Original-Cin Q&A: Tatiana Maslany on Pickpockets, Performance and the John Turturro Experience
By Bonnie Laufer
Canadian actor Tatiana Maslany, who scored a 2016 Emmy Award for her performances in the sci-fi series Orphan Black, delivers a brief yet strikingly powerful performance opposite John Turturro in Noah Segan’s poignant drama, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, which premiered at TIFF last September.
Playing Kelly, the estranged daughter of an aging pickpocket confronting an increasingly digital world, Maslany brings profound depth and unspoken history to her screen time.
Speaking with Original-Cin, Maslany opens up about the dynamic charge of working with Turturro without rehearsal, finding personal resonance in themes of aging and obsolescence and her new series Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed on AppleTV. The Only Living Pickpocket in New York opens in theatres across Canada October 30.
ORIGINAL-CIN: I saw the film at the Toronto International Film Festival and was taken by it. We feel for Turturro’s character Harry, but your character Kelly gives the audience a real gut punch. It’s a small but impactful role. I know you had worked with the director Noah Segan before; how did this role come about?
TATIANA MASLANY: We'd acted in a music video together, so we knew each other through friends and had kind of kept in touch over the years. I honestly don't know how I was in the ring for this, but when he offered me the part and that it was a scene opposite John Turturro, I was like ‘Yes, like no matter what.’ But then reading the script, I was like, ‘This is so beautiful and such an intense, powerful scene written so elegantly where there's so much said but also so much unspoken.’ There was a sad unspoken history with somebody who you're also a stranger with. There were so many dynamics in there that I was really interested in and couldn’t turn it down.
O-C: From what I understand, you didn't want to rehearse with John because of the characters' estranged relationship. Tell me a little bit about that decision because you only worked on this film for one day.
TM: Half a day actually. When I arrived on set that morning, Noah asked John and I if we wanted to rehearse, and neither of us wanted to, and Noah felt the same. It felt like we all were in the same mindset of having tension and sort of unpredictability and discomfort to it where John and I didn't know each other. Sort of like we're coming at each other as strangers who have a lot of ideas about what it is that we need and what we want, and the yearning there is between these two characters, but ultimately we don't know each other and so that tension was really interesting to play with.
O-C: You have worked with many great actors, but I think Turturro would be top of the list.
TM: He's a dream of a character actor. He's so funny and strange and can deliver it all no matter what he takes on.
O-C: The thing about his character Harry in The Only Living Pickpocket in New York: he is a thief but we still feel for this guy. Not only is he going through some personal issues, but he knows he’s becoming obsolete, getting involved with a cybercrime he not only knows nothing about but didn’t intend to get mixed up in.
TM: I'm 41 and I feel alienated by certain elements of this new world (laughs). I struggle to understand some things. But that's the thing, right? Time passes, you're just like, ‘What?’ I'm suddenly this, and suddenly people are talking to each other in this way, and I don't understand this language anymore. It’s the alienation of it and the loneliness of it, and not that I understand it in the same way that Harry's character does, but I think that we all feel left behind in some ways, and I'm sure we experience this all as women too. We become obsolete in certain ways. The age of women is a very different thing than for men. Then there's all these themes in the film that resonate. The idea of running out of time, the idea of like what are the regrets I have about my life? Who have I hurt that I can't face? You know, all of that feels resonant.
O-C: Your series Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed on AppleTV just got renewed for a second season. You play a woman who is written so well, I can’t imagine you being bored in her skin! But you claim you get bored too easily. You were on Orphan Black for a number of seasons, and playing 17 clones, there’s no way boredom set in on that show! When do you know enough is enough?
TM: I was never bored on Orphan Black, for obvious reasons (laughs). I mean, that's never my choice to say enough is enough. So, I don't, but I get it. Actors don't get to decide that. I certainly think that stories do run their course and actors get told that's what they're supposed to be. I think it's hard when there's a demand for something, and people think they want more, it is what it is. I always remember the original The Office, the UK version. There were two seasons and two Christmas specials, and it still holds this special place in my mind because it was so contained and it knew exactly what it was doing, and it was done. There was no drawing it out forever. I like a completed thing that’s all wrapped up in a bow.
O-C: You really lead the charge in Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed. Paula, the character you play, is so unhinged. Was she someone you felt connected to right away or did it take a few episodes to realize who she was?
TM: I remember at the audition for it I felt very strange. I just couldn't get comfortable in my skin, and I felt, ‘Who is this person? I can't get a sense of her.’ As I was mulling on it, I was like, ‘Oh, this is actually where she's at.’ She is sort of learning who she is now after this massive loss, this huge breakup, and this kind of marker of identity that's been taken from her, which is her home, her husband, all of these things that we can become very attached to in terms of knowing ourselves. I think the feeling I had of who the heck is this and can I even fit in this body? The great writing helped me put her into place.
O-C: Just to wrap it up, did John Turturro teach you any pickpocketing tricks? He’s pretty good!
TM: He's really good. I've mostly gleaned tips from him while we've been doing Q&As for this film. No matter what project we're working on — whether it's an absurdist play or a movie about climate change or whatever it is — he's the most researched actor. So, yeah, I've learned a lot from him and just hearing his answers. I'm like, ‘Oh my God, you're so deep in this.’