Netflix’s Sirens stars Meghann Fahy (The White Lotus, The Bold Type) and Milly Alcock (House of the Dragon) finish each other’s sentences like sisters — at times even talking over each other like sisters — even though they don’t actually have any of their own.
“It made me want a sister,” Alcock tells Teen Vogue about the new limited series, sitting beside Fahy in their interview. Fahy smiles and gestures to herself, “You got one, babe.”
Sirens, created by Molly Smith Metzler (Maid, Shameless) and loosely based on her 2011 play Elemeno Pea, is about sisterhood, but it’s also about class and how people with money wield that power. Across five episodes, viewers are transported to a Martha’s Vineyard-type beach town where Simone (Alcock) plays the too-diligent assistant to lady of the house Michaela “Kiki” Kell (played by Julianne Moore).
Simone and KiKi consider each other best friends, even family, in a fairly toxic warping of their employee-employer relationship. When Simone’s actual older sister Devon (Fahy) shows up out-of-the-blue and desperate for help taking care of their aging father, she’s convinced KiKi is leading a cult. But the reality is murkier, as the show’s characters reckon with what they owe to each other and the costs of upward social mobility.
Below, Meghann Fahy and Milly Alcock unpack the twists and turns of Netflix's Sirens, chat sisterhood and survival, and even explain Devon’s wild neck-licking scene. Warning: spoilers ahead.
Milly Alcock: Oh my God, I forgot that.
Meghann Fahy: I forgot about that too. Oh my God. I love that moment because it is so cringy and really funny, and then it immediately gets so sad.
Alcock: It's so sad.
Fahy: Which Molly [Smith Metzler] does so well, and that is one of the things that I was so excited about doing. I love those sort of hairpin turns between happy and sad. Look, Devon has a really unhealthy relationship with sex. She is struggling with that. When we meet her, she's on the ferry, she's like hanging out with that guy. I think that's an extension of her currency. [Gestures to Milly] It’s like what you've said about Simone, what makes her feel valuable.
They've both been traumatized so much in their lives as young girls, and now Devon especially is exhibiting some really self-destructive behavior as a result of that. She meets Jose and likes him, so she licks him. He's been really sweet to her, and I think that she takes that sweetness and tries to get something else out of it, like a salve. She's trying to self-soothe and she immediately realizes that she's made a mistake. But I do think that it was very, very impulsive of her. She's in the moment, got the idea to do it, and just did it. And then doesn't really give herself a second to think about it prior, which is something that she does a lot of in other ways too.
Fahy: No.
Alcock: No.
Fahy: Well, my best friends are twin sisters. I've known them since I was 12, and I have heard them argue a lot, and I genuinely felt like I knew how to do that because I've witnessed them. Because Devon shows up on the steps and calls her sister a stupid—
Alcock: —B*tch.
Fahy: Within seconds. I was kind of like, yeah, I get that. I've heard my friends argue in this way.
Alcock: And Simone doesn't flinch. She's like, well, okay. That insult is so weightless because of the way that they bicker constantly.
Fahy: Totally. It's like, nothing shocks your sister.
Alcock: I think that this show kind of puts at the forefront two people who are from disadvantaged backgrounds — actually, all three women don't really have any of their own money if you think about it — and [explores] the way that they've been introduced into this kind of class system and this power system and the way that they give back or don't give back, and their relationship that they have with themselves and other women. Michaela's actually really giving, and Devon doesn't really want to see that because I think, too, like, we want to hate rich people. You know what I mean? You do.
Fahy: Totally.
Alcock: You have that dislike.
Fahy: Also, I think Devon is very unwilling to accept that her sister would choose this life instead of being a part of her life. So she villainizes her in that way, like right off the bat.
Alcock: It was Molly's kind of call back to sirens, like the Greek mythology of sirens and the way that these women were vilified and called these monsters because they were there to seduce the men. And Molly has kind of spoken about it today, that she wanted to use the blueprint of sirens and put the women at the forefront of that and be like, what are these women singing about? Is it a cry for help? Is it a song? Who is really the monster here?
Fahy: I loved the way that the siren through line was sort of weaved throughout the show and how that was reflected in imagery or a piece of clothing, like costumes and stuff like that. And I loved that sort of throughout the series, the dresses become flowier and like—
Alcock: —the lenses they used.
Fahy: —a little bit more ethereal, and it turns more and more down that sort of path of the mythology and the mystery that surrounds these women and the way that the men kind of move around them like they're being pulled towards them without the women even really necessarily being aware of that. They did a really, really funny job of doing that with Devon, like when Ray comes to town and Morgan too, like all of them sort of running after her on the beach and Eddy, the lawn guy. They do these really fun imagery of the siren call that I do think is really cool.
Alcock: So much running.
Alcock: So much running. Dude, I ran more on this than I did in Supergirl.
Fahy: Really? Well, you were flying in Supergirl.
Alcock: I lost a toenail, because I wasn't wearing actual sneakers. I was wearing Espadrilles, and my toenail just—
Fahy: —said, nope.
Alcock: Just said goodbye.
Fahy: No more.
Alcock: I remember going up to someone because I had open-toed shoes one day, and I was like, "My nail is on its last limb. We need to make sure that we don't see this in the shot because it's disappeared." So there was a lot of running, but I think that the running is also-
Fahy: —running from oneself.
Alcock: Exactly. You stole the words out of my mouth Meghann, but yeah, the symbol of running and you can't outrun your past. Those stairs, there's a lot of stairs, going up and down those stairs. Last summer was quite a workout. Yeah.
Alcock: It's just human nature.
Fahy: Yeah. I think it's sort of like yeah, everybody is sort of born wanting to be seen and known and—
Alcock: —accepted.
Fahy: These two girls especially are in a deficit of that. And so I think Kiki's sort of actual superpower is her ability to see and understand the pain that these girls are carrying around with them. And it's really cool to see her kind of do that with Devon, who is the most averse to it. And even Devon kind of succumbs to it because it's true. Kiki is reading her like a book in a lot of ways, and so I think it's very disarming to Devon, but it feels really good because no one has ever done that. You know what I mean? No one has said, I see your pain. You're trying so hard.
No one has said that to her. It's so powerful. And same for Simone.
Alcock: And I don't think it's malicious as well. I don't think that Kiki's intention is to manipulate. I genuinely think that she's trying to care—
Fahy: 100%.
Alcock: —for these girls. That's really hard for Devon to accept until she gets sirened.
Fahy: I think that Devon leaves thinking and accepting that she might not see her sister again. But they're letting each other go with so much love. I think Devon arrived at that a little bit before Simone. I don't think that when they say goodbye, Simone has necessarily arrived in that space yet.
Alcock: She hasn't. She's arriving kind of.
Fahy: She's still like, well, we're going to see each other and we're going to get pedicures, and I'm going to hang out with you. And it's like-
Alcock: But I do think she's, as she's saying it, she is realizing that oh my God, this is never going to happen.
Fahy: And I'm doing this anyway. I’m still going.
Alcock: She's still pretending. She's such a broken girl, and she's still trying to play and be like, this is fine. This is happening. And I think that that scene for me was so heartbreaking to play because it's like she's kind of yeah, she's coming to the realization that like, oh my God, you're never going to show up. We can't pretend. We can't really go back.
Fahy: We really need each other.
Alcock: We really need each other.
Fahy: They could heal each other together because they're the only two people in the world who know-
Alcock: —what's happened.
Fahy: What any of the stuff that they're suffering from was. So it's innately a very lonely experience for both of them to not be closely connected.
Alcock: But that was one of my favorites. That was also our last day shooting together. Which, it was so sad.
Alcock: I feel like relationships inherently, you have to sacrifice a bit. You know what I mean? You have to be willing to break down certain potential boundaries for certain people, and those boundaries can come back up, they can go back down depending on where somebody's at and where you're at. But I think that ultimately it has to be a push and pull. It can't be a one-way street, a friendship or a relationship. And it will change as you change and they change, but I think that ultimately sometimes you have to do a bad thing to do a good thing.
Fahy: But it's interesting though, what tips a boundary over into a lack of accountability in a situation.
Alcock: Well, it depends on the circumstance though, I think.
Fahy: Of course. But it's such a gray area. I think it all boils down to whether or not your intentions are pure, or if they're manipulative, then obviously you're just kind of... I don't know what I would really say that [line] is. Interesting… interesting, interesting.
Alcock: But I feel you have to earn that trust though.
Fahy: What do you think it is [Claire]?
Alcock: Yeah, what do you think it is?
Alcock: Yeah.
Fahy: Yeah.
Fahy: On that sad note.
Alcock: See you later.
Fahy: So glad you brought up the neck lick. I totally forgot about it.
