“I’ve not seen that part. I was like, ‘You don’t have to carry that burden. You don’t have to watch it [laughs],’” Merritt Wever told RadioTimes.com.
She is, of course, talking about the scene in episode five of Apple TV+ series Roar, The Women Who Was Fed By A Duck, in which said bird instructs her character to remove her trousers and lie down on the floor – “You’ve done so much for me, I want to do something for you” – before performing oral sex on her.
Now there’s a sentence you don’t say everyday.
It’s one of the most – if not the most – extraordinary sight most of us will ever witness, on-screen or otherwise.
“People keep asking what I think of the episode, which makes sense because I worked on it and this is part of my job,” she said. “But the truth is I’m a lot more interested in what the people who watch it and experience what we made feel about it. And I’m nervous about it, honestly. I’m nervous to hear how it is received. I’m scared.”
She added: “I hope people feel it was worthwhile. I hope people feel it’s treated with respect. I hope people don’t feel that because it is a story told in a container that has a bit of a gloss on it, or comes off a certain way in the beginning, that it is not being treated seriously because we certainly did take it seriously.”
Beneath the absurd, comical facade is a story about domestic abuse, which disproportionately impacts women. Wever’s character suffers both emotionally and physically at the hands – or wings, in this instance – of her partner, who seamlessly disguises his true nature when the pair first meet at a local park. But over time, the mask drops and his cruelty is revealed.
“This is a woman who is at a very uncertain point in her life,” she explained. “Even though she’s incredibly intelligent and incredibly confident and capable, she’s feeling a little disconnected from both herself and her family. And she meets this duck, who feeds her and she thinks the duck is feeding her good things, but she finds by the end of the story that the duck is feeding her bad things and she learns to feed herself.”
And just in case you were wondering, the duck that features in the episode is real.
“We had the actor Justin Kirk from Angels in America and Weeds,” said Wever. “We had him every day, every scene, practically right off camera out of my sight line playing each scene with me. And then I would be working with the duck, which is a live being, so it’s moving, it’s listening, it’s looking. And that seemed to work, having those two points of reference.”
- Read More: How to watch Apple TV+ on your television
Was the duck a good scene partner?
“We found our stride pretty quickly,” she said. “I was prepared for that to be the hardest part of this job, working with an animal. I was prepared to be constantly just grabbing snippets of the scene but instead, the duck was extraordinary. The thing that I thought was going to be the hardest was not the thing that was the hardest.
“The most difficult part of the job was the most difficult part of every job, which is the acting, figuring out how to play the scene. So in some ways, it was like every other job.”
- Read More: Best TV shows on Apple TV+
All eight episodes of Roar are available to stream now on Apple TV+. Find something else to watch with our TV Guide.
The latest issue of Radio Times is on sale now – subscribe now to get each issue delivered to your door. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the Radio Times podcast with Jane Garvey.