Jessica Biel and Elizabeth Banks play sisters caught up in a murder mystery on their new TV series -- but how would they, plus costars Kim Dickens, Corey Stoll, Lorraine Toussaint and Bobby Naderi, fare solving one in real life?
Starring in a murder mystery is one thing ... being in one in real life, is another.
Jessica Biel and Elizabeth Banks star as estranged sisters caught up in the middle of a twisted whodunnit on their new Prime Video series, The Better Sister, based on the thriller book of the same name. On the series, the pair are forced to work together to discover who killed Biel's on-screen husband, played by Corey Stoll.
It's a position only one of the two leads told TooFab they would thrive in off-screen.
"I think my brother and I would fail miserably. We'd be in jail immediately," joked Biel when asked whether she and her real-life siblings could solve a murder mystery. "We would not. No, it's like two Pisces scrambling around trying to figure it out. We'd just be like, 'We did it. I don't know what happened.' We wouldn't fare very well, I don't think."
"We would have figured out somebody else to blame ... there'd be no issues in my family," Banks then answered, making it sound like her siblings would be better at covering up a murder than solving one.
"We all know our roles. We play them well," she continued. "I would pay for everything to happen. I have a sister who's the organizer who would like get it all done. My brother's the big guy. He's like, he's the muscle. I have another sister, who's like the distraction and we would have it down."
"We're criminals ... so it helps," she joked.
Also starring on the show are Bobby Naderi and Kim Dickens, the latter of whom is returning to on-screen detective work following her outing in Gone Girl. She and Naderi play partners investigating the murder in the series.
"Terrible. I'm terrible. I'm always terrible at any procedural or anything," Dickens told TooFab of her own mystery-solving skills. "This is certainly not a procedural, but I'm just like kind of the best audience member."
"I thought I knew, and I was totally wrong every time," added Naderi. "Until the very end, then I figured it out."
Getting back into her detective shoes is something Dickens admitted she was "a little concerned" about at first, thinking the character might be too close to the one she played opposite Ben Affleck.
"I was like, 'Oh, is it like Boney?' But I think she's so different. She's less dry. She's really reckless and a little bit messy at times and just fun," Dickens continued. "I mean, I loved working with Gillian Flynn and her novel, but to be back in the saddle with [showrunners] Olivia Milch and Regina Corrado, who are my old Deadwood comrades, it was a dream scenario."
As for Lorraine Toussaint and the aforementioned Stoll -- aka Biel's dead on-screen husband -- they, too, were split when it comes to their investigative abilities.
"I would be terrible," Toussaint said of solving a real-life crime herself, before admitting she also had no idea how the central mystery of the show was going to unravel until she finished reading both the script and book.
"I was turning pages, going, 'Oh my,'" she shared. "I read the book first because, yeah, I was turning pages going, 'Oh my God, oh my God,' and then I thought I knew it."
"I thought I knew it at least twice in the reading and was wrong both times," she added with a laugh.
While Stoll thought he and his brother "might be a good pair" at crime-fighting, he said he "couldn't guess" how The Better Sister would end either. "But as soon as I knew who it was, it made total sense and it was obvious," he added.
See if you can figure it out for yourself when all eight episodes of The Better Sister drop Thursday, May 29 on Prime Video.
