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EDITING www.postmagazine.com 12 POST NOV/DEC 2020 he Undoing in a six-part dramatic/ suspense series that premiered on HBO in October, rolling out a new episode each Sunday night and con- cluding on November 29th. The series stars Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant as Grace and Jonathan Fraser, a well-off Manhattan couple, both of whom have successful careers — her as a therapist and him as an oncologist focusing on children's cancer treatment. As busy as their careers may be, both make time to do right by their young son Henry (Noah Jupe), who attends a prestigious private school in the city. Much of the couple's social life revolves around school events and fundraisers, with Grace's father — played by Donald Sutherland — being a major donor. After one such event, a student's mother is found murdered, and leads point to Jonathan as the prime suspect once an affair is revealed. While the infidelity strains their marriage and hurts the couple's son, Jonathan is adamant that he is not the killer. The series plays out with several twists that leave the audience question- ing his innocence and others' involve- ment, up until the finale. London-based editor Ben Lester, ACE, cut the entire six-hour series, continuing a relationship with director Susanne Bier that dates back to 2015, when he collab- orated with her on The Night Manager for AMC and BBC, and again in 2018 on the Netflix feature Birdbox. "That was huge fun," he says of the Netflix feature. "And then basically, when we were doing Birdbox, The Undoing came up. David E. Kelley. Nicole Kidman. Do I want to go to New York for five months? Yes, that sounds great!" Lester says he knew from the outset that The Undoing would be a six-part series, all shot at once, much like a fea- ture film. "The great thing about Susanne is that she always insists that I am out on-set," he explains. "It has plus and minuses. The plus is I get to go out to New York for five months, where I've never actually been before." The series was shot from March through July of 2019, and was well into post production when the pandemic hit, causing a delay to its initially-scheduled May release. "We locked this back in January, right in the beginning of the year," recalls Lester. "Then COVID came along. We mixed (Episodes) 1 to 3. We didn't have a score yet for (Episodes) 4 through 6. Everything was shut down. We didn't have a title sequence. We couldn't finish it on time." A one-day shoot in London gave Lester what he needed to create the series' open. The slow-motion sequence features a little girl playing, her red hair blows as she chases bubbles, all to Nicole Kidman's rendition of "Dream A Little Dream Of Me". "Susanne had this idea of 'childhood', 'innocence', 'dreams' essentially," says Lester of the open. "Her brief was that it's the 'dreams of children'. The little girl is supposed to be Grace, and her future husband." Months after the hiatus, Bier returned to the States from Denmark. Lester and the director spent time revisiting the ed- its for all six episodes in early August. "[It] was amazing — to be able to es- sentially have five months away from it, editorially, and then to be able to watch it fresh," Lester recalls. "There were the usual last-minute changes, but it all made it slightly better. It was a long time to be on it, but it was a real luxury." While in New York during the pro- duction, the post team was set up in an apartment, right near Central Park. Lester had an Avid system and would put to- gether assemblies for Bier to review. "Susanne wants to see assemblies once a week," he explains. "She doesn't want to see things on Pix. She wants to come in and watch it, and that is hard work, but it really pays off down the line." Lester had an assistant who would prepare camera files for him each day and set up bins. "I think it was DNx36," he says of the resolution. "I try to stay out of that. I trust the assistant and the team to get that set up. "You can get a bit lazy, technically," he continues. "At the beginning, starting out, you feel the need to be on top of everything. You don't want to have any holes in your knowledge, or any kind of ignorance. And then the more you do, the more you can rely on people around you to sort that stuff out. Guiltily, I have kind of drifted away from knowing a lot of what is going on behind the scenes." His focus, he says, is instead on the story, the performances and mak- ing the film. The Undoing is mostly HBO'S THE UNDOING BY MARC LOFTUS BEN LESTER CUTS THIS SIX-HOUR SUSPENSE/ DRAMA T Director Susanne Bier on-set in New York City. Ben Lester cut the series on an Avid.