Sister.]

Summary

The series ‘The Better Sister’ showcases hidden family secrets that challenge a fragile reconnection between sisters Chloe and Nicky.

Lorraine Toussaint’s character Catherine is complex, spending her time engaging in high-powered activities and gardening, giving her a unique edge.

Corey Stoll discusses the intricate relationships of the characters, revealing a rich emotional depth and motivation for the characters’ actions.

The eight-episode Prime Video thriller The Better Sister tells the story of sisters Chloe (Jessica Biel) and Nicky (Elizabeth Banks), who are seemingly vastly different on the outside and yet probably equally as broken on the inside. When Chloe’s picturesque life is turned upside-down by the brutal murder of her husband Adam (Corey Stoll), the sisters work through an estranged that was partly due to Chloe being the guardian of Nicky’s son Ethan (Maxwell Acee Donovan), from her own prior relationship with Adam. But with Ethan now the prime suspect of the crime, the two must unite as they deal with a complicated family history and unravel the truth behind what happened to Adam. When we first meet Adam, he’s already been murdered, and Chloe is fleeing their home in a white dress splattered with his blood. As the series goes on, we learn about how different his relationships with both Nicky and then Chloe were, and that Chloe’s life wasn’t as perfect as she led people to believe. At the same time, Chloe’s boss and mentor, Catherine Lancaster (Lorraine Toussaint), advises her on how to handle her own family PR while also sizing up Nicky’s true motives. During this interview with Collider, co-stars Stoll and Toussaint talked about what made Catherine such a striking character, figuring out Adam’s relationship with his son, Chloe versus Nicky, the interesting layers of Catherine’s backstory, and the experience shooting your own murder.
Lorraine Toussaint Loves Her Wheeler-Dealer ‘The Better Sister’ Character

“She’s such a complex, interesting woman.”

Image via Prime Video

Collider: Lorraine, I love your character. I could watch a show about just her. What do you think Catherine was up to when we weren’t seeing what she was up to? LORRAINE TOUSSAINT: Oh, my God, she has lovers. She has pool boys. She’s growing weed in the backyard, although she claims she’s not actually doing it. She’s also at the White House. She’s visiting heads of state. She’s traveling. She’s such a wheeler and a dealer. She’s so interesting to me, in terms of who she is behind the scenes when we’re not seeing her. I think she’s involved in politics. She’s involved in all sorts of things, but all high-powered. And then, there’s a part of her that likes to garden and just grow things. She’s such a complex, interesting woman. Where do you think her backbone comes from? Is it something that she’s had to develop, is it something from sheer will, or was it something she’s just always had? TOUSSAINT: I can tell you what I think. I think it comes from real struggle, real suffering, and really experiencing the full gamut of life. She is a survivor, that Catherine. It’s one of the reasons that she can look at Corey [Stoll]’s character and know that there is a red flag because she’s had to serve some men and get restraining orders. That’s not foreign to her. Not that that’s what happens to this character. But she’s done drugs. She’s done runways in Paris. She’s slept with politicians. She’s made kings. She’s also been homeless. She’s also been broke. She’s also slept on sofas. I just thought she was this fascinating, interesting combination of things. That’s a great question because I did a lot of thinking about what she wasn’t doing when we weren’t seeing her.

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I love that early on, she says, “I’m the fucking lion tamer of the circus, baby.” TOUSSAINT: Yeah, baby. That’s exactly right, I’m the fucking lion tamer. That’s right. How much fun is it to play a woman who gets to say dialogue like that? TOUSSAINT: I just loved it. She means it because she actually has gotten to where she’s gotten in all kinds of ways. She’s done all sorts of things. She has paid the price in lots of ways that are not for the faint of heart. She speaks fully from experience. I just love that she’s a broad.
Corey Stoll Feels There Was a Lot of Motivation for Murdering His ‘The Better Sister’ Character

“My job as the victim was to give everybody a reason to kill me.”

Image via Prime Video

Corey, there’s something so interesting about your character when this crime happens because this kind of story typically would focus on the wife or the ex. You don’t necessarily immediately jump to the child, but for a while, his son under suspicion. What was it like to find that relationship and figure out what that was like? COREY STOLL: It’s a very complicated family. I found that relationship between the father and son to be my way into the character. There’s something about fathers and sons that is so rich. It’s so fraught. I could really identify with that. I could see the place where love, resentment and resistance all meet. Men have these full emotional lives, but so often don’t have the vocabulary to express it. A part of my job as the victim was to give everybody a reason to kill me. That’s why it’s a good mystery, because there’s a lot of motivation, all-around. There were a lot of reasons to want to off me. That was fun to be able to play.

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How did your character feel about Nicky versus Chloe? These two women seemingly could not be more different. STOLL: The great thing about playing any marriage is that there are the two people involved, and then there’s the relationship. They’re each their own entity. The Adam in the relationship with Nicky and the Adam in the relationship with Chloe are two very different aspects of the same person, and yet there is a throughline. Even though these relationships are so different, the demons that Adam is struggling with remain. What was it like to shoot the fight scene between Nicky and Adam, and to figure all of that out? Is it fun to shoot a scene of your own demise, or is it just a very strange day? STOLL: No, it’s great. It was really fun. Elizabeth [Banks] was completely game to do it. We had a great stunt team that sketched out the fight. It was very collaborative. It came in and we’d figure out what made sense and what didn’t. It’s just like any other scene. You have to practice a little bit more and make sure everybody is safe, but I love doing that stuff. It’s really fun.
Lorraine Toussaint Says That Catherine Comes to Respect Nicky in ‘The Better Sister’

“She doesn’t start out respecting her because she doesn’t respect very many people.”

Image via Prime Video

Lorraine, there’s a conversation between Nicky and your character about it being a man’s world and women needing to stick together, and how that’s something that Black women just do. I just thought, not only does Catherine need to give a TED talk, but it showed so much about who Catherine is. What was that scene like to shoot? What do you think Catherine thought about Nicky? TOUSSAINT: Catherine finds herself liking Nicky, eventually. I think Catherine is very surprised by the fact that she likes Nicky and slightly irritated by the fact that she’s coming to like Nicky. I think she likes Nicky because she recognizes herself in Nicky. They share a very interesting common past, a history which, in the version you saw, she doesn’t actually tell Nicky. There was one version of the script where we actually talked about it, but I think those scenes changed. She certainly has an understanding of addiction. She has an understanding of where this woman has come from and where she’s living now. She plays with Nicky like a cat with a mouse, but Catherine is a cat anyway. She likes to toy with her prey. Nicky is one of the few characters who actually gains Catherine’s respect, but she doesn’t start out respecting her because she doesn’t respect very many people at all. Nicky begins to get her respect, and it’s interesting what she does with that.

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The Better Sister is available to stream on Prime Video. Check out the trailer: