Death and Other Details’ Violett Beane Talks First Half of Season 1, Imogene’s Confidence, and That Malta Excursion

In January, Hulu debuted a brand new murder mystery series to add to their already-stacked line-up of whodunnits. Set on a luxury cruise ship, Death and Other Details follows Imogene Scott (Violett Beane), a young woman who must assist in solving a brutal murder committed on the boat. In order to solve the case, she is forced to work alongside Rufus Cotesworth (Mandy Patinkin), a detective from her past that has reentered her life—much to her dismay. 

When it’s revealed that the murder on the ship is connected to her mother’s car bombing from her childhood (a case Cotesworth was unable to solve, despite his promises), this unexpected partnership is formed in an attempt to solve these two interconnected mysteries. 

After refugees are discovered below deck, Episode 5 takes some of the action off the boat. Imogene and ship owner Sunil (Rahul Kohli) decide to rescue this family, resulting in an unexpected excursion to Malta where they also are on the hunt to identify the mysterious “Viktor Sams,” who has connections to both heinous crimes separated by decades. 

Now that we’re past the halfway point of the season, Paste sat down with Beane to discuss her origins with Death and Other Details, her experiences filming, and what curious viewers can expect from the rest of the season.

Note: The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Paste Magazine: How did you get involved with this project?

Violett Beane: That was nearly two and a half years ago, and I just auditioned like any other person. I had Covid for the first time and had lost my sense of taste and smell. I did the audition with my mom on Zoom, where she was reading on the other side. I remember that the scene was tasting a French 75 and guessing the cocktail and I was like “I fully can’t taste or smell anything right now.” [Laughs]

Paste: What about the script appealed to you?

Beane: It’s more like “What didn’t?” It’s so fast paced, which you can feel from the way it’s edited, but it also reads like that. You’re constantly wondering what’s going to happen next and you get introduced to all of these really intricate and interesting people on almost every page! That alone was so intriguing to me as well as the world that Mike [Weiss] and Heidi [Cole McAdams] created. Everything feels so beautiful and, even though it’s set in the modern day, it feels like it could be in the ‘60s at certain points.

Paste: This is your first leading role in a TV show. How did you approach it differently than your other supporting roles?

Beane: You’re driving the story and so everything does kind of fall on you in terms of making it all make sense. During the pilot, I definitely was overwhelmed because whether this succeeds or fails is not solely based on me, but there’s a lot riding on it. For me, what’s most important is just leading with gratitude and kindness and realizing that everybody is there because they want to do their best work and that we have to show up even when we’re having a bad day.

Paste: I read that parts of filming were done on a set, but some were done on an actual ship from the 1930s. Can you talk about what that was like?

Beane: We started shooting on the Queen Mary, which I think is permanently parked in Long Beach, and that was really fun. Then later when we moved to sets for parts of it, we had the feeling of the boat and our set designer absolutely crushed making it look exactly like that. There were certain sets that were completely recreated and then obviously new ones that we built. But we shot everywhere. For Episode 5, we went to Malta for a week, and that was insane. We were there for five or six days, and it was this crazy whirlwind of trying to get everything in a short amount of time. And when we got there, six of our seven bags had been left in London Heathrow, including all of the makeup and hair and all of our personal stuff. We didn’t get it back for four days! So that was just crazy fun and insane stuff that definitely bonds you together.

Paste: One of the things I like about your performance is how you balance her confidence with her uncertainty about what is going on and who to trust. How do you contrast those two elements when playing Imogene?

Beane: That’s something that maybe we share in common. I do speak with conviction and most of the time I know what I’m saying, but sometimes I don’t. And I think it’s that you believe in yourself. You believe you’re doing the right thing, or you believe that you know something. I think with her, she just wants to get to the bottom of it and understand it. She also feels this pull to detective work; she feels like her blood is pumping and her heart is beating, and she knows that it’s what she’s supposed to do. I think she’s so willing to follow something to the ends of the Earth, even if it might not be the case, because she wants it so badly. And that’s a lesson that I think she learns throughout this season. A big theme for us is truth or justice. Can you have both? Sometimes it’s not possible and that’s also something you’ll be seeing by the end of the season.

Paste: Last week’s episode, Episode 5, marks the halfway point in the season and we left off with you and Sunil together in a boat. I think it’s interesting because she doesn’t generally trust people and yet she lets in both him and also Jules (Hugo Diego Garcia) earlier on. How does she decide who to trust and who to avoid?

Beane: It’s this idea of keeping people at an arm’s length. And with Jules, there’s this level of like “Oh, we get each other because we’re both from nothing and we’re both alone.” So for her, in that moment at least, it’s simply sexual. I think that there’s a little bit of a difference with Sunil. I think she feels like he sees her and that scares her to death because anytime she’s close to somebody, she feels like she could lose them. So she puts these walls up. You do get to see them sort of come down with him, but anything could happen at any point and her walls might go right back up, and you might even see that this season.

Paste: Can you talk about how you tackled the dynamic between Imogene and Rufus?

Beane: It’s kind of beautiful how [the dynamic] is built in like that. He originally wasn’t meant to be the detective but, when you think about it, he has to be. He’s the only person that knows what he’s doing on the ship. And that would be so bizarre if this young blonde girl was like “Here, let me solve the crime!”

Paste: And then he has this rich background with her, which adds to everything. 

Beane: Exactly. So it’s sort of built in that he’s mentoring her through all of this, and it was a fun dynamic to go from her despising him to having to rely on him. And I think that that also goes to what you’re talking about regarding those walls with Sunil, for instance. She has walls with him that she has to let down in order to get to the next step, and it forces her to start that journey in her life.

Paste: The whodunit genre seems to be in a resurgence, with Rian Johnson’s Knives Out franchise and other similar movies. Do you have a favorite murder mystery or one that you watched to get ready for Death and Other Details? 

Beane: The only thing I really watched was Colombo, because I feel like he’s somebody that shouldn’t be a detective. In a lot of them, they start out that way or they feel like that’s always what they were supposed to do. And he is kind of just like this bumbling guy and he has this little tagline, “one more thing,” and for Imogene, hers is “gross,” and I think that’s so applicable for her.

Josh Sharpe is the current TV intern at Paste. His other bylines include TheaterMania and Collider. To hear about his thoughts about film, TV, and musical theatre, follow him @josh_sharpe22 on all socials.

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