Michelle Maclaren talks about her experience on serial killer thriller series; Credits: The Hollywood reporter

Elisabeth Moss and Michelle MacLaren are coming together with Shining Girls, the new Apple TV thriller series. 

Shining Girls is Apple's collection to its latest limited series, which serves as a great, on the edge of your seat watch. The thriller made its way to the streaming services this year in April and is based on the novel by Lauren Beukes featuring the same name. The novel was released in 2013 and had instantly become a best-selling sensation. 

The story features Elisabeth Moss, known from The Handmaid's Tale, as the lead of the show, Kirby Mizrachi. Mizrachi is a newspaper archivist. The archivist had suffered a terrible assault a long time ago, but she is unable to recall the face of her assailant. 

Yet, she gets to embark on a thrilling journey as the series starts with an array of murders. She finds the perfect opportunity to look into it and this may lead her to the door of some even bigger questions and answers. 

The archivist is helped by Dan Velazquez, a journalist played by Wagner Moura, known for his Narcos. The journalist is very intrigued by the case and decides to help Mizrachi and find the answers to the mystery along with it. Things are bizarre but only turn weirder when they find that there is a metaphysical reality to all the murders. 

Screen Rant sat with director Michelle MacLaren and talked about what it was like to film the series with the phenomenal actress. MacLaren has already worked with great TV series like Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad. 

MacLaren talked about how she gathered inspiration for making Shining Girls and how she decided on what she wants out of the series. Describing the tone of the show, MacLaren shared that Shining Girls is not limited to just one genre and extended to many. 

She took inspiration from All The President's Men, Se7en, Zodiac, and The Insider by Michael Mann. The collective collection of ideas is what leads to Shining girls

The director wanted the audience to connect with Kirby on a deeper level and actually go through her feelings. Kirby feels fear and vulnerability as she starts in the series but she changes for the better as the series continues. She becomes more confident as she learns more about things and is totally adamant to take over whoever is causing suffering in the show.

The director also shared that wanted to experience playing in a group of many genres and not stick with one when it came to Shining Girls. So, they added thrill and excitement, and mystery to the show along with deeply emotional characters that the audience can connect with. The viewer wishes themselves to become indulged in the story and feel good as the mysteries are solved one by one. 

Elisabeth Moss did a great job at playing Kirby in the show and is certainly phenomenal with her skill and talent. It's amazing to see her gradual transformation along with Kirby as more and more comes out in the open. 

Talking about working with Moss, MacLaren shared that the actress is "amazing" and can take over just any role with incredible skill and prowess. She is highly talented and powerful as a person, too, and also is familiar with how things work behind the camera.

The actress also directed a few episodes of the show. This also helped her form a deeper connection with MacLaren, who was otherwise the one filling the director's chair. 

The director explained that they focused a lot on her condition of Kirby and how she presents herself in a vulnerable state at the beginning of the series. She is still haunted by the memory of her assault and wants to leave this place behind and begin somewhere new. 

But getting the opportunity of actually looking into the matters truly changes her as a person and now she has the chance to finally figure out who this mystery person could be. There is a strong transition from Kirby being a scared, vulnerable woman, to a powerful and talented investigator who wishes to look into matters. 

That slow transition by Elisabeth Moss is certainly a magnificent thing to witness in the series. The director gushed that working with Moss brought her absolute joy. 

It is also important to see how time has impacted the series of the events and that the events that happened 30 years ago are much further away and there is only so much that can link back to them. It is also difficult to transition back and forth between the present and past eras and portray the past in the correct light.

MacLaren agreed that shooting a period piece is really difficult and it was challenging to make 2021 Chicago look like a place from the 1990s. They have to remove smartphones from the equation, along with what kind of cars are moving over the place. People are different in their fashion sense too. 

Then there is the matter that they couldn't allow any LED signs in the series and more. While it only feels like the events happened 30 years ago, the world changed a lot in these 30 years and making sure they filmed the right side of the change was a challenge for the series.