How 'Saint X' Hulu series turns the 'girl gone missing' story on its head
"It's [a] very multi-layered story," "Saint X" star Alycia Debnam-Carey said.
At the surface, Hulu's newest series "Saint X" is a story many are sadly familiar with: a young attractive female goes missing on vacation and the news makes headlines around the world.
But a deeper look at the new series, based on the bestselling novel by Alexis Schaitkin, shows that the story extends beyond what's become the popular girl gone missing trope and instead explores the lives of those affected by a young woman's tragic death.
"It's [a] very multi-layered story," Alycia Debnam-Carey, who plays Emily Thomas in the new series, shared in a recent interview with "Good Morning America."
"It sort of does deal with a lot of concepts and issues about how when something like this happens in a community or in a foreign country, it's then spun out in the media in so many different ways," she added.
"Saint X" follows a young woman named Alison Thomas (West Duchovny), who goes missing while on vacation with her family at Indigo Bay Resort on Saint X, a fictional island in the Caribbean. Two male employees, Edwin Hastie (Jayden Elijah) and Clive Richardson (Josh Bonzie), at the resort are suspected of her murder, but eventually released due to insufficient evidence.
Years later, after a chance encounter in a taxi with Clive (Bonzie), Alison's little sister, Emily Thomas (Debnam-Carey), who has been impacted by her sister's tragic death, goes on an obsessive pursuit to find out what happened to her sister and who her sister really was.
The devastating ripple effect of tragedy
With Alison's death at the center of "Saint X," many have an idea of the story's general focus, but the novel and accompanying series instead uniquely give audiences a multifaceted look at the death's rippling effect for many on the island.
The story unfolds through a lense in which audiences see what an event like this does for not only the family of the deceased, but how it also leaves a lasting impact on those who were accused of her death.
"It upends the sort of white girl gone missing [story]," West Duchovny, who plays Alison in the series said. "It really puts forth the ways in which the trauma and the grief and the prejudices really affect so much more than just Alison's family."
In the events leading up to Alison's murder, audiences get a glimpse of Edwin and Clive's friendship and what working at the resort is like. Viewers also learn how the resort came to be and how its history influences Edwin's and Clive's attitudes toward the guests.
"I understand why someone who is on an island, that has been irrevocably and quite negatively from his experience, changed," Elijah told "GMA.".
"His school that he went to is no longer there, his house that his friend lives in has been knocked down to build this resor," Elijah continued. "And these people come to his island he feels that they don't treat him with a level of respect that you should have coming to an island as a guest."
When Edwin and Clive are identified as suspects in Alison's murder, the story reveals how some, including Alison's father, are quick to place blame on the two men, who are Black.
"The big message I took away is that sometimes in our rush to understand something or place blame or judgment, we fail to see things as they actually are," Bonzie said. "There's kind of a funhouse mirror effect that happens when a tragedy occurs. We're so quick to be like, who did this, who's responsible? And we will place blame anywhere."
"With Clive, you see that maybe they rushed to judgment too quickly," he added.
The series also explores the long-lasting effects when a tragic death occurs, in this case by honing in on Alison's sister Emily (Debnam-Carey) 20 years later. The young woman has had to deal with the absence of her sister in their family – and the complex circumstances surrounding her death – for the majority of her adolescence.
"What really attracted me to this role was the personal psychological experience that this would have on a person," Debnam-Carey said on portraying Emily. "How it would affect someone trying to uncover what really happened, but then also who she is, and what kind of person she was [when she] was a child that kind of was left behind that now she's trying to fill the void in her family."
"It was really an exploration into the psychological downward spiral of someone that was affected by something so traumatic," she added. "That was really interesting to me."
Not just a murder mystery
One thing that drew the series' cast and creators to Schaitkin's story was how it relinquished expectations of what a story, with the death of a young woman at its center, is typically about.
"I love the subversion of the narrative of the book," Elijah said. "You open it, you think that's gonna be one thing. And it's very much so not gonna be that thing."
For one of the show's creators, executive producer Leila Gerstein, the story was one that drew her in because of the way it looks at the media's obsession with "dead white girls."
Instead of focusing on the sensationalized headlines and coverage tragic tales like this can often elicit, the series' creators instead focus more on showing who Alison was.
"We're seeing not just Alison -- and we're seeing her not as this perfect girl," Gerstein said. "We will come to see [she] is a bit of a mess and has her own issues and her own problems."
Duchovny said one of the reasons she found playing Alison to be challenging was because the on-screen role only portrayed her life in the days leading up to her death.
"With the book, you get a little bit more of Alison," she said. "But in the show, you get her for those eight days that she's on vacation. So for me, it was such a challenge and so important to me. Like how can I do justice to this character within these parameters."
"It doesn't just feel like a murder mystery genre," she added.
The first three episodes of "Saint X" are available to stream Wednesday on Hulu.
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