Margaret Qualley and The Creative Team Behind Maid

We spoke with the creative team of Maid and Margaret Qualley about her Emmy nominated role as the lead. The directors of the show sat down and discussed their process and shooting the episodes, noting that even though being a woman informs every decision in their life, when you show up on set you only think of yourself as a director. It was important however, that in collaboration with other women’s voices there’s a shared language about power structures and perceptions. Early in the process, Margaret mentioned that she was moved by both the script and the memoir, it being unlike anything she’s read for. During her quarantining process, she realized that the best person to play the role of her character’s mother was, in fact, her own mother. The pandemic helped Margaret realize how important her family was and she described her involvement as a “precious soap” that she had been saving up to use.

Anika chimed in about her character, noting that she was very interested in women who aren’t interested in being nice. She enjoyed playing an extremely privileged person of color where her blackness was not forefronted. It was important for showrunner Molly to make the audience go through the journey of emotional abuse through ten episodes. The key to keep people engaged, according to Molly, was to keep them on her side, especially through the humor and levity of the characters, with a lot of it falling on Margaret’s charm.

In their discussion, Margaret talks about how by being with a character for so long, who you are at the beginning of filming is different from who you are at the end, with the experience affecting every creative involved. Director Lila noted that while the work begins with the writing, it ends with Margaret excavating the difficult emotional terrain through her face.

Watch the full conversation below.

Q&A on the Netflix series Maid with showrunner/EP/writer Molly Smith Metzler, actors Margaret Qualley, Andie MacDowell, and Anika Noni Rose, cinematographer and director of episode 8 Quyen "Q" Tran, composer Este Haim and director of episode 5 Lila Neugebauer. Moderated by Kristen Baldwin, Entertainment Weekly.

Single mother Alex turns to housecleaning to make ends meet as she escapes an abusive relationship and overcomes homelessness to create a better life for her daughter, Maddy.