‘Imperfect Women’ Star Kate Mara on Nancy’s Affair With Howard

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains stories from the Episode 5 of “Imperfect Women,” now streaming on Apple TV.

There’s a lot to learn about Kate Mara’s Nancy Hennessy in “Imperfect Women.”

The Pasadena socialite – whose murder kickstarts AppleTV’s mystery thriller – is hard to figure out. Growing up in a trailer park in Bakersfield, Nancy has led a difficult and complicated life that the audience sees only in glimpses, before eventually marrying the wealthy and affluent Robert (Joel Kinnaman). Over the first three episodes of “Imperfect Women,” told through the perspective of her best friend Eleanor (Kerry Washington), we learn that Nancy was having an affair with a mystery man named David.

With both the police and Nancy’s friends believing her lover to be responsible for her murder, David’s identity is seemingly revealed in Episode 4 when a bartender with the same name begins flirting with Nancy at a New Year’s Day party at her Pasadena mansion. But when she turns him down, the audience is back to square one, until she refers to Howard (Corey Stoll) — her other best friend Mary’s (Elisabeth Moss) husband – as “David” in the episode’s closing moments as part of an inside joke.

Nancy faces a series of blows in Episode 4: She has less than ideal interactions with her husband, her husband’s father, and her daughter, whom she slaps in front of everyone at the party. Mortified, Nancy runs out and is followed by Mary and Eleanor, plagued by memories of her traumatic childhood, which includes being repeatedly assaulted by her mother’s boyfriend and being blamed for it by her mother — who crashed a car they were both in as a form of punishment. She tries to apologize to her daughter, Cora (Audrey Zahn), and is shut out by both her and Robert, eventually discovering what she assumes are divorce papers on his laptop.

The threat of an impending divorce hanging over her head, Nancy starts working on a production of “Ariadne” at the L.A. Metro Ballet in Episode 5, where she lands an unemployed Howard a job as an academic consultant as a favor. Spending every day together, Howard and Nancy strike up a friendship that escalates into an affair after a drunken night celebrating the show’s wrap.

Later, Nancy finally discovers the reason Robert’s been pulling away for months – he’s lost a large chunk of money in a bad business deal and tells her they should probably separate to protect her from the financial fallout. Nancy, overcome with relief, assures him she loves him and doesn’t care about the money. (“Your money did not rescue me. I’ve been living without your love for three months now and I’m a total mess,” she cries). The pair reunite to make it to the opening night of “Ariadne” – where Nancy calls off her affair with Howard despite his aggressive pushback, and return home happy. That is, until Robert discovers she’s been having an affair, thanks to Howard anonymously sending him illicit photos of her. Following a violent outburst from Robert, Nancy gets in her car and flees in the last scene of the episode.

Below, Mara spoke with Variety about Nancy’s past trauma, the character’s relationship with Robert — and why she began the affair in the first place.

For obvious reasons, Nancy doesn’t have any scenes in the present storyline and mainly appears through flashbacks. How did you tackle portraying her when the audience primarily experiences her through Eleanor’s eyes at first?

I really didn’t approach her any differently than I would with a character who is alive, because I’m playing her alive, it’s just in a different time period. Most of the show, even for the other characters, is also in different time periods. You’re not only seeing Nancy in flashbacks, it’s everybody.

She’s in a vulnerable position. She’s preparing for a divorce that she thinks is coming. How does that add to the pressure to succeed at work and create her own life?

I think that everything in Nancy’s life is at a certain level of anxiety and pressure. Her relationship with her daughter is definitely in a complicated place, and her relationship with her husband. She’s really striving to start a career, but doesn’t have the support from the person that she loves, and so I think she’s just at a pressure point in general. And all of that leads to the decisions that she ends up making.

Nancy grew up as a ballerina and mentions that the ballet can be triggering for her as an adult. Does being in that atmosphere, every single day, add to her emotional state?

The interesting thing about that scenario for Nancy is that when she does go back to the ballet as an adult, and hasn’t been there in 20-something years, it’s quite scary for her — but it’s also really exhilarating, because it was the thing that she loved that kept her going for a long time. As an actor, that’s really fun to play, because it’s very complicated. It’s not just one thing or another. She loves it, but she also is very uncomfortable because it brings up so many feelings and so many thoughts about her past — things that she is still trying to deal with.

The language that Nancy uses when she’s talking about her past trauma is interesting. In Episode 5, she makes it sound like she came on to her mother’s boyfriend and seems to take the blame for the whole situation. Does her unresolved trauma affect her decisions in the present? And how did you choose to approach portraying that?

I chose to approach it as it was written — luckily, it was all very clear, it wasn’t like I had to fill in the blanks, so that makes it more helpful from an acting standpoint. But I think all of her experiences and traumas and relationships from her past, just like it would affect anyone in real life, completely inform her decisions, relationships, relationship dynamics and the people that she chooses to love and the people that she chooses to hide from. It completely narrates all of that for her present and for her as an adult, for sure.

Had you read the book before you boarded the project?

I read the book because I was offered the project. The book was available when the scripts were not, so actually, the book was a big reason why I did the role, because I couldn’t read all of the Nancy episodes, so it was hard to know where my character was going to go. But the book obviously is very clear, and it was very helpful in that way.

How did you react to that Howard reveal in the book and at the end of Episode 4?

I thought it was a really great surprise. There are so many moments like that, which is why I think the show is fun to watch and why the book is really fun to read as well. Because it keeps you guessing, and for a certain amount of time, really keeps your mind changing with every chapter and episode.

Something’s building between Nancy and Howard, and there’s a vibe between them that’s obvious to the audience — maybe in hindsight. Does Nancy pick up on it? Does she want to put a stop to it before it becomes an affair?

I think she probably doesn’t want to believe it, so she’s probably telling herself lies or is maybe in denial about it. Before it starts, there isn’t much for her to stop. What is she going to do? Stop talking to him? Once the affair starts, obviously, there are so many moments that she could have done the right thing or made different choices, but she’s very much in a state of denial, and she just has so many other things going on with her husband and her family.  

Is that why she doesn’t put an end to their affair either? She clearly shows immense guilt over the situation, especially since he’s her best friend’s husband.

Oh no. There’s so many reasons why the character, or any character, has an affair, you can’t really pinpoint it to one thing. That’s why learning about her and all these things that are going on behind closed doors sort of gives you a glimpse into why she might be at that place in her mind. I don’t think there’s one specific thing. I think it’s so many things that have piled up and led her to this moment.

She obviously doesn’t want people to know that they’re together, but she does take him to this party where they’re seen together, which seems a little bizarre.

It’s good for the show! For the story! I think the more she goes on with this affair, and the more dangerous it becomes, the more like her old self she feels. And that’s intoxicating to her, and what leads her there. There’s so much that she has not put to rest and dealt with in a real way. She’s reliving this place of danger and self-loathing.

She also reaches out to Scott, her mother’s old boyfriend, in what feels like another decision born of self-loathing.

I thought it was very brave that she wanted to — and to confront somebody that’s hurt you so deeply and that has betrayed so many levels of trust. There’s a lot of power dynamics there, the abuse of power was really intense in that relationship.

I wanted to ask about Cora. There’s this huge fight that happens in Episode 4, but she’s not present in Episode 5. Did you decide in your mind what their relationship was like off-screen in those final months?

I can’t really remember what the sort of backstory I told myself was, but I assumed it was just fraught. You do hear from Cora’s character, what her experience of their relationship was leading up to Nancy’s death — it certainly wasn’t in a good place.

Robert has an alcohol problem that’s addressed throughout the show, and at the end of Episode 5, he has a violent outburst when he finds out about Nancy’s affair. Do you think he’d ever been violent toward her before?

I don’t think so. I don’t know if it’s in the show or not, but she says that he’s never been like that before. I’m not totally sure.

At the end of Episode 5, she finds out about all the money problems, and Robert is very shocked that she doesn’t care about the money. Why do you think that is? There’s the sense that there’s a lot they don’t know about each other.

I think that there’s a lot that everybody doesn’t know in the show, which is why it’s fun. All the characters, you think that they’re best friends, but they don’t know XYZ, or they’re married, and they don’t know [something else]. I think a lot of human nature is that people don’t share everything, even with their closest relationships.

But with Robert, he’s very insecure about his position and his family and what wealth means to the people around him. He’s very defined by his wealth, and I think that’s why she has a lot of empathy for him when she discovers all of these money problems that he’s been dealing with his family. She kind of just melts into him after learning all of that, because she really does truly love him. And the miscommunication there really is what sets them off on this terrible trajectory, which really didn’t have to happen if there was honesty there.

Robert and Eleanor’s dynamic is a pretty big part of Eleanor’s perspective for the first three episodes, but in Nancy’s episodes, it doesn’t really come up. Do you think that she was ever an actual strain in their marriage?

I don’t think so. Up until seeing that email [regarding the divorce papers], I think that Nancy’s very confident in their marriage. They have such an intense relationship, her and Eleanor, and I think she trusts Eleanor with her life. Even though she knows there’s this history and these feelings, I just don’t think she ever would worry about anything happening. Again, it’s one of the reasons why the story is fun — these different perspectives, something can be so intense and real for somebody else, and then a person very, very close to them in their life has a completely different experience of what’s going on.

The trio’s friendship is, at the end of the day, the focus of the show and both Mary and Eleanor fight extremely hard to get justice for Nancy’s murder.

I think she would do the same. That wouldn’t necessarily be a surprise, I almost think that’s expected in their friendship. They’re very entangled in each other’s lives, and for good or for bad, they’re like family. They’re chosen family. So, I think that that would be something she would expect in a way.

This interview has been edited and condensed.