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Toni Collette had no idea what she was in for with Pieces of Her.
“Every scene was more emotionally demanding than I anticipated,” the actor told Vogue. “I had no idea how intense it was going to be and was truly exhausted by the end. I think I let myself get fooled, because I might not have done it if I knew where it would take me.”
Based on a best-selling thriller by Karin Slaughter, the Netflix limited series (premiering March 4) stars Collette as Laura, a loving mother and speech pathologist in small-town Georgia. Her idyllic existence with daughter Andy (Bella Heathcote) is shattered when they get caught in the middle of a deadly mass shooting at a local diner. After Laura disarms the perpetrator with alarmingly violent ease, Andy’s view of her mild-mannered mother is forever altered.
“I love that she’s so complicated and you rarely know what she’s thinking,” Colette says of her character. “She appears to be one person until we learn that she is not exactly who or what she seems.” In time, the spotlight suddenly thrust on Laura—who is celebrated as a hero by the press—sets off a violent chain of events, and when some shady figures from her past reappear, she’s forced to confront the ghosts of her former life.
Developed by the production team behind Big Little Lies, the twisty series asks a lot of its leading lady, both emotionally and physically, and even calls on her to learn a completely new skill: After committing to playing Laura—once a gifted pianist—Collette had two weeks to prepare a Bach composition for a key scene.
“It was epic and hugely stressful,” she says. “I was shitting myself because I couldn’t use sheet music. Laura is playing from memory in the scene, so, you know, no pressure!”
Laura fits comfortably into Collette’s eclectic slate of characters. Like her creations in Hereditary and United States of Tara, Laura is a woman whose pleasant exterior masks deep layers of trauma. And while Collette may regret her habit of signing on to such heavy material, it certainly keeps things interesting.
“I’d get bored playing more straightforward women,” she says. “I like people who dig deep and own their lives—the good, the bad, and the ugly. We make so many choices, and now it’s Laura’s time to take responsibility for her own.”