It’s fascinating to watch you play Love because she is so similar to Nell but the two have very different ways of dealing with familial trauma. Love compartmentalizes it so intensely that it manifests in violence. She almost seems at peace when she tells Joe that she killed his landlord, Delilah (Carmela Zumbado).

Oh my gosh, what a beautiful moment. This murderer looking at Love like she’s crazy. When I read the script, I was like: “How am I going to figure out how to perform this? How does this make sense in relation to the behavior that I’ve already presented?”

What did you decide was most important for you to convey at that point?

I didn’t want to do anything differently from the way the audience is used to seeing her through Joe’s voice-over. I wanted to still be fully engaged in the character and what her life is and the ways in which she acts. So that if you go back, you can see that she has all the qualities that make her capable of doing something like this.

It also becomes clear that Love is not a woman who needs to be rescued — she is capable of killing someone right underneath Joe’s nose and smoothly covering her tracks. It frustrates Joe’s relentless narrative that women are weak without him.

Yes. You cannot possibly look at this woman and go, “Oh, she’s hard.” But she comes in saying what she has to say; she’s not delicate by any means. Look at what she’s been through and the way in which she’s dealt with it. She shows an incredible amount of strength. She supports him so much because she sees this kindred spirit in him. He’s also somebody who’s dealt with pain. So, she feels that he deserves to have the same kind of peace and self-possession that she has found through years of practice.