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Molly Smith Metzler is ready to take viewers to an “uncomfortable place.”

In her five episode limited series Sirens, starring Meghann Fahy and Milly Alcock and based on her play written during her time at the Juilliard School, Metzler turns Greek mythology on its head by rethinking myths in the perspective of the sirens.

“Everything we know about the sirens, we know from the sailors. They are described and cast in this role as murderers, monsters,” she tells The Hollywood Reporter of the mythical creatures, adding that she wanted to know “What’s their side of the story?” and “Why are the sirens monsters?”

The result is what Metzler describes as her “darkly comedic, emotional thriller” that centers on sisters Devon (Fahy) and Simone (Alcock). In the show, Devon travels to a lavish island to confront her younger sister Simone and ask her to come back home to Buffalo to help with their ailing father (Bill Camp). However, Devon learns her sister now works for socialite Michaela “Kiki” Kell (Julianne Moore), who not only reigns supreme on the island and its cultish community but has a tight knit bond with Simone. Through trying to save her sister from this new world and persona she’s become, Devon, along with Simone and Michaela are forced to confront their past, present and future in the span of the weekend.

However not everything is at it seems — or perhaps, it is. That’s something for viewers to decide, says Metzler. “This is a show that goes to an uncomfortable place, an unexpected place, and I think asks you to question the assumptions you made and why you made them,” she says.

By blending cultural commentary and Greek mythology, Metzler is aware there can be a multitude of interpretations of her characters and story. “I’m gonna be on Reddit. I want to hear what everyone thinks,” she says. “The five [episode] titles are sort of puzzle pieces. I’m inviting you to think about it.”

In a conversation with THR, Metzler talks about reimagining Greek mythology through the lens of power and sisterhood, why the shocking ending was “inevitable” and why “no one knows what to compare the show to.”

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I wrote the play almost 15 years ago, and I’ve lived a whole life. I did Maid with Netflix a few years ago and coming off of Maid was so satisfying and wonderful, but it was also a bummer. We were talking about, “Well, what should I do next?” Jinny [Howe, VP Scripted Series, Netflix] who did Maid remembered the play from way back when. We started talking about [how it] might be a really perfect time to adapt that if we can get the right creative team. It’s just such a weird moment for women and wealth and it’s very 2025. I read it, and I was like, you know, I think you’re right. So we started thinking about how to do that.

One of the things I loved about Sirens was that it doesn’t check a box of a similar show. It looks like it might be a Nantucket show or a murder show or a cult show. I almost want the audience to feel like maybe it’s that, but then it is its own tone. No one knows what to compare the show to and I love that. It’s a great compliment. It’s also a huge challenge when you are your own tone. The hardest part of the job is to have that vision and have it be really specific for the entire creative team. But I like to describe [the show] as a darkly comedic, emotional thriller.

The play does not have any Greek mythology in it, so the Greek mythology twist is brand new to the adaptation. Part of the story is my daughter is a Greek mythology fanatic. She’s 12 years old, and she came home asking about the sirens one day, and she was like, “What’s their problem? Why are they so mean that they’re killing all these sailors?” It was just my husband and I, we wrote the show together, [and] we got talking about how everything we know about the sirens, we know from the sailors. They are described and cast in this role as murderers, monsters. I couldn’t help but think about the similarities, because the play is about three women isolated on the island. So are the sirens. It’s a lot about power and sexuality and the way we treat and villainize women, especially beautiful women who have seduced people. So it all felt like a very exciting merge of Greek mythology and the play and this opportunity to talk about, what’s their side of the story? Why are they singing?

We location scouted in Cape Cod and then in Long Island, and we looked at a lot of houses, because that house is a character on the show. But the most important thing to me was the stairs. The house we found is in Cutchogue, Long Island. The stairs are not CGI! It had that many stairs — I think we counted 108 stairs, that we’re dragging cameras up and down. But that’s how important it was to me, because I wanted that height. It’s such a metaphor.

We see Simone climbing those stairs all the time, how ambitious she is. Even though I’m not broadcasting her ambition at the end, if you think back to all the times we see her climbing and everyone’s climbing those stairs in the show in different ways. That was really, really important. Then the other thing is that [the location] felt isolated. One of the things about the sirens in Greek mythology is it’s a punishment. They’ve been exiled to this island. So it had to feel very difficult to get to and very isolated in the middle of the ocean. A lot of the locations we looked at just looked too populated. You had to feel like the Kells really own this island.

Like the house, the palette and the costumes are also a character in this world. We had the great fortune to work with our costume designer Caroline Duncan. We talked so much about, how do we make it heightened but real? When you get off the ferry in contemporary Nantucket, you see that palette. It’s the Nantucket reds, the Lilly Pulitzer. It is the palette of summertime for the rich and vacation folks.

We wanted to satirize it a little bit, turn the hues up, make the hats slightly more ridiculous, but for Devon as someone coming from Buffalo, it still feels like a real option, like these people bought it in a store. It can’t look too fantastical. So Caroline did such a beautiful job bringing that to life and the key was she ended up custom-making most of what’s on screen. Everyone’s about to watch the show and then go try to buy these clothes. Some of Simone’s [outfits] are bought, but I think everything Michaela wears is custom.

That very question is what I was trying to dramatize. Every sister relationship I know is very complex. I think they’re both right. I love offering that question to the audience because I think how you interpret it says a lot about you and your relationships with your family. I love writing sisters because the gloves are just off. The truth is on the table. No one loves you like your sister, no one will call you out and also no one will show up for you in that same way. Their dynamic is that push and pull that they’re both right about everything all the time.

She’s a very hard character, which is why we hit the jackpot with Meghann Fahy. She’s mean and sarcastic, broken, but she’s also so full of love and struggling. Those things make her so human. She’s wrestling with her own potential sirenhood, which is something we see. We see that with the sex addiction; she’s got the suitors who start to fall over. She has a power that isn’t comfortable for her [and] she doesn’t know what to do with. I think Devon leaves this weekend really a transformed person. I think coming up so close to her potential power and seeing it and not wanting it is a really beautiful thing about about her. Her arc is bittersweet, but it’s also one of empowerment.

I think Michaela is an extremely lonely person in her life, and I think the birds fill her with a sense of purpose. But Simone fills her with a sense of purpose. She’s mentoring Simone. They call her mini Michaela. [Michaela] wants to set Simone up to do way more than she has. She doesn’t want her to just be a rich wife. She wants her to go out and achieve things. All she desires in exchange for those things is total and complete loyalty and undivided attention (Laughs.)

I think of them as sort of co-dependent, but also mutually servicing each other. It’s a fascinating relationship. But then to have your sister show up, who is really a mother figure to you and has actually got your best interest at heart, but is such a fucked up person — all three of these women need so much from Simone. I had so much fun writing this, because I feel like the two of them are fighting over Simone, and meanwhile, the biggest threat to their situation is not one of the three of those women. It’s something else that we don’t have any idea is coming. It’s a tug of war over Simone, and the real power isn’t either of them.

I think back to the summer when I was 22 and showed up at Martha’s Vineyard to work at a yacht club, and I met some of these unbelievably wealthy women, and was like, “Their life is perfect,” and made a bunch of assumptions about them. By the end of the summer, I was like, “Good god, I was so wrong.” I hope the show does that at the end, not just [with] Michaela, but [with] all the characters, you look back at what’s happened in these five episodes and reconsider the assumptions you made about all of them. This is a show that goes to an uncomfortable place, an unexpected place, and asks you to question the assumptions you made and why you made them.

There’s probably some great ideas of who he is in Greek mythology. I’m gonna be on Reddit. I want to hear what everyone thinks! But actually, to me, I think the question is, who’s a monster in Greek mythology? Why are the sirens monsters and Zeus isn’t? We portray these characters in Greek mythology and it’s the women who are the monsters. Maybe Kevin[‘s Peter] is the siren. I think the show asks you to reconsider the rules that you might have cast these people in in Greek mythology. But I think Peter is the most powerful character and the reason Kevin was the perfect actor is [because] he actually makes you forget that, because he’s so warm. He wants you to be disarmed and forget how powerful he is, but he does remind you at the end. It is a bit of a Zeus moment, if you ask me.

I like to think of that bathtub scene and their final scene on the ferry, the arc between that moment and that moment. These two women go through something over the course of this weekend, and where they come out is more similar than they would have ever guessed. They have more in common and see each other in the end with clear eyes. That moment in the bathtub, to me, Michaela says it. She says, “You can always tell the motherless woman in the room.” All three of these characters have lost their mother in a traumatic way and I think there’s something about, “I see you, I recognize you.” It just has to be noted that the sirens in Greek mythology, they lost their mother figure. Michaela rightfully sees something in Devon that she recognizes, and vice versa. They have more in common than Simone and her do.

In the myth, the sirens lose Persephone. They lose her, and she goes off with Hades. The sirens get punished by Demeter and sent to this island in exile. So that’s what they’re in trouble for, losing Persephone, who’s a mother figure to them. There’s a lot about their mother in the episode. Bruce talks at length about his his dead wife in the episode, how she shipwrecked him, how she destroyed him. We hear a lot about these mother figures in the episode, and that’s that’s why it’s called Persephone.

I love it, and I think that’s why we gave them the titles we did. I’m going to be on Reddit. I want to hear what everyone thinks. The five [episode] titles are sort of puzzle pieces. I’m inviting you to think about it.

Writing towards that ending was something we did with great care. I didn’t want anyone to see it coming. But then when it comes, I wanted it to feel inevitable. What I love about the ending is that it asks the audience to decide how to feel about it. We went through all the different takes of Simone on the cliff at the end, and the one we chose for the final cut has a little bit of a Mona Lisa smile. Her face is a little opaque. We chose that one because I think there’s a version where she won, she’s a siren and hear her roar. And there’s a version that this is bittersweet and painful. I think how the audience interprets it says a lot about how they feel, probably about who she is and who you are, and what home is to you, and what you would do in that circumstance? I think she needs to survive, and that’s what she does to survive.

Oh, yes. We start the series with the shot of Michaela on the cliff. We end the series with Simone on the cliff, and you’re on this island. It has this cyclical, timeless feel like this is a tale as old as time. It’s a tale as old as Greek mythology time. Women are going to be cast in this role. Peters are going to do Peters (Laughs) It’s an old story. It’s right there in front of us.

I would say is what you think is right. It’s yours to decide. I think there are people who are going to think Simone’s a villain, and there are people who are going to think Peter’s a villain, and people who are going to think they’re all villains. I do think the show asks you to look at these five episodes, look at these characters and reevaluate the assumptions you might have made about them. I can’t ask you to feel a certain way about what Simone does. All I can ask you is to try to understand it, because if you were in her shoes, and that ferry is leaving to take you back to certain trauma and destitute, what would you do? That’s what I hope people are talking about. I hope this is a debate people are having. It’s a question that interests me so much, I wrote a damn five episode series.

I hope people say that is the most beautiful performance I have seen an ensemble give in the history of television, because every time I watch it, I just can’t believe how astonishing our cast is. Then I hope people feel that the show went somewhere they didn’t expect, and it made them think about things in a new way [and] think about class in America in a deeper way.

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