SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched the fourth and final season of “Unreal,” streaming on Hulu. The cameras have not only turned off (OK, melted) for “Everlasting,” the reality show within the show on “Unreal,” but also for “Unreal” itself, which dropped all eight episodes of its fourth and final season on Hulu this morning (July 16). “We’re so excited that people are getting it all at once because it’s always felt like that kind of show to me,” “Unreal” creator Sarah Gertrude Shapiro tells Variety. “And when you get to the point where you feel like you absolutely can’t stand Rachel, you know there’s another turn coming, and it’s coming right away. Bingeing feels like the truth to me right now, and I’m really happy to [tell the story] this way.” Always a manipulative character who will say and do whatever she has to to make the most salacious television, Rachel (Shiri Appleby) took things further than usual in the fourth and final season. Not only was she playing a suitress game of her own, bedding a number of the men who returned for the “All Stars” season of “Everlasting,” but she was also orchestrating a story that started out simply trying to get sexual assault victim Maya (Natasha Wilson) to confront her attacker but ended up with the near-rape of another contestant and a cover up that, at least for a short time, painted Maya as the violent one and landed her in jail. “In the initial [story] break it came more from a place of character than topical news stuff,” Shapiro says of diving into sexual assault survivor trauma in the season. “To be totally honest, it was talking about, what is the thing that Rachel could do that could be the worst thing she could ever do? And so it felt like this betrayal of women — setting another woman up for such a fall — was a really complicated thing to pull off.” What became most important for Shapiro when wrapping up the show was to make sure that both Rachel and Quinn (Constance Zimmer) got to “try things they hadn’t tried before” — so it “felt like everybody hit the side of the fishbowl before they gave up.” Here, Shapiro talks with Variety about whether Rachel had a true moment of growth before the end of the series, what was most important in closing out her story with Quinn, and how working on “Unreal” launched her next project, a feature film about women fighting against ISIS. Throughout the whole series, Rachel and Quinn both have done some ethically questionable things, but in the fourth season Rachel really takes it to another level. Did you feel you had to have them atone before the end of the series? I don’t find atonement super interesting. What I was the most obsessed with for Rachel was — the line is kind of buried in the first episode, but I feel like it’s the most important part of the season to me, which is Quinn asking her, “You don’t have a trace of feminist guilt about this new life you’re living?” And her saying, “I got tired of hearing myself talk.” [It] was the most important part of the entire season for me [because] she was just tired of her own shtick, and she wanted to be a different person and she wanted the relief of living a different life. So I think the idea that she got highlights, bought a push-up bra, just decided to be a different person is more fascinating to me on a personal level. It’s more interesting to me to lean into her delusion than to have her apologize for it. What were the challenges in writing a character who is making so many outward changes but can’t act too out of character because the changes aren’t happening within? When you have a character who’s pretending to be somebody else, it’s a complicated challenge, in terms of writing them. I talked about Rachel this season in the room like she was a troll wearing a wig. She should feel like a person who hates herself, hates her body, hates her life, but she’s putting on everything to cover up how gross she actually feels. And so that first Tinder date was supposed to be her crawling out of her skin and trying really, really hard to pretend to be somebody else, and the line is, “Yeah I don’t date a lot,” but for us, we should know she hasn’t been on a real date ever. She f—s people in the back of the truck. … So how do you write someone who’s trying to be somebody else but keep them who they are? I think for us it was just about making her really uncomfortable in that new skin so we could see the old Rachel cracking through. How did the process of writing Quinn’s new attitude differ? I think that Quinn is at a place in her arc and also at an age in a person’s life where they are like, “What’s next?” She’s gotten to the top of her career in some ways, she’s accomplished a lot of the things she wanted to accomplish, and it felt really believable to me that a person like that would try something different. And the amazing thing with an actress of Constance’s ability is that we always trust that she’s going to find the truth in it. And it felt like she did that — she got inside who Quinn was but was able to adjust to the new attitude. What were the discussions you had in the writers’ room about Rachel’s methods in trying to force Maya to confront her rapist? There are so many concerns, right? Tonally, it’s really challenging. I think there were a lot of concerns about Maya stabbing him — I think just the fact that that’s a wild place for our show to go to but I also feel like if she didn’t do anything then what was the point, and then how do you make her not crazy? What Rachel was doing was so horrible, and there was a lot of conversation about can you even come back from that? There were concerns in every direction. What pushed you past those concerns to go as dark as you did? I think part of what we’re saying is that we wanted to commit to taking the character to the deepest, darkest place that we could take her … and I feel like what was really important to me was really asking the question, “After all of the terrible things that Rachel has done, what is left that would make her feel like she’s hit the bottom of the well?” I think that when we were talking about some of the stuff that I had been through when I was working on the show and other situations that people have found themselves in, it’s really when you betray your own — the essential ingredients and components of that on a character level absolutely felt like the place we needed to get to. In terms of how it happened, that was up for discussion, but from a character standpoint we had to get her to a point where it seems like she couldn’t come back from it. Yet you brought her to a place, eventually, where she seemed to genuinely want to take ownership and responsibility of her actions. She did. But she didn’t end up doing so, and Tommy (Francois Arnaud) took the blame for the manipulated footage that made it look like Maya was crazy and Roger (Tom Brittney) was a victim. So how much true growth did she really have? There was a moment where she could have intervened and said, “It wasn’t Tommy, it was me,” and we talked about that a lot — but I felt like that just felt a little too tidy for our show. It felt a little too saccharine and a little too sweet, putting a bow on it like, “She really has learned!” So while she did grow, she’s still just as f—ed up as she’s ever been, and I think that the relationship between Quinn and Rachel is still as codependent, but we still admire it and care about it, and that felt like our show. Why was it important for you to end the series not only with Rachel and Quinn on the same side again but also literally burning down their toxic past by setting the “Everlasting” set on fire? That was 100% what we were driving to all season — that moment of her talking about [motherhood] and making it very clear that she is Rachel’s parent. And when we were talking about it, the parents in the room were saying there is a thing where you wouldn’t let your kid go to jail. So even if they had done something really horrible, you probably would keep them out of jail, so I feel like that’s what we were getting to — when Quinn had the opportunity to take Rachel out of commission, she just couldn’t do it. … I also feel like they’re going to do better — like they’re going to do something better with their lives. That was really important to me from a series perspective, not to leave them in the mud. I actually believe they’re really strong, capable women and they can do something better with their brains. And I think a really important part of it, too, is Rachel saying she’s not going to marry some bozo, and Quinn’s not going to have a baby with Chet, and I feel like the most beautiful part was them accepting who they are and that it is within who they are that they can do something better. In addition to bringing back show-within-the-show suitors and suitresses who had connections to Rachel and Quinn for the final season, you also introduced some new blood in Candy (Natalie Hall). What did you want her character to bring that you felt the show was missing? The Candy character was one that I was excited about in terms of subjugating the narrative of strippers and showing the complexities of post-feminist women or third or fourth wave feminism. I thought it was really important to have a loud, clear voice with that point of view because that’s really what Rachel and Quinn are kind of bumping up against because they’re a little bit becoming dinosaurs — they’re a little bit behind the curve. Their show they’re making is antiquated, their feminism is a little messy. And Candy comes in, and she’s almost holds up to them the ideal that they should be holding up to themselves. And I also thought it was important to have someone who was as smart or smarter than they are. There is talk in the show of a spinoff for Candy — have you had discussions about making one of the other shows within the show a reality? Even from the day I pitched [“Unreal”] there were conversations like, “Oh there could be additional content.” I would say for me that that path doesn’t hold a ton of interest for me. If we were to try and launch a next [show] with it, it would have to be radically different, but I felt like it would also have to be an organic continuation of the wants and needs of those characters. Similarly, did you ever toy with the idea of devoting an episode of “Unreal” solely to “Everlasting” to further showcase the juxtaposition between the worlds? I think that came up over and over again and every time we talked about it, it kind of unraveled the DNA of the show. The relationship between the control room and the floor is kind of the beating heart of the show, and from a technical standpoint, even when we go full frame for the reality show, everything feels a little bit off. So it got talked about a lot, but we never actually wanted to go that way. How did your experience directing episodes of “Unreal” influence your new Amazon film?<doc-sep>UnREAL type TV Show network Hulu WARNING: The following contains spoilers for season 4 of UnREAL. Read at your own risk! They really did burn it all down. Quinn (Constance Zimmer) and Rachel (Shiri Appleby) worked together one last time in the series finale of UnREAL to destroy Everlasting, the reality dating show they both secretly (or not-so-secretly, at times) despised yet couldn’t get enough of for bringing out their worst manipulative selves. Appleby’s Rachel, though, was the one to light the fuse. In fact, she was the (newly blonde) catalyst behind season 4’s most explosive scenes, from the assault on set to the shakeup that made her showrunner. Below, Appleby talks Rachel’s makeover, the series finale’s biggest moments, and saying goodbye to the show. UnReal Season 3, Ep. 308 "Recurrent" Credit: Bettina Strauss/Lifetime ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Let’s start with that final scene, of the mansion burning up in flames. What was your reaction when you read that in the script? Were you satisfied, or were you shocked? SHIRI APPLEBY: It felt like if they were going to end the show, that was the greatest way to end it, to burn the mansion down. There’s no way you could come back from that. And I kind of liked that the last line was like, “We can do better.” [It] left a lot to the imagination. I liked that, and at least they were together in a way that felt safe. But with those two, you never really know. Right, they’ve been through so many ups and downs throughout the seasons. And even that last curveball, with Quinn throwing Tommy under the bus instead of Rachel, did you personally think Quinn made the right call? To protect Rachel after everything that’s happened? I felt like that was [supposed to be Rachel’s] way of getting out. She was like, “You’re never really letting me escape,” and I felt like it was again Quinn’s messed-up way of taking care of Rachel, you know what I mean? Like, not letting her burn her life down in that way. I felt for Rachel, because she’s really trying to do the right thing. She was like, “I really deserve the punishment I should be getting,” and the thing that’s sad is that Quinn took away the control that Rachel had over her own life. Does it feel unfair? Rachel was so ready to turn herself in and now she can’t. Is she going to have to live with all that guilt? Did Quinn just do a terrible deed? I just think it was kind of a selfish deed on Quinn’s behalf. Rachel always has a hard time having ownership over her own life, because Quinn is always able to be two steps ahead of her. At least Rachel had rejected Tommy (François Arnaud) anyway. I’m wondering, though, is that how you and François played that relationship all along, as a one-sided love affair in which Rachel didn’t fully love Tommy? [Laughs] Yeah, I just kind of felt like it was just too fast to really fall in love with somebody. She fell for having a partner in so many ways, somebody that was going to help her get away from Quinn and not feel so dependent on her. She was having a partner in that sense. But if a guy’s falling in love with a girl who’s, like, setting up a rape, do you really want to be in love with that guy? Speaking of which, what was your reaction when you read how awful Rachel would become this season, with setting up the assault just so she could give Maya a chance to confront Roger? I mean, I was not into that story line. I’m so amazed they did that. ‘Cause it was like… [Pauses] It shocked me, because I feel like there are ways you can deal with your history without [doing it] at the expense of other people. But it was definitely the way this character found a way to, again, try to make things right. When you were reading it, was it difficult for you to wrap your head around, the fact that she would do something like that? [Pauses] Yeah. [Pauses] What did you think when you watched it? I was certainly shocked, at the scene itself and at Rachel’s expression. She just looks so devilishly delighted at setting up a near-rape. Yeah, and she was dressed so innocently. I put a little black bow in her hair. You never see her look like that. She was just looking so together. I mean, I hope it painted a really uncomfortable picture, where you’re just like, “Is somebody having some sort of psychotic break, that they would be making these kinds of choices?” Oh, that little black bow, you made that addition to her look? It just looked so un-Rachel, but perfect for the episode. Yeah, it was kind of happening at the time, style-wise. I just felt like she should sort of become another person this season, with the blonde hair and leaning into this vision of “I’m going to make myself one of these perfect women so I can create this life I want and I’m going to fix all the wrongs in my life.” UnReal Season 3, Ep. 305 "Gestalt" Credit: Bettina Strauss/Lifetime What was it like leaning into such a new look and identity? Rachel’s not only blonde this season, but completely diabolical, more so than any previous season. When [the writers] initially broached it to me, they were like, “Will you put blonde highlights in your hair?” And I was kind of like, “What are we trying to say with it?” And then they were explaining that they wanted Rachel to be turning herself into one of these contestants, so that she would feel like she was pretty enough to find love, I was like, “Let’s just do the whole thing. Let’s just make her blonde.” I actually found that I was really inspired by that, and I found it to be sort of creative. I let the character walk differently, leading with my chest, and using her sexuality in a different [way]. She’s always been a very sexual person, because she needs that connection, that’s the thing that makes her feel safe, but I wanted her sexuality this time to be much more overt than it had been in the previous seasons. With this being the final season, do you feel satisfied with where Rachel ends up? Is there anything you would have wanted to see her do more of or that you wish you guys had time for? I mean, you always want to make sure your characters feel safe, and that you’ve told this story, an emotional arc from beginning to middle to end, and I felt like we uncovered so much with her. I felt like we really got to see her evolve. She is a very smart character and she was really just looking for a place and people in her life that could be real to her. What was your last day on set like? Did you take anything with you? Yeah, I did. I have a hallway in my house, where I have the waitress uniform from the original pilot of Roswell framed in a glass box, and I have the microphone I used in Life, Unexpected, because my character was a radio talk-show host, and so from this show I got the T-shirt that said “This is what a feminist looks like” with the green army coat and my fanny pack. We just picked it up two days ago, and so it will go in the hallway of my characters, my girls. It was funny — I had called the studio maybe a few days before the show wrapped, and I was like, “If the show gets picked up, I’ll have it if you need it back, but this is just the one thing I really want to take with me.” I really just like looking at it now. This is a really significant chapter in my life, so it’s nice to have it up there to look at. So what’s next for you? What do you want to do now that you’ve closed that chapter? I’m going to look for a show that shoots in L.A. I can’t wait. [Laughs] I’m so excited. I feel really creative, and I’m excited about finding the next right fit, and finding a show that’ll shoot at home. And is there anything else you want to add? Just thanks everybody for watching. I’m so glad this show hit a cultural nerve. We’ve been able to tell a great story. UnREAL season 4 is now streaming on Hulu.<doc-sep>
UnREAL type TV Show network Hulu WARNING: The following contains spoilers for season 4 of UnREAL. Read at your own risk! Quinn (Constance Zimmer) ended the series right back with Rachel (Shiri Appleby) safe in her arms. The two have managed to burn down Everlasting once and for all, and after four seasons, UnREAL ends with the pair of women finally coming to an understanding: that they have to move on from the show. For Rachel, it means embracing who she is, brown hair and all. For Quinn, it means not being a mom and starting that nuclear family she had planned for with Chet (Craig Bierko). Below, Zimmer chats with EW about the series finale’s twists, what she would have liked to see more of, and directing one of the most harrowing scenes from UnREAL. ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What was your reaction to reading those final scenes, with the mansion burning and Quinn and Rachel back in bed together? Do you think it’s a satisfying ending for them? CONSTANCE ZIMMER: I think it is. There’s something weirdly satisfying about them burning down the mansion because it brought them so much pain and misery and it was kind of them taking the only thing they could kind of take control of and burning it down. That’s a baller move for two women to just say, “Screw this. We don’t want it, but we don’t want anyone else to have it either.” Do you think Quinn did the right thing, though, to welcome Rachel back and not punish her for her actions? I do, because I think that Quinn knew that at the heart of Rachel is somebody who just wants to be loved. And I think that Quinn believes, in her mind — which is a little bit of a mess — that she’s the only one that can love Rachel for everything she is — good, bad, or otherwise. I don’t know, it felt like it would be really good therapy, that they would be able to make a decision and say, “Screw this. Burn it down. I accept you for everything you are, and we deserve better and we can do this together and from a healthier place.” Because Quinn was also trying to pretend to be something that she thought she could be and her reality was hard as well. They’re both just realizing they have to be okay with who they are, they have to accept themselves. Right, Quinn this season was so ready to become a mother. But did she really lose her baby? When Rachel asks her, she doesn’t give a definitive answer. And if the script didn’t give one, did you have one that you chose to play? I haven’t seen the take that they used, but we played it in a way that leaves it up to the audience’s interpretation of how. I had a very specific thing I was playing, but I’m a little hesitant to tell people if it’s one or the other. There’s something mysterious and interesting about letting people [think] whatever they think. I don’t know if that’s being lazy or copping out, but I know exactly what it is. UnReal Season 3, Ep. 309 "Codependence" Credit: Bettina Strauss/Lifetime Something the show was very clear on was how Rachel went too far with making a sexual assault happen for the sake of the show. What was your reaction to reading that story line? Oh, I was horrified, especially because that’s the episode I directed… It’s dark. I mean, look, this season is not any lighter than our past seasons. We only have eight episodes to pretty much show these two characters and the three and four and five characters that we’ve been following for four seasons, how they’re gonna get out. Quinn and Rachel are extremes and that means that they are put into extreme situations in order to figure out what their own outcome is, because they’re so wrapped up in not being okay with just who they are. It’s hard. That is a harsh episode. As the director, what were your goals going into that specific scene, especially with handling its sensitivity? Yes, obviously the sensitivity factor was huge. In shooting it, I was very concerned about my actors and making sure that they were comfortable with what was being portrayed.