Finneas, known for his Oscar-winning collaborations with Billie Eilish on “No Time to Die” and “What Was I Made For?”, ventured into new territory by composing for television for the first time with AppleTV+’s limited series “Disclaimer,” directed and created by Alfonso Cuarón.
Even though Finneas had never worked on a TV score before, Cuarón admired his work and brought him in during filming. The main scoring process, however, didn’t begin until post-production. “He sent me a bunch of music that he loved as references, and it was mostly string quartets,” Finneas says. “I was immediately like, ‘Oh my God, I don’t know how to write music for a string quartet’ so I had to learn.”
The series features Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Kodi Smit-McPhee. It centers around journalist Catherine Ravenscroft, who faces her own past after receiving a novel that reveals deeply personal secrets.
To bring the score to life, Finneas collaborated with composer David Campbell. “To notate and write what I had written and then orchestrate it into parts — because I don’t know how to write sheet music.” Campbell recommended the Attacca Quartet, whom Cuarón already knew and admired.
Finneas noted that many of Cuarón’s past projects “don’t have a score,” so he approached this series with subtlety. “There are big montage sequences, like the water rescue, where we knew we needed the momentum of music, and there are moments where the music is a little bit of an inner monologue of character,” he says.
The seventh episode contains a pivotal moment where Catherine’s hidden truth is exposed. The man she once saved, Jonathan, later assaulted her. Cuarón gave Finneas a specific track for that scene. “I thought it was super haunting, and it just felt like the right horrible thing to play” during the revelation that the story that had unraveled her life was false. The music’s tone evolved alongside the narrative.
Finneas composed a theme for Catherine using a cello, first introduced in Episode 1. He also created music representing the family. Nicholas, Catherine’s son, “is mostly listening to rap, grime and drill,” which contrasts with the rest. “So you hear that with the cello, married with synths that you hear with [husband] Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen).”
Additional themes included a love motif for Steven (Kevin Kline) and his deceased wife Nancy (Lesley Manville), seen in flashbacks.
Reflecting on the process, Finneas described his workflow as nonlinear. “I would work on cues from Episode 6 and then 2,” moving through the episodes out of order, “which was satisfying.”
He concluded, “If I were to do more television, I would hope I’d get to do that again, because, you know, it’s appealing to do it that way.”
