"Leave it to Sam Esmail to make it really uncomfortable, real and awful," the star at the heart of the deadly twist tells The Hollywood Reporter.
[This story contains spoilers for the final season premiere of USA Network's Mr. Robot.]
When it comes to processing the Mr. Robot final season premiere's devastating first scene, perhaps it's best to remember a certain phrase: "You're panicking right now. Remove all emotion, and you will do just fine."
In her closing moments on Earth, Angela Moss (Portia Doubleday) utters those words to Phillip Price (Michael Cristofer), one of the most powerful men in the world — but not powerful enough to stop what's coming. It's ironic that one of Angela's final lines is one that Price, her biological father, uttered all the way back in season two under very different circumstances. Back then, Angela wasn't in immediate risk of receiving two bullets to the back of the head — though perhaps she was on a collision course with such a brutal demise the entire time.
The final season premiere launches into action with Angela's death, a continuation of the character's final scene in season three. According to creator Sam Esmail, the writers' room quickly determined that Angela's execution was the right way to start season four, and in fact catalyzed the decision to end Mr. Robot after only four seasons.
"Unless we pulled punches," he told The Hollywood Reporter, "there was no way Whiterose (BD Wong) was going to let her continue living and going out in the wild to figure out the machine, with what Whiterose had divulged to her. We felt that if we were being honest, it was the only end to her character."
As Portia Doubleday explains it, she was a champion of the decision to kill Angela, saying it felt true to the spirit of what she represented since the first episode of Mr. Robot. Ahead, Doubleday speaks with THR about bringing her time with the USA Network thriller to such an abrupt and shocking end.