Merritt Wever’s Godless Character is the Western Hero Women Have Been Waiting For
Merritt Wever doesn’t know why she was cast as Mary Agnes in Netflix’s new Old West-set miniseries, Godless. “I was very surprised that the role came my way,” the Emmy winner candidly admits. “She’s so damn tough, and I don’t consider myself a tough person.”
Well Merritt, that’s acting. And I hate to break it to you, but you’re pretty gosh-darn good at it. (Can someone please hand this woman another award? The world needs another Merritt Wever acceptance speech.)
In the seven-episode series, which also stars Jeff Daniels and Michelle Dockery, Wever’s Mary Agnes is wearing the pants—literally. The show is set in La Belle, a town dominated by women after many of its men died in a mining accident. Mary Agnes, the former mayor’s wife and the sheriff’s sister, relishes in the rare opportunity to take up male space, and emerges as a leader amongst the strong community of ladies. She trades in her dress and corset for her dead husband’s cowhand chaps, and she reclaims her maiden name: “Albert’s dead; there’s no reason for me to keep carrying his name about like a bucket of water.”
Yup. That’s the kind of badass one liner you can expect from Mary Agnes. She’s definitely not a damsel in distress—but she’s not a perfect hero either. Wever brings a complexity to the character, showing that beneath the bravado is a woman with weakness; she’s tough as nails, but she’s uncomfortable in her own skin.
Introducing this vulnerability is how Wever says she approached her own self-consciousness with playing a gun-wielding, foul-mouthed matriarch. “I tried to solve [my own insecurity] by finding all of the ways that she wasn’t tough,” Wever explains, “or the ways that her toughness was defensive, or the ways that she was an emotional prickly porcupine. I tried to find all of the ways that she was vulnerable, because I think it was more interesting as an actor. But honestly, I personally wasn’t feeling very tough at the time, and I was scared that I wouldn’t succeed.”
Spoiler alert: she did succeed. Big time. Godless is a must-watch show, and Wever is a major reason why. Because after a (way too) long Jeff Daniels monologue, you’re rewarded with a scene where Mary Agnes pulls a pistol on a shopkeeper for threatening her niece. And frankly, it’s moments like those that kept me going through six long hours of desolate landscapes, blood splatter, and strong southern accents. Now, a Mary Anges spinoff series? That’s something I’d tune in for.
Godless is streaming now on Netflix.
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