Lola Petticrew’s Performance in Furious Is Absolutely Spellbinding

Have you heard the gospel of Lola Petticrew? The nonbinary actor first came on my radar after our friends at Autostraddle blogged about their role in Hulu’s FBI serial killer drama Furious, but I resisted watching it. Not because the show doesn’t have great reviews — it does! — but because I don’t typically want to spend my post-work hours watching a crime procedural about a Jeffrey Epstein-style network of sexual predators. Real life is dour enough. But as the accolades for Petticrew continued to roll in, I was persuaded to put on my thickest skin and press “play.”And wow! Already, in this initial, eight-episode season, Petticrew has easily turned in one of the best TV performances of the decade so far.If you also need to be brought up to speed on Furious, the Elizabeth Meriwether-created show follows FBI agent Alice Black (the fantastic Emmy Rossum) as she pursues serial killer Catherine Grace (Petticrew), who is using the same kinds of opioids her traffickers once used on her to murder a string of abusers tied to the wealthy Jay Easton. (Clock those initials.) When we first meet Catherine, she cuts a terrifying figure, breaking from a gruesome torture session only to give a trick-or-treater some candy corn before returning to her violent reverie. Petticrew nails the same sort of unnerving American Psycho-esque tones that Christian Bale did a quarter-century ago, and that many have since imitated to lesser effect.But as we learn more about what Catherine and her closest friend endured at the hands of Easton’s pals — and as Alice’s own past begins to unravel — the show’s moral outlook gets muddier. Petticrew’s performance also begins to reveal its layers, shattered teenage vulnerability coming to the surface in moments that are largely acted alone in bedrooms, with no screen partners. Catherine can be crying one moment, dancing the next, all of it believable, all of it seamless. Petticrew completely inhabits the material in a way few actor