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Murdaugh: Death in the Family: Jason Clarke Talks Crime, Trial & More

Murdaugh: Death in the Family's Jason Clarke spoke with us about the finale's Alex Murdaugh trial, recreating the double murders, and more.

While Murdaugh: Death in the Family features an ensemble cast, the bulk of the burden literally bears on star Jason Clarke, who plays family patriarch Alex Murdaugh. Initially, trying to manage a tragic boating accident involving the death of a family friend, things start to spiral out of control, thanks in part to a reporter, Mandy Matney (Brittany Snow), who starts to unravel the truth about one of South Carolina's most influential families and how not everything is as it seems. As the truth threatens the family's fortune and empire, Alex starts to buckle and crumble under pressure as a civil suit is brought by the victim's family and risks exposing Alex's shady dealings and ruining the Murdaugh family's legal practice. On the heels of the Murdaugh series finale, The Last Frontier star spoke to Bleeding Cool about filming the infamous double murder scene of Alex's wife, Maggie (Patricia Arquette) and their son, Paul (Johnny Berchtold), and whether Alex's trial could have gone for more than one episode. The following contains spoilers.

Murdaugh: Death in the Family Star Jason Clarke on Staging the Murder, Leaving No Doubt on Existing Narratives

When filming that fateful night in question with Patricia and Johnny, did it feel a bit cathartic? What was it like?

I felt very separate. We were well into it at that time, Tom. We'd shot a lot, and it was always hanging over my head. We got to come up and shoot this. I liked the way that it was written. There was a simplicity to it. You come and then you solve it in space. For me, it was the weird things that made it even darker that [Alex] literally just pulls up in the golf cart. He's got the guns in the back. He's got his thing to put on top of him.

My only problem, as Alex, is if I go around the side where the chicken is and the golf cart was, and he's going back and forth feeding the dog, I need to know where he is. I don't want him to come around the corner, and I'm half ready. I don't want to be sneaking around the corner to poke. There was a calmness in making his decision to kill Paul and Maggie at this point. Of course, there's the actual doing it, your tempos, but he goes and I just called out a little bit, but Alex said, "He doesn't need much to eat there, Bubba. (Murdaugh's family dog)," just to hear where [Paul] was, so I could track him. So okay, I have got time. Yep, again, bang, bang, bang. Then I can hear that he's gone into the shed, then and then it's just like, "You know what, it's game time for him."

They did their thing, and we did our thing. It was pretty close to the date that it happened. There was a lot of strangeness around, like this "Showdown at the OK Corral." It hangs over the whole movie, and you want to shoot it as quickly as possible. It's the same thing with the aftermath, and then you also want to do justice to what these people had, and Alex's struggle was intense but minimal. There could have been a moment where he blew his [own] head off, but he didn't. He got through it, got on the course and the cart out, and then it was game on for him.

The way it was shot, there were no distinct facial features on the shooter. Was it something you guys mulled over with multiple different angles to retain ambiguity?

There were lots of different angles. We walked through it, and there was no need to overplay it, Tom, in my mind. The murder is THE horrific thing, and there were a couple of shots. There's a quick grab of me where you see me, just I would have liked even that to be a little bit longer. Where you see that Paul sees his father's eyes, and boom! Goes around the corner. The next thing they shot at me is that immediate struggle of like, "I hope he's dead. Hang on, I can hear him, but he's not. Oh fuck! I got to go in there again."

That was the moment when I thought I wanted one moment when he could have almost blown his own head off, because nothing can prepare you for what he did just then, but he's able to get through it. As you come back around, you see me, who is almost about to fall over. I'll rack it again when I hear him, and then he gets the more steel, and he does it twice. There are two shots, and I think the second one's strengthened him up. At which point he's having a hard time. He clocks the son again one more time, because that's where his real moral quandary lies. In his own mind, he felt like Maggie dug her own grave, but with a glance at him, it's just like, "Okay, I've come this far," and I think that's how he would have put it together, that's my guess.

The way the finale played out, do you feel like an adequate amount of time was spent in the courtroom sequence and getting the entire case out? Or do you feel like it could have at least maybe deserved another episode?

Oh, I think it could have definitely handled another episode, absolutely. The court case is the thing we all know. Look, there's something about the brevity of it, but there was a lot in that court case, and we all know it. You're then going into bigger notions of justice and mistakes, I think the judge and the prosecutors made, as well as the defense. I was happy with what we had. It was important to show [Alex] kicking off his defense, the bit we did word for word, because you get to see you get to see Alex with it all on the line.

All episodes of Murdaugh: Death in the Family, which also stars Brittany Snow, Will Harrison, Gerald McRaney, J. Smith-Cameron, Tyner Rushing, Kathleen Wilhoite, Noah Emmerich, and Tommy Dewey, are available to stream on Hulu.

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