The MRS. DAVIS Team Breaks Down TV’s Most Unconventional Love Triangle

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the first five episodes of MRS. DAVIS.]

MRS. DAVIS may be telling the story about the fight against an all-knowing artificial intelligence…but it also has a truly unique love triangle: Between nun Simone (Betty Gilpin), resistance leader Wiley (Jake McDorman), and…Jay, AKA Jesus (Andy McQueen). Yes, as in Christ.

Though it was clear that Simone was a nun, it took until a couple of episodes into the series when it was revealed that she would go to visit Jesus himself in a falafel restaurant and they were married in the more, uh, traditional way.

“For us, when we landed on the idea that our lead, our hero, was going to be a nun and what that meant, what it meant to be a bride of Christ as some sisters identify, we wanted to see that depiction very literally,” showrunner Tara Hernandez told reporters. “And do so in a way that felt relatable; felt relatable to most people who aren’t nuns or have joined any sort of religious order, and that’s love.”

“It felt exciting and scary, but romantic,” she continued. “It’s something that we can all sort of get behind. So, knowing that she at some point in her life had fallen in love with the actual Jesus Christ, one could presume that this wasn’t her first relationship. And enter someone from her past, someone who also seemingly had the same goals as she did, but sort of their business was unfinished because she had this very literal come to Jesus moment…it felt like such exciting, new territory that…hadn’t been done on television before.”



When Gilpin first heard about the twist, “I really zoomed out and got floaty and existential and was like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna play it like I’m dating a ball of light or the ocean or the air,’” she recalled. “And [co-creator] Damon [Lindelof] and Tara were like, ‘No, no, no, no. He’s your boyfriend. He’s the man you fell in love with, who happens to be Jesus. You fell in love with him first. And the way to be with him is by becoming a nun and that is your entry point into your faith.’”

Then it came time for Gilpin and McQueen to figure out how to play the dynamic. “It was incredible,” McQueen gushed. “It was such a great experience to be working in that capacity. Betty just said…it was like doing a play. It was like having a totally different show in my mind. It was a love story. It was like BEFORE SUNSET. It was like their own little world that existed, and because of that, there was so much light that was being built throughout.”

“Andy…made it very easy to make it a specific and loving and intimate relationship that felt really real and not like a one-dimensional, perfect character that I worship,” Gilpin added. “I think Simone is very independent and not a rule follower. And watching her enter into a kind of rule-based way of life, in order to be with the man that she loves, works for a while. Up until a point when it stops working.”

“We ask the question [of] is it really faith if you’re starting with proof?” she continued. “If you’re starting with proof of existence, and you have all the answers and access to him whenever you want him, is that really any risk? Or is it just is she compartmentalizing and kind of cheating a little bit for what it’s like to be a person of faith? And I think that she learns [that] in seeing people interact with AI…having something that is just giving you what you want and having access to it all the time is not necessarily a full, real relationship.”



It’s also complicated for Simone and Wiley, who met as children…and have their own complex tie, despite her essentially dumping him for Jesus.

“They are very much connected, the two of them,” McDorman said. “AI, and algorithms, are kind of demystifying faith, and supplanting faith and finding magic and stuff like that. So then if you bring love into it, how much of love is some force that we can’t define? And then in Wiley and Simone’s specific situation, because they share that Holy Grail [organ transplant]—how much of it is explainable? Like is that connection because from [childhood], they had a shared donor liver with a little holy grail in it?”

“I think Wiley would be like, ‘F— the Holy Grail liver, I love you,’” he continued. “But who’s to say? It’s very complicated. When Wiley reveals in the scene in the rain on the sword that he got wings by getting himself an expiration date and comes clean about the fallout from what happened at the rodeo, and how she left him and it scarred him and he just so desperate [that he] did something as drastic as turned himself in to get instant wings…and she finally says, ‘Alright, no more secrets, let me tell you the truth. I was trying to save your ass because I couldn’t live without you.’”

Of course, Wiley is still reeling from the Jesus of it all…and that’s playing into his current stalemate with Simone. “I think that piece of information was so close to providing Wiley with closure knowing that it came from a place of love, until she’s like, ‘And I’m married to Jesus now,’” McDorman noted. “It totally f—ing spins him out, all over again. Because it would! I mean, he’s like, ‘Oh, great. So I got dumped for Jesus Christ, who’s real by the way, or my ex is a f—ing psychopath and she thinks she he’s an actual person, in a falafel restaurant.’ So neither scenario is very healthy for Wiley. So, it’s all very complicated.”

MRS. DAVIS, Thursdays, Peacock

RELATED:

• The MRS. DAVIS Team on the Wildly Ambitious Peacock Series: ‘Let’s Swing for the Fences’
• MRS. DAVIS: Betty Gilpin’s Nun Tries to Defeat A Powerful A.I. in New Trailer
• MRS. DAVIS: Peacock Sets April Launch for New Betty Gilpin-Jake McDorman Drama
• MRS. DAVIS: David Arquette and Elizabeth Marvel to Recur

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