The actress stars in the series alongside Jennifer Garner.
Spoiler alert! Plot points from the season 1 finale of The Last Thing He Told Me are discussed in detail below.
Angourie Rice couldn't dream up a better ending for The Last Thing He Told Me. ET spoke with the 22-year-old actress, who dubbed the ending of the Apple TV+ series "kind of perfect."
Rice stars in the show as Bailey, a teenager whose dad, Owen (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) mysteriously vanishes. In the series, which is based on Laura Dave's book of the same name, Bailey teams up with her stepmom, Hannah (Jennifer Garner), to find answers.
Ultimately, Bailey and Hannah learn that, following his first wife's death, Owen testified against his father-in-law, Nicholas, who was involved in organized crime. As a result, Owen and Bailey were forced into hiding.
Hannah reacts to the news by making a deal with Nicholas to keep Bailey safe, but with the understanding that Owen will be unable to return to their lives.
"I think Hannah shows this incredible bravery and courage to do something that's difficult and risky, but ultimately is the right choice," Rice told ET. "I think that's a choice that we face in our lives in many different circumstances. The choice between what is right and what is easy. I think Hannah chooses the right choice, but that doesn't mean that it's easy."
With that choice, Bailey loses her dad for good, but gains a relationship with her late mother's family.
"When Bailey finds out the truth, she gets a family and she loses it all over again. I think all families are complicated, and I think we all might have similar sort of circumstances in our own families of complicated loyalties and blame, and all of that," Rice said. "If you take away the context of the show, all those emotions towards family and those complicated dynamics really come up a lot in real life."
Forging that relationship with her newfound family, Rice believes, "would be very complicated, and definitely not straightforward" for Bailey.
"That's one of my favorite scenes in episode seven on the plane," Rice said, "[when Bailey and Hannah] sort of talk about what that could look like, what the future could look like."
After that particular scene, the series flashes forward five years. As Hannah is preparing for her show at a gallery, she spots Owen hiding in the shadows. The pair have a brief moment together and then he disappears into the wind again, just as Bailey, who calls Hannah "Mom," arrives with her new beau in tow.
"One of my favorite things about that last scene is that Bailey doesn't get to see her dad. I think that's really important, because I feel like for Bailey, there would be a lot of anger there," Rice told ET. "We see that in the show. She really struggles to express how she's feeling because she has this pent-up anger against her dad, which she feels like she's not allowed to feel because he's given her everything, but she is still so angry that he would do something like this to her."
"So I think the ending is tragic, yes, but I also think it's kind of perfect, because I think it would be almost cruel to Bailey to see him again," she added. "I think it's a little bit cruel to Hannah as well, but Hannah is so strong and he knows that she can handle it, whereas it would completely crush Bailey, I think."
As for if Rice sees more of The Last Thing He Told Me in her future, the actress said she'd be down to return to the role if Dave decided to continue with the characters.
"If they wanted to do a season 2, I'd be interested. I think what's so interesting about the show is that the end of the show is the ending, but what I like about it is that it's also the beginning for the characters," she said. "I mean, without the flash forward, we see Hannah and Bailey, the beginning of a new life together, and how they are going to navigate that I don't know."
"Also, because it's the beginning of an entire new identity for Bailey. She's just received all this information. It would be really cool to see how she creates a life with that," Rice continued. "But, I mean, that's all up to Laura Dave. It's her story, they're her people and her characters."
The Last Thing He Told Me is now streaming on Apple TV+.
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