‘Cape Fear’ star Javier Bardem knows you might be actually rooting for his Max Cady: “That’s the fun part,” says Javier Bardem

The most terrifying part of Apple TV‘s new Cape Fear series is that there are moments when you might find yourself almost rooting for Max Cady (Javier Bardem) — the iconic villain dead-set on enacting revenge on the person he blames for putting him behind bars —  instead of the well-to-do family he’s targeting.

“There is something fable-like about this story, in the moral simplicity of the basic premise of an all-American family terrorized by a monster,” series creator Nick Antosca told DECIDER this week. “In the the ’60s version, that’s really what it is. In the ’90s version, the family is dysfunctional and there is some guilt and stuff in the past.”

In the Apple TV version, we start the story sure that Max Cady is guilty of the brutal murder of his pregnant wife and unborn son, but soon cracks in this straightforward storyline present themselves. Cady becomes sympathetic in moments, while the lawyers who conspired against him begin revealing more and more damning flaws.

“The monster is the monster in the contemporary nightmare, but both the family and the monster are more complicated,” Antosca said. “There are lingering questions about guilt and justice and culpability that pervade the story in ways that, to me, feel very today.”

Cape Fear originated as a novel by John D. MacDonald called The Executioners, which was soon adapted into the 1962 film classic starring Robert Mitchum as Max Cady, a convicted rapist, and Gregory Peck as Sam Bowden, the key witness responsible for his conviction in court. Martin Scorsese reimagined the story in 1991 by casting Max Cady not as a sympathetic drifter, but the pure incarnation of evil played by Robert De Niro. The Apple TV show goes several steps further, making Cady’s crime a potential homicide that maybe — just maybe? — he didn’t actually commit?

“Well, I guess that’s the fun part of this ten-episode journey,” Javier Bardem told DECIDER. “You don’t know exactly what it’s true, what it’s not, who is hiding what.”

Early on in Cape Fear, we watch as Max Cady’s mistress is coached over the phone into confessing to the crime before dying (brutally) by suicide. She leaves behind a note full of details only the killer would know and the long-lost murder weapon. Max Cady is exonerated after 17 years in prison and he emerges with a mission: to confront his former defense attorney Anna Bowden (Amy Adams) over the plea deal she sealed with the case’s dashing prosecutor, whom she promptly wed thereafter.

Amy Adams told DECIDER that the fear Anna fights to suppress when she meets Max again is partially about the threat he represents and about the fear that her past indiscretions may come to light.

“He feels very unpredictable. I have, you know, this vision that she sort of kept track of him a little bit in prison,” Adams said. “So she sort of understands that the person who went in is not the person coming out and she doesn’t fully understand what he’s capable of and whether that’s violence or exposure.”

While Anna and her husband Tom (Patrick Wilson) initially look like a picture perfect couple, their panic over Cady’s release hints at a deep shame they share. Beyond that, we also get to see the ways in which they fail as parents to their teenaged children and the secrets they keep from even each other. This touch, plus Antosca’s decision to give Max a tragically traumatic backstory, keep you guessing whom you can trust. The tension is sharper than a knife.

“In the modernity of the piece, innately, we’re questioning truth in a different way, because the way we digest truth and information is so different,” Adams said. “We are seeing so many different perspectives on a situation. So it allows for a lot of ambiguity in our perceptions.”

“Depending on who you’re listening to, depending on who you’re identifying with, will be the person you believe to tell you the truth.”

Apple TV’s Cape Fear‘s ten-episode-run constantly leaves you wondering who you can really trust.

The first two episodes of Cape Fear are now streaming on Apple TV. New episodes come out weekly on Fridays.