Glenn Close on her 'sinister' cameo in The Woman in the House: 'People expect me to be the bad one'

Warning: This article contains spoilers about the season finale of The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window.

Glenn Close's startling cameo in The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window came as a surprise to the star herself.

"They approached me out of the blue. And I was out in LA, which is kind of rare. I had enough time in my schedule to do it. So I said, why not? Sounds like fun," she recounts to EW.

Fun, indeed. The part sees the eight-time Oscar nominee play a mysterious, unnamed woman in the finale who is seated on an NYC-bound flight next to Kristen Bell's Anna. Close's character ominously claims her trip is for "business," and Anna, who finally seems to have her life in order, dozes off contentedly. When she awakens later in the flight, the seat next to her is empty. She goes to the bathroom and finds Close's character dead, slack-jawed with blood running down her ear, but upon alerting the flight crew, the bathroom is found to be empty and the attendant promises Anna there was never anyone in the seat next to her.

Close, who says she really wanted to work with Bell — "I think she's terrific and has a great sense of humor, and she's very philanthropic," she explains — had just one request before signing on for the role. "Have gloves and look fabulous," she says with a laugh. The final look, below, was clearly a success — Close kept the costume after the shoot.

As for the character herself and what her mysterious "business" in New York was, Close says she only knew that she was "glamorous" and involved in "something sinister." "My imagination could go crazy, but I think they wanted it to seem a little sinister and [for her to be] short and very succinct," she says, adding, "she didn't want to fall into a conversation at all."

In a previous interview with EW, showrunners Rachel Ramras, Hugh Davidson, and Larry Dorf said they wanted "an actress who had starred in movies like this, sort of the OG of them all," and that to them meant the Fatal Attraction and Jagged Edge star.

"I don't know if I had heard that," Close says when asked about it. "But certainly, if I come on screen with a certain attitude, people always expect me to be the bad one. There's a lot of baggage that [comes] if I act in a certain way, where people say, 'Uh oh, something bad's gonna happen.' I played women that people think are truly evil. But for me, it's only [101 Dalmatians villain] Cruella who's truly evil."

She continues with a laugh, "Everyone else has a story, except for this mystery woman. Her backstory is a mystery even to me." Much like poor Anna in the final seconds of The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window, looks like we're going to have to keep on guessing — for now, at least.

The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window is now streaming on Netflix.

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