But the ultimate choice-the choice to sleep with Rust-was made to free herself from the marriage. There’s some revenge there, certainly, and I think you see it when she sits down at the kitchen table and really sticks it to Marty. You used the word “revenge.” Was it revenge? Or was she trying to free herself? I’m curious about Maggie’s motivation for going to Rust’s apartment. She knows that Marty will never, ever be able to recover from that. And the ultimate revenge for her is to have an affair with the person Marty is most threatened by-his partner.

But ultimately, in Episode 6, after Maggie finds out about Marty’s infidelity once again, and she sees her own daughter’s behavior unraveling, no doubt because of Marty’s absence, she realizes she really needs to do something critical in order to save herself and her daughters. She’s trying to keep her marriage intact. She starts out as a nurturing person-a very protective wife and mother. I thought she was a completely fleshed out character. The reason why I signed on to the project is because I loved Maggie.

I think Episode 6 is a good rebuttal to that critique. Excerpts from our conversation:Ĭritics have said that True Detective is male-centric, that it’s the Rust & Marty show, and that female characters have been marginalized.

She explained why Maggie is attracted to Rust why sex with him was a way of setting herself free and how Marty’s family is going to factor into the remaining two episodes. To delve deeper into Maggie’s psyche, we gave Monaghan a call. She brings a steely, earthy sensitivity to the role-a welcome contrast to Harrelson’s callous machismo and McConaughey’s mystical nihilism. Monaghan has been on the sidelines for much of the series, but now she’s center stage divorced from Marty, she’s even become part of the 2012 investigation into the “copycat” killings that happened after the initial murder 17 years earlier. But the real revelation Sunday night was Michelle Monaghan ( Mission Impossible, Gone Baby Gone), the gifted Iowan who plays Maggie. Much has been said already about McConaughey’s mind-blowing performance, and the sex scene at the heart of “Haunted Houses” is no exception. Minutes later, a regretful Rust is shouting at Maggie to “get the fuck out of here,” and Maggie is heading home to tell Marty what she’s done. So in the middle of the night she shows up at Rust’s door with a bottle of wine in her hand. But that doesn’t seem devastating enough. First she visits a cocktail bar and strikes up a conversation with a stranger. When Maggie discovers that seven years after his last infidelity, Marty is now cheating on her again, she decides to do something drastic. Turns out a domestic drama has been haunting them, too-and Marty’s wife, Maggie, is at the center of it.

True detective s01e06