The Savant's Jessica Chastain on Turning a True Story Into a Timely Thriller

The following cover story was published before Apple TV+ indefinitely postponed the release of The Savant, starring Jessica Chastain. We will update this story when additional premiere information is available.

Before she became “the Savant,” the real woman behind Jessica Chastain’s latest character was an anonymous source in a 2019 Cosmopolitan article — someone whose job was so sensitive, her name couldn’t be printed. The Andrea Stanley story “Is It Possible to Stop a Mass Shooting Before It Happens?” detailed the life of a government-trained expert who infiltrated online extremist communities.

Now, her work loosely inspires The Savant, an eight-episode Apple TV+ limited series. Chastain stars as Jodi, a brilliant top-secret investigator who immerses herself in the hideous online world of white nationalism to uncover domestic terrorism plots. Her colleagues call her “the Savant” because Jodi has a sixth sense about which trolls are just talking a big game and which are about to act.

Kelly Carmichael, Chastain’s partner at Freckle Films, brought the article to Chastain. "She knows I’m very inspired by women who do incredible things behind the scenes — that’s kind of my lane," Chastain says via Zoom.

And it’s certainly timely. "That’s what makes it so upsetting — look at what just happened in Minnesota." (A few weeks before this interview, former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were assassinated by an attacker who also critically wounded state Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette.)

As Jodi dives further and further undercover with a hate group, she’s also juggling life as a mother of two, with a soldier husband (Nnamdi Asomugha, The Good Nurse) deployed overseas. "What happens when you spend so much of your time in an energy that is so much about hate?" Chastain considers.

“The idea that every single day this woman is pretending to be a hate-filled, homophobic, racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic a-hole, looking at so many images that are really harmful and destructive and having to write such things — how do you prevent that from taking over who you are? That was the most interesting thing to explore about the character.”

She found balance in Jodi’s relationship with her children, played by Trinity Lee Shirley and Toussaint Francois Battiste. “Hanging out with those kids was very helpful. I can understand what it’s like to not feel like you want to face the day, but you’re responsible for little human beings, so you need to hide whatever darkness might be bubbling up inside you.”

Chastain did nothing to shield herself from that dark energy, however. As she always does, she went all in.

"If you’re coming in thinking you have to protect yourself from this character, then you’re never going to be able to be the character, to relate to the character. I have to give myself to it completely, and that means I need to be really selective about the work."

A diligent researcher, she was already painfully aware of the issues in The Savant. "I did a movie about gun regulation called Miss Sloane, and boy did I see a lot of angry comments directed towards me after that, which were quite shocking. And that was years ago. So, I feel like I’ve seen a lot of that rhetoric. I don’t need to go and look."

Despite the heavy subject matter, her colleagues say she was a delight on set.

Executive producer M. Blair Breard, a six-time Emmy nominee who worked with Chastain on HBO’s Scenes from a Marriage, says, “When she’s not working on a scene that requires tremendous emotional depth, she’s a very funny person.”

Michael Patrick Thornton, who plays Jodi’s boss, Gary, and previously starred with Chastain in A Doll’s House on Broadway, was struck by "her infectiously joyous energy" when they first worked together. "Her playfulness initially took me by happy surprise," he notes via email.

"I’m gonna get so much shit for this, but in my experience, most of the Juilliard folks with whom I’ve worked — good actors, to be clear — I wouldn’t use the word ‘playful’ to describe,” he says, referring to other alumni of Chastain’s alma mater.

Once the work begins, he adds, "She’s an absolute master class in ‘Be Here Now’ — the most exquisite and sublime listener with whom I’ve ever had the privilege of doing a scene."

"We have a shorthand, he and I," Chastain says. "Michael’s really quick-witted, really funny, improvs lines and works harder than anyone. I hope to work with him again and again, because he brings out the best of me as an actor."

Like Thornton, Gary uses a wheelchair, but refreshingly, there is no explanation for it in the series. "I can’t overstate how awesome that is, and how rare it is in television and film," Thornton says. "I honestly tip my hat to everyone at The Savant who made that decision. The explanation of why a character is disabled shouldn’t ever explain a character in total. That’s not drama; that’s just lazy writing."

In addition to researching his character, he adds, "The older I get, the more joy and discovery I find in allocating the majority of that character stuff to what I’m absorbing from everything."

To read the rest of the story, pick up a copy of emmy magazine here.

This article originally appeared in its entirety in emmy magazine, issue #11, 2025, under the title "The Savant"