FX series The Patient premieres on Hulu August 30. A psychological thriller about a therapist, played by Steve Carell, who is held prisoner by a patient, portrayed by Domhnall Gleeson, the show comes from Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg, creators of The Americans.
Chained to a hook in the basement floor, Carell’s Alan realizes over time that Gleeson’s Sam is a serial killer. Sam wants Alan to curb his homicidal tendencies.
Linda Emond and David Alan Grier are also in the cast.
At a TCA session, Fields explained how the idea for the show came to be. “We had spent a lot of time talking about a way to do a show that dealt with therapy, both being people who really believe in the value of introspection,” he said. “We were having a tough time finding a way in because it's hard to find drama in people talking to each other. Then we stumbled upon this idea, and it seemed like, gee, there might just be some stakes in this particular circumstance, and we were off to the races once we found it.”
Carell spoke about being chained to the floor during shooting. “When I got chained in, it was a real lock with a real key, and I thought, boy, if there's an earthquake or a fire, I hope somebody thinks twice about letting me out of here.”
There are ten half-hour episodes.
Gleeson shared about the prep work he did to inhabit a serial killer. “A lot of the clues were on the page, and I think a lot of the clues were also strangely in me,” he said. “I can only play it as the version that makes most sense to who I am, I suppose. So really it was about asking questions of myself and asking questions of the script as opposed to looking for answers on the internet or in research. I enjoyed that journey tremendously.”
Weisberg added, “Very early on at the beginning, we had this idea of a serial killer who wanted to get better, who was more on a spectrum and had a lot of normal things about him rather than just being, like, the crazed killer you normally think of. So we really had to do research to find out if that was a real thing or something ridiculous that we had made up.”
Fields, Weisberg and Carell executive produce the series with Caroline Moore, Victor Hsu and Chris Long.
