The MVP: Despite an Emmys Snub, Carla Gugino Gave a Masterclass Performance in The Fall of the House of Usher

It would have been so easy for this kind of performance to become gaudy, to lean too heavily into caricature as Verna shifts and changes depending on the Usher she’s confronting. It could have become repetitive, ineffective, and downright boring in any other actor’s hands, but Gugino makes it a joy to watch as she moves through each episode in ways that are strikingly different and yet so hauntingly familiar. Gugino’s fearless physicality while mimicking a chimp before ripping Camille (Kate Siegel) to shreds balances nicely against the chilling cat lady that stalks Leo (Rahul Kohli) through his apartment, and the innocent call-girl of Tamerlane’s (Samantha Sloyan) nightmares strikes a perfect parallel to the vixen that would bring about Perry’s (Sauriyan Sapkota) end. But while each grand finale for her targets is equally enthralling and well-performed, Gugino’s finest moments come in the season’s final episode, with two cleverly placed scenes back-to-back. 

The first of those scenes is when Verna comes to collect Lenore (Kyliegh Curran), the last of Rodrick’s children and grandchildren left standing—and arguably the only one in this family who didn’t deserve Verna’s twisted transaction. Verna sits softly next to Lenore on her bed, gently telling her how her mother’s nonprofit (named after her daughter) will go on to change millions of lives across the globe, all for the better. The scene could read a touch too saccharine for a series this dark, but Gugino plays it with a sense of serene calm that communicates Verna’s reluctance to carry out this cruel act while still making it clear she never backs away from the horror of what she must do. As she stares straight down the camera, looking directly through Lenore at the audience, there’s something both endearing and unsettling about the tears in her eyes, about the comforting smile she attempts before she puts her hand up and kills Lenore with a single touch. The final shot of that scene is of Verna’s hand falling to the bed after tapping Lenore’s forehead, as Gugino allows her perfectly clawed hands to scrape the bed into an almost-fist while taking a deep breath. This movement paired with her inhale is perfectly mournful while emphasizing the casual nature with which this death was carried out. It brought me to tears the first time, and even on a rewatch, I had to pause once again due to the magnitude of what Gugino achieves in that small sequence. 

The second of those scenes is the one almost immediately following, when Rodrick, having just found his granddaughter dead, leaves his home and goes to Fortunato, where he is faced with the visages of his dead relatives seated around the extravagant conference table. As the lightning flashes through those huge floor-to-ceiling windows in the dark room, his kids and granddaughter disappear, leaving only Verna. The character’s temporary gentleness is gone, now replaced with a chilling, cold, confident presence at the other end of the table. There’s a twisted pride to Gugino’s delivery of this monologue, one that communicates the awe and disgust at Rodrick’s mounting body count—the very thing that she enabled. The final shot of Verna in this scene is her caressing Rodrick as she instructs him to head to his childhood home, where he will tell Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly) everything. She’s chilling and sensual; haunting and horrifying all at once. 

When The Fall of the House of Usher closes on Verna’s veiled face before pulling out to a wide of her handiwork laid neatly in two rows—nine fresh, Usher graves—it’s once again Gugino’s performance that lingers. Verna isn’t a beacon of morality or of right and wrong, but instead of checks and balances. As she looks at the burial mounds and then up at the raven perched upon a nearby monument, there’s a haunting weightlessness in her face, a blasé air for a woman who took those nine lives with ease and violent revelry. While every episode also hinged on the performances of each Usher that met violent ends, Gugino was the lynchpin of the entire series—if she didn’t deliver, The Fall of the House of Usher wouldn’t have worked. But, in usual Gugino fashion, she delivered her all and then some, offering up a performance that will haunt me for a long, long time—and should have earned her a nomination with the rest of her similarly achieved peers. But, alas, the Emmys know nothing of cosmic justice.

Anna Govert is the TV Editor of Paste Magazine. For any and all thoughts about TV, film, and her unshakable love of complicated female villains, you can follow her @annagovert.

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