What does ‘The Curse’ finale mean? We asked ‘Moses’ to find out
The surprise star of the Showtime series’ final episode speaks
L-R: Emma Stone as Whitney and Dr. Elliot Berlin as Moses. Jeff Neumann/A24/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME. Photo by Jeff Neumann/A24/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME.
By PJ Grisar January 12, 2024
Full spoilers ahead for Showtime’s The Curse
In the final episode of The Curse, Nathan Fielder hits the ceiling and a guy named Moses tries to coax him down. The head scratching, zero gravity, surprise birth conclusion gave viewers much to ponder. It also gave Dr. Elliot Berlin, an Los Angeles-based chiropractor specializing in pre- and post-natal care, stunt experience and a SAG card.
Appearing only at the very end of the Showtime horror comedy, which follows a do-gooder couple Asher (Fielder) and Whitney (Emma Stone) as they pitch an HGTV show where they sell impractical “passive homes” in an underprivileged community, Berlin plays the memorable role of Whitney’s unconventional doula, an Orthodox Jew named Moses. The chiropractor says when Stone, whom he has people in common with, first read the script, she immediately saw him in the Moses character — Berlin is, in fact, a trained doula — and told him to audition.
Acting wasn’t completely new. Berlin does stand-up comedy and majored in theater at Yeshiva University. He made the mistake, he said in a phone call, of trying to develop a new character, reading his sides as an “L.A. over-yogi doula with a little bit of the New York Jew in there.” Production didn’t go for it, but called him back and asked him to play the part more like himself.
What you see, Berlin said, is mostly his demeanor with his pregnant patients, and Fielder — who directed the finale in which his character, Asher, literally is stuck floating upward in their scenes together — encouraged him to “do what you would normally do.”
“I’m like, ‘I normally would not be in a room with the dad stuck to the ceiling!’” Berlin said. “What do you mean ‘What I would normally do?’’
Indeed, “Green Queen,” the last hour of The Curse, is the most baffling episode of the entire series. Asher, due to some differential in thermal pressure in their eco-friendly home, wakes up on the bedroom ceiling as Whitney goes into labor. The Siegels’ baby is born as Asher is eventually sucked up endlessly into the stratosphere in the fetal position, like a fully-grown version of 2001’s star child.
Berlin said the first “whiff of the chaos” he got after booking the part was when he got a call from a stunt coordinator.
“’I think you have the wrong person,’” he told him. “‘I’m a fat guy from Los Angeles. Like, if I just skipped the last step on the way down, that’s my biggest stunt.’”
Berlin did a whole weekend training, a completely new experience for him. But there was more to the performance than being briefly airborne while hanging on to Fielder. Berlin believes the finale is an expression of the creators’ feeling of “the world turned upside down” during a time of extreme polarization.
Fielder and co-creator Benny Safdie set out to “poke fun at people who take themselves too seriously when it comes to righting the wrongs of the world” Berlin said. He thinks these same people often succumb to “groupthink” and “extremism” in their virtue signaling. Naturally, their unthinking actions — say, Whitney’s letting people shoplift thousands of dollars of designer jeans from a local store — are fueled by guilt, which Berlin said is very much “our thing” as Jews.
But why exactly did it end with a Fielder on the roof — or, rather, above it, clinging to a tree for dear life? Berlin suspects that the story may have gotten away from the creators, just as Whitney and Asher’s unwieldy — and unthinking — efforts to make amends for the wrongs of racism, capitalism and genocide spiral out of control.
“It’s possible the undertone of all the Judaism is the idea of tikkun olam,” Berlin said. “We are supposed to make the world better and you can’t shirk those responsibilities, but it’s also metered. You have to think for yourself. I wonder if the reflection of the house, the whole idea of the mirrored houses, is really ‘Hey, look at yourself first. Think for yourself. Ask questions.’”
“Green Queen” features some of the show’s most Jewish content, including a Shabbat meal (complete with a Holocaust joke and an odd discussion of Mel Brooks’ humor), Hebrew songs and evil-eye averting superstitions about the baby. And, naturally, it has a Moses figure.
The name Moses has significance, Berlin thinks, in that the biblical Moses is traditionally regarded as the epitome of humility. This, he says, fits well with doula work (Berlin notes doula comes from the Greek word “slave”).
“My role as a doula is always to build up the woman who’s in labor to help her find her strength and her confidence, and thrive,” Berlin said. “To a degree that was Moses’ role too. He always sort of went to battle with God in ways that seem like pure chutzpah. But he didn’t do it for himself. He did it for the people.”
There are even more Jewish meanings to derive from the birth scene, Berlin argued, recalling how one of the “curses” of Adam and Eve for eating from the tree of knowledge was the pain of childbirth. In the end, the pain gives way to Whitney’s bliss at seeing their child.
“Her real mission in life, I think, becomes clear to her at that point,” Berlin said. “In the childbirth world, we say all the time that at birth, especially the first birth, it’s two births happening at the same time: the birth of a baby and the birth of a mother.”
While Berlin doesn’t plan on quitting his day job, he said it was incredible to work on The Curse set, with Stone’s “nuclear” energy, Fielder’s extreme attention to detail (“he would do takes 1,000 times and still not be satisfied”). He does hope to take on a bit more acting on the side — both because it’s fun and, if he works enough, he can qualify for the SAG health insurance.
Already, Berlin says he has been “loosely offered” the role of Santa Claus in a movie.
“I’m like, ‘huh, from Moses to Santa Claus — I can see that,’” he laughed.
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