Linda Cardellini on the Final Season of ‘Bloodline’: ‘It’s Fun to See Meg Strike Out on Her Own’
Q&A
Deadly secrets bind Bloodline’s Rayburn family—but in the drama’s third and final season, the consequences of “good son” John’s (Kyle Chandler) murder of dangerous black sheep brother Danny (Emmy winner Ben Mendelsohn) tear them apart. We talked to Linda Cardellini, who plays youngest sibling Meg, to see how her character can escape the deeply troubled clan.
Season 2 ended with third Rayburn brother Kevin (Norbert Leo Butz) killing John’s detective partner—and Meg’s ex-fiancé —Marco (Enrique Murciano), who was about to reveal John’s crime and his siblings’ cover-up. How does that change Meg? It officially drives her away from her family. With Danny, John lost control. What Kevin did was not an accident. Marco didn’t deserve to be bludgeoned to death! Meg really loved him. So the family truly splinters after that—everyone is trying to survive for themselves.
Are you happy with how Meg’s story is ending? It’s fun to see Meg strike out on her own, even if she goes about it wrong. She’s trying to find the person she could have been if she didn’t have the pressure to be someone she wasn’t. Meg’s problem is that from the outside she knows who she is, but from the inside she has no idea.
Will Meg ever confront family matriarch Sally (Sissy Spacek)? Sissy and I lost it in the middle of shooting a scene where Meg screams at Sally. It broke our characters open, because Meg had never yelled at her mother. Sally has to come to terms with who her children might really be…and loving them in spite of that.
How is Bloodline different from other TV projects you’ve worked on: Freaks and Geeks, ER, Mad Men? With Mad Men you follow the letter of the script. With Bloodline we’d get parts of scripts. We’d play. I didn’t always know where Meg was going.
So can the Rayburns ultimately escape justice? They know how to get around things, but something will trip them up.
Bloodline, Currently Streaming, Netflix
