TV| On Becoming a God
in Central Florida
Kirsten Dunst rises to the top in a satire
about the desperate drive for success
COMEDY-DRAMAWhether playing a foolish French
queen destined for the guillotine (2006’s Marie
Antoinette), a depressed woman patiently wait-
ing for a planet to smash into Earth (2011’s Mel-
ancholia) or just a humdrum hairdresser
sinking into crime (season 2 of FX’s Fargo),
Kirsten Dunst has no actorly varnish, glamour
or ornamentation. She’s so firmly and utterly
ordinary and real, she’s actually a bit strange:
You can’t imagine her fitting into a sleek, highly
charged drama like HBO’s Big Little Lies—she
might make everyone else in that cast look like
Big Little Phonies. Becoming a God, an odd,
unruly new series that was originally slated for
YouTube, is a good fit. Dunst is Krystal Stubbs,
a working mom who gets sucked into a pyramid
scheme thanks to her doltish eager-beaver hus-
band (Alexander Skarsgård, inset). Krystal
loses everything, then schemes to get it back—
and then some. At its best,
Becoming a God is comically
wild (a pair of gators play a
major role) and—because it
depicts money and profit as
the ultimate arbiters of daily
American life—compellingly
uncompromising. At the cen-
ter of it all is Dunst, shiny and
hard like a coin—and, like a
coin, always letting the world
see just one face, while we’re
always aware there are two.
(Showtime, Aug. 25, 10 p.m.)
PEOPLE September 2, 2019 35
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Edited by
Tom
Gliatto
Dunst plays a
woman scrambling
to get out of the
financial hole dug
by her husband
(Skarsgård).
FROM LEFT: PATTI PERRET/SONY/SHOW
TIME; LIZ VON HOENE/SHOW
TIME
