You’ll have to forgive Natasha Lyonne if she’s irritable today. She just quit smoking, which is no small feat for someone who’s so synonymous with the habit that there’s an Instagram account dedicated to the coolness of her taking a drag.
“I’ve been putting it off for so long,” she tells me, pointing to the small Nicorette pack on the coffee table in her East Village apartment. “I’m naturally wired for self-destructive crutches. I fucking love a vice.”
Though she admits there are “immense” consequences of raging nicotine withdrawal, the health benefits far outweigh the discomfort (at least, that’s what she’s telling herself).
Celeste Sloman for Variety
“It might be a symptom of being in a pretty decent place,” she offers of her reason for quitting. “In a way, I want to meet that artistically and emotionally. I want to return the favor and say, ‘OK, maybe I’ll sign up for life for a little bit longer.’”
“A pretty decent place” is underselling Lyonne’s career renaissance.
The 43-year-old actress has always been a crackling presence on-screen, but her early days in Hollywood were marked by star turns in underseen indies such as 1998’s “Slums of Beverly Hills” and 1999’s “But I’m a Cheerleader.” And, of course, she played the wisecracking teenager Jessica in “American Pie,” but she was overshadowed by main cast members (Jason Biggs, Tara Reid, Seann William Scott, Alyson Hannigan, and Chris Klein).
Pop culture didn’t really catch up to Lyonne’s unorthodox charms until recently, and that’s partly because she finally put herself in the driver’s seat. She co-created the hit 2019 Netflix show “Russian Doll,” an existential time-loop comedy that landed Lyonne Emmy nominations for acting and writing. As jaded New Yorker Nadia Vulvokov, who begins the series by reliving her 36th birthday, “Groundhog Day” fashion, Lyonne got the platform to showcase her spectacular range — with the ability to dole out pithy one-liners in one breath and plumb the depths of her character’s intergenerational trauma in the next.
“People have suddenly become receptive to my eccentricity and idiosyncrasy,” she says, slouched on her couch in a T-shirt and rainbow-pinstripe pants. “It’s a real curiosity that when I turned 40, people were like, ‘We’re down for this.’”
Even after her series took off, she says, creators weren’t falling over themselves to work with her. She thinks she knows why: When men write, direct and executive produce a piece of zeitgeist-tapping entertainment, she suggests, “everybody comes out of the woodwork to be like, ‘How many new roles can we give you?’”
But for a woman, “I think it’s the inverse. When women are doing a lot of those jobs, that can feel intimidating,” she says. “With all the excitement of ‘Russian Doll’ Season 1, Rian was the only person who came to me saying, ‘I really want to come up with something for us to do together’ — and then he followed through.”
Lyonne is referring to “Poker Face,” a case-of-the-week murder mystery series from Rian Johnson, the writer-director of “Knives Out” and “Glass Onion.” Though she’s surrounded by scene-stealing guest stars in the Peacock series — including Nick Nolte, Chloë Sevigny, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Hong Chau — “Poker Face” exists as a vehicle to spotlight Lyonne’s on-screen magnetism.
She stars as Charlie Cale, whose abilities as a veritable human lie-detector put her on the run and into the orbit of a curious number of violent deaths. Viewership is not guaranteed in the age of peak TV, even when high-wattage talent is attached, but “Poker Face” has managed to break through — it’s already been renewed for a second season.
“I had the idea of doing something ‘Rockford Files’ or ‘Columbo’-esque, and I realized those shows always have a charismatic personality at the heart,” Johnson says. “When I saw Natasha in ‘Russian Doll,’ I couldn’t take my eyes off her.”
Lyonne radiates an effortlessly cool vibe, so it’s somewhat surprising when she says her Hollywood persona doesn’t line up with her real self. She’s actually intensely calculated about her craft. She even works with an acting coach, recommended by Sam Rockwell, to make sure Charlie doesn’t blur with Nadia on “Russian Doll” or her other breakout TV role as Nicky Nichols on “Orange Is the New Black.”
“Because I have big, curly hair and a New York accent, you would not think my OCD is quite as strong as it is,” she says. “But I am obsessive about precision. I don’t actually enjoy anything genuinely chaotic or confusing or muddy. I like things that are meticulous, almost mathematic.”
She glances around her living room. “There are books all over, and it seems like there’s no plan,” Lyonne says, gesturing to the shelf behind her. “But also, there’s no dirt in the apartment.”
Lyonne talks exhaustively during our interview, hardly stopping to breathe, and her thoughts take so many twists and turns that it’s hard to remember the question she’s answering. At one point, she stops mid-sentence to say: “Good luck editing it down to whatever this piece is supposed to be about.”
We barely settle into her living room when Lyonne suddenly sits up. “Do you want something to drink? Am I supposed to offer you water?” she asks me. “Don’t writers like La Croix?” I admit with embarrassment that I’m no fan of carbonated beverages. We walk over to her basically empty kitchen (“When people talk about multi-hyphenates, I would not put cooking in there for myself,” she cracks), and she opens the fridge. “What about something interesting? This is pineapple …” she trails off as she picks up a bottle. “No, you don’t want this.” Eventually, we settle on a glass of water.
Celeste Sloman for Variety
As we make our way back to the couch, Lyonne sips from a “Tonight Show” mug and picks up where she left off on her creative process. “I like to get really prepared — to be so meticulous that then all of a sudden you can be sloppy,” she says. “It’s through an obsessive work ethic that you can seem so casual and undone.”
Johnson took notice while filming “Poker Face.” “Natasha comes in thinking and overthinking every single detail,” he says. “And then she does a magic trick on set, where she understands to step in front of the camera and live in the moment.”
Lyonne spent much of her early career feeling misunderstood by Hollywood. During most of her 20s, she found herself in a darker frame of mind as she dealt with well-publicized struggles involving alcohol and drug abuse. One of the great comforts of reaching her 40s is that she no longer feels bound by anyone’s expectations.
“Being in your 40s is so much better than being in your fucking 20s and 30s. It’s so much cooler. It’s so much sexier,” she says. “My romantic life is more happening. Back then, I was waiting to be selected. Once you’re in your 40s, you’re like, ‘Who am I attracted to?’ We’re all going to die, right? So I better get my living in quick.”
She admits she doesn’t know how long the smoking cleanse will last, and she’ll forgive herself if she cracks. But right now, it’s been helpful to “raw dog” reality as she determines her next chapter.
“I’m taking this time to get very quiet. I’m dying to direct a feature, so I’ve been taking a lot of time to read books and see what’s worth adapting. I’m also working on my own scripts and rewriting scripts I’ve already written,” she says. “I don’t know what smoking is going to look like once I’m back interfacing on set with all the elements.”
Suddenly, Lyonne brings up the Beach Boys song “I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times.” She says her recent run of success counters the thesis of the rock band’s misfit manifesto. “In many ways, I feel like, ‘Oh, maybe I was meant for exactly these times’ — just the idea that a woman would be allowed to embody this quintessentially male role on ‘Poker Face.’ And it’s an unspoken thing we’re even doing it.”
Except for maybe the innocent, girly Megan Bloomfield in “But I’m a Cheerleader,” Lyonne’s film and TV personalities skew more “tough guy New York.” She’s now interested in expanding the idea of who or what she’d like to say as an actor.
“I’m curious what it would be like to soften, or to play women. I’ve been playing men this whole time. I’ve been stealing from De Niro my whole life,” Lyonne says, citing Al Pacino and Stanley Kubrick as other early influences. More recently, she’s asking herself, “What would it be like to let my voice register a bit higher? What would it be like to be a bit more vulnerable?”
An example of this is how she went out on a limb last May to host the Season 47 finale of “Saturday Night Live,” a show that she’s always adored. “The single greatest week of my life” is how she remembers it. “It’s so high octane. They literally, like, rip your clothes off and put on something else and then jam braces in your mouth, and you’re back out there. And I was like, ‘I’m fucking born for this thing!’”
Between sketches, Lyonne was remarkably calm as she caught up with long-time pals (Maya Rudolph, Seth Meyers) and even an old boyfriend (Fred Armisen). “SNL” producers came up to her saying, “You’re supposed to be all panicked!” She loved being invited because it felt like an opportunity to be part of something bigger than herself. Comedian John Mulaney emailed her suggestions to polish her monologue. Seth Meyers stopped by Studio 8H to offer well wishes. Tina Fey texted after the show to say “Congrats.” “Honestly, the only thing I care about is this family aspect to this business. My parents are dead. I’m not married with kids. They feel like my chosen family.”
OK, our time is up. I’m happy to be ending our conversation on such a hopeful note. Lyonne is grounded and centered — and I decide those nicotine cravings are no match for someone so resilient and, well, badass. I get up to leave with my empty water glass in my hand and, in a moment that will haunt me for the rest of my life, accidentally drop it.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuuuck. The glass lands, in slow motion, on the floor and shatters into 10 million pieces over the living room rug. There are shards everywhere — big enough to cut and small enough that not even a vacuum would pick them all up. I sheepishly bend over to clean up this catastrophic mess, but Lyonne insists that I leave it. “I’m going to have somebody come clean it professionally. Because I’m showbiz, baby!” As I race for the door, she sighs and says, “This is going to be the thing that makes me pick up a cigarette.”
Styling: Cristina Ehrlich/The Only Agency; Makeup: Dotti/Statement Artists; Hair: Ursula Stephen/A-Frame Agency; Manicure: Dawn Sterling; Look 1 (blue shirt): Full Look: Gucci; Look 2 (white suit): Full Look: Chanel