Spoilers for Evil season four, episode ten, “How to Survive a Storm.”
Sheryl Luria has been dancing with the devil, literally and metaphorically, since the very beginning of Evil. After the Satan-worshiping Leland Townsend (Michael Emerson) got her addicted to his youth-serum injections in season one, she began working alongside him at DF, a real-estate, social-media, and cryptocurrency corporation where she takes orders from actual demons. But this four-season arc came to a messy and heartbreaking end in this week’s episode. As she predicted two episodes ago, Sheryl meets her death at Leland’s hand, surviving long enough to say good-bye to her granddaughters and make amends with her daughter, Kristen (Katja Herbers).
In her final days, Sheryl, played by the fiery Christine Lahti, attempts to redeem herself. Despite her disdain for religion — as she told priest David Acosta (Mike Colter) in a recent episode, “Your church is such a fucking patriarchy” — she has her grandson, Timothy, who is theoretically the Antichrist, baptized to protect him from Leland and others who want to exploit him. She warns Kristen to protect her daughters from Leland. Just before she dies, she even asks David to give her last rites, a remarkable pivot considering she also recently told David, “I don’t want your forgiveness. I hate you fucking guys.”
Lahti hated saying good-bye to Sheryl and her castmates, but she understood why it had to end like this. “It’s a show called Evil. I think Leland is going to prevail,” she says. But she was still surprised when co-showrunner Michelle King, who created the series with her husband, Robert, first delivered the news while Lahti was working out on her Peloton. “I had just gotten done with this article about when Brian Cox was told by the Succession showrunner that he was going to be killed off, surprisingly, in that show. I was thinking, Oh my God, what that call must have been like. And then: ring, ring. It’s Michelle.”
When did you find out Sheryl was going to be killed off?
The day before they released the tenth-episode script to everybody. Which I’m glad about. If I had known that I was going to be killed off, it might have affected the way I did things. As a result, I just was barreling ahead, thinking I’m going to prevail. I’m such a kick-ass, determined woman obsessed with bringing down Leland that there’s no way I’m not going to.
Michelle King called me. “Hi, so sorry to tell you this, because we love Sheryl and we love you, but just organically, story-wise, this feels like the right thing to do.” And I understood.
Especially in this final story arc, it feels like Sheryl is a vessel for all the viewpoints in the series. She’s very much a skeptic, like Kristen and Ben. In the end, she seems to embrace faith and wants to get her last rites. Did that turn feel authentic to you?
Yes. I think one of my favorite scenes in the entire four years was the confession scene with David. You see her cynicism and rage about having to be in this fucking church and beg this priest to baptize Timothy so she can destroy Leland. But while she’s in there, there is so much guilt and remorse and sadness bubbling up in her. It makes her feel so vulnerable.
It’s very hard for Sheryl to ask for help, and she does need help, not only just to have David baptize the baby, but in terms of forgiveness or understanding about her own checkered past. She’s done some things she’s not proud of. A lot of things she did to protect her daughter and granddaughters, but let’s face it, putting your son-in-law on a shelf and draining his brain fluids, even if you think he’s an absentee father and no-good husband, is probably not the best way to go.
Probably not.
For Sheryl, it’s all been gaining power. Her backstory that I made up, with the Kings’ approval, was that she was in a rock-and-roll world with a lot of really toxic, masculine men who mistreated her, abused her, undervalued her. When she and Leland were supposed to get married and he rejects her — he said something like “Go take your dried-up, old ovaries and go back under the rock that I found you under” — something snapped in Sheryl. It was like, That’s it. I will never, ever be brought down or made to feel less than by a man again. I will gain power by any cost.
At the end, she wanted more than anything to reconcile with Kristen. It did give her some relief. She also has a connection now with David. I think it was more about David saying he forgives her more than God, necessarily.
In that confession scene with David, Sheryl says she needs to baptize Timothy because Leland is afraid of the church and it’s the one place he won’t go. But I was thinking about how, at certain turning points in one’s life, if you were introduced to religion from a young age and even if you’ve since rejected it, there’s a part of you that wants to go back to it. Like when you become a parent or a grandparent. Is any part of her like, I want to baptize him because I feel like that’s what I should do, regardless of Leland?
Yeah, it is complex like that, Jen. She’s so needy for help, and yet she is trying to stay the cynic. But there’s something soothing about being in that booth, having this priest hear her and still believe she’s a worthy person. That’s really moving to her.
When my mother died, it was so traumatic, and my father-in-law said to me, “I’m so sorry you don’t have any faith because it would help you right now.” That really struck me. He’s right, in a way. This is why people lean into faith. It can be so supportive and helpful, even if it’s not, you know, “I believe she’s in heaven.” I’m still an atheist, but I remember feeling there is something to that.
To get a little personal for a second, this episode debuts the day before the anniversary of my father’s death. He was raised Catholic, but we were more generally Christian in our house. At the end of his life, he also wanted last rites. He wanted his funeral at a Catholic church. I was annoyed, because I was like, This isn’t who he was. What is going on here? It was interesting to see Sheryl have a similar moment.
I’m sorry about your father. That makes it so relatable. Your father was obviously not an atheist, but maybe an agnostic, and maybe that was true with Sheryl too. Maybe that vulnerability, that needing to be forgiven and comforted, was so huge that she leaned more into the believing part than the non-believing.
I also wondered if the baptism had an impact on her. As soon as Timothy was baptized, the power comes back on. He’s a transformed baby.
Of course, Sheryl couldn’t see the demon. Only Sister Andrea could see the demon baby. But there was something very powerful about the way that the thunder and the lights and everything went along with this.
Was there a physical baby on set, or is that created in post with CGI?
We did some takes with a robotic little creature operated electronically by the puppet master. Then there were other takes where it was the actual child. We also had a dummy child that was so heavy. Andrea and I were both like, “We do not have to go to the gym for weeks after this.”
Sheryl is obviously very skeptical of Leland at this point, yet she seems surprised when she realizes he tried to kill Lexis. Why didn’t she realize he was capable of stooping to that level before?
She thought she made it very clear to him when she said several seasons ago, “If you ever touch one of my granddaughters, I will cut off your dick.” She thought he heard her. And true to her word, when she found out he actually crossed that line, she went over to cut off his dick. Unfortunately, as she said a couple episodes ago, she tried to slice it off, but it was too small. She couldn’t get to it and she just ended up stabbing him in the groin.
Will we see Sheryl on the show again before it ends, or was this it?
You know, she’s dead. I was hoping in the next four episodes she might come back as a ghost and, frankly, torment Leland. Like, put cockroaches in his ears while he’s sleeping. Just have some tweezers and be dropping live cockroaches in his ears. I even pitched that to Robert King. It didn’t happen. There is a funeral for her and a memorial service, but she never comes back.
What was shooting your last scene like?
My last scene was in the grocery store incognito. We were about to shoot that scene with Kurt Fuller and the demon in my office where he tries to kill us, and his costume falls around his ankles and he can’t walk. We were in our dressing rooms waiting to be called into makeup. And we got a notice that they were shutting down because there was a picket line. So we shut down because of the strike. And I didn’t know if we’d ever get back to shooting that scene, my hospital scene, and that grocery-store scene. Finally, we did many, many months later, once the strike was over. I had a long time to think about all those scenes and let them percolate.
Is it a good thing or a bad thing to have that time?
It turned out fine. I was just happy that we got to shoot those scenes. They could have said, Well, we can cut that and save money and just end the season this way. The good news was, not only did we get to shoot all this stuff from episode ten, but then, once they decided to cancel the show, they got to shoot four more episodes to tie up all the stories.
Is there a chance we could see you come back in some form for those episodes, or maybe as a movie follow-up?
I would be interested in wherever, however, this show continues. But my character’s dead, so that’s a problem. I pitched to Robert and Michelle that, if there was any show that was going to bring back somebody within the thematic world of the show, it would be this show. She could come back as a different being, or in somebody’s dream or fantasy or nightmare. I would love to come back as Leland’s worst nightmare.
You’re an atheist, but did working on this show have any impact on your feelings about religion?
Of course. I, along with Sheryl, always landed on the side of Kristen, that there is a psychological explanation to all this stuff, the exorcisms and the demonic possessions. But it made me appreciate other people’s faith. Sometimes, I was even jealous of it. But to me, religion is, historically, just patriarchy on steroids and the oppression of women. Once I got to be old enough to realize all that, it was like, Why would I want to be part of that? And why is God a white man? I feel, if anything, kind of Buddhist leaning, that there is a God in everyone.
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