Natasha Lyonne, the star known for her raspy wisecracks, believes she leads with her silliness. “I am, to my own detriment, sort of a silly person,” she says. “Because I think, you know, it’s funny that we live and we die and everybody takes it so seriously.”
But her work, she explains, means a lot to her, which is why she found her nomination for best actress in a comedy for her mystery series Poker Face so moving. “When it comes to my work, I’m a very intense workaholic and very detail-oriented, and so it means a lot to me,” she says shortly after the July 12 nomination announcement (and before the July 14 SAG-AFTRA strike).
On the Peacock show, Lyonne brings to life Charlie Cale, an accidental sleuth who has the innate ability to tell when someone is lying, a talent she puts to use while traveling across the United States, avoiding a wronged casino owner. The show, created by Hollywood whodunit king Rian Johnson, adopts a retro case-of-the-week structure that Lyonne found gratifying after noting how viewers experienced the binge model with her Netflix series Russian Doll. “It was very fun to return to case-of-the-week and have audiences in communion with the work for a longer stretch of time,” she says.
Beyond her dedication to how the show was created — she also wrote and directed an episode that features guest stars Nick Nolte and Cherry Jones — Lyonne identifies with Charlie’s quest for the truth. “As a human being, I’m miffed that we put so much importance on things that are meaningless and so little importance on the things that actually matter about the human experience. I think that’s something I really have in common with Charlie,” says Lyonne. She just wishes that she had Charlie’s “superpower of actually being able to sniff out when there was something faulty happening and get to the bottom of it, and make sure that person knew that there were consequences to their unwieldy behavior that might make an underdog’s life trickier.”
The Emmy nomination also means a lot to Lyonne given the context of her relationship with Johnson, with whom she developed the project since its inception. They have a “unique connection,” she says, adding, “I think that’s so rare in the arts that you find a moment in time when two people are really just inspired by each other.”
But she had another person in mind as her date for the ceremony. In fact, on the morning of nominations Lyonne asked Johnson if his wife, the film historian Karina Longworth, could accompany her. After all, her fandom of Longworth, the host of the podcast You Must Remember This, is how she and Johnson initially connected. “I love them both very much,” Lyonne says.
This interview was conducted before the July 14 launch of the SAG-AFTRA strike.
This story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
Source: Hollywood
