The billionaire Andy Ronson (Clive Owen) — a technological genius who serves as an antagonist and, ultimately, tragic figure in the FX limited series “ A Murder at the End of the World ” — may bear a more-than-passing resemblance to certain tycoons of our time. But co-creator, director and co-star Brit Marling , who conceived the show with her longtime collaborator Zal Batmanglij, had an older inspiration in mind. “If anything, I think we were pretty influenced by reading about Disney, and the idea of Walt Disney as a figure who made real leaps in original thinking,” Marling explains in a conversation with Variety ’s Awards Circuit podcast .
“A Murder at the End of the World” is certainly critical of technology, but Marling and Batmanglij also wanted to present a more nuanced narrative than resolving its classic whodunit plot with a single diabolical billionaire. “There are a lot of narratives that want to make the easy answer that this tech billionaire, this corporate CEO, this person is the bad guy, and if we can just find the one bad guy and exile that person from the system, we’ll all be saved,” Marling observes. “And I think it’s a lot more complicated than that.
” Listen below to this episode of the Awards Circuit podcast, which also features a conversation with “Parish” star and executive producer Giancarlo Esposito. “A Murder at the End of the World” follows amateur investigator Darby Hart (Emma Corrin), author of a hit true crime .
