By Hope Sloop
Published Oct. 20, 2026, 5:04 p.m. ET
See more of our coverage in your search results.
Connie Britton is used to being in the spotlight, but her new show, Phony, is turning the spotlight into a microscope.
In the Hulu mystery-comedy, the Friday Night Lights alum stars as a mom and high school principal who may or may not have been switched out with a near-identical body double, a conspiracy at the heart of her son’s (Sam Nivola) investigation throughout the show. Given that much of the show’s premise revolves around characters staring at her intently, Britton says that she can’t think of another role that has made her feel more exposed in her decades-long career.
“It is so vulnerable — I can’t even tell you — in the kind of ways I probably should have anticipated, but I didn’t necessarily anticipate,” the actress tells DECIDER in a sitdown conversation. “The whole process of changing my face, it means you have to look at your face really closely in the first place, and then make the most subtle changes, which happens to kind of be like, ‘Oh, well, because my face does this here, we’re going to [do this instead].’ Anyway, yes, it’s very vulnerable, very vulnerable.”
While Britton says her lips are sealed when it comes to the true nature of the changes — i.e., has her character really been body-swapped or are internal changes manifesting outwardly — the actress says the tweaks that the team came up with are very much there. To make her look ever so slightly different without making it a dead giveaway, she worked with series creator Nick Paley, hair and makeup, and VFX artists who made almost indistinguishable changes. The goal, it seems, was to make Britton look about 99.5 percent like herself, but to leave just enough room for doubt that the audience themselves might question what they are looking at.
“It really was a journey to get there and to get to the process that we use because, you know, it had to be subtle and so it’s kind of a combination of all the things, hair and makeup, and slight changes in that way,” she explains of how they found Ellen’s updated look. “And then also a little bit where they had a whole team of incredible artists who were able to do just very subtle things with VFX. Literally frame by frame, almost like painting in a way. So it’s really a combination of all these different mediums to kind of achieve that.”
Rest assured that the mystery is one that will keep fans guessing through the final episode. Luckily, for that mystery to stay alive, Britton says the team did not have to use any dots, green screen, or any other behind-the-scenes trickery that might have made her envious of her VFX-less co-stars. Sadly, fans dying to know why these little tweaks to the actress’ face were required will have to stick around and watch as Nivola’s character continues to unravel what really happened to his mom.
The first two episodes of Phony are now streaming on Hulu. New episodes stream Tuesdays.
If you’re new to Hulu, the basic (with ads) price is $11.99/month. If you want to upgrade to Hulu ad-free, it costs $18.99/month.
If you want to stream even more and save a few bucks a month while you’re at it, we recommend subscribing to one of the Disney+ Bundles, all of which include Hulu. These bundles start at $12.99/month for ad-supported Disney+ and Hulu and goes up to $32.99/month for Disney+, Hulu, and Max, all ad-free.