Fans of crime thrillers with a supernatural twist will get hooked on The Rising, exclusively available on Lionsgate Play – Executive Producer and cast share their experiences
Put your crime solving skills to the test and dive into a world of mystery as Lionsgate Play adds another edge-of-your-seat thriller to their roster. British series The Rising is a supernatural crime drama packed into an intense 8-episode series. It follows Neve Kelly (Clara Rugaard) as she makes a jarring discovery – she’s dead but she somehow still exists. With her newfound paranormal abilities, Neve is determined to investigate her death and fight for justice. But as she digs deeper, she discovers that her loved ones might not be as innocent as they seem. As the life she knew starts to unravel and secrets rise to the surface, will Neve be able to solve the mystery of her own death?
Talking about what she loves about the show and her character, Clara Rugaard, who plays Neve Kelly said, “One of the reasons why I think this show is unique and interesting is because it does the beautiful thing of reimagining the ‘dead girl’ story and gives the victim a voice. It’s all through the victim’s perspective and through Neve’s eyes. The drive and the force is coming from her. ‘That’s not how my story is going to end.’ I think that that’s clever and really cool.”
Bringing a fresh perspective on the classic murder mystery, lead writer and executive producer Peter McTighe muses on what makes The Rising a must-watch.
Talking about the appeal of giving a murder victim the voice to tell her story, McTighe says, “That was definitely one of the most exciting things that appealed to me about the show. We are able to give agency to a character who traditionally would be a dead body on a slab, a person who becomes a plot device and is then robbed of their character in order to serve someone else’s story. I wanted Neve to be very firmly at the heart of this and for the audience to be with her through all those phases, that initial shock she goes through, the realization of what’s happened, the impossibility and the confusion of that, and the anger that then propels her forward.”
He adds, “It’s that quest to understand what happened and to find justice and that awful sense of loss and missed opportunity. It would have been very easy just to do the plot version of this show and have Neve raging against what’s happened, but there is so much heartache and character in what has happened to her as well. There is no easy fix for her and her situation. We’re not going to magically bring her back to life. Neve is really dead and that is a really tough and heart-breaking concept. It was important to me that we always remembered the human in Neve and that need for contact and other people, and the sadness that she’s not able to do that anymore.”
