Kristen Bell Reveals What To Expect From Her Netflix Series With The Title That's Seriously As Long As This Headline
More details are emerging about Netflix's new satirical thriller series starring Kristen Bell. The show carries the unwieldy title, "The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window," which sounds like several airport kiosk paperback titles shoved into one. Bell now tells Entertainment Weekly that she was drawn to the show because it's "so outside the box and absurd," sharing her excitement over the show's twist-filled script.
"The Woman in the House..." will debut on Netflix as an eight-episode limited series in January. The dark comedy starts with a familiar plot point: a nosy, wine-guzzling neighbor may have witnessed a murder. The neighbor in question is Bell's character, a woman with a broken heart and a drinking problem. Her neighbors are sexy widower Neil (Tom Riley) and his daughter (Samsara Yett), and the cast also includes Michael Ealy, Shelley Hennig, Christina Anthony, Benjamin Levy Aguilar, and "Midnhunter" standout Cameron Britton.
A Murderous Satire Played Straight
Just as "Making A Murderer" spawned the hilarious mockumentary series "American Vandal," it seems that Netflix's own messy film, the Amy Adams-led "The Woman In The Window," shares ample common ground with the upcoming satire. In a sit-down with EW, co-creator Rachel Ramras insists that the series is having fun with an established genre, rather than making fun of it. For Bell's part, she says the pitch for the show "was like nothing I'd ever heard before, and it made me laugh," citing a particular twist involving her character's daughter. But for Bell, the difficulty was finding the balance between satire and sincerity.
"This one was particularly challenging because it was, 'Do I make a joke about this? Or do I play it completely straight, and risk missing the joke?' Rachel kept me on track. And she basically said, 'Try to do everything as sincere as possible, but make sure you're laughing on the inside.'"
By now, there's an entire sub-genre of true crime and murder mystery parodies, capitalizing on a cultural obsession that shows no signs of slowing down. Shows like "Only Murders In the Building" and NBC's now-canceled "Trial & Error" have to walk a fine line between comedy and bad taste. For "The Woman in The House...," unreliable murder mystery narrators seem to be the key comedic target. Bell says her method was to play the character completely straight and let the laughs come from the audience.
According to Bell, the end result of her work on "The Woman in the House..." is "the best bad acting I've ever wanted to accomplish in my career." That better be a promise. We look forward to seeing how the mystery unravels when "The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window" premieres on Netflix on January 28, 2022.