‘Evil’s Katja Herbers on ‘a Whole Different Level of Guilt’ for Kristen & the Silent Episode
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Evil Season 2, Episode 6 “C Is for Cop.”]
The manifestation of Kristen Bouchard’s (Katja Herbers) guilt over her murder of serial killer Orson LeRoux (Darren Pettie) almost lands her in boiling hot water as we reach the midway point of Evil Season 2.
In the same episode that sees the team looking into whether it was racism combined with possession that led a white cop to shoot an unarmed black woman, Kristen gets away with murder because she’s friends with a detective. Mira Byrd (Kristen Connolly) finds her talking to seemingly no one — Kristen hallucinated LeRoux — in her backyard, holding the murder weapon and … covers it all up. Then, Kristen, David (Mike Colter), and Ben (Aasif Mandvi) head up to a silent monastery to determine if a priest should be considered for sainthood.
Herbers takes us inside her character’s head, previews the silent episode, and more.
How is Kristen feeling about killing LeRoux now that she’s gotten away with it?
Katja Herbers: What’s really interesting about [it is] they put her being acquitted from this crime in the episode that is about a white guy getting away with shooting a black woman, and here I am a white woman getting away with murder because I know someone who’s a cop. She obviously is very relieved that she doesn’t have to go to prison and she can still be a mother to her children. Straight after that comes the knowledge that she’s never really going to get away from this thing that she did. I do think that she would do it again, but since it’s her white privilege helping her get away with this, that brings on a whole other set of things to grapple with. It’s a whole different level of guilt.
Elizabeth Fisher/CBS
Does this change how she looks at Mira? It’s one thing for a friend to try to help out, but it seemed a little too easy for Mira to let it go and come up with a story to explain that night.
Yeah, especially when she said, “We’ll just say there was a black man in the yard and you were scared and that’s gonna just solve everything.” It’s not like somebody else is going to go to prison for this murder. I also think that Mira does believe that this guy deserved to die. So as far as there’s justified murder — although I wouldn’t say that I ascribe to that — I don’t think anyone has to be sad that LeRoux is gone.
Maybe Kristen would have done the same thing if she were the cop. I don’t think Kristen would have said, “We’ll just say there was a black man in the yard.” But yeah, it’s an interesting episode for Mira Byrd and her perspective on all these things, also immediately saying, “That white cop that shot the black guy, he’s a totally good guy, it’s just street sense.” She’s kind of I guess maybe what you could call the common type of cop that we’ve seen in these situations over and over again in America.
We see Kristen trying to rationalize things like that hallucination in the elevator, and then there’s also the jinn that she keeps seeing. How is she doing that?
She’s a scientist and she just understands it from a perspective of her trauma and the fact that maybe [her] medication is not the right medication for her at this point. Every once in a while, she’ll think that something’s real, and then she just snaps back into science, like an elastic band. She’s just like, “Maybe something supernatural does exist.” Then three minutes later, she’ll be like, “No, I have another way around it.”
Elizabeth Fisher/CBS
The next episode is the silent one. What can you preview? Who’s going to have the most trouble not speaking while they’re there?
It was a hell of a lot of fun to make it and Kristen gets a little drunk. And so when you’re drunk, it’s maybe harder to adhere to the rules.
It seems like Kristen’s getting a bit of a break from Leland [Michael Emerson], with this episode and supposedly while they’re away at the monastery in the next one. Is that when she should be the most concerned about what he might be up to? Or could Sister Andrea’s [Andrea Martin] trick at the exorcism have perhaps made him pause his plans?
Unlikely, ’cause he’s Leland. The silent episode is just after Kristen’s been acquitted of this murder. She has been extremely worried about that, [about] having to go to prison and having to leave her four kids behind, but burying it. So in Episode 7, you see somebody who’s just got a weight lifted off her shoulders, so she’s kind of just maybe overly excited, carefree for a second, and not worrying about Leland too much. The world is kind of good right now for a second.
What can you tease about what we’ll see from him in the second half of the season?
You can expect him to not let go of Sheryl [Christine Lahti].
And then that means back in Kristin’s life.
Yeah, he’s not done with her.
Elizabeth Fisher/CBS
What else can you tease about the second half of the season?
We see David on this trajectory to will he or won’t he become a priest. That’s going to be a major part of the second half of the season. And also we may think that after Kristen’s acquitted, her life is now going to be better, but it’s really not. She is in a lot of trouble mentally also with being acquitted in the way that she was acquitted.
Are we going to see a lot more therapy scenes then with Dr. Boggs [Kurt Fuller]?
There’s going to be a bunch of therapy. There needs to be a bunch of therapy.
Should there be any concerns about Kristen possibly killing again, now that she’s gotten away with murder? That hallucination of LeRoux did go on quite a bit about taking a life, almost like tempting her.
It was her imagination telling her that, right? If you would put another LeRoux in front of her, she knows that she can do it. That makes it easier to commit a second murder, should that be necessary.
Elizabeth Fisher/CBS
Say with Leland?
I think she’s kind of over Leland a little bit. In her mind, he’s just Jake the flake. He’s just a sad puppet, and she might be wrong, but I think she’s kind of just written him off as whatever he’s doing is not that threatening to her at this point.
Are we going to see any Kristen-demon therapist scenes?
Not this season.
I hope to get that because I liked the parallel in Leland’s office at the beginning of the season.
Me too. That was great.
Evil, Returns, Sunday, August 29, Paramount+
