Emma Corrin Is Not Your Typical TV Detective in ‘A Murder at the End of the World’ (Exclusive)

A Murder at the End of the World is no ordinary whodunnit thriller. The FX on Hulu miniseries debuted on Tuesday with its first two episodes — titled "Homme Fatale" and "The Silver Doe" — and right from the start, it's clear there's something special about this story. Created by The OA geniuses Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, the new miniseries follows the same tradition as the gone-too-soon Netflix masterpiece by letting its lead character usher everyone into the story.

It begins with Darby Hart (Emma Corrin) sharing a snippet of her* gripping nonfiction novel "Silver Doe," about a murder victim she and her partner-turned-love interest Bill (Harris Dickson) doggedly resolved to solve together. If that weren't fascinating enough, Darby is soon invited to an icy oasis belonging to an eccentric billionaire for reasons that are unclear to her and to all of the other individually talented guests. Soon, she's at the center of a new murder mystery that hits closer to home, even if she is thousands of miles away.

For Emma Corrin, the chance to work with Marling and Batmanglij, whose work on The OA  and "extraordinarily unique way of writing" they were already familiar with, meant taking on a multifaceted narrative adventure; with heady themes like climate change, tech billionaires and, well, murder in the mix, there's a lot at stake in the story.

"I think that's the beauty of how Brit and Zal's brains work. They can hold so many things at once, and I think that's what makes it a really interesting series," Corrin said. "It's totally fair to say it's a whodunnit because I suppose at its core it is, but it also explores the world of tech that we now live in, it's a love story as well, and it's a story of growth and development. You watch this person grow up in this unique environment, and it's this really intense character study. So it's many, many things at once."

The complexity of the character (who appears to us in a few very differing points in life) also really struck a chord with Corrin.

"What I found most intriguing about her is that given the way she grew up with her dad as the coroner and these crime scenes that she grew up on — which is an insane thing if you think about being exposed to as a kid and a teenager — she has that darkness in her and that ability to sort of see through things and through people that maybe other people don't. But she also has a curiosity and optimism, and I really enjoyed that because it meant that there was no danger of her ever being one-dimensional," Corrin said. "There was no danger of her ever slipping into the tropes of detectives that you see in series sometimes who are so jaded and depressed and angry at the world. She has those elements in her, but she also has this almost childlike curiosity, which was really fun."

The main setting of the series, which, in the present-day, takes place in a snowed-in, futuristic smart hotel in Iceland before moving to a warmer, simpler climate for the backstory of Darby's first murder case, also hugely informed Corrin's performance as a character who is increasingly alarmed and isolated.

"It was an incredible production to work … because we started out in Iceland, and that experience, for the whole cast, it was incredibly bonding," they explained. "It was very humbling to be in that landscape and to be in the mountains and shooting out there. And when we then moved to these stages in New Jersey when they built the entire hotel, which we shot in about four to five months in total, it meant that we still could feel the wind. We could take ourselves back to what it felt like to be in the mountains and in this incredibly remote landscape. But also, shooting on stages everyday in this hotel, certainly for me, I really did feel like I would never leave, like I did never leave. It was very immersive."

It's a feeling that seems to reach through the screen to captivate audiences as well, and as the series continues, the landscapes and character dualities will continue to inform the tone of the story. 

The first two episodes of A Murder at the End of the World dropped on Tuesday, Nov. 14 on Hulu. New episodes will be released each week on Tuesdays through Dec. 19.

*Emma Corrin is nonbinary. Their character Darby Hart is female.