by Gill Pringle in LA
In following Chastain’s undercover profiler known as “The Savant” – who infiltrates online hate groups in an effort to stop domestic extremists before they act – as audience members, we almost breathe a sigh of relief.
Relief that there are real-life people out there who protect us from the alarming rise of online radicalization.
Clearly Chastain felt the same way too, immediately optioning the original 2019 Cosmopolitan article upon which the story is loosely based for her own Freckle Films production company.
“I was moved that these people existed,” says the Oscar-winning actress.
“I didn’t know that there was a group of people that work behind the scenes online; spend so much of their time infiltrating these hate groups; adapting these avatars and working almost like an undercover cop to stop plots of violence from happening.
“That gave me a lot of hope and inspiration, and it made me feel safer; like how many acts of violence would have happened had they not been there protecting us? I was really inspired by that article,” says Chastain, 48, who stars as Army veteran Jodi Goodwin in this eight-episode series, with Nnamdi Asomugha portraying her Army medic husband, Charlie.
Ostensibly, Jodi is a suburban mum, but while her two kids are at school or asleep, she hits the hate-filled chat forums using a carefully constructed online persona. It’s a blurred line between her mission to protect the public and doing a job that can put her own family at risk.
At the same time, there’s a psychological cost to leading a double existence. The Savant delves into the corrosive weight of concealment and the strain of facing societal hate head-on.
Certainly, some of those themes of online hate resonated personally for the actress and mother.
“I think that being a public person, especially…” she says. “I love to play strong women who do incredible things and break barriers and boundaries and expectations and stereotypes, so I am very familiar with getting comments that are derogatory and sexist and pretty horrific.
“The internet can be a dark place. It can also be an incredible place. It can be the place you learn; videos from women all over the world in their protests and what they share, and it connects us all. And it can be a great place of hope and evolution and moving forward.
“But it can also be a cesspool where hate is just circling, and I do think that we need better guardrails for it, especially when children are involved,” she suggests.
“I’ve taken social media off my cell phone. It’s on my iPad. I’m not off social media completely, but because I’m quite familiar with it, I just don’t need to have my cell phone and social media be that close to my body at all times, so I compartmentalize it and put it somewhere else.”
When she met with the woman – whose identity will remain anonymous – who was originally profiled as “The Savant” in Cosmopolitan, Chastain was full of admiration for her selfless work.
“I was giving her a lot of compliments and thanking her for her service, and she was brushing everything off. Every time I tried to bestow on her my admiration, she was actually, ‘Oh, it’s not a big deal what I do, it’s not a big deal.’ I realised that is very important for Jodi; she doesn’t want to be called ‘The Savant’, and she doesn’t want to understand, in some sense, the weight of what she does. She doesn’t want to live in it. She just wants to do it. She doesn’t want to talk about how great she is. She just wants to move forward and help people. I took that away in terms of the personality of the character,” says the actress.
The specific plot of violence featured in The Savant is not based on a real event. “The sad reality is that mass acts of violence are constantly occurring in the United States. We were taking the collective atrocities that have happened in the US and then representing what one of those could have looked like.” says Chastain, who is eager to tell stories that perhaps haven’t been told before, leading her to also executive produce The Savant.
“I’m drawn to any kind of story that I think is important that needs to be told. Definitely something that I haven’t seen before – that’s always really exciting to me. And this explores something I’ve never seen before. I didn’t know that these people existed that infiltrated these groups online. I like that all these guys get tricked by her… and it’s a suburban mom doing it in our series. As a producer, I’m excited to make projects that I learn from and projects that I would want to see,” says Chastain.
Inhabiting a character whose job it is to deal with the ugly underbelly of the internet was not always easy. “Jodi’s journey in this show, and in her work, is very similar to what we do as actors, where we kind of have to put on an avatar of a person who has completely different beliefs than us, oftentimes, and different ways of being and try to think how they would move and how they would speak and how they would navigate the world.
“It’s really important to have a separation. It’s difficult for me because when I’m acting, I never see myself as Method. I’m not someone who’s like, ‘Call me by the character’s name,’ but I cannot help that it affects me. It costs me something when I’m working on a complex or dark character; someone exposed a lot of trauma. There is an emotional cost.
“I have to take really good care of myself in between jobs. I have to be very clear: is this something that I’m willing to do? Because sometimes, you’re not even aware of it when it’s happening, the cost of it; you’re not even aware of how far down the rabbit hole you’re going, at least for me. Again, I’m not someone who’s like, ‘I’m gonna go fully in.’ It just happens to me when I’m working. The great thing is, when you’re doing a job, it’s a short job, and then you’re out and you’re free.
“But, for Jodi, it’s been ten years that she’s been playing this avatar, and at a certain point, it’s like: ‘where does she end and where does the avatar begin?’” she says of Jodi’s work at The Anti-Hate Alliance [AHA].
“The Anti-Hate Alliance is an organisation that cooperates with the FBI to prevent violent acts and keep civilians safe,” says Chastain.
“They want to stop mass shootings and attacks on American soil from within the country. They’re like undercover cops, so they’ll befriend a lot of people online and they’ll try to gather information. Everyone at the AHA has different avatars or what are known as ‘sock puppets’ that are on all of the message boards and in all of the chat rooms. FleshyMF is the avatar Jodi uses online. And the length of time Fleshy has been on these boards has created a lot of trust in the chat rooms.”
If some roles – such as this – are difficult and haunting, at least she gets to walk away at the end. “I’m [often relieved to] get to say goodbye – although some characters I don’t want to say goodbye to, like Celia Foote,” she says referencing her beloved character in The Help, an early role which propelled her to a Best Supporting Oscar nod.
She hopes that The Savant offers a profound message: “That you can’t avoid trauma and pain. You have to bring it out into the light – even if you think it’s the ugliest part of yourself. Because, don’t they say, sunlight is the greatest antiseptic? You’ve got to bring something in to the light and acknowledge it, in order to heal from it,” she says.
The Savant is available to stream on Apple TV+ from 26 September 2025
