The entire first season of Neagley is now streaming on Prime Video!
Reprising her role from Reacher, Maria Sten is now at the forefront of her own series as Frances Neagley. As always, she brings her A-game as the formidable, often stoic character who does not like to be touched (suffers from haphephobia).
Ahead of the series premiere on Prime Video, I had the opportunity to chat with co-creator, showrunner and EP Nick Wootton. He told me why he believes Frances Neagley’s character should be at the forefront of her own show, what it was like to create an in-depth backstory for the character, what surprising things he learned about her in the process, and much more.
Watch the full interview with Nick Wootton below:
Frances Neagley has been a fan-favourite of the Reacher universe, and now, she’s at the forefront of her own show. Serving as the co-creator, showrunner and EP, Wootton told me why he wanted to create a show centred on Neagley.
Wootton explained, “You know, it’s the lack of the the sort of, I think, the barest exposure in the books and in the series, the Reacher series, to her haphephobia. And really the sort of the taste of her sort of psychiatric psychological issues without really having any explanation for them was really catnip. I think for us, we were like, you know, ‘Well, let’s make a season out of explaining what’s going on with her and what her backstory is.’ And use this season to build not only sort of to do a detective show, but also that has this sort of DNA and a mystery of you know of the Reacher-verse, but also the Reacher show. But also to use that season to sort of delve into her backstory. And that was really like – that was sort of really the spark because you felt like, ‘Oh, we really we can really go a lot of places with this.’ And yet, we can tell a very, you know, we can tell two stories at once. We can tell this detective story and her story at the same time if we really do it right and that, to us, was the goal. And, for me, always the most successful version of any first season of a of a show like this.”
With Neagley as the lead in her own series, audiences will have the opportunity to learn more about her and see her confront her past trauma. Wootton said it was “fascinating” to see the evolution of Neagley’s story as things progressed in the writers’ room.
Wootton said, “It was really fascinating because it sort of evolved. It evolved, you know, as we went along. It deepened as we went along. It was sort of like we had, you know, an inkling of what that was going to be and why. But then really building out what, how to reveal it and how deep it went and how it was going to affect her relationship with her father going forward. It just sort of mushroomed from there, and that was a good sign. That was such an excellent sign because we just felt like, you know, anytime ideas are, you know, are sort of showing up at four o’clock in the morning that are good versus just being looney tunes. But like, when they’re like, ‘Oh my god, that’s actually the solve,’ you know, oh my, we should do this, we should do this, and those kinds of things were happening as we were breaking this season, where you felt like, okay, this is – we’re onto something here.”
As the series progresses, audiences will get a better understanding of Neagley.
Regarding what he hopes viewers will understand about the character after season one, Wootton said, “You know that she has a very tough exterior and a very complicated interior, that is, and I think that it’s – she’s also somebody who is in denial of that complexity, and yet is wrestling with it at the same time. So maybe that. There’s a simple concept. I hope they come away with that. I’ll see, but that’s, I mean, that’s basically the the notion.”
Neagley is a mysterious character in the books, and with this new series, Wootton and his team can explore and flesh out the character. So, I wondered if there was anything that surprised him about the character in the process.
Wootton shared, “Oh, absolutely! I think, you know, the fun of developing that character was sort of again finding those pathways where you’re like you know the humour, which which is also in the Reacher show. But finding her ability, the humour, the depth, her relationship with her father, that kind of, to me, was where we had no idea what really to expect because we just hadn’t seen it from Maria playing Neagley in the with those with those sort of you know attitudes, and it was just phenomenal to watch her develop that out.”
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