The Undoing’s Hugh Grant on Mysterious Sylvia and Shocking Cut Scene

Warning: This story contains massive spoilers from The Undoing‘s Sunday, November 29, finale.

The ending no one saw coming — that was given away in the premiere. The Undoing came to a dramatic and graphic end on Sunday night, revealing that Jonathan (Hugh Grant) did, in fact, murder Elena Alves (Matilda De Angelis). Ahead of the episode, dozens of theories circled social media about who committed the vile act.

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Although Franklin (Donald Sutherland) and Henry (Noah Jupe) were on that list, Sylvia (Lily Rabe) was even more suspicious. Earlier in the show, Jonathan admitted that he had cheated on Grace (Nicole Kidman) one other time, years ago — and fans assumed that was with Sylvia.

“The conversation we had was that he was lying [when he said one]. There were plenty of other women. I think he’d been a womanizer all his life,” the Golden Globe winner, 60, told TVLine. “In terms of Sylvia, there was a version of the script where when she tells Grace that she represented Jonathan in his dismissal case from the hospital that he also made a pass at her. Not a successful pass, but he did come on to her.”

Lily Rabe in ‘The Undoing’. HBO

The England native also admitted that his character did so many awful things throughout the series that even others on set were shocked.

“Suggesting to Grace that [Henry] might be the murderer was pretty awful. And the poor boy overhears it. I’m able to bring him around with my infinite daddy charm. That was just ghastly. Even some of the crew said, ‘Oh, that’s just revolting,'” he said. “The only other time they said that about is when we were shooting the murder. … I was doing some takes where Jonathan — while hammering away at [Elena’s head] — was spitting out a part of her brain.”

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Grant then revealed that there was a grotesque detail edited out of the finale — something that wasn’t even written in the script but something he added in while filming the murder scene.

“After her head was [beaten to a] pulp I [did a take] where Jonathan, the doctor, was quite interested in her brains, and he started poking around in them with his finger,” he shared. “That was just me trying stuff.”

The BAFTA winner also shared his input for the “extremely complicated emotionally” car scene with Jonathan and Henry — and one big detail was his idea.

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“Episode 6 had been the subject of so much debate. [New script] versions were emailed back and forth, especially the last section in the car. I was terrified [when we were shooting it], and I remained terrified until [the finale aired] that the whole road trip might be laughable in the wrong way,” he said. “So it was a huge relief to see — at least on social media — that people seemed to think it worked. I was the one who pitched [the idea of Jonathan and Henry] singing that song. That was a song that me and my cousins used to sing on holidays as kids, and I thought that might be cool as a moment of craziness. But I was terrified people would just think it was all crap.”