Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘A Man on the Inside’ begins as a mystery about a missing necklace and an old man’s unexpected turn into espionage. However, over the course of eight episodes, the show delves deep into the topics of aging and loneliness and explores them from different perspectives. At the center of it is a man named Charles Nieuwendyk. Retired and recently widowed, he is looking for a new purpose, which is when he sees an ad from a private investigator, Julie Kovalenko, who needs someone his age to go undercover at Pacific View Retirement Residence.
When Charles’ daughter, Emily, hears the news, she is concerned about this sudden turn of events, but eventually, she comes to appreciate the change that this new endeavor has brought about in her father’s life. It seems difficult to put oneself in Emily’s shoes, but there is a real-life woman who had to deal with the fact that her octogenarian father was turning to espionage to escape his loneliness.
Emily is Loosely Based on Sergio Chamy’s Daughter
‘A Man on the Inside’ is inspired by the true story of Sergio Chamy, which is documented in ‘The Mole Agent.’ The documentary serves as the cornerstone of the Netflix series and allowed creator Mike Schur to develop all the characters based on the protagonist, Charles. In the documentary, we meet Sergio Chamy’s daughter, Dalal, who is initially concerned about her father going to live at a retirement home for three months to solve a case. However, in a moving moment, Sergio explains why it is important for him to do it, which makes Dalal accept her father’s choice.
Apart from this interaction, we don’t see much of the daughter except when she visits her father at the retirement home. Very little is known about her apart from her relationship with her father, who is at the story’s center. In the documentary and later in the interviews, she spoke about her reservations about letting her father take the job. She revealed that at first, to her and her siblings, all of whom were concerned about their father, the PI agency’s call in the newspaper seemed like a scam as the whole premise of hiring a man in his 80s as a spy seemed rather ridiculous. However, she and her siblings eventually supported their father’s choice.
When the case was solved, Sergio left the retirement home and moved to Santiago, Chile, to live with Dalal and her family (husband and two children). She had wanted her father to stay with them since the beginning and didn’t like the idea of him staying in a retirement home. She credits her life and successes to her parents and considers it her responsibility to care for her father when he needs his children the most. She expressed her happiness about the fact that her children have grown up in the shadow of their loving grandfather. She also continued to support her father and his burgeoning acting career. She also accompanied him to LA to attend the Oscars and celebrate the nomination of ‘The Mole Agent.’ As for her personal life, Dalal enjoys her privacy and loves spending time with her family away from the public spotlight.
Mike Schur Made Significant Changes to Emily’s Character
When Schur decided to turn the documentary into a fictional series for Netflix, he found it best to expand the daughter’s character. Expanding an hour-and-a-half film into an eight-episode series meant diving into the characters and their relationships with each other. To understand Charles better, one needed to look at his equation with his daughter. With this in mind, Schur invented a whole new arc for Emily, which we don’t see for Dalal in ‘The Mole Agent.’
An entirely different backstory for her was invented. Instead of two little children like Dalal, Emily is given three young boys who are more invested in their phones than anything happening around them. She also becomes a bit more involved in the investigation, while Dalal is not involved in Sergio’s investigation at all. Through Emily and Charles’s relationship, another emotional dimension is added to the story. We find out more about Charles’ life with his wife and how the grief of losing her has been weighing on both of them. The arc of their relationship gives more depth to Charles’ character development, making Emily an integral part of his story.
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