Oscar-winning composer and award-winning songwriter Finneas isn’t any stranger to writing music for movie. The composer and songwriter received Oscars — together with his celebrity sister Billie Eilish — for “No Time to Die” from the James Bond movie of the identical title, and “What Was I Made For?” from “Barbie” in 2024. He has received Grammys and has a solo profession in addition to multiplatinum music with Eilish. He’s a songwriter of all trades, however when it got here to writing music for AppleTV+’s restricted sequence “Disclaimer,” the sequence creator and director Alfonso Cuarón wished one thing totally different from him.

Regardless of Finneas’ in depth resume, he had by no means scored TV, however Cuarón was a fan. Though the musician was on board throughout filming, it wasn’t till post-production that the work actually started. “He despatched me a bunch of music that he liked as references, and it was principally string quartets,” Finneas says. “I used to be instantly like, ‘Oh my God, I don’t know the right way to write music for a string quartet’ so I needed to be taught.”

The seven-part sequence stars Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Sacha Baron Cohen and Kodi Smit-McPhee. The present follows acclaimed journalist Catherine Ravenscroft (Blanchett), who constructed her repute revealing the misdeeds and transgressions of others. When she receives a novel from an unknown writer, she is horrified to comprehend she is now the principle character in a narrative that exposes her darkest secrets and techniques.

Finneas began writing the music and introduced on composer David Campbell “to notate and write what I had written after which orchestrate it into elements — as a result of I don’t know the right way to write sheet music.” It was Campbell who really helpful the Attacca Quartet, and since Cuarón was a string quartet buff, he already knew the celebrated group of musicians.

In approaching the rating, Finneas notes that almost all of Cuarón’s movies, like “Roma” and “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” “don’t have a rating,” so the “much less is extra” strategy appeared applicable. “There are huge montage sequences, just like the water rescue, the place we knew we would have liked the momentum of music, and there are moments the place the music is a bit of little bit of an interior monologue of character,” he says.

Episode 7 reveals Catherine’s secret. Jonathan, the younger man she had met on vacation and rescued her son from drowning, would later return to her room and assault her. Cuarón gave Finneas a bit of music for the scene. He says, “I assumed it was tremendous haunting, and it simply felt like the suitable horrible factor to play” beneath the conclusion that the narrative that had unfolded and destroyed Catherine’s life was unfaithful. With that realization, all of the fantasy music that had come earlier than needed to shift with the narrative.

When it got here to devices, he gave Catherine a cello theme that may very well be heard early in Episode 1. He additionally created a household suite. Catherine’s son, Nicholas (Smit-McPhee) “is usually listening to rap, grime and drill,” and that’s a bit at odds with the remainder, “so that you hear that with the cello, married with synths that you just hear with [husband] Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen).”

Elsewhere, he created totally different themes together with a love theme for Steven (Kevin Kline) and his late spouse Nancy (Lesley Manville) who seems in flashbacks.

As for his expertise scoring for TV, Finneas says he didn’t work in a linear method. “I might work on cues from Episode 6 after which 2,” and leap round, “which was satisfying.”

He provides, “If I have been to do extra tv, I might hope I’d get to do this once more, as a result of, you already know, it’s interesting to do it that method.”