The Beast In Me: Every Actor And Character In Netflix's New Thriller Revealed
Claire Danes reteams with Howard Gordon for Netflix psychological thriller The Beast in Me, premiering Nov. 13, 2025. Created by Gabe Rotter and co-starring Emmy winner Matthew Rhys, the eight-episode limited series follows a grieving author whose dangerous fixation on her real estate mogul neighbor spirals out of control.
Netflix just put a date on its next big psychological thriller, The Beast in Me, and it is very much a Claire Danes showcase. Think grief, obsession, a missing wife, and a neighbor you definitely should not get obsessed with. And yes, Homeland fans: Danes is reuniting with showrunner Howard Gordon.
The quick version
The Beast in Me is an eight-episode limited series created by Gabe Rotter and directed by Antonio Campos. Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys lead the cast. It lands on Netflix on November 13, 2025, and digs into grief, fixation, and the ways people get tangled up in things they probably should leave alone.
The setup
Danes plays Aggie Wiggs, a critically acclaimed author whose life has cratered after the death of her son. She is blocked, gutted, and drifting. Then a new neighbor moves in next door: Nile Jarvis, a slick real estate mogul who was once suspected when his wife vanished. Aggie channels her pain into a laser-focus on Nile, and that curiosity gets dark fast. Danes is also an executive producer here, teaming back up with Gordon for the first time since Homeland.
"You start to see this writer and this murderer have a kind of equal value. And how is that possible? I thought it was really interesting, this idea of writer as sniper, as a potentially predatory character."
Nile Jarvis, by way of Matthew Rhys
Rhys, an Emmy winner for The Americans, plays Nile as the kind of guy who can be magnetic one second and deeply unsettling the next. Gordon admits this was the real tightrope to cast:
"That was the far more challenging part to cast for. For me, the heavy lifting in the show was really, really making that character by turns dangerous, charming, and even vulnerable."
Stacked supporting cast
Brittany Snow is Nina Jarvis, Nile's current wife. Natalie Morales plays Shelley, Aggie's ex-wife. Jonathan Banks shows up as Martin Jarvis, Nile's father. David Lyons and Hettienne Park are the FBI agents poking at the cold case. Also in the mix: Kate Burton, Bill Irwin, Will Brill, Deirdre O'Connell as Aggie's literary agent, and Tim Guinee as a figure in Nile's orbit.
When to watch
All eight episodes drop November 13, 2025 on Netflix. Here is when it hits your time zone:
- Pacific Time: 12:00 AM
- Central Time: 2:00 AM
- Eastern Time: 3:00 AM
- UK, GMT: 8:00 AM
- India, IST: 1:30 PM
- Japan, JST: 5:00 PM
Where they shot it and who is behind it
Production ran from September 2024 through January 2025, primarily in Red Bank, New Jersey, and Raleigh, North Carolina. It is a 20th Television show with an executive producer list that will make you do a double take: Conan O'Brien and Jodie Foster are on board. Not a typo.
How this thing came together
Gabe Rotter wrote the original script years ago with a male lead. The project picked up steam after the protagonist was reconceived as a woman and Conan O'Brien's Conaco got involved. Once Howard Gordon signed on as showrunner, Netflix gave it the go-ahead. The creative DNA pulls from Janet Malcolm's book The Journalist and the Murderer, which Danes has cited when talking about Aggie's blurred boundaries. Even the title nods to a Johnny Cash song about wrestling with your own darkness, which is very much the vibe here.
The Beast in Me starts streaming November 13, 2025.